Ronny Elliott

Ronny Elliott is a singer from Tampa, Florida, who's been around the block and back since the early 60's. A member of bands as diverse as Duckbutter who backed Chuck Berry among others, The Outlaws who are a cult phenomenon all on their own, and Your Local Bear who once opened for Jimi Hendrix. It took until 1995 before the idea of a solo career took flight though.

Since then, he's cranked out a half dozen albums with his backing band The Nationals.

Stylistically Ronny is hard to categorise. The obvious comparison, with the baritone voice and almost spoken word style, is to Johnny Cash, and that's not a bad place to start. Songwriting wise, he's the usual comparisons one hears are to Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt.

Songwriting subjects or if you prefer targets, cover topics as diverse as Sid and Nancy, freedom of speech, a tale of a condemned prisoner awaiting execution, the famous Martin Luther King missive, in Letter From A Birmingham Jail, and a sarcastic take on the iconic SXSW festival entitled South by So What. All spiced up with occasonally gorgeous ballads and baked with a heaping helping of humour.

His most recent album Valentine Roadkill was chosen by the influential Mojo Magazine as one of the top ten Americana albums of 2005. In 2007 he released a new effort Jalopypaint.

See: http://www.ronnyelliott.com for more, and http://www.ronnyelliott.com/albums.htm for plenty of samples to try out.