About Cindy Ellis

Music is my thing. I was born into a musical family in Forth Worth, Texas, and some of my earliest memories are of singing melodies while Daddy sang a harmony part. Country music was always on the radio while Mama went about her day keeping house for our family. Daddy taught my brothers, and many of the neighborhood kids, how to play guitar, and I started piano lessons at an early age.

While I was in elementary school, my family moved to central Arkansas, where both my parents were raised and where most of my aunts and uncles lived. This is where we started our family band: Daddy on the fiddle, brother Steve on guitar, brother Tim on mandolin and I played the autoharp. We all sang, and Mama would sit protectively nearby, monitoring our performances and reading the audience. We frequently played in church and at the world-renowned Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View, Arkansas during my teen years. In the summers, we played for the Mountain Folk Music Festival at Silver Dollar City near Branson, Missouri. Our family often hosted “pickin’s” and invited our cousins, neighbors and other local musicians over to jam. I sang for local civic events, weddings and funerals. In college I got into the concert choir and chamber singers and fell in love with a Capella music. As an English major, I did a lot of writing, and began working on some poems and songs. During this time I also performed with several bands in the Little Rock area.

In 1983 I moved close to Nashville, Tennessee, where I currently reside. Over the years I have played in country, rock, bluegrass and gospel ensembles while continuing to serve as a musician in local churches. Daddy is no longer with us, but I still make music with my brothers whenever we get together, and now our children have continued in the musical tradition as well.