Robert Ellis w/ Wheelwright
Saturday November 21, 2026 | Doors: 7PM | Show: 8PM
Swallow Hill Members:
Want discounts on most shows? Become a member here.
Questions about our venue?
See here.
About the Artist(s)
Robert Ellis
Recorded live to tape in just two days, Robert Ellis’s exquisite new album, Yesterday’s News, is as stripped-down as it gets, with the celebrated songwriter and producer’s delicate, reedy tenor accompanied only by nylon string guitar, upright bass, and the occasional piece of handheld percussion. The arrangements are harmonically sophisticated here, drawing on the open tunings and intricate fingerpicking of English songwriters like Nick Drake or Richard Thompson, and Ellis’s performances are similarly subtle and nuanced, tapping into the bittersweet longing of Chet Baker and the playful poignancy of Bill Evans and Jim Hall.
While that might seem surprising coming off 2019’s raucous Texas Piano Man, subverting expectations is nothing new for Ellis. Born and raised outside Houston, he gained early acclaim for his piercing introspection and absorbing narratives, but over the course of five solo albums, he flirted with everything from Paul Simon and John Prine to Elton John and Joni Mitchell in a series of sonic and visual transformations that ran the gamut from Redneck Steely Dan to Lone Star Liberace. NPR hailed his “musical daring and impeccable songcraft,” while Rolling Stone praised his “sharp eye for storytelling,” and the New York Times lauded his writing as an emotional “gut punch.”
Yesterday’s News marks Ellis’s debut LP for Niles City Records, an outgrowth of the famed Niles City Sound studio he and longtime collaborator Josh Block run in Fort Worth, TX.
Wheelwright brings a southwestern sound of pop and grunge from the sprawling desert city of Phoenix, AZ. None of his songs are idealistic. No light without darkness, no laughter without at least some suffering, no thoughtfulness without some recklessness. With devil may care spirit, and a message of hope, frustration, and love, Wheelwrights music contrasts between worlds of wandering existentialism, the strife of modern relationships, and the shreds of hope that can be found in darkest and most broken places of ourselves. Songs of acceptance, hard luck, and love without all the kumbaya bullshit, but rather the idea that we are all beautiful and flawed, stuck here together, whether we like it or not. His songs are self admitting and allow listeners to meet him where they truthfully are. It’s brash and it’s honest. In his words, “everybody has things about themselves that they don’t like, they have things that they would change about themselves, but they also have spirits, and hopes, and dreams and light inside of them despite the darkness that seems to hang over us as we march into the uncertainty of what’s next.”