Acclaimed Americana/Blues guitarist William Lee Ellis was raised in the deep roots of American music. Named after his godfather, legendary bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, Ellis grew up in a musical family – his father, respected banjo composer Tony Ellis, was one of Monroe's Blue Grass Boys.

Growing up in the Kingsport-Bristol-Johnson City cradle of country music, Tennessee native William Lee was immersed in roots music heaven at an early age – some of his earliest memories include trips with his father to visit old time music master Tommy Jarrell and being bounced on his godfather’s knee. It was only natural to take up the guitar, and Ellis spent his adolescence backing his fiddle-and-banjo-playing dad at bluegrass festivals and contests across the country.

In college, Ellis took his musical studies in a new direction, spending the better part of a decade playing classical guitar and earning a master’s degree in classical performance from the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music. While there, Ellis chanced upon a musician who would change his life: Piedmont blues giant Reverend Gary Davis. Folk-blues revivalist Andy Cohen introduced Ellis to Davis’ intricate fingerpicking style, which fascinated the classically trained guitarist. “Davis was both a brilliant sacred musician and bluesman, and that’s a mix I love dearly in pre-war traditional and folk music,” Ellis says. “A combination of the heavenly and the hellish, full of tension, drama and gut-hitting emotion.”

Along the way – including years living in Japan then Memphis – Ellis learned to combine Davis’ fingerpicking technique with his classical performance background and the bluegrass-infused memories of his youth. Yet it’s clear that he’s no revivalist – Ellis writes his own unique music, using old blues forms and apocalyptic gospel themes as a vocabulary to express contemporary experiences. In his quest to capture the timeless appeal of pre-war traditions, and to make the music’s message live for today, Ellis has created a brand of Americana/roots music that’s all his own.

Ellis’ recordings have been hailed by the international press from Billboard to the London Times: his seven albums include five for noted roots label Yellow Dog Records: 2000’s The Full Catastrophe; 2003’s Conqueroo, picked as one of the year’s best records by Acoustic Guitar magazine; 2006’s God’s Tattoos, which won a Best International CD honor at Australia’s BlueStar Awards; and 2023’s Ghost Hymns, nominated for Acoustic Blues Album of the Year at the prestigious Blues Music Awards (i.e., the Grammys of the blues world). Its companion EP, Long Night, followed in 2024. The decade-long gap in Ellis’s recording activity is simple: he stepped into academia, earning a PhD in ethnomusicology and moving to Vermont, where he is Chair of Fine Arts and Professor of Music at Saint Michael’s College. In Vermont, Ellis has not only taught on blues, jazz, and gospel music but has published on blues and folk art in equal measure, culminating in the spring 2023 show he curated at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis, Build a Heaven of My Own: African American Vernacular Art and the Blues. He has also curated an ongoing series at Burlington’s Flynn theater, New Voices, that celebrate the diasporic music making of regional acts and communities, many with immigrant or refugee backgrounds. These experiences and more have given shape to Ellis’s latest full-length album, Ghost Hymns, a collection of original compositions and arrangements, one framed by a global roots vision. Featuring musical friends of international scope and experience, its 12 selections channel such voices as Lead Belly and Rev. Gary Davis alongside Chinese busking, Ghanian high life, and the Sacred Harp. Ellis is an avid world traveler – musical tours include Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Scotland, and China – and as a teacher he has instructed guitar at Augusta Blues Week, Common Ground on the Hill, and Jorma Kaukonen’s prestigious Fur Peace Ranch. With his banjo-composer father, he’s also played globally for the U.S. State Department from Cuba to Belarus, as well as the Kennedy Center, MerleFest, and The Late Show with David Letterman in a performance with actor Steve Martin. Ellis has recently been traversing the US in support of Ghost Hymns, including NPR's Mountain Stage and the Blues Music Awards.