Although a relative newcomer to the music scene in Wilmington, Ellison is, by no means, a newcomer to the life of musician.  Growing up in the Myrtle Beach area the oldest of three children, she is a product of a creatively nurturing home environment. Her father, Michael, is a lifelong musician who has performed with Charlotte’s Sugercreek and Billy Scott and the Party Profits, while her mother, Myra, is an accomplished visual artist.  Growing up, Bibis reminisces that their house was always filled with music.  “I always knew I was going to sing,” she admits--even if, at an early age, she thought she wanted to be an archeologist “because I liked the way the word sounded,” she muses.

But digging in the dirt was not in the cards for Bibis. Instead, she attended and graduated from both the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts Academy and Honors program--as well as The Academy of Arts, Science, and Technology of Myrtle Beach, where she absorbed a large dose of musical theater experience. “Those schools really allowed me to be comfortable with being an individual,” Ellison confides. “They instilled in me a confidence in my abilities and talent”--something she would need to rely on sooner that she realized. When Ellison was eighteen, her father suffered a debilitating stroke, and some time later was involved in a serious automobile accident, preventing him from his love of playing music. “Our house turned from a house of music into a house full of silence,” she remembers.

Always a prolific journal writer, her father’s physical challenges became a catalyst for a different type of self expression-–writing songs. “When my father came home from the hospital, and the weeks started to pass, I realized what it had meant for me to hear him practicing and watch him perform,” Ellison recalls. “I began to understand what I had to do with my life.  My father left me with a very important task,” she explains. “His story, his voice--the one he gave me--had to be heard.” 

So, with a guitar, a stack of original songs, a few belongings, and a ton of courage, Bibis headed to Charlotte, her father’s hometown, and began her journey towards rebirth as a performing singer/songwriter. “I was there for a year or so, and was really was well received. I was helped by a lot of older musicians that knew my father. It was an incredible nurturing experience for me,” she explains. Then, her confidence soaring, she moved to Chapel Hill. “I knew that Chapel Hill had a larger and more diverse musical community than Charlotte. That appealed to me, and it was closer to the ocean, which I dearly missed.”  Soon she was playing regularly, living among like-minded musicians and further developing her distinct songwriting and vocal style.

“With my experience in theater, I was used to being on stage. However, I was always playing a character,” she confesses. It was only when she started performing in front of audiences that didn’t “know” her that she believes she started to develop her own stage persona. During this period Ellison was able to develop her voice in such a way that it seamlessly connected tones, inflections, and crescendos with her lyrics.  As a result, Ellison’s music is tonally haunting, her stream-of-conscious lyrics full of metaphors--yet intimate and honest.  Her subject matter ranges from the personal to the universal, her songs originating from anywhere and everywhere. She admits that she writes the lyrics first, then finds the music to complement the mood of the prose.  “Finding the music to complete the songs has never been a problem for me. I always have melodies running around in my head,” she says with a smile. “I guess that comes from always hearing music when I was growing up.”

And now Bibis finds herself in Wilmington. Originally planning to stay only a couple of months, she is starting to think that something larger once more may be taking hold of her. Performing with pianist and vocalist Tim Black on Thursday’s and an occasional weekend night at Costello’s downtown, she is starting to re-tune her stage chops. “Performing my originals has not happened as quickly as Tim would like,” she confides.  “However, we both are having a great time. Tim has been tremendous in getting me back on stage.”

The invisibility of music has always invited a likeness to spirit. Listening to Bibis Ellison, and learning of her influences and character, you can hear the connection between sound and spirit. Both are invisible, yet each is a force whose effect on us is always incalculable. Ellison possesses a voice--and spirit--that inhabits a place many singers can’t go without faltering. She sings her songs as she has lived her life--full of emotion and raw, yet controlled, expression, all sounding effortless to the listener. Now in Wilmington, and doing what she started out to do eight years ago, she is back on track, and it seems her life is obliging her once again.