"I got a word machine in my head. It's a damn noisy contraption. Constantly running. No 'off' switch," says Ellis Paul. After growing up on a potato farm in northern Maine, Ellis started writing songs while he was attending Boston College on a track scholarship and was laid up for several months with an injury. He's often called the quintessential New England songwriter, and he's got more than a dozen of Boston Music Awards to prove it. Ellis's passionate, literate character sketches, delivered in a soaring, lyrical voice, have influenced a generation of folk songwriters toward the shamelessly poetic.