Robert Ellis

Robert Ellis heads to Gold-Diggers in East Hollywood for a bill that also features Alicia Blue. The available information identifies the two performers but gives no further detail about the night’s stage lineup, whether Ellis will appear solo or with collaborators, or the shape of either set. Expect the focus to be on Ellis’s songs, whose recorded work has moved freely between country, folk, rock, pop and jazz.

Ellis comes from outside Houston, Texas, and is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist known for piercing introspection and absorbing narratives. His 2023 album Yesterday’s News pares the arrangements back to his “delicate, reedy tenor,” nylon-string guitar, upright bass and occasional handheld percussion. Across his solo records, he has pursued marked stylistic changes, from the alt-country guitar-slinging troubadour framing associated with his earlier work to the barroom-piano turn of Texas Piano Man. He has worked with guitarist and occasional co-writer Kelly Doyle, and recorded with Angaleena Presley, Jonny Fritz and Matthew Logan Vasquez of Delta Spirit. NPR praised his “musical daring and impeccable songcraft,” while Rolling Stone noted his “sharp eye for storytelling.”