Ellie Fortune Live at Li Po Lounge in San Francisco (6 MP3s)

Scroll down for 6 free MP3s of Ellie Fortune's live performance at Li Po Lounge.
Maybe the thing I love best about Ellie Fortune is how his musical conduct precisely embodies One Night Music ideals. He's always freely and generously giving things away. At his shows, his CDs are available by donation. He has free promotional, hand-stamped matchbooks and will offer you as many as you like. And before his new release Matriarch was available on iTunes, LaLa, Rhapsody and Amazon, he passed out flyers linking to a free download of the entire album. You can still download "The Echo" -- a haunting standout of floating vocals and perfectly punctuating drums -- from Ellie Fortune's page on Bandcamp.
It's hard to believe One Night Music recorded Jesse K. Phillips, the Sacramento-based frontman of Ellie Fortune, almost a year ago in Isla Vista, California. Back then, Ellie Fortune was a solo project. It still is, but it has manifested itself in many different shapes, line-ups, and instrumentations since we recorded him. Recently, Ryan and I met up with Jesse at Li Po Lounge in San Francisco's Chinatown, where an Ellie Fortune trio (featuring Thommy Minnick and Teddy Briggs on upright bass and drums) played a late show in a dark downstairs that resembled a basement tornado-shelter more than a music venue. Jesse's had a busy year of recording and touring. He's currently on a West Coast and SXSW tour with Mason Lindahl, and sometime late March, he'll end up in Brooklyn, where he plans to move towards the end of the summer.
Hearing Jesse solo is like unexpectedly finding yourself in some free-floating meditative trance, and hearing Jesse play with other musicians is like snapping out of that spell and feeling the earth firm beneath you. The trio is grounding, providing a full and lush complement to music that usually soars unbounded. I'll take Jesse's music in any form. Here are a few songs I captured from Ellie Fortune's performance at Li Po on December 30th, 2009 with my Zoom H2.
Ellie Fortune Live at Li Po Lounge in San Francisco on 12.30.09
Click to play. Right click and "Save As..." to download.
01 Hollowed Out
02 The Echo
03 Harlot
04 Summer Fable
05 Goldmine
06 Goat
ZIP file of all 6 MP3s (download only)
All songs are written by and property of Ellie Fortune. They are available here with permission from Ellie Fortune for personal non-commercial use.

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