Brian Ellefson

Bio:

Brian was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and has the laid back, down to earth sound and attitude that come with the territory. He spent 6 years as a studio musician before releasing his own album Panoramic View. The album was a one-man effort with Brian writing, recording and producing the tracks over the last year. During his time as a studio musician, he spent a lot of time playing alongside other guitarists and learned to play complement to the root chords. That accent-style guitar carried forward into his own music and is prominent on most songs on the album. “I’ve always thought of myself as guitarist first and a singer second. When I was in high school this guy posted an ad for a singer for his band and I’d never sung before but decided to give it a try. I landed the role but felt like I wasn’t contributing enough just singing and decided that I wanted to be a guitarist, too. I taught myself to play and had such poor dexterity when I started that I had to bend my thumb over the fret board instead of using my fingers. Thankfully I got better and I’ve put a lot of effort into learning different guitar styles like flamenco, classical and blues. I’ll wake up with an idea in my head or while I’m doing things other than music. I love trying to capture those ideas, flesh them out and make them something. My best ones seem come to me when I’m not really thinking about it. The biggest challenge is to stop what I’m doing and record them before they disappear. Eleven songs made it onto the disk but I think there were about thirty ideas and a third of them got lost because I fell back to sleep or The Office came on.“ ..

Member Since:

November 24, 2008

Members:

Guitars - Brian Ellefson, ... Bass - Brian Ellefson, ... Vocals - Brian Elle ... oh you know what I'm saying ...

Influences:

In no order: Ben Folds, Bob Marley, Ben Harper, Peter Gabriel, The Edge (from U2), Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Gordon Sumner (Sting), Wilco, The Band, The Police, indie artists, and people who play instruments besides the guitar.

Sounds Like:

Jack Johnson, Mat Kearney, Jason Mraz, Ben Harper

Record Label:

Nada Grenada