There are worse places to talk about the state of music than a swing by the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin. That’s where Robert Ellis finds himself these days, holed up in an old monastery turned creative commune called The Refuge. “It’s supposed to be a safe place,” he says, “where you can kind of escape that mania.”
The mania he’s talking about is the business—the grind of touring, promoting, and trying to stay creative when your life is a rolling schedule of soundchecks and 5 a.m. radio stops. “If my job is to be a songwriter, then the job of promoting that music is basically its enemy,” he says. “They’re mutually exclusive. When do I ever have time to write?”
Ellis, who’s made a name for himself as a sharp songwriter, doesn’t waste words—or chords. “I’m not in this to make friends or write background music. I want to communicate something. That’s what I love about Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell. You can’t just put them on while you’re cooking dinner. You have to listen. They pull you into a story.”
That approach has made his records dense, literate, and emotionally layered. But it also makes his job harder. “If you really care about this, it’s the most frustrating thing in the world,” he says. “Ninety-five percent of what I write is garbage. But you keep showing up until something hits. The song I worked on this morning—I’ve been stuck on it for a month. Today, I finally cracked the code.”
Ellis says he writes like a short story author, not a diarist. “I’ve never been super autobiographical. I treat it more like narrative writing. You just invent characters, build worlds. There’s a wealth of information out there if you have an imagination.” He laughs. “Not necessarily in my life, but definitely out there.”
Lately, he’s been splitting his time between solo work and Traveler, a side project with Cory Chisel and Johnny Irion. “Three big personalities,” he says. “It took three years to finish the record. But we respect each other so much. Cory can sing a line I wrote and make it sound like I meant to write it that way all along.” The album’s done, though the trio isn’t rushing to hit the road. “We’re proud of it,” Ellis says. “But I don’t know if any of us want to get in a van for 300 days to sell it. We’re figuring out less conventional ways to get it out there.”
Which brings it back to The Refuge—the rare place where art can just exist. “Nobody here wants anything in return,” Ellis says. “That’s almost unheard of. The music business is built on profit, but profit kills creativity. You start thinking, ‘What if nobody buys this?’ and that’s poison. Here, that voice goes away. You just make the thing. And that’s the point.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out "California" from his self-titled 2016 LP below!
