Season 2, Show 5, on February 21, 2026
Text by Sylvia Mallory
Photos by Beth Jacobsen
New Song had the honor of hosting the legendary Ellis Paul on February 21—one day after a light snowfall and just 24 hours before the first flakes would fly in a late-February blizzard. To counter Mother Nature, Paul delivered an evening of songs and stories that would melt the iciest iceberg.
Classically trained Croatian-American Radoslav Lorković accompanied Paul on piano and accordion for the sold-out show. Blending threads of blues, jazz, and American roots, Lorković matched Paul’s crackling energy with his own.
The duo opened with the love song “Rose Tattoo.” In acknowledgment of our troubled times, they then shifted the mood with Mark Erelli’s “The Only Way.”
The jazzy toe-tapper “Kick Out the Lights (Johnny Cash)” followed. Paul enlisted the help of the audience in the call-and-response chorus as they sang about the infamous (and true) 1965 incident when a heckler led Johnny Cash to smash the footlights on the Grand Ole Opry stage with his mic stand, which led to Cash’s years-long banishment from the venue. Next, Paul’s moving tune “What Could a Horse Do?” memorialized a real story about how the therapeutic power of a racehorse named Whiskey helped a despairing PTSD-ridden Navy vet overcome his trauma.
The musicians’ well-balanced playlist also included popular Paul favorites such as the bittersweet love song “Holy”; “You’ll Never Be This Young Again,” with its carpe diem message; and the timeless love song “I Ain’t No Jesus.” “Five Alarm Fire on the 4th of July” recalled (with hilarious embellishments) a heartwarmingly memorable real-life 1979 Paul family reunion that came with high drama (hint: the family farmhouse burned down as the family partied on).
After their bows and goodnights, a standing ovation drew Ellis and Rado back to the stage. They closed the evening with the John Prine classic “Angel from Montgomery,” encouraging the audience to sing harmonies in the chorus. Delighted listeners swarmed the performers and scooped up CDs—and it’s safe to say that many went back out into the dark, icy night in a brighter mood than before.
