Alan-LUCID CULTURE
New York, NY

Performance and exhibition
What drives someone to become a performer? Conceit? A passion to be heard? Dissatisfaction with other entertainers? Madness?
What drives someone to become a performer that puts their neck literally on the line
What drives someone to become an assassin? Conceit? A passion to be heard? Dissatisfaction? Madness?

New York City has a great banjo player and songwriter embodied in Curtis Eller, as evidenced by his newest full length recording: "Wirewalkers and Assassins". These ten songs aren't exactly a cycle but they do touch upon some reoccurring themes (as illustrated by the CD's title). Circus performers, killers and other celebrities peak from behind curtains and strut boldly onto center stage.

Tightrope walkers, assassins and celebrities all have one thing in common: they all have somewhere to fall. And, damn, they can fall hard (though Booth managed to keep going after breaking his leg when he jumped from Lincoln's box to the stage.) But there-in is the essence of drama: the great brought low. It's the goal of an assassin and the end result of many entertaining careers.

Eller is a great storyteller. He takes the tale of John Wiles Booth and carves it into a classic murder ballad ("The Curse of Cain"). He shapes boxer Joe Louis in to an object of veneration, the focus of a condemned man's prayer (on the closer "Save Me Joe Louis"). On "Plea of the Aerialist's Wife" he remolds himself into a country crooner (reminding me of the great Rex Hobart). On this one song he manages to make heartbreak and fear seem both personal and universal. The tunes aren't always downers though, "Sweatshop Fire" and "Firing Squad" are barn burners and flag wavers... rural vaudevillian calls-to-arms. They remind us of a time when folk music was insurrection music, protest music.

Curtis' unease, his dissatisfaction makes him a backwoods troubadour on par with Steve Earl. Both seemed burdened by the past, what could-have-been and the shadows those events throw on the present. This album is haunted by the (American) Civil War and by the killing of a president that followed it. One man can follow a vision and take action. But what vision? What action?

Curtis Eller's troubled soul is palpable on this recording, but he isn't without hope. He finds strength in love and in people's ability to endure... and, most potently, in the witty turn of a phrase.
Perhaps his feelings can be summed up by paraphrasing the Brown Bomber: "We're gonna win 'cause we're on Joe Louis' side."

Quick Review:
If you think the line "I'm gonna get fucked up like Ulysses S. Grant" is genius, this album is for you.

Jordn Block-SEPIACHORD
Seattle, WA

Those who loved Taking Up Serpents Again, Curtis Eller¹s excellent 2004 collection of banjo-driven Americana, pre-rock roots-folk and ragtime ruminations, need not tread cautiously when considering his latest, another 10-track offering dubbed Wirewalkers and Assassins. Few records this year have been as adept at mining the successes of their predecessors while still sounding refreshing and new. Serpents is more than an appropriate comparison for the new disc. It's almost a mirror. Eller's carefully plucked banjo and vaguely country-western vocals still steal the show but many of the same elements surface: the walking upright bass and punctuating accordion, the cooing harmonies and rabble-rousing stompers, brushes skittering across a snare as Eller fingerpicks his way through a verse. And, above all, Eller maintains his focus ­ some may say his fixation ­ on historical narratives and anachronisms, the way lines pleasantly blur between past and present, fact and fiction, lore and legend. On Serpents, we were introduced to Abraham Lincoln, Buster Keaton, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, Stephen Foster and a host of others. Now, it¹s John Wilkes Booth, John Brown, Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon, P.T. Barnum and Joe Louis. (Elvis Presley returns for a second go-around.) With this mix of reference points and connotations, it's almost less accurate to call the disc old-timey than other-timey. Of the record's 10 great tracks, the ones that work best are the ones that kick up some dust and get your blood flowing, whether it's the harmony-backed choruses of "John Wilkes Booth (Don't Make Us Beg)," the pulsing one-two, one-two throb of "Sugar For The Horses" or the borderline-frantic shuffle of the incredible "Firing Squad." (Standouts from the more slowly paced tracks include the pedal steel weeping of "Hartford Circus Fire, 1944" and the naked, unadorned "Daisy Josephine," a heartstring-tugger if Eller's ever written one.) The record's two best tracks, though, are "Sweatshop Fire" and the album-closing "Save Me Joe Louis." On the former, Eller ponders the fate of the Confederacy, singing lines like "I¹m going to get fucked up/ like Ulysses S. Grant" over banjo, spare percussion, wailing electric guitars and backing from a perfectly timed chorus of angelic female voices. On the latter, a melancholy offering that takes place, in part, on death row, Eller¹s brand of box-car folk slows down and the proceedings adopt an almost gospel-like hue with the addition of a moaning organ. It¹s a breathtaking end, a change of pace after a half hour of acoustic ballads and more toe-tapping fare, and another reminder that, no matter what¹s come before, Eller¹s still got a lot more ground to cover.

Justin Vellucci-SWORDFISH
Pittsburgh, PA

BANJO OF FURY: An Illustrated Review from Billy's Bunker
(to see the review with the illustrations click HERE)

Curtis Eller has a voice like John Prine, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Jake Speed, Bruce Cockburn, and Phil Ochs turn and turn about with lyrics tinged by each of their songwriting styles. There are arrangements in the vocal backing like that of Leonard Cohen on Songs of Love and Hate or Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks on anything. Curtis looks like Groucho Marx, Leon Redbone, and one of the Poughkeepsie cough drop Smith Bros. kicking like a ninja with a banjo in his hand. What holds this album together is that elemental banjo and lyrics that chronicle the times and challenge the faithful with real American poetic flare as convoluted and contradictory as O Suzanna. Years from now Wirewalkers and Assassins may be the soundtrack for Ken Burns' "Second Great Depression" five part series on PBS a few years hence.

Billy's Bunker: Close your eyes, relax, and dream up some crazy shit I can use for the review. Curtis Eller: I'll try to think up some crazy shit when I get a free moment. I played a funeral once, and I've done a few gigs at a Milliner's shop...she pays her musicians with free alcohol and a custom made hat.

A good song says something if there is some heart in it. Curtis seems to care about things past and things future, and things right here and there. He looks and sounds as quirky and mournful as the way things have come to be. This here is roots music reinvented for the new dust bowl that's about to blow us away. Eller's unique blend of augmented Old Timey is polished to a fish-eye mirror brandished by the unforgiven and forgotten in the face of punch proud America. This novel of a song writing style is no more insubstantial than Doris Kearns Goodwin or Flannery O'Conner with some of the wise humor of each.

Billy's Bunker: Where does your music come from? Curtis Eller: Although I play the banjo, I'm not a old-time, bluegrass or country musician. I consider myself a rock & roll singer. I grew up in Detroit and have lived in New York City for 15 years, so I play city music. I sing about a lot of old stuff, but so did Ray Davies.

Curtis Eller's American Circus has the eye of Ray Davies in its lyric images. There is a sense of history in Ray Davies treating events such as death of John Kennedy and the demise of the Palais dance hall in Ilford, but Curtis digs deeper where the firsthand accounts are found in books and fading newsprint. The world presented in this album is that land that time forgot where concepts come of age. The anachronisms brought together in these songs fit a similar clogged or atrophied ventricle in the heart of America. We are all Americans there. We fit in fine, since we are a concept of ourselves most every day of God. Each of these songs chip away at the same chunk of marble until there is nothing left but Uncle Sam. This is an America we sense beyond mere experience. We hope to find in history what we seek to become. Time and America are seen by this American Circus a little like fourth dimensional chess or Billy Pilgrim's unstuck travels in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. America is a thing out of time.

Curtis Eller: My dad was a bluegrass banjo player and a rockabilly guitarist (but he only played in church). I pretty much restrict my performances to places that serve alcohol . . .which -- outside of communion -- excludes church. My dad also ran a small local circus when I was very young, so I got an early education in the value of physical performance. We also got lucky enough to meet all the legendary circus performers when they'd come through Detroit . . . people like the flying Wallendas.

I said before in a different review that the singer songwriter is as much a wirewalker as a sad standup comedian. The risk is great for such folk. All they have to protect themselves is their songs. My own experience of the high wire is from TV. Curtis has a big tent on this American Circus. Whatever he's getting at with that, I certainly hope it doesn't burn down. Circus tents are magical places of wonder. Sparks are very real and unforgiving. We should not bring the two together.

Billy's Bunker: Why do you call yourself "the angriest yodeling banjo player in New York City?" Curtis Eller: All of my music is specifically about being American and that's been a pretty frustrating thing to be in recent years. I was just trying to crack a joke about the other dark subject matter of some of my songs and the phrase kinda stuck.

Patriots and revolutionaries can be an impediment to setting up the new government. Those folks keep reminding everyone why we fought the war and such. They keep looking under the rug and pointing out what hasn't been done. There's an artistic swirl of social observation in Curtis Eller's songs, and that prized commodity in American literature: the ability to empathize with a criminal, an enemy, the unforgiven or the forgotten. Curtis feels his way through history and beyond it in these songs. Sing along and you can feel it too.

THE SONGS:

1. AFTER THE SOIL FAILS sounds a little like a Bruce Cockburn mythic conservation-conscious assault spiced up with anachronistic images in the style of Neil Young's Pocahantas arranged with the backing vocals and chords of Leonard Cohen's First We'll Take Manhattan. 'Nuff said? Guess not. Everything on this album has that Ken Burns' "Civil War" soundtrack simplicity like a document from back in the day. The slow rhythm is so insistent it has that Tom Waits drunken shuffle feeling in the percussion. Okay, that don't help either? This song haunts me. "You're gonna find me / Right here / After the soil fails." Sounds like a futuristic dust bowl song. Hope he's not prophetic. Starts with Nixon, Fidel, General Sherman, Jack Ruby and a Russian Oil Tanker. Ends with a whimper. Ain't no further west to go. Just go home and recycle, I guess.

2. JOHN WILES BOOTH (DON'T MAKE US BEG) has that echoplex driven Elvis' Burning Love setting on the vox box for a plea to John Wilkes Booth, Jack Ruby, John Brown and Lee Harvey Oswald with a pretzel of irony in the lyric. The 50's style female backing vocals are right off Sun Records, with a twisted difference. Despite the sweet fairy tale concertina solo, this song may be one reason brother Eller likely has a file in Washington, D.C. If you listen carefully, there's a history lesson here with roots all the way back to the Civil War. Gotta wonder if Curtis' banjo don't bear the inscription, "This machine kills fascists" somewhere writ in invisible ink. Woody Guthrie might have sung along to this one.

3. HARTFORD CIRCUS FIRE, 1944 is a true story dirge of a waltz to the 168 souls lost in the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944. There's a plaque at the spot with those 168 names written around a medallion to commemorate this loss. "Except for the nightmares and the coughing, it's like the circus never passed through." You can add a soft spot in your heart somewhere near the one for The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald for this tragedy. Curtis provides the detail for this tragedy complete with a spark coming from the high wire drifting down through the stands. The Flying Wallendas draw a deep breath above the tent "trying not to look down." That deep bass drum beats a cadence to humanity lost to ashes. "And no one in Hartford is sleeping easy, because the circus lives here in our dreams." One hundred and sixty eight souls lost in 1944. "And Jesus Christ himself was struck dumb." Remember these 168 lives. Do not repeat.

4. SUGAR FOR THE HORSES skewers William Marcy "Boss" Tweed (April 3, 1823 ñ April 12, 1878) is that politician convicted for stealing between 40 million and 200 million dollars from New York City taxpayers. He died in prison. This song drills home the American equivalent of "Let them eat cake" in the recurring chorus: "There's always sugar for the horses when there's no one left to sing." Curtis don't stick with his time so there's a banging reference to A-Bombs blowing out the desert near Vegas. This song is an upbeat talking blues with a wealth of taste. There's plenty in the way of related historical reference here and there. I expect this might be a job for Wikipedia! Maybe Noam Chomsky can skip the research. I'm not that well informed. $200 million meant something back when.
I don't care a straw for your newspaper articles, my constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damned pictures. ~ Boss Tweed

5. THE CURSE OF CAIN takes on the character of a Confederate soldier running from the new order after the shadows of southern secession have ceased to leave a meaningful outline on the earth. "Useless! Useless! They're all worse than cowards. Every Confederate heart has set me free! I am abandoned with the curse of Cain upon me." Now, this soldier has feelings all his own, appropriate to his circumstance. He thinks "Abraham Lincoln had it coming" just like Malcolm X once said "the chickens have come home to roost" after John Kennedy was killed in Dallas. This waltz is the circular ballad of a loyal soldier on the wrong side of history. This rendition sticks to the period, but for some drama on the drums just a tinsy bit Bon Jovi in the felt mallet buildup. Guess we can whip this one out and sing it if we ever get on the wrong side of history. Face facts, we might need this song soon.

6. SWEATSHOP FIRE has a haunting backing vocal so far out the harmonics sounds like Gyorgy Ligeti's Illuminations shimmering around the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey. "And I'm gonna get drunk like Ulysses S. Grant. I'm going down to Antietam with a quart of bourbon in my hand." Keep that haunted feeling. Time slips a bit. "And just as sure as Jack Ruby's gonna set things right / Well there's always daybreak at the edge of night. / And this time I'm gonna burn like a sweatshop fire." I believe Curtis Eller's Confederate soldier is a pawn for a surviving confederated mentality. Maybe it's that certainty run rampant, or some other fleeting political target Eller eviscerates here. This is persuasive speech hidden in fiction and fantasy like William Faulkner and Neil Young. That electric guitar seeks to sear the sky. There's something in the air that banjo can't quite reach. That cluster of voices haunts me. It's getting hard to sleep at night.

7. PLEA OF THE AERIALIST'S WIFE is the sweetest and bluest song on the album. I take this song to be a detail of the "Hartford Fire" sung this time by the wife of an aerialist. She man be one of the soon to be widowed Flying Wallendas. Curtis excels at finding that just enough description to set the stage and open our hearts to the story. This song is a prayer for the life of a high flying husband. He had promised her he would not be there. She watched him fall in Detroit, and "like a fool, all [she] could do was stare." This song is about the circus about to go up in flame, focusing on the aerialist who had promised not to go up again. You can sing "Leaving on a Jet Plane" or "Wasting Away in Margaritaville" to these chords for added irony, but you won't likely be so inclined. There is true sentiment sung to the woman watching her worst fears come true as the tent burns and her husband is stranded on the wire. The name of the band is a circus. The subject is America. I'd like to put my hand on the shoulder of that longsuffering woman and tell her it was all going to be alright. I would like to tell her, if it were true. Song says, "Don't walk away and let it burn." Hear her plea.

8. DAISY JOSEPHINE is Curtis Eller's song to his daughter. He has a picture of her with daisies on myspace. This song is as close to a private moment recorded between a father and daughter as I can remember in song. Curtis' voice sounds like Dylan in 1960 singing Woody Guthrie's songs for children. This is as fine a tribute to a child as Lennon's "Beautiful Boy." If you don't know what it feels like to be a proud father, imagine singing this one to a child about to fall to sleep at night. Call it love.

9. FIRING SQAD is the title song of the album, not to be taken lightly. The story starts all the way out in Tokyo and New Motor City where they are "digging up Henry Ford." Detroit is sinking into history. Our hero has a badge he's turning in, leave the keys in the car, he "can't believe he took this job." "Now the wirewalkers and assassins are the only ones that risk a fall." The advice here is to "take it to the wire," but not that thin blue line. Guess the "firing squad" requires a badge. "I must have been crazy to take this job / I'm giving up on the firing squad." This song is a parable. You'll hear what we are meant to hear.

10. SAVE ME JOE LOUIS is the wispy lullaby to finish this volume. There's a nod to "Roosevelt in the White House" who can't do anything "down here." Who can you turn to in a workingman's gospel song? "Save me, Joe Louis. Save me, Joe Louis, save me, and let the gas chamber take me away." There's a rousing unison chorus for emphasis. Somehow, this seems a little more thoughtful than the typical sing along. There's a hint of "Take It To The Limit" in the chords of this song. This song on this album takes the place of "I Shall Not Be Released" as the closer for the concert -- another prison song yearning to breathe free. Have to wonder if this plea to the strength and power of Joe Louis in the face of the gas chamber is more than a dying wish. Time will tell..

Billy Sheppard-BILLY'S BUNKER
Cincinnati, OH

Curtis Eller could be Sufjan Stevens¹ crazy older brother. Both Eller and Stevens are banjo-wielding, history-obsessive troubadours born in Michigan, but whereas Sufjan¹s style is more sedate and gentle­the blue-eyed angel of Indie music­Eller is a little wilder looking, a more unpredictable performer, and isn¹t afraid to get in yer face with his American tales of long-dead presidents, robber barons, and of course, Wirewalkers and Assassins, the title of his newest album. Now residing in NYC, Eller was born and raised in Detroit and the city¹s mythology still lives in his imaginative arsenal of reference points, whether singing about "diggin¹ up Henry Ford" in the hard-charging "Firing Squad" or invoking our legendary boxing icon in the melancholic sweetness of "Save me Joe Louis." Other songs have Eller singing in unusual roles, such as the distressed wife of a wirewalker in "The Plea of the Aerialist¹s Wife" and as John Wilkes Booth in "The Curse of Cain." And if one song about John Wilkes Booth isn¹t enough for you, Wirewalkers and Assassins gives us two. "John Wilkes Booth (Don¹t Make Us Beg)" is a rompin¹ boogie that asks "Where is John Wilkes Booth when you need him?" (and later, Lee Harvey Oswald) and you kind of get the feeling that Eller isn¹t singing about the 19th or 20th centuries here. You don¹t need to know anything about the Volstead Act or Robert Moses or the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944 to enjoy this sometimes sorrowful, sometimes foot-stompingly fun album. But it¹s likely you¹ll start getting curious as you find yourself singing these immediately memorable songs in your head.

Scotter Bragg-DETOUR MAG
Detroit, MI

Curtis Eller touts himself as "New York's angriest yodeling banjo player," which is like claiming to be the funniest Tuvan throat singer in Tallahassee. He's got the market cornered, all right, but he's less angry than voracious about the old-time American history (in style and song) he plunders. On this year's Wirewalkers and Assassins, the circus-trained juggler and acrobat plucks and plinks over dark visions of the American South, pre-execution prayers, faux-proletarian arsonist fantasies and a heady, obsessive matrix of conspiracy theories. But even as he bumps up against the musical limits of vaudevillian hokum ‹ some slick slide guitar and country-soul-sister backing vocals save him ‹ he spins his yarns with unfettered imagination and affection. Eller's lexicon is rough, wide and impervious to irony.

Roy Kasten-RIVERFRONT TIMES
St. Louis, MO

Banjo player and singer Curtis Eller has a distinctly leftfield slant to his brand of Americana. He sings of presidents, Jack Ruby and Elvis to a stripped down folk sound.
"John Wilkes Booth (Don't Make Us Beg)" is a merry toe tapping tribute to the presidential assassin. Eller has an acid tongue and an eye for the absurd. "Sugar For the Horses" is no less special, a catchy song that references Elvis and has a great backing vocal by Liisa Yonker. "The Curse of Cain" is a song with a heavy heart that speaks of Booth again and somehow sounds sad. "Abraham Lincoln Had It Coming" notes Booth in the song. I think Eller is after a comparison with today's America and not liking what he sees. He pens a loving tribute to his won daughter in between all this and ends the album by wanting to be saved by the boxer Joe Louis. The wayward and elusive Eller seems like he wants to make an exceptional album and he just has.

Anna Maria Stjärnell-KAFE LUNA
Sweden

CURTIS ELLER'S AMERICAN CIRCUS
Wirewalkers And Assassins
It' s not often that a press release makes one laugh out loud, but Curtis Eller's is an object lesson in how to engage the reviewer and make her/him favourably disposed even before hearing the album. And there was no disappointment, as the album carries all the wit and quirky originality of the PR: the two quotes on the CD sleeve are from wirewalker Karl Wallenda (of the Flying Wallendas, dummy) and assassin John Wilkes Booth, and it is the latter who haunts the songs in one guise or another. John Wilkes Booth (Don't Make Us Beg) is a heartfelt - and somewhat outrageous - plea for one way to solve the problem of the current President of the USA, while The Curse of Cain examines Booth's mind after the event in Ford's Theater in 1865, sympathetically.

To make comparisons as a way of getting into the album, Eller's lyrics are reminiscent of the likes of Tom Waits with a detailed knowledge of forgotten and half-remembered parts of American, and particularly New York's, history: he doesn't burn up like the 'forest fire' of cliché, but like a 'Sweatshop Fire' ­ the unspoken reference is to the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911. The plea of the man bound for execution, Save Me, Joe Louis is supposed to have been a real cry from a black convict in the 1940s... and so on. The legendary corrupt Tammany Hall leader, Boss Tweed, rubs shoulders with Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon, until the whole thing takes on the hallucinatory quality of Luc Sante's evocation of New York, Low Life.

But if it were just a clever reworking of history, the album would be dry as dust, if unusual; that it isn't is due to Eller's clever mixing in of more straightforward (sic) tracks: Plea Of The Aerialist's Wife adds a plaintive touch, as against the tale of the Hartford Circus Fire, 1944, which may or may not have taken place, and Daisy Josephine is a lovely lullaby/balled as befitting his subject matter. Ellers holds the music together with parlour-style banjo picking, framed by upright bass and drums, with delicate touches of backing vocals, organ, squeezebox and steel guitar. It's all very light and attractive, with a lot of waltz time in there, and is a bit of a left-field classic that is already one of my albums of the year.

Ian Kearey-fROOTS MAGAZINE
London, UK

Curtis Eller's American Circus - Wirewalkers And Assassins
***** (4.5 stars)
On Wirewalkers and Assassins, Curtis Eller's American Circus presents an aural psychotronic vision of Olde Timey Americana. The overall sound of the album is vaudevillian country and folk: Eller's banjo tunefully mingles accordion, lap steel, violin, and else, but the lyrics are just off-kilter enough that you'll never mistake this for mere historical recreation. Oddly, references to personages both modern and anarchonistic abound: John Wilkes Booth and the Civil War seem to co-exist with Richard Nixon and Fidel Castro. The effect is something like finding a tube radio from some alternate reality that only plays songs about dusty roads, boxing, and circus catastrophes. And what a brilliant tune it is!

Jack Shear-LIAR SOCIETY
Binghamton, NY

A Terrific Work Of Song Craftsmanship ***** (5 stars)

From the first track to the last, this batch of songs by banjois Curtis Eller is his hardest hitting release to date. Like his previous full length album "Taking Up Serpents Again", this album is sure to please the Americana buff with a hankerin' for gutsy singing and crafted lyrics. Subjects like circus fires, assassins on the run, wirewalking, the greed of the well-to-do, and cries for help from the gas chamber are just a small example of the wealth of vocally illustrated lyrics on this record. A great mix of songs from straight up rock, to Civil War era tunes, to slapback echo that could have come straight from the Sun recording studio circa 1956, Eller quenches the thirst of many, but leaves you pressing "Play All" over and over again. This time, to go along with his basic band, violin is a welcome addition to a few tracks. Some amazing lap and pedal steel playing really make "After the Soil Fails" and "Sweatshop Fire" shine, and of course, the tremendously strong background vocals we come to expect with each album, are there in fine form. Favorite tracks include "Save Me Joe Louis", "The Curse of Cain", "Sweatshop Fire", and his sweet dedication to his daughter "Daisy Josephine". Each track is fantastic on it's own, but the whole album is recommended as a terrific work of song craftsmanship.

Baxter Jones- BEETLEJUICE 1988
New York, NY

Traversing roughly the same carny-goth-Americana terrain as Beat Circus, Humanwine, and even the Dresden Dolls is singer/songwriter/banjo plucker CURTIS ELLER. His world-historical point of view and brush moustache might conjure Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood, but his particular soup strainer predates Day Lewis's by several years, as does his, uh, plain view of things. The 10 songs on the new, self-released Wirewalkers & Assassins depict "John Wilkes Booth, Joe Louis, Jack Ruby, Boss Tweed, Richard Nixon, and the Hartford circus fire of 1944" with "the usual references to Elvis Presley and drunken Civil War generals." In other words: it's good.

Jon Garelick-BOSTON PHOENIX
Boston, MA

Curtis Eller's latest creation Wirewalkers and Assassins certainly lives up to it's title. A whole new album showcasing that yodeling banjo player from New York in fine form. The trickling melody of how the album opens in "After The Soil Fails" takes you back, puts you in that place from which the rest of the songs that follow are put into perspective. The one thing I've always appreciated about Mr. Eller's music is that it's a story between the lines. You're talking Richard Nixon and thinking George Bush, he's singing about union and confederate armies and somehow you end up thinking about republicans and democrats. The impact of my first listen was sudden and definitive with it's full rich sounds, inspired lyrics, banjo picking toe tapping head wrangling idiosyncratic simplicities. Are we talking about Tokyo being the new motor city as we are in "Firing Squad" or asking on "John Wilkes Booth" to hold President's more accountable in a more definitive kind of way. It's a gasoline and pistol sort of justice that has the spirit of that old sound, but with a modern perspective infused through out. It's a very linear sort of traveling that goes on with this album and the beauty is that the music itself is truly timeless. It's powerful in both it's cadence and conviction, and so it only stands to reason that if you're looking for something completely different than the normal stretch of sound that permeates through your speakers then Curtis Eller and his American Circus's latest creation would certainly be like adding tonic to the water supply.

Antony Mores-FOLK IT UP
Chicago, IL

This here is a fourth, long-awaited, and very welcome album from CURTIS ELLER's AMERICAN CIRCUS. The Wirewalkers are the cultural heroes, working with honour and no safety net, for the wonderment of us all. The Assassins are the nemeses to those who would use, and destroy the heroes. Both archetypes weave and swing their ways through the songs.
Spotting their historical (or personal) counterparts will be a pleasure for months ahead. Fidel Castro, Joe, Lewis, Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald, Richard Nixon and all the rest. But for our entertainment today, we have, Ladies and Gentlemen, a glittering cast.
We have:
Ms Liisa Yonker and her soulful sisters in song Ms Marilee Eitner (doubling accordion) and Ms Rima Fand (who offers a fine violin to duet with the banjo); the ever-upright Joseph DeJarnette on double bass; the D.J. Fontana of the Circus - the rhythmical Mr Chris Moore; the multi-talented Gary Langol on upright bass, lap steel, organ and mandolin; old friend Gerald Menke on pedal steel, Amy Kohn on extra accordion; and our own, our very own, (and New York City's adopted) Mr Curtis Eller on banjo, voices and heart-rending songology. Handbills, posters and tickets have been painted for the occasion by the talented Mr Jamie Walcott, in the frontier style to which we have become accustomed.

CURTIS ELLER is a solo performer for the most part, with a theatrical presentation and a talent for deep Americana of a pre-talkies Vaudeville kind. On this album he plays banjo in a percussive and gymnastic way, sprinkling it like Tabasco over the well measured arrangements of eleven original songs. The shapes and themes are familiar to us American Circus die-hards. The instrumentation and arrangements and the sound production have all developed and got richer since the earlier work. Continuity of studio, producer and key personnel has done nothing but good. New listeners would be wise to start right here.

In hearing a song that rails "Where is John Wilkes Booth when you need him?", sounding like it could have been recorded by Sam Phillips in 1956, with Marilee Eitner playing the prettiest accordion middle eight you've ever heard, you might be inclined to smile and file it under "Charmng". But ponder the deep pleasure of the harmony singing and reflect on a long tradition of grotesques in all our cultures, painted and dressed in affectionately angry mockery of the living.

"The Circus lives in our dreams", sings Eller, as "Hartford Circus Fire 1944" winds to its mournful end. An old world has been burnt to the ground through neglect and abuse. "The angels' voices don't carry, the choirs disband and drift apart". And we don't sleep well. The song doesn't need to name villains - we all have our own P.T. Barnum, but the deeds have been done and those glories are lost. When the whole shooting match is named "America Circus", I think it's fair to interpret Eller's laments for the burnt out circus as connected in some serious way with 3rd Millennium USA.

The same might be ventured of his interest in factories, coal mines, warfare and other historic sites of toil and untimely death."Sweatshop Fire" (WOODY GUTHRIE's autobiography is full of people set afire - it's a very American way) is not so arcane and historical is it? Whether it's our souls destroyed in office cubicles, or our comrades destroyed in third world diamond mines, we need songs that point the finger at the drunken maniacs in suits who set the whole thing burning (like Ulysses S. Grant). As in earlier songs about drunks with power, Eller captures the self delusion of alcoholism with scary accuracy.

The brightest (but by no means the only) beam of pure optimistic light on the album is "Daisy Josephine", a celebration of the birth of a next-generation Eller. New York might be knocking down its own heritage, and throwing sculpted angels into the New Jersey swamp, but a beautiful new life in the City's heart brings hope and pleasure to fill the void. In his redoubtable imagination, Curtis has the stone angels re-emerging to welcome the baby.

I've mentioned the bursts of quality harmony singing, and the very pert squeeze box. Other delights include lap steel guitar on the very alt-country "Plea Of The Aerialists Wife". "whose lines and stature have more than a shade of "Stand By Your Man" about them. The accordion touches this song, too , but gently. The careful rationing of the instrumentation in itself is a strength, keeping everything fresh and unexpected at each entry.

The predominant banjo has a choreographic quality to it, as if dancing around Eller's central character, commenting with twirls, twitches and bursts of notes like a tragi-comic Pierrot, hesitant and aggressive by turns. It's combination with a range of other instruments creates a series of textures that suggest something archaic, but which are novel and unusually expressive.

The last words must go to the closing masterpiece of a song "Save Me Joe Lewis", with organ mandolin and strung-out chorus. It tells of a man executed in a gas chamber in a southern state during the 1930s.

"Save me Joe Lewis, save me. / The last words that I'll ever say. / Save me Joe Lewis save me / and let the gas chamber take me away."

We have the whole Circus, most of New York, half the USA and me too, joining in as these lines swell to the final note. The enigmatically defiant last words had been put into an anonymous black convict's mouth in the writings of Martin Luther King.
A UK tour is imminent. The live show has been sampled and recommended on previous visits.
********* (9 stars)

Sam Saunders-WHISPERIN' & HOLLERIN'
Leeds, UK

"Curtis Eller is New York City¹s meest boze jodelende banjospeler. Hij zingt over duivenraces, optredende olifanten en Jezus, allemaal nadat hij die met eigen ogen heeft waargenomen. Hij heeft de stem van een engel en speelt de banjo alsof hij een circustent in vuur en vlam zet. Hij begon zijn loopbaan in de showbusiness op zevenjarige leeftijd als jongleur en acrobaat in een circus in Detroit, maar is sindsdien overgestapt naar de banjo, omdat daar het grote geld mee te verdienen is." Zo af en toe is er niet te ontkomen aan de schrijfsels in persberichten. Maakt het ook niet uit wat waar is en wat niet. Zoals dat nu het geval is bij Wirewalkers And Assassins (eigen beheer) van Curtis Eller¹s American Circus. Er is nu eenmaal geen ontkomen aan de tien nummers vol wilde taferelen op deze cd. Curtis Eller zingt over John Wilkes Booth, Joe Louis, Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro, Elvis Presley en dronken generaals uit de Amerikaanse burgeroorlog. Zelf ziet hij er overigens uit als een motorisch gestoorde Charlie Chaplin. Tom Waits is zeker ook een naam die genoemd moet worden in verband met deze New Yorker. De stuk voor stuk interessante nummers brengt Eller samen met Chris Moore (drums, percussie) en Gary Langol (lap steel, staande bas, orgel en mandoline), terwijl het circus daarnaast nog diverse andere gasten laat optreden. De theatrale aanpak van Curtis Eller zal wellicht een enkeling afschrikken, maar wie de moeite neemt om zelf ook eens het dunne koord te bewandelen, die zal ook zonder vangnet dit energieke avontuur maar al te graag meer dan eens herbeleven. In oktober geeft Eller enkele optredens in Nederland. Mis het niet.

John Gjaltema-ALT COUNTRY.NL
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Banjo!
Het is vooral de banjo in de opener After The Soil, die de aandacht trekt. En die banjo keert terug in alle andere songs, want dat is het enige instrument dat deze New Yorker zelf bespeelt op deze cd. Een grootmeester is hij niet, maar de klankkleur geeft zijn liedjes toch iets extra¹s in vergelijking met een gebruikelijke gitaar. Eller, die in een circusfamilie is opgegroeid en ooit zijn brood verdiende als acrobaat en jongleur, brengt ons fijne muziek, tegen de country aan. Langzaam, midtempo of uptempo, soms met een lekkere Œslapping¹ staande bas, een warme accordeon, geinige meidenkoortjes en een pedal steel. Zijn teksten zijn een stuk zwaarder, wat al onmiddellijk duidelijk wordt met titels als The Curse Of Cain, Firing Squad en After The Soil Fails. Geen mainstream, dus. Maar om hem nou aan te bevelen aan fans van Tom Waits en The Band, zoals cdbaby doet, dat gaat toch veel te ver (en ik geloof er nu ook niks meer van dat zijn vorige zou lijken op Sixteen Horsepower en Andrew Bird).

Kees van Wee -HEAVEN MAGAZINE
Geldermalsen, Netherlands

~~~TAKING UP SERPENTS~~~

Curtis Eller is nostalgic for a lot of things that happened before he was born -- Buster Keaton movies, Al Jolson songs, Luna Park, Amelia Earhart, even the old-time music that forms the fabric of his songs. He's artful enough about it, fortunately, that you'll go along for the ride. You'll feel "Coney Island Blue"'s mournfulness almost personally, even if you've never thought twice about lost landmarks on Stilwell Avenue, just because of the sweet-sour melancholy of accordion and banjo. You enter into "Sugar in My Coffin"'s bluegrassy belligerence the way the song's regulars belly up to the bar, not thinking for even a moment about how modern or old-fashioned the tune is. Like an actor who fully inhabits a role, Eller takes you with him, holds you in an alternate reality and keeps you there. He's much more disciplined about maintaining his world than Langhorne Slim, who uses traditional instruments but makes no references to 19th century politics or 1920s celebrity kidnappings. Even when Eller allows contemporary images to slip in, as with the 2004 election reference on the excellent opener "Taking Up Serpents Again", he couches them in mystically rural images and magically old-fashioned settings. There's an intensity, a focus, a concentrated vision that permeates all the cuts on this odd, very compelling album. It's like a movie whose premise is unbelievable, but whose execution is so good that you believe it anyway.
Eller, who has worked with similarly eccentric Thomas Truax, is a very accomplished musician and songwriter, crafting eloquently simple melodies and embedding them in sparse instrumentation. He is accompanied on various tracks by accordionist Marilee Eitner, upright bass player Joseph DeJarnette, tuba-ist Joe Exley ("Coney Island Blue"), pianist and lap steel guitarist Gary Langol and drummer Chris Moore (whose Figurines we reviewed a few months ago). The music has a restrained intensity, like a New Orleans funeral band just about to round the curve from dirge to Dixieland. There's a mournfulness in songs like "Stephen Foster" and "Taking Up Serpents" that seems just about to burst into euphoria, and a sadness lurking in bar-room stompers like "Sugar in My Coffin". They're the kind of contradictions that make Eller's sobriquet -- New York's angriest yodelling banjo player -- make perfect sense.
If circus clowns scare you a little, if nostalgia makes you worry about the future, if funeral music inevitably cheers you up, you might be ready for the fascinating and self-contained world that Eller has created here.

Jennifer Kelly-SPLENDID E-ZINE
Downers Grove, IL

"New York City's angriest yodeling banjo player" spells out his influences: Sephen Foster and Buster Keaton. Clearly, they are components of Curtis Eller's vaudevillian music, but doggone it if he hasn't named songs after the Dixie songwriter and the deadpan comic on his most recent CD, Taking Up Serpents Again. But there's more to Eller's widescreen imagination, his epochal music. "I'm speaking in tongues unknon to men", he sings in a raspy, rattled voice across the slowly plucked banjo's ruckus of the title tune.
Accompanied by haunted cooing background angels-as he is throughout Serpents-the clarity of Eller's handsome voice and the rancid money-changing politics of his lyris are obscured by the idea of his olde-timey sound. Take pause. Listen to this record repeatedly. The shuffling soft-shoe beats and wheezy accordion of "Hide That Scar" gently conceal the miscreant visions of his lyris and effortlessness of his vocals.
There's a wretchedly elegant sarcasm and darkly burnished humor at work within Eller's songs. Take the delicate pleasure of hearing Al Jolson on a jukebox on "Sugar in My Coffin"; Eller is better than he lets on. Perhaps that's because he's spent most of his time playing at funerals and horse races with little more than tuba, accordion and upright bass behind him. No matter. This is not music recorded in a vacuum. It should be heard in one, literally or fuguratively. Despite his hadlebar moustache and really old-school arrangements, Curtis Eller is more modern in his scope than a dozen glitchy laptoppers.

A.D. Amorosi-NEW YORK PRESS
New York, NY