Press Quotes and REviews
Reviews of the new album, A Poison Melody, can be found on the Welcome Page
Top-Ten Albums of 2019! “How is it that A Poison Melody is so sweet? Curtis Eller’s American Circus throws down a full orchestration of his view of the world, complete with banjo and brass. Stunning seems trite when considering this politically charged statement set to music. Eller and his band create simply defiant artistry. Charged with an energy that is part of the chaos of our times, the music winds through generations of social and political struggle in a jazz-blues fusion.”
-Lisa Whealy-Independent Clauses (A Poison Melody)
"A savagely lyrical, surreal chronicle of some of the darker, more obscure moments in American history. Cruel ironies, double entendres and surprisingly subtle humor are everywhere in his songs. Eller’s also got a fantastic new album, How to Make It in Hollywood, which finds him taking a full-throttle detour into dark garage rock and classic soul music along with the oldtime sounds that made him one of New York’s most riveting live acts"
-New York Music Daily
“As a songwriter he’s created a unique lyrical world backed with razor sharp banjo playing. As a live performer he’s simply remarkable - a whirlwind of chaotic charismatic that leaps off the stage & whips through the crowd."
-David Goody (Coventry UK)
“Curtis Eller gives a master class in how to command the attention of a room.”
-Venue Magazine UK
“Go and see Curtis Eller. One day, you’ll be able to say you saw him in a tiny venue before he was huge.”
-American Songwriter Magazine
Old Theatre Royal(Bath, UK)
Curtis Eller came onstage by himself, carrying his trusty banjo, wearing enormous trousers held up by braces (suspenders, for you Americans), and then immediately left the stage to join the audience. There, he proceeded to sing; a very intimate start, despite that he was standing on a chair in the midst of us.
Once we were all thoroughly mesmerised, he returned to the stage, joined by his small band of drummer, electric bassist, backup singer and tenor saxophonist and launched into a raucous rock and roll song, Old Time Religion. It was entirely appropriate as it encapsulated many of the aspects of Curtis Eller. He is a revival tent preacher, all American, part historian of the last century-and-a-half, with original songs that impressionistically recall songs of the period. And he is a dancer, light and sure on his feet. As a singer, you might expect an Appalachian voice, but that’s way too dry for Curtis; he’s much more in the African American/Deep South tradition of soulful singing.
If his performance is spellbinding, the subject matter parallels that with fascinating stories and a constant undercurrent of humour. A good example was a long, enlightening discourse all about theAmerican folk hero, black prizefighter Joe Louis, and how he was so different from his precursor Jack Johnson, universally loved rather than vilified and hated (by whites) as Johnson was. Suddenly there was an abrupt change of story line, to North Carolina and to the change of its execution method from electric chair to gas chamber in 1936. And to he first person to be gassed, a young black (of course) man. His last words were not for his mother, or his father, nor even a call to Jesus. They were “Save Me, Joe Louis,” the name of the plaintive and lovely song Eller immediately fell into.
Saxophonist Steve Cowles played in the gravel-voiced R&B style popular after WW2 and on into rock and roll and he was terrific, expressive, adding little Coltranish touches here and there. He was the perfect diversion from the all-encompassing Curtis Eller. Eller’s longtime compatriot, Dana Marks, sang backup vocals and also danced, like Curtis, in odd, sometimes disjointed movements that nevertheless were fluid and somehow matched the nature of the music they accompanied.
Early on in the show Lenny Bruce, the American comedian of the 50s that was the caustic cornerstone on which most modern stand-up comedy is built, popped into my head. Lo and behold, two songs later, Eller told us a bit of Lenny Bruce’s story and sang one of the more affecting songs of the night, Lenny Bruce, a slow 6/8 time R&B song (see it at https://youtu.be/w0vpzY8JMHw). It was touching, historical-educational, and soulful all at the same time. That’s Curtis Eller.
-Charley Dunlap-Bath Fringe
As a songwriter he’s created a unique lyrical world backed with razor sharp banjo playing. As a live performer he’s simply remarkable - a whirlwind of chaotic charismatic that leaps off the stage & whips through the crowd."
-David Goody (Coventry UK)
"Hard though it is, I try not to get hung up on genre, but by the end of this review I’m going to have to invent a new one and issue patent on behalf of Curtis Eller and his American Circus, because I can (almost) guarantee you won’t have heard anything like this before. What you have here is quality artistry with loose- limbed, plug-in and play theatrical improvisation that name checks a Sgt. Pepper’s menagerie of 19th and 20th century American celebrities and politicians on its way to completely bowling you over. I’d need another review to list out the names you’ll hear, but there’s no danger of the album becoming land-locked in 2014 as most of them are dead and gone."
-Folk Radio UK (How to Make it in Hollywood)
"Ever since the reigning banjo king of the East Coast’s “Antique-Garde” relocated to North Carolina from New York City a few years ago, his fan base has grown more fanatical at shows and on Facebook, and his sound has ripened like delicious fruit or aged like sweet bourbon, whichever analogy you prefer. Eller and company stomp and romp through the record’s 10 tracks as if the building’s on the fire and there’s only one take to go before the studio’s nothing but ashes and regret. It’s not desperation. It’s desire, driven by circumstance."
-PopDose (How to Make it in Hollywood)
"Curtis Eller finds the middle ground between silent film The General and a banjo-packin’ Jello Biafra. Eller’s songs are an American History 101 course in waking life."
-American Songwriter Magazine
"Nostalgia isn’t an easy pursuit. It requires you to remove yourself from the now, disengage from a cynical default and make emotional connections across the aeons of time. For our generation, it is something of an enigma. What is needed is a superlative storyteller, someone that can conjure up compelling images from the past, and pluck out the common threads of humanity like the strings on a freshly-strung banjo. Curtis Eller is that man."
-Spindle Magazine (Bristol, UK)
"His voice has been honed by many years of funerals, burlesque reviews and bars, his songs hallucination as revisionist history, where the downtrodden are the great and gold of Hollywood old, with Eller weaving himself into an alternative mythology encompassing heavyweight champions of the world, presidents and their assassins and, of course, the clown away from all the laughter, left with nothing save all the pills and something Irish to wash them down, a dead actress and a trial by Randolph Hearst and Will Hays..."
-Big Boulder (Sheffield, UK)