Ellis Paul

In the 1960s, Mrs. Plissey produced her own television show "The Aroostook Homemaker" which aired every third week on Presque Isle television station WAGM-TV.

While attending high school in Presque Isle, Maine, Paul listened to Top-40 radio and participated in track.

He played trumpet in the school's stage band where he was introduced to the big band jazz music of Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson.

He excelled in track, becoming the Maine State champion in five-kilometer distance running, a feat that garnered several scholarship offers, including an offer from Boston College.

Ellis Paul (born Paul Plissey; January 14, 1965) is an American singer-songwriter and folk musician.

Having graduated high school with the class of 1983, Paul relocated to Boston, leaving small-town rural life behind.

In an interview with Daniel Gewertz of the Boston Herald Paul stated, "It wasn't until I went to Boston College on a track scholarship that I first heard folk."

Paul was particularly moved when he heard Bob Dylan singing "The House of the Rising Sun".

It was then that he began to take folk music seriously.

In 1989 he won the Nameless Coffeehouse's New Songwriter Award.

Paul played Cambridge's Club Passim, a venue that would become his "home" venue, for the first time when he opened for John Gorka in October 1989.

Born in Presque Isle, Aroostook County, Maine, Paul is a key figure in what has become known as the Boston school of songwriting, a literate, provocative, and urbanely romantic folk-pop style that helped ignite the folk revival of the 1990s.

His pop music songs have appeared in movies and on television, bridging the gap between the modern folk sound and the populist traditions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

Paul grew up in a small Maine town.

He attended Boston College on a track scholarship, majoring in English.

Injured during his junior year, Paul began playing guitar to help fill his free time and soon began writing songs.

After graduating college Paul played at open mic nights in the Boston area while working with inner-city school children.

He won a Boston Acoustic Underground songwriter competition and gained national exposure on a Windham Hill Records compilation which helped him choose music as a career.

Paul was inducted into the Presque Isle High School Athletic Hall of Fame (under his birth name, Paul Plissey) on January 11, 2013.

Paul majored in English at Boston College where he continued to participate in track.

His best time in the 10,000 meters (30:18:50) remains the fourth best men's outdoor record in Boston College history.

When a knee injury in his junior year sidelined him from athletics, Paul picked up an acoustic guitar to pass the time.

He taught himself to play guitar with the help of a Hits of the 70s songbook, and began to write songs.

Boston radio included a classic hits station that played the music of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and James Taylor; artists who were mostly unfamiliar to Paul.

Within a few years they became major influences.

Having a career in music was the furthest thing from Paul's mind at that point, but as his playing and writing improved it became a bigger focus in his life.

In an interview with FolkWax journalist Arthur Wood, Paul stated:

"I started playing and learned a few songs by other writers to begin with. I started writing originals within a few months. My songs were pretty horrendous to begin with. They kept getting better and better. When I graduated, I started playing at open mics in bars in Boston. Eventually discovered that there were folk clubs where people were actually listening, and not drinking and carousing while you played. I got involved in that circuit. I think that's why I've become so lyric conscious — because of those listening rooms, where you really have to rely on words in those situations."

The open mic circuit in the Boston area included The Nameless Coffeehouse in Cambridge, Westborough's Old Vienna Kaffeehouse and The Naked City Coffeehouse in Allston.

Paul became a regular face at those clubs along with other young folk musicians such as Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, Dar Williams and Vance Gilbert.

Paul had released 19 albums by the end of 2014 and received 14 Boston Music Awards, considered the pinnacle of contemporary acoustic music success by some.

He has published a book of original lyrics, poems, and drawings and released a DVD that includes a live performance, guitar instruction, and a road-trip documentary.

In 2014, his children's CD Hero in You was published as a book by Albert Whitman & Company.

Paul plays almost 200 live shows a year.

Ellis Paul was born in Fort Kent, Maine, a small, rural potato-farming town near the Canada–US border.

Paul's family had strong connections to the potato industry – his father, Ed Plissey, was Executive Director of the Maine Potato Commission and his grandfather owned a 140 acre potato farm.

Schools in the area closed for three weeks each year so that school children could help with the potato harvest.

Paul spent many hours working on his grandfather's farm.

Paul's mother, the former Marilyn Bonney of Buckfield, Maine, is a University of Maine graduate and was an extension agent for northern Aroostook County.

She and her husband often worked together on special projects for the service.