Concerts

Close out the year with Ellis Paul at Club Passim

The singer-songwriter comes to Cambridge for three shows, Dec. 29, 30, 31.

Ellis Paul. Courtesy Photo

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The music business, and that of the singer-songwriters that make up part of it, has changed drastically since Ellis Paul first began touring in 1990.

And like the music, Paul himself has changed as well. Part of his start, however, he owes to Boston.

The 1990s saw somewhat of a rebirth for singer-songwriters after years of dance-y pop tunes dominating the charts. Singer-songwriters like Tracy Chapman, Shawn Colvin, and Patty Griffin emerged, and Boston was particularly accommodating, Paul said in a June 2019 interview with Riff Journal.

“There were radio stations playing singer-songwriters that were commercial stations,” he said. “For a while in Boston, I got more airplay than Aerosmith. I would go out to a theater in town and there’d be a thousand people there to see one man and the guitar. It was a pretty special time for all of us there.”

The scene has changed considerably since then, he noted in that interview, considering the emergence of social media. Just that day, he said, he’d released a video recorded with his cell phone.

“It’s going out to the world and will probably have 40,000-50,000 hits on it in a week or so,” he said at the time. “There was no intermediary really involved in it, other than just the promotion person I hired to get the word out. So, it’s all on me.”

Paul released his last album, “The Storyteller’s Suitcase,” in 2019. It was his 20th album, and was named the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance’s Album of the Year.

Paul is set to take the Club Passim stage for three days – Dec. 29, 30, 31 – so those who don’t have holiday week plans yet, perhaps this is for you.