By Nathan Ham
West Jefferson native Tim Elliott just released his third single entitled “I Got You” and the budding country music star has saw his song gain more and more attention in the last few days, debuting in the top five of most added songs on MusicRow’s Country Breakout Chart.
Elliott is not your typical music star. He spends as much time driving and fixing his tour bus as he does performing his hits on stage, and that’s a lot considering he tries to play about 200 shows a year.
“I’d rather do it myself than lay in the back of the bus worrying about dying,” Elliott joked.
Elliott has watched his fan base grow immensely over the last couple of years. He is a two-time winner of the Male Country Artist of the Year award in the Carolina Music Awards. All of the voting is done by the fans, so you have to have a lot of them if you want to win any of those honors.
Elliott’s on-stage performances have a lot to do with why so many people enjoy his music and are excited to see his shows.
“We’re not jumping up and down or standing on our heads and shooting off flashbulbs in the background or anything, but it’s an energetic show,” he said. “It’s very crowd-interactive. I love for people to feel like they’re part of it. Any artist can stand up there and sing, but if you pull those people into the show, talk to them, and stop the show and just interact with people, you make them part of what’s going on.”
Growing up in West Jefferson in a musical family meant lots of evenings playing some good ole bluegrass jam sessions.
“All the family would come over and my grandma would cook dinner, and everybody would just sit around and play guitar till the wee hours,” Elliott said.
He learned how to play the guitar by the age of eight and then moved on to playing the banjo, mandolin and keyboard.
Eliott’s shows are known to feature a lot of different styles of music, not just country, but other genres as well.
“We literally go from 1953 Hank Williams songs to John Mellencamp to Luke Bryan to Waylon Jennings, just an entire gamut from southern rock, classic rock, modern country, classic country, Texas swing, whatever people want to hear,” said Elliott. “I am definitely a country singer with a country band, but that does not mean I have to stay inside some fence.”
Music has always been a passion for Tim, but it was not the only thing the country musician had going on in his life. Elliott opened a pair of restaurants in North Carolina and then bought a bar in Nashville. It’s there when his music passion fired back up and he decided to sell his businesses and jump back into the music scene full time.
The journey hasn’t always been easy or fruitful, but no one can say Tim Elliott hasn’t worked hard for what he has.
“I’ve never been given anything. There’s definitely no trust funds, no daddy’s money. Everything that I’ve got thus far has been by the sweat of my brow,” he said.
Elliott’s songs have garnered over one million streams on Spotify. To keep up with Tim and his music journey, you can see check out his website at www.timelliottlive.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TimElliottMusic, on Twitter @timelliottlive and on Instagram @timelliottlive.
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