Robert Ellis is set to return with Texas Piano Man on 14 February 2019 via New West Records. The 11-song set was co-produced by Ellis and Niles City Sound (Leon Bridges) in Fort Worth, Texas. The first single Fucking Crazy is out now.
A wild and spirited album, the grandiose Texas Piano Man presentation - vocals that soar, pumping piano vamps that call to mind Leon Russell and Elton John - finds an intriguing bedfellow with lyrical and thematic content that are disarming for their sincerity. Putting down his guitar and sitting at a piano awakened something, and Ellis likens the musical experience to being behind the wheel of “a rock solid muscle car.” It’s a heavy thing, with beautiful lines.
Because Ellis and his band were fluent in honky tonk and capable of burning through dozens of George Jones standards on any given night, he could have found his boots set in concrete. He has instead over the course of four albums done his best to set wide parameters for his musical expression, befitting a guy from a state nearly 800 miles from one end to the other. “With Texas, people expect a certain thing and they want a certain thing, and I fought that for a long time,” he says. “I’ve realized though that Texas shouldn’t be made a category. I want to redefine to the outside world what it means to be Texan a little bit.”
Fucking Crazy is the first single from the sophomore album and the video was shot in Marfa, Texas. Watch the video below.
Texas Piano Man follows Ellis’ critically acclaimed 2016 self-titled LP which was named an ‘Album of the Year’ by multiple outlets including NPR Music and Rolling Stone Country, among others.