"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 a baker's 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 folksters toward the shamelessly poetic. The Boston Globe calls Ellis "literate, provocative, urbanely romantic." Whatever you call him, he's one of the major songwriters of our time. He comes to Michigan with a new release, "Chasing Beauty."