I’m breathing water, I’m taking deep breaths, and it’s all because I have bet my lovesick heart in a game I knew I could not win….

She’s singing accompanied only by her acoustic guitar in a café somewhere deep in Bushwick. She’s beautiful and melancholic.

Only the innocent can tell such great lies to themselves.

After the 4 minutes I spent breathless, I glance at the people at the open mic asking myself if they have also noticed that this girl is way better than anyone else that has walked onto an open mic stage with a guitar, just like that.

Her name is Elli Perry and with southern accent, she explains she has just returned to Bushwick after 2 months in Georgia. And she’s happier than ever, spending all her time in the studio recording, working and creating. She’s got plenty of great material to work on.

Elli is charismatic, it feels almost as if the air surrounding her was full of electricity, you can almost hear it buzzing.

This is how it feels like to be alone. The man holding my hand is barely holding his own.

We’re walking on Broadway towards Greene. She’s got a guitar on her back, white coat and black mittens. She’s telling me how miserable she was, nearly got sick, she couldn’t stand it anymore and had to leave the city.

But now Elli is back. The curse has been broken, the frog has been kissed, the universe has send the right vibe and now here she is knocking on the door. She has been spending all her time in a studio working with the technicians Rob Guariglia and Scott Harris, who besides the fact that are Elli’s great friends are responsible for Elli’s single “Standing in Place” that will be released in January. Elli gives me her iPhone headphones and lets me listen to it. It’s sweet, beautifully polished, and Elli has never sounded better. “This single just might be it…” I’m thinking.

It’s a late fall afternoon, and the air is cold, making our noses red when we reach the People’s Garden. It’s a garden like I’ve always wanted to find, a garden I used to read about in my childhood books, but I never knew of its existence, until now… Definitely, I wasn’t anticipating it in Bushwick. Old fashioned toys, Christmas lights, blues music blasting from the speakers and a chicken walking around. The garden keeper sets up a fire to warm his hands. Elli is laughing and doesn’t know what to play with first; she says the garden feels like places in Appalachians where she grew up.

Elli Perry will play an acoustic show in Little Skips on December 16. All songs used in this article are from her first album “The Secret To Scaling A Mountain” She’s also on Facebook and on Twitter.

About Katarina Hybenova

Proud founder of Bushwick Daily. She writes, takes photos, and sometimes video. Born and raised in Slovakia, she has studied in Prague, Leuven and New York, traveled the world only to find home in Bushwick or should we say Ridgewood :) She is interested in yoga, running, human & cat friends.

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