Eleanor Underhill tried her hand at a variety of instruments—piano, trombone, guitar, and ukulele—before settling on the banjo, the instrument that has defined her sound. At age 14, she composed her first song and has since amassed a vast catalogue of music that has supported the creation of five albums with various projects. Her unique open-back banjo style, salty-blues vocals, and prolific writing ability has contributed to the success of her band, Underhill Rose, who has toured nationally and overseas while garnering international acclaim on the Americana scene since its formation in 2009. She has also won top honors at Asheville’s Songwriting Idol Contest, played on a Grammy award winning song by Kid-Hop artist Agent 23 Skidoo, was selected to perform in the Asheville All-Star Band in the summer of 2018, and is a Deering Banjos endorsing artist.
Though collaboration has surely been the cause of much of her success, Underhill felt the burning desire to get her hands on the dials and take a song all the way through the process of writing to recording to producing to mixing to release. In the fall of 2016, Eleanor holed up in her parent’s restored mill house with her modest collection of recording equipment and began tracking a full length album of original material. With the help of a Regional Artist Project Grant, Eleanor is thrilled to releasing her very first solo album—Navigate the Madness—in the fall of 2018. Leaning on the talents of several Asheville musicians (many of them in Eleanor Underhill & Friends) she has created a work that is more adventurous and singular than anything she has done before.
Eleanor & Friends will be performing the entirely of Navigate the Madness at the album release show on October 6th @ Ambrose West. This will be an intimate, not-to-be-missed show as Eleanor will be sharing some of the inspiration behind the songs and the album.
Enjoy this one-hour podcast where Eleanor shares about many inspirations and experiences related to her first solo album and even plays one of her songs live in the AshevilleFM studio.
Living Well with Eleanor Underhill on AshevilleFM, October 1, 2018
