Curtis Eller

Curtis Eller

Curtis Eller is an American musician and banjo player from Detroit, born in 1970. He performs and records in New York City with his band Curtis Eller’s American Circus.

Career

Eller begins his show-business career at the age of seven as a juggler and acrobat with the Hiller Olde Tyme Circus in Detroit before turning to the banjo. His work with Curtis Eller’s American Circus includes appearances at funerals, horse races, burlesque shows and vaudeville revues, and the act also performs for audiences in cities including Amsterdam and Los Angeles.

Music and themes

His songs cover a wide range of subjects, including pigeon racing, performing elephants, Jesus, snake handling, Buster Keaton, Coney Island and Amelia Earhart. On the album Taking Up Serpents Again, these songs are accompanied by tuba, upright bass, accordion, pedal steel and rattlesnakes.

Eller writes a song about Amelia Earhart’s disappearance called “Amelia Earhart”, which includes the lyric that she “disappeared in a cloudbank and the static never cleared.” His song “Alaska” is voted NPR’s All Songs Considered “2003’s most Popular”.