Ellis Paul - Live in Philly

The Mrs. and I were lucky enough to be in the audience for the Ellis Paul show on Saturday morning at World Cafe Live in Philly. He played most of the tunes off his debut kid's record, the impeccable effort titled "The Dragonfly Races", sprinkled in a couple Woody Guthrie numbers, including a faithful rendition of "This Land is Our Land", and one Pete Seeger tune. It turns out that this was only the 4th or 5th children's show Ellis had performed, so he was still feeling out his way on stage in front of a mostly knee-high crowd. Despite his relative inexperience in that department, he did a fantastic job interacting with the youngsters, leading them in some sing-along/dance-along bits and seemed to please a fairly packed house.


Here is a short clip of Ellis Paul performing "Road Trip" - the standout track from "The Dragonfly Races" - with some on-stage help from his friend Rachel.




The Bear would have loved the show (especially the chance to hear "This Land is Our Land" played live). We were sans children on Saturday because of the Christmas gift we received from my one brother and his wife. They gave us, as well as our oldest bro and his better half, lunch in center city and tickets to see the matinee performance of RAIN - The Beatles Experience at the Academy of Music. Minutes after we said hey to Ellis, we bolted for Broad Street. Never one for cover/tribute bands, I must admit that RAIN does one hell of a job recreating the music of the Fab Four. I can only imagine how much money they must have to fork over to the weird-one Michael Jackson for the right to perform and make money off The Beatles catalog. I didn't pay for the tix, but I still feel dirty for helping to indirectly line his pockets.