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Tawny Ellis - Edge Of The World - Part Two |
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So, why Edge of the World Tawny, both as the title of the album
and titular song?
“After listening to all of the songs, I just thought it was the most
universal song about how people are feeling in the world right now. My
experience of being in Big Sur California and I don’t know if you have
ever driven that coast, but the song was inspired by a trip up there. I
almost called the album The Beauty and the Danger, because many
years the road collapses in certain parts. When you are driving you are
(both) over the water and it is so far down. It is so beautiful and then
the fog rolls in. It is absolutely one of my favorite places in the
world. You are in awe of the beauty, but it feels super dangerous at the
same time,” she tells us.
That however is not the title she chose for the album.
It is also a very personal song. It is a confession. It is like you wake
up and you feel as though the whole world has forgotten you. I am
nowhere. I felt like that for many years after COVID, because I couldn’t
find my voice. I was disenchanted with the whole world. When I drive up
the coast I lay in the sand. You get a perspective. Those granules, that
sand that you are laying on they have been there for eternity. So, all
of your problems go wow (she makes a motion with her hands indicating
they go away). If I am breathing and looking at this beauty that is
all I can really see right now. That is why that song was inspired.”
Every true artist learns something new about themselves, discovers
something they may not have known or acknowledged about themselves while
they are in the process of creating, no matter the artform. We wondered
what Tawny Ellis learned about herself while writing the songs for
Edge of the World. Perhaps in Tawny Ellis’ case it was not so much
something that she learned, as it was a part of her life that she
revisited and had the opportunity to reflect upon, as in the song
“Terry.”
“I think for me it is the way that I can turn something that is hard or
sad for me into something that I can share (with others). It is like
alchemy. I think I am an alchemist. I turn (one thing) into something
else.
Literally, on the day that my friend Terry Ellsworth died that song on
the album (was written). He was just one of my best friends. He was this
miraculous amazing friend. He lived in downtown LA. He was the godfather
of the whole arts scene down there and I was part of that.
My husband had brought home the dulcimer and as I was messing around
with it, I got the news that Terry had passed. I was only on the phone
with him a month before that. He told me he was going into the hospital
for dental work and I thought something is up. He had cancer. He didn’t
want everybody to worry, so he didn’t tell anybody. My heart broke into
a million pieces, because of how much I am going to miss him and how
important he was to so many people. His miraculous personality and the
gifts that he continued to give everyone. He said I’m the richest man in
the world and he lived literally in a little tiny room with a bathroom
down the hall at the American Hotel.
He said he was the richest man, because of all the people that he knew
and the friends that he had. He worked at the art gallery and theater
down there. It is called Art Share L.A. I have played there many,
many times. (She laughs and says) I really believe he was my
number one fan. He just got me.
I turned my sorrow into something beautiful, and I get to play it for
all of his friends, everybody that knew him downtown. They got something
beautiful out of it, by remembering him.
I have many other important people that have been in my life and they
don’t get a song about them! Somehow Terry got a song about him. It just
came out. It is a very elusive thing. You never know. I have a bazillion
ideas (She starts waving her hands for emphasis) There is so much
shredded paper and there is this idea and that idea. You never know
which thing is going to become a real thing. Sometimes I will listen
back to voice memos and I will go, why didn’t I finish that song? It is
amazing how one little clip of an idea can blossom into a whole thing.
Other times you think you really have something and it just doesn’t
(happen),” she says, each word or phrase seemingly weighed carefully and
introspectively.
Sometimes you will see an artist put out a single or more often an EP,
but Tawny Ellis explains her approach to music, “I like having a body of
work. There is that pressure, because you have to have nine or ten
songs. There is a little bit of that, but it only becomes that kind of
pressure if you have to write a song. I had so much bottled up. I was
blocked, because I couldn’t find my way through it. I didn’t want to be
negative. I was trying to dissect and figure out. A lot of those songs
came out of the magical part of me. It is finding what is underneath the
pain and then pulling that magic up. The songs are in the instruments or
they might start from me. Sometimes I will be walking across the living
room and I will hear a melody and words will be right there as well. I
have to sing it into my little voice recorder. It is all different ways
really.
For me I really wanted to get a body of work out, so I could do what I
am doing now, which is change the channel and let all of that speak for
who I am and where I am in my life as an artist. Now I get to come out
of the studio. I don’t want to be eternally in the studio. I am not one
of these people who is like hey let’s record all week and then let’s go
play gigs all weekend. I can’t do that, because the main person in my
band is my husband and he is making guitars and amplifiers all week. He
needs support in that. He’s the person I want to play with. He is the
person who has been playing with me since the day that we met. He
understands me too. He is so talented (big smile) and he is just
so good at everything that he does (you can hear the pride in her
voice). He is a great producer, a great musician, but his business
is so demanding. He is the one that I want to do it with, so I have to
be very strategic about it.
Now we can just be in performance mode until I am ready to write another
record and I have no desire to do that for a while. I am done for a
little while.”
As we mentioned in Part One of this interview, Tawny Ellis is
artistically talented in so many ways we wondered why music won out.
“There is no rational reason other than there is a fire inside of me to
express myself in that manner. I was quite successful at jewelry making
and I have been very successful with making my living as an actress, as
a young person in LA. I made a handful of movies and I was on TV shows.
When I first came out to LA all I wanted to do was to play music, but I
didn’t really know anyone and I met this woman who was a manager for
actors and she convinced me to go to acting class and the next thing I
knew I was on movie sets, playing roles. I was in a lot of pain in my
heart, because it took up all of my time, because all I really wanted to
do was to pursue music. I sacrificed a lot to play music. I know it is
crazy. I had a friend say to me the other day that is the hardest thing
you can do. If it is in you the way it is in me you don’t really pick
it, you just need to do it.
There used to always be three things, I’m acting, I’m writing songs, I
am in a band, I am making jewelry, I am sculpting. They were always the
three things that I was pursuing all at once. I had to pull myself away
from acting, so I could get myself in the place when I was playing in
the clubs and really pursuing my music. Acting made me feel very
vulnerable, because you don’t know what is going to end up on screen and
what is going to be edited. There are so many people telling you what to
do.
I can’t do it all at once. These little segments of my life, I was a
jewelry designer. You have to pick. All of it gets me excited. I have a
talent for making things obviously, three dimensional things. What
really inspires me is telling stories. If I can tell my story that for
me is where the spark is. I don’t care if people like my sculptures or
not. I don’t really have an ego about a lot of the other stuff I do.
This is important to me that I connect. There is so much in music, the
textures of the instruments, the rhythms and the cadence of it. There is
so much delicious stuff in music and it is so powerful. I think it is a
really incredible communications tool. It absolutely brings people
together [She repeats absolutely for emphasis] beyond anything
else. I really believe that. It has that power.
With music I am in control. There is nobody doing my makeup or making me
look this way or that way or telling you what to wear and that is why I
have been independent for so long. I just feel like I am in charge and I
get to choose what I sound like, who I am and what message I am
bringing. It has nothing to do with anybody else, their script, their
words or their whatever.
I loved acting class way more than I ever liked working on a set. I
don’t pursue acting at all, but every once in a while, someone will say
hey will you play this part. I will be okay. I was invited to play a
part right when I was sick (June 2025) and I couldn’t, so I had to turn
it down. I don’t know if I would have said yes, because I was trying to
get my record out. I don’t think I am done. I think that I will maybe
act a little bit more in my life, but right now I am excited about
playing this record,” says Tawny Ellis.
The song “Bottom Line,” was a collaboration between Tawny Ellis and
Laura Cole, both in the songwriting and Cole also sang harmony on the
song. “Bottom Line,” came out of the idea that Gio, my husband has known me for a long time and so my nickname is “Bottom Line Ellis,” because everybody will be like it is this, it is that just in life. Ya, ya, ya. I will then just come in and say it is blah and then everybody goes oh, that is it. I just always bottom-line stuff. It is not always that becoming. I like to cut to the chase. I thought that is a great premise for a song. It is a great idea for a song.
When you go out for lunch and you hear the table next to you, with
someone saying (She says this in very dramatic fashion) ‘well he
did this and he did that, but I just don’t know (her hands are spread
out like that emoji). I don’t know if he is really into me. Guys do
it all the time, she was like that. I can’t figure her out.’ I thought I
am just going to write a song that asks what’s the bottom line? What’s
going on? We don’t need any of these games.
Then we just made up a story. We pulled up past memories of
relationships and things and we just had a hoot writing that song. It is
so much fun to sing too. I really like it,” she says.
The mid-tempo “Flicker Of The Flame,” us autobiographical and reflects
upon the life of an individual she knew who had a spark and immense
talent, a seemingly bright future but then, not to make a pun it went up
in flames.
Tawny Ellis explains, “You are partially right and maybe one hundred
percent right, but there is a lot more to mention. When I was very young
in Hollywood these were the days when I was disenchanted with my acting
and I was really trying to pursue my music. There was a person that
entered into my life that was the most enigmatic, hottest, most
brilliant songwriter and singer. I am not going to say who it is. He had
it all. He had the label, the billboards on Melrose (Avenue). He had it
all. He had the shows. He had everything.
He was very busy trying to prove how not into that he was and he
self-destructed before all of our eyes. He is still around now. I have
these little muses that have come along in my life to help me with
finding my voice and he was one of those people.
I was in awe watching him play. My ex-boyfriend was his drummer, so I
saw hundreds of gigs. I would study him and the way that he wrote songs.
I was still trying to get my songs together. He sat down at the piano
and he would go you have to have at least three parts to a song. It is
like a puzzle. You have this story here and the chorus has to encompass
the thing. He gave me the structure of the different parts that needed
to happen to make a song work. He was a muse and a mentor. He proceeded
to drink too much alcohol and he would get on the stage.
If there were important people there like his label, he would
start demeaning them and talking bad. Everything that is your absolute
don’t do he would do and he (destroyed) his career.
The “Flicker of the Flame,” is not my crush on him, which I definitely
had, but it is more that youthful burning. He was obviously chasing fame
and wanted it but didn’t think he deserved it or something and he
self-destructed. The “Flicker of the Flame,” is that burning desire to
make it and to be something in this crazy ass town.
As I have grown older, I think so fondly of those years, because I
learned so much watching such a talent. He was up there with you name
it. I thought he was better than anybody I had ever seen play. He was so
good. His songs were so good. It hurt how good he was. Everybody wanted
to be him or to be near him. When I look back at that all of these years
later what came to me is it was just a flicker of the flame (she
makes a motion with her hands illustrating a tiny bit) that’s left.
It is in my mind’s eye. Those times don’t exist anymore. Whatever I can
pull out of that story, so it lives on in my heart and
maybe people can relate to that. Maybe a love interest is a
flicker of that relationship but it doesn’t necessarily have to mean
that. For me it is more about youthful burn and youthful desire to live
your dreams. Running around the streets of Hollywood, being wild and
trying to pursue your dreams. That is what my life was.
I was like oh you (meaning her) have five auditions tomorrow (her
hands illustrate trying to do a balancing act) but I want to stay up
all night and write songs. The music won.
We at Riveting
Riffs Magazine are glad the music won, because Tawny Ellis is an artist
who is truly passionate about telling stories, most of which seem
grounded in real experiences either of her own or of others or a
combination of both. We would encourage you to check out her website and
her music.
#TawnyEllisInterview #TawnyEllisMusic #RivetingRiffsMagazine #RivetingRiffs #TawnyEllisActress #TawnyEllisSculptor #TawnyEllisEntrevista #TawnyEllisMusica
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Continuing,
she explains, “When I think of Edge of the World, I feel like you
can either have superpowers and fly or you can just be done. You could
fall into the rocks and it is over. I feel like that is how we are in
the state of our entire universe. Being a human on this planet are we
going to come out of it as the plane is about to crash and is everything
going to work out okay or are we going to crash into the mountains. 