GypsyElise and the Royal Blues

The "world bred, traveled and seasoned" vocalist, Elisandrya De Sade-Way is essentially southern musician by trade. Born in 1959 to a family of entertainers, her flower-child era rearing is clearly heard in her music. A savvy lady who finally cashed in her chips from years of entrepreneurship, Gypsy Elise has plucked a bouquet of talented musicians, dubbed The Royal Blues, including her husband Ryan De Sade-Way on the Keys and key bass, Herman Halphen on drums, and Alex Geddes on saxophone.

Gypsy Elise bloomed to the beats of the standards of music rooted in blues, jazz, funk, and ballads. Pair a musical family upbringing with a vocal range to rival Jacob's Ladder and hear the sultry vocals inspiring a sensual and swampy fusion. The Contralto's 3.5 octave range begins at Low 'A', providing her an abundance of entertainment opportunities and experiences. In April of 2000, Gypsy collaborated with Sergio Yetta, in New Orleans, on "Lonely Gypsy", a collective of his music and her lyrics/vocals, which is registered at The Library of Congress.

Other musical accomplishments pre-The Royal Blues include performing with Kermit Ruffins, Walter Payton of The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Charmaine Neville, Tab Benoit, Stevie Ray Vaughn (naming just a few). She also co-produced the "Summer Of Love" tour which featured Big Brother and The Holding Company, It's A Beautiful Day, Strawberry Alarm Clock. She has negotiated contracts with artists such as Etta James, The Grateful Dead, King Creole and The Coconuts, Burning Spear, Arrow (Alphonsus Cassel, again just to name just a few.
In addition, this Jane-of-all-trades was an owner/partner of Music Referral Newspaper, a movie producer, professional chef, master home brewer, author of 2 novels, and in 1998 produced the World's Largest Earth Day Event.

Recently deciding to fully embrace her vocal talent, Gypsy Elise and The Royal Blues released "Redline" in October of 2010 and their most recent project is titled "Music Box Watermelon", officially released on June 29th of 2011. Of "Redline", Elise said "All my songs are based on storied that I usually create from something that inspired a thought. Sometimes they are simply dreams that I wake up to and write as I recall them. Once set to music, they become the songs that I hear in my core. It was a tremendous amount of fun writing "Dead Man's Bone", and with most of the songs on the album "Redline", they come rather easy for me. Now with the release of "Music Box Watermelon", the same is still completely true, Music is FUN for me!"

Refining her vocals and assuming her position as troubadour, Gypsy Elise, with the aid of The Royal Blues, vividly captures the mysterious chambers of human emotion when reciting a torch or blues ballad. Together their sound recalls Gypsy's transient kindred with a whimsical bohemian, yet mesmerizing sensual mash-up of blues, R&B, jazz, rock, and funk. Their repertoire ranged from soft, dulcet melodies to psychedelic powered rock, but invariably provokes a teeming crowd from tears to twinkle-toes.
- Haley Hemenway Sledge, Ogden Museum of Southern Arts, Intern