Biography
Ely Silverthorne is the folk/indie-rock project of singer-songwriter Aaron Knoll. Born in Buffalo, currently living in New York City, Ely's songs are strongly travel oriented and primarily deal with themes of distance, leaving things behind and moving forward from one's past. There's also a strong strain of roadgeekery in his music with many songs specifically referencing roads and highways by number.
Ely's music is strongly influenced by bands such as the Magnetic Fields and the Mountain Goats, while the songwriting tradition speaks strongly to influences from Magnolia Electric Company and Jason Molina's work, with hints of folk influence from icons like Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan.
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Aaron Knoll plays most of the instruments (guitar, bass, piano, mandolin, drums and vocals) and has recorded his first single, EP, and LP in his studio in Astoria, NY. His early records are decidedly low-fi, embracing the artifacts of DIY recording, but consciously avoiding the intentional low-fi aesthetic. To-date, Ely's records have been released on Applewood Records , in close association with Austin musican Mike Gorman.
The name Ely Silverthorne comes from two destinations from songwriter Aaron Knoll's first cross country trip. The Ely, is Ely, Nevada a small town of 4,000 on US Route 50 in the desert of White Pine County. Silverthorne comes from Silverthorne, Colorado a town of 4,000 on US Route 6 at an elevation of 9,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains. The names were chosen because of their similarities in size, and population, and because of their stark differences in landscape and appearance, which evokes the wide range of landscapes seen from the road in the Western United States.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.