"I got a word machine in my head. It's a damn noisy contraption. Constantly running. No 'off' switch," says Ellis Paul. 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, strike at the heart of the human condition, and he has influenced a generation of folksters toward the unpretentious and the shamelessly poetic. He comes to town with a brand-new CD, "The Day After Everything Changed."