ELLIS PAUL will perform in Boothbay Harbor on June 15.
Music takes on a deeper cultural significance when it functions as an agent of change as well as reflection.
When Maine native Ellis Paul revisits the Boothbay Opera House on Saturday, June 15, he and the venue both will symbolize a decade’s worth of radical evolution.
The Opera House is celebrating its 10th anniversary season this year, inviting to the stage some new performers and especially those performers who helped establish the venue as a destination for great music in the Mid-coast.
For his part, during the past decade Paul has become both a parent and an increasingly respected national music icon. His songs have appeared in film soundtracks, he was chosen to record an unfinished song by the estate of his personal hero Woody Guthrie, and he has continued to find a way to feed his family by doing what he loves.
Currently recording his latest album, working-titled “Chasing Beauty,” Paul is touring the East Coast in bursts from his home in Charlottesville, Va.
Next weekend’s appearance in Boothbay Harbor is a return to one of his favorite rooms, one he watched evolve during a previous chapter in his life.
“I love playing at Boothbay, it’s such a nice room there,” Paul told The Times Record this week.
“Acoustically the room is really great, and there’s so much history there. When I was living in Edgecomb (in the 1990s) they were still fund-raising to open it. I saw the curve of what the community did to make it work, and so I have a visceral connection to it as well,” he said.
Some 25 years into his career, Paul is on the curve of change. Eschewing the traditional music label business model of selling music to a corporate label who then is responsible for promoting the music, Paul is among a group of artists who are rallying fans to pay for music up front and remove record companies from the equation.
Building a connection with fans helps the artist, and it links fans with the record in a more substantive way than just passing over money to buy it, Paul said.
By contributing $25 or $100 to the artist while he or she is writing or recording the album, fans end up paying more than the cost of a CD but in return receive personalized swag, credit in the liner notes and, in cases of deep-pocketed donors, inperson “house concerts.” For more information, visit ellispaul.com.
Tickets for Ellis Paul at the Opera House are $17 in advance and $20 at the door. The show starts at 8 p.m. at the venue, 86 Townsend Ave. Parking is available for ticket holders and refreshments are always served.
rshelly@timesrecord.com
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