Ellie and Leela Grace

Leela & Ellie Grace
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Leela Grace Biography -- Ellie Grace Biography

Ellie and Leela perform at
Shindig On The Green in Asheville, NC
in the summer of 1998.

Leela, Jean Denney, and Ellie perform
Irish Step Dancing And Beyond
at First Night Columbia '99.

Leela and Ellie Grace are singers, songwriters, multi-instrumentalists, and percussive dancers who perform contemporary folk, original songs, and traditional music. These sisters (ages 22 and 20) grew up travelling across North America performing professionally as a part of The Grace Family (with their parents Paul and Win). They are now branching out and performing as a duo, bringing to the forefront their close, sisterly harmonies and their instrumental proficiency. They have been acclaimed by audiences and fellow musicians alike for their strong singing voices, thoughtful original songs, warm stage presence, and spirited precision dancing.

Ellie and Leela play the mandolin, fiddle, guitar, and old-time frailing banjo. With their parents, they have recorded three albums (on CD and cassette). They have been performing American clogging for over fourteen years, but are now also entertaining audiences with such percussive dance styles as Irish step dancing, French-Canadian waltz-clogging, African boot dancing, and American tap.

Music has been a part of Leela and Ellie's lives since they were just a twinkle in their parents' eyes. As toddlers, the only place they would sleep during late-night jam sessions was on a blanket in the middle of the music circle. Until the girls were 8 and 10 years old, the family lived in a small farmhouse at the end of a gravel road in southern Boone County, Missouri--where the northern prairie meets the foothills of the Ozarks. Paul and Win often played music until late at night (sometimes playing high-powered string band tunes on the fiddle and accordion!), and they were always amazed that Leela and Ellie were able to sleep soundly in the next room! So it was no surprise when Leela and Ellie first began to dabble with instruments, that they could immediately hear the chord changes, that they already knew tons of tunes and songs, and that when Leela wrote a fiddle tune at the age of 11 ("Coming Down From Cosby Knob"), it came out to be a perfectly-structured dance tune--a total of 64 beats, 32 in each part!

Paul & Win always tooks Leela and Ellie along to performances. At one 1979 coffeehouse show, Win was playing the accordion with Ellie in the backpack when she realized that Ellie was peeking over her shoulder and entertaining the entire audience with smiles, jibberish, and laughter. In 1982, Paul & Win were performing at a festival in southern Missouri, when Leela and Ellie (who were 5 and 3 at the time) spontaneously jumped up and started dancing in the grass in front of the stage--something they often did in the living room at home. The audience was completely smitten, and at the next day's performance, they were asked to dance again! From that time on, they would often dance to one or two tunes during their parents' shows. They simply jigged to the music, and did swings and other moves that they had seen done at square and contra dances. When they were 7 and 5 years old, Win decided that they couldn't get by on being cute any longer, and arranged for them to take 6 clog dance lessons. They became overnight clog dance fanatics. By 1987 they were writing their own routines and steps, and their dance performances were getting rave reviews. In 1993 and 1996, they recorded their clog dancing on Grace Family albums. As one reviewer said in a review of the 1993 CD/cassette In Dreams I Hear The Music, "Witness the near-perfect synchronization between Leela and Ellie as they clog and buck dance their way through the "Cuffey/Smith's Reel" medley."

The last two years have brought a giant leap in dance inspiration for Leela and Ellie. They have had intensive sessions with two great dancers: Sandy Silva, dance percussionist with Kevin Burke's band Open House, and Helen Gannon, director of the St. Louis School Of Irish Arts. They received youth scholarships to attend Eileen Carson's (choreographer, dancer, and director of the dance troupe, Footworks) week-long class, "Clogging and Movement For Teens," which was held at the Augusta Heritage Arts Center in West Virginia. They have also taken a short course in American tap dance. In their travels and performances at festivals, they often are inspired by dancing and exchanging steps with other performers who dance. For example, one evening in the summer of 1996 found them dancing and playing fanatically late into the night with Minneapolis' Wild Goose Chase Cloggers in spite of the fact that it had gotten completely dark, that everyone had already danced and played all day, and that their entire dance floor consisted of three 2' X 2' platforms. Leela and Ellie continue to bring all these dance experiences into their presentations of percussive dance. They now perform, in addition to the American clog dancing for which they have been so well known, French Canadian waltz clogging, Irish step dance, an Irish soft-shoe dance, some American tap dance, and a South African boot dance. They have also recently developed a program on the roots and evolution of American clog dancing. As musician Neil Gaston remarked, "Leela and Ellie are two of the finest clog dancers to ever tap a toe!"

Leela and Ellie learned to play the bones (with both hands!), spoons and limberjack from the fine musicians that they met in their travels, and they began to perform these old time percussion instruments with Paul & Win around 1984. When Paul & Win were performing at a 7-day festival in Michigan in 1988, Leela and Ellie got bored with sitting on the sidelines, informed their parents that they already knew all the words to the songs--and even some harmonies, so why not sing onstage? Gradually, Leela and Ellie's voices were added to the band, and soon they began to take the lead on a few songs. Both girls had begun writing songs, poetry and tunes at a very young age. Win fondly remembers the one of the first songs that Leela and Ellie carefully crafted together on the piano (at the ages of 7 and 5), and she recently came upon the words to the song written as only a 7-year-old could write: "Oh my true love he is gone!" The ensuing years of songwriting practice have paid off. The Grace Family now performs quite a few of Leela and Ellie's songs. Their originals are some of the most-requested material played and recorded by the band. Both Leela and Ellie arrange all the songs that they bring to the band, and their creativity has brought positive comments on song arrangements from other musicians.

Before Leela and Ellie could even walk, Paul and Win began to acquire instruments that "the girls" could play whenever the inspiration struck them. They would wander from the piano to the little autoharp to the $15 Silvertone guitar to the ukelele to the little fiddle to the little accordion to the pennywhistle to the harmonica (Anything but Paul and Win's instruments was fair game!) playing a few bars on each one. They eventually settled on a favorite instrument, and as they gradually became competent on their instruments--making phenomenal progress!--their instruments were added to Paul & Win's shows. The last few years have brought an exciting change in the Grace Family's sound, bringing with it a packed calendar of bookings and critical acclaim from reviewers and audiences alike.

In addition to performing with Paul & Win, Leela and Ellie have joined many wonderful folk artists onstage including Sally Rogers, Claudia Schmidt, Cathy Barton and Dave Para, David Roth, Anne Hills, and Geoff Seitz and Jim Nelson. These are the same people who have inspired and mentored Leela and Ellie through the years, and what a pleasure and honor it is to be able to perform with them!