Raw Emotion

It’s a rare writer who can take gut-wrenching personal trauma and make it into something so beautiful that it it saddens, reveals and inspires all at the same time.

Have a listen to 800 Voices by the Asheville-based Irish singer-songwriter, Danny Ellis. It’s the opening track of his album of the same name.

I won’t get into the details of Danny’s story; I don’t have to. Listen to all the tracks on the album and you’ll get the picture because Danny brings raw emotion to every song.

For a brief introduction: Danny grew up in Ireland, abandoned by his impoverished, broken family and placed in an orphanage run by Catholic clergymen. The conditions he was raised in were brutally inhumane. The album 800 Voices is a documentary of sorts that provides snapshots into daily life for the eight years Danny spent there. It’s quite literally a tale of survival, and the key to his ability to make it through all that was - you guessed it - music.

I have had the privilege to study songwriting with Danny, and he is one of the finest humans I have ever met. And lest you think Danny - and his 800 Voices songs - are all about doom and gloom and tragedy, think again. Danny has a great sense of humor, too! (Listen to his songs “Who Trew Da Boot” and “Excuses” from the same album).

But back to this opening song…  why does it work? The thing that gives me chills every time I hear it is the stark, “cold” open - just Danny’s voice, and the gentlest of strums on the guitar. There is something in the quality of his tenor voice that goes straight to your heart. From there, Danny paints images so vivid, you can see them in your mind’s eye even if you’ve never experienced anything like he did. And wait for the interesting ending: lilting cadences of fiddles sound like a dance, and make you ache to know what is in the next chapter of Danny’s journal.

Raw emotion… thank goodness the gifted few like Danny can show it to us.