Rock and Roll Banjo Player Curtis Eller Brings His American Circus to Town

Curtis Eller is a rock and roller, albeit a rock and roller with the tightest, most badass banjo playing you could pay a ticket price for. “I most definitely consider myself a rock and roll singer” he told me in a recent interview. “If I played the electric guitar there’d be no question, but I’ve always felt most at home behind the five-string banjo. I love the primitive, brutish sound and all the ugly silence between the notes. The banjo was the weapon of choice for all rock and roll singers from 1845 until the repeal of prohibition in 1933. I’m just the next in line.”

Eller writes songs about tragedy, history, politics, and more. They are darkly funny, mocking, tragic, protesting, savage, and bizarre. With numbers such as “Sweatshop Fire” and “Save Me Joe Louis,” he wears his politics proudly on his sleeve. His attitude reminds me of an interview I conducted with New York anti-folk singer Hamell On Trial who told me “I don’t see a lot of ‘protest’ music around, even in the folk community. It doesn’t sell and nobody wants to jeopardize their already meagre salaries. Me and my big mouth can’t help it, I guess.”

What is Mr. Eller’s take on that? “I wholeheartedly agree,” he says. “I think many of the young performers making the rounds these days suffer from a debilitating fear of offending. I guess at this stage of the game, I have nothing to lose. Having started my professional, musical career in the anti-folk scene in New York City, I have seen Hamell perform on many occasions. He is a brilliant performer and an inspiration.”

Eller’s songs can be hard-hitting or heart-rending, with upbeat banjo and buoyant percussion belying lyrics that bite a hole out of your day.

I’m gonna burn … like a sweatshop fire
I’m climbing up into the rafters, I’m gonna clip that angels wire
I’m gonna lock the factory doors an let ‘em sweep the ashes away
If you was holding out for the union to save you
I guess you just turned up on a bad day
‘Cause this time I‘m gonna burn like a sweatshop fire

“I’ve always aimed to deliver tragic material for maximum comedic value,” he explains. “If I can get people to laugh while listening to songs about sweatshop fires and horse poisoners, then my work is done.”

Eller is presently touring with his American Circus – a band of around a half-dozen musicians who add drums, keyboards, bass, horns, bellows, harmonies, costumes, clowning, high kicks, and maybe even acrobatics to the live act. “The American Circus has always been, and remains, an expanding and contracting aggregation,” he says. “I relish the thrill of a new face onstage.”

Indeed he relishes it so much that on his website he invites people to run away and join his band. “I love working with a revolving cast of performers. It keeps the embers stoked. There have been American, British, and Norwegian versions of the band over the years, and perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I tend to attract accordionists and tuba players wherever I go.”

He plays Open House Festival in Ireland in the near future, and considering the amount of American politics and history in his music, I had to ask him if European audiences get his songs to the same degree that American audiences do. “The show seems to go down well everywhere I’ve been,” he says. “Each country seems to react more strongly to different aspects of the shows, but once I get the feel of the culture I can steer things down the right path. It’s all a matter of taking direction from the audience. They always let you know which way to go.

“The current tour is two months long” he continues. “It includes performances all over the UK, Ireland, and Hungary, and has necessitated the enlistment of a revolving cast of musicians from the US and UK. They are all dynamic, fearless performers who keep the fire to my feet and act as a net when I come crashing to the stage.”

Eller’s father was a rockabilly guitarist who also played the banjo and left records by Bo Diddley, Earl Scruggs, Pete Seeger, and Elvis Presley lying around the house. Seeger was the one who inspired Eller to start playing. “Like generations of aspiring banjo players before me,” he says, “I worked my way through Pete Seeger’s classic method book, How to Play the 5-string Banjo when I was about 13 years old. Pete was one of the greatest things that ever happened to America. He taught the people to sing loud enough to drown out the angels.”

The Elvis records had an impact on him too, though. “I am a dyed-in-the-wool Elvis fan. I love the voice, the music and the moves. I love the story and I love the tragedy. I love just about everything about Elvis. I think if you know enough about Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon, then you know all you need to know about America.”

His dad also ran Hiller Old Tyme Circus in Detroit. “I was too young to participate in a meaningful way,” he remembers. “But the circus made a huge impression on my young heart. Later my dad and I had a father-son juggling and unicycling routine, but that was after the circus had faded away. The whole episode was as romantic and thrilling as you’d expect, and it left its footprints all over my life.”

Would he have his dad join the circus for a gig? “My dad inadvertently sent me careening down the road of rock and roll, but he has rarely performed outside church,” he says. “I’m not sure he’d approve of some of the wilder joints I play, but it would be wonderful if we ever did find ourselves onstage together. It’s rather strange that it’s never happened.”

In May, Eller released the EP Baudelaire in a Box: Songs of Anguish.  Charles Baudelaire published his blasphemous collection of poems Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) in 1857, which ultimately resulted in his prosecution. Eller, and the band New Town Drunks, composed music for the Theatre Oobleck stage show written around this story, and recorded four of those songs for the EP. I asked how he got involved with project. “I’ve always worked extensively in the theatre, so when I was invited to take part in this wonderful project I jumped at the chance,” he says. “It’s a magnificent concept and it was a genuine pleasure to join their bleak, Baudelairian parade.”

Baudelaire is well known for his translations of Edgar Allan Poe’s work, and this led me to wonder if Eller had worked with any of Poe’s writing. “Although I love Poe — who doesn’t? — I’ve never worked with any of his material in the past. Maybe we could mount a sister project to go with Mr. Baudelaire!”

Will he be performing any of the Baudelaire in a Box: Songs of Anguish on his European tour? “I’ve been playing some of the material in the solo portions of the shows lately. The tunes lend themselves to a quiet, poetic treatment.”

Considering the circus and his background as a juggler, I couldn’t help but wonder if there are any interesting props that he tours with. “The most interesting prop we’ve had on this tour,” he says, “has been my 8-year old daughter, who’s been stealing the show with her outrageous gymnastics displays during our sets!”

This response is sweet, unabashedly proud-dad-cheesy, and very telling. When I ask him what he does when he isn’t performing or writing, he responds, “I have exactly enough time and energy in my life for The American Circus and my family. When I’m not onstage, I’m with them. Everything else is just background noise.”  It was for his family that he left his beloved New York City and moved to North Carolina. “Leaving New York City was actually one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I loved New York and still do, but we did it for our daughter and we did the right thing. Durham, North Carolina is a vibrant and artistic place and [a] wonderful place to bring up a kid. It also happens to be where I met the current and most definitive version of The American Circus. It’s home.”

Now that North Carolina is home, can he tell us about any artists from there that we haven’t heard, but should?

“Durham and its surrounding environs,” he says, “have a long and vibrant musical history, but I’d like to take this opportunity to plug artists of a different stripe. My wife, Jamie B. Wolcott, is an illustrator and rock and roll poster designer. She’s responsible for all America Circus artwork including the new Baudelaire project. I’d also like to shout out to The Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern, a wildly experimental theatre troupe founded and led by American Circus vocalist Dana Marks. These are my true comrades.”

Video cresits songsfromtheshed, Curtis Eller

http://www.curtiseller.com/
http://www.newtowndrunks.com/