Elliot Ulysses Brown (born 20 June 1985 in Northland, New Zealand) is a singer/ songwriter from New Zealand. Until recently, Brown has been playing with Jackson Hobbs in two piece band The Stomps. Currently he is playing as a solo musician and recording as Elliot Brown and the Candy Caps, featuring an array of friends.
Brown is a primarily self taught guitarist and vocalist, receiving his first guitar and lessons from his father at the age of six, and only a few lessons from a professional jazz/classical musician at the age of twelve. Studying a variety of the greatest artists of many disciplines, he has absorbed lessons in classical harmonies from artists such as Bach, vocal harmonies of Brian Wilson, with haunting lyrics inspired by a love of the work of Edgar Allan Poe. He attributes much of his passion to his love of folk and classic country artists, such as Bill Monroe and Hank Williams. Brown's music captures the full spectrum of human emotion with his complex melodies and visual lyrics. His talent is self evident, or as Kim Freiderich of Punk Globe says, "[Elliot is] a man with so much talent that it made me stop and drop what I was doing...I found myself listening to his songs one by one over and over... mesmerized with what I was hearing."[1] Freiderich goes on to point out; "You are not signed to a label, which I find quite funny since it's been a long time since I have heard this much talent." This is a common response to Brown's magic, Paul Gallagher of Under the Radar and 95bFm who has played his music "religiously" says, "[He is] one of the more under-appreciated troubadours of New Zealand music, Elliot Brown has been a force of lyrical talent for as long as I have known him"; going on to add, "There has always been a mix of brutally earnest honesty within Elliot's music and a thematic blues folk aesthetic of an Dylan / Bo Diddley / Winston Churchill-speech quoting odyssey."[2]
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Brown's first solo album, Delirium Tremens, features songs recorded over the last two years, with samplings from both The Stomps and Elliot Brown and the Candy Caps, recorded by Gundry Audio, Sailor Mouth Records, Cybiont, and Raggedy Man Records, and is available for sale at Amazon, download at iTunes and available for sample on his web pages. Brown is continuing to compose music, write lyrics and record tracks for his upcoming album, expected to be completed by January 2011. Currently, Brown is playing venues based in New Zealand, but with a solid fan base of 27,000 in the USA, is also planning a tour of the United States by 2011. Delirium Tremens can be heard on Myspace in its entirety. Reviews can also be read on such pages as Under the Radar.
Road To Destruction is Brown's second solo album. It is a compilation of 12 tracks recorded in a series of different studios since the release of previous album Delirium Tremens. While predominantly containing original songs (written by Brown) there are four covers of relatively unknown traditional English and American songs. These four tracks were taken from recordings made at York Street Studios in a one-night (25 April 2011) recording session during which Brown recorded 12 songs with Dave Khan (fiddle, banjo, mandolin, lead guitar, squeezebox, vocals), Hariet Ellis (vocals), Fred Renata (bass, vocals), Jackson Hobbs (formerly of The Stomps who plays percussion, vocals), and Campbell Duncan (producer). Songs from this recording session include traditional English ballads (e.g. Cruel Mother which is almost A cappella sung by Ellis and Brown), and traditional American (e.g. Soldier's Joy, Gospel Plow).
Similarly to Delirium Tremens, themes running through Road To Destruction are alcohol, poverty, "busking" (street-performing with a hat out for coins), and "general wretchedness".
As stated on the album cover, Brown openly encourages piracy of his work, reasoning that without piracy his songs would probably never be heard by the majority of his listeners. Another reason for Brown's encouragement of piracy of his album is, due to being entirely self-funded, Brown released fewer than 100 copies of Road To Destruction. Also, as with Delirium Tremens, Brown encourages any amateur film-makers to make music-videos for his individual songs, with several of this album's songs having had various music-videos made for them by the public prior to release of the album.
Brown is showcased on a variety of radio stations including terrestrial stations such as KiwiFM, 95bFM, BBC Radio, HumanFm and Radio Boudaki, to college and online radio stations like www.HeadcaseRadio.com from Seattle and IM Radio 2.0 at www.IMRadio.com and many more. Current marketing efforts include networking with radio stations worldwide; booking efforts focused in the United States and New Zealand, with a unique approach to social networking that has invited fans from all over the world to participate in his craft by creating music video's with free artistic license, covers of his work and much, much more. Brown currently has more than 27,000 fans on his main MySpace account alone, with more than 79,000 plays and nearly 142,000 page views by his efforts alone.[3]
YouTube has recently become another weapon in the arsenal of Brown, with videos made by himself and by loyal fans all over the world being uploaded.[4] He is also having a website created in the United States. www.elliotbrownmusic.com