Picture yourself in a boat on a river...

Now visualise an American. If you're English, I'm guessing you've got an image of a slightly chubby guy in t-shirt and jeans, big walrush moustache, possibly shaking you warmly by the paw and saying things like "Real pleased to be here!". Reader, I met him. Mark Elliot is a typical American, in that he is warm, self-deprecating, polite, hard working, and desperately good at what he does. What he does do (hang on, I might need to check the grammar on that one) is stand up in front of people and sing simple songs in a rich, warm come-on-into-the-parlour-and-shake-the-dust-off-your-boots fashion which is both enormously endearing, and incredibly difficult to make look as easy as he does. Do.
The easiest and best way to form an opinion about any darned fool who's willing to get on stage with an acoustic guitar is to wonder what they'd be like at your local pub's songwriters night. This is all too frequently easy to visualise, as that's where you generally bump into them. Bedsit poets, protest evangelists, political flag wavers - I should know, I've played all these roles, and more. What isn't easy - in fact what is astonishingly difficult to do - is to make that singer-songwriter role still relevant in these days of the minimal attention span, loop technology and instant gratificatory downloads: to stand up and perform in front of people and draw them into your world, to tell them stories, to make them populate your songs with their characters - Mark Elliot can do this - I know, because I saw him do it tonight.
If I hadn't been in the other band playing, I would have missed it. Because of flight restrictions preventing him from flying in earlier this week, many people across the country did miss out on the chance to make their own minds up. I liked him. You should go and see him play, I think you'll like him too, and I say this about a man who lives at the foot of a mountain outside Nashville, writes songs for a living and who has therefore clearly got the job that was reserved for me...

http://www.myspace.com/cubcreekrecords