Coming home is always a pleasure for musician Matt Ellis.
“When I can, I like to go out for walks and drives, and just enjoy the peaceful feeling of the town,” Ellis said.
A 2005 graduate of Mahomet-Seymour High School, Ellis now lives in Springfield where he enjoys writing and performing music.
Ellis grew up around music as his father Dewaine, a retired Air Force band musician, played saxophone and clarinet in several bands, and his grandfather, Dennis Wesley, played saxophone and piano in the Dennis Wesley Orchestra. But it was really all the electric guitar music playing on MTV in the early 1990’s that got Ellis so interested in learning to play the guitar.
“Bands like Nirvana, Guns ‘N Roses, Metallica, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, White Zombie, and all those cool guitar-driven bands from that era really sparked the interest and the path I’m on today,” he said.
Now, Ellis not only plays cover songs during his show, but he also shares songs he’s written.
“I would say most of my songs tie together some sort of experience I’ve had along with a dream I might have,” he said.
For example, “Take Me Back,” follows a childhood experience of telling his sister he wanted to purchase the Alice In Chains Unplugged album. Knowing the lead singer was a drug addict, his sister, Angela, said the album had a negative message, and she discouraged him from listening to it.
“Needless to say, I’ve listened to just about everything I could find by Alice In Chains since then, and I absolutely love that edgy, bluesy, heavy-rock sound,” Ellis said. “I just wish they could’ve made it along fine with Layne. My song, “Take Me Back” ties in my first experience seeing Alice In Chains music in front of me with growing up wanting to be a musician myself, and seeing the music business from my standpoint at the time I wrote the song.”
Ellis said he wrote more songs when he was discovering how to play the guitar during his teenage years. But once he learned how to play, he wanted to make money entertaining people, so he learned classic rock, country and blues cover songs.
“The show is very raw in that I don’t use any loops, drum machines or backing tracks,” he said. “It’s just my voice and my hands.”
In recent years, he rediscovered his songwriting roots, and has performed in Nashville, along the Gulf Shores, Omaha, Denver and Los Angeles.
“What I’ve learned out of it is that I need to really hone in on my songwriting and start performing my own music more often,” he said. “I had the most absolute flattering feedback on my songs that it made me realize that maybe the songs I write can reach people more than I thought they could.”
“Everything I’ve recorded is kind of obsolete or dead in a way, so I’m looking to get something really nice produced soon. And I think some of these new avenues I’m taking are going to help me get there.”
Along with solo performances, Ellis now performs regularly with four different bands in the Springfield area.
But on Friday night, Ellis is returning home to play at JT Walker’s with Joel Honey from 9:30 to midnight.
“JT’s has adopted that (hometown) atmosphere in their place,” he said. “They do a really good job of keeping a very easy going type of attitude around there. The people are nice and they always give me a warm welcome when I return.”
