Battery Point

A few months ago Island musician Dennis Ellsworth was living in Toronto frustrated because he wasn’t playing enough music. Fast-forward to the present and Ellsworth is home in PEI swathed in music, practicing and performing regularly with his band Battery Point.

Ellsworth broke up his band in Toronto and re-formed it in PEI with all new people, he said. “It’s probably one of the smartest things that I’ve ever done.”
Bruce White joins Ellsworth, playing guitar and singing back up, along with Island brothers Brady MacDonald on drums and Craig MacDonald on bass.
Ellsworth was sick of the amount of money and time it took just to live and work, let alone rehearse and play in a band in Toronto, he said. “I wanted it to be a more serious thing and put more time and effort into it because that’s the only way that you’re going to get good enough to be what you want, to have success.”

Spend some time with the band and it seems they are never serious; there is an eager hilarity to the four when they are together. Grins all around demonstrate the excitement they feel in finding themselves in such a fulfilling musical situation.
The laughter doesn’t set them back because they are all game to spend time on the details of songs. “A week of rehearsal turned into 12 new songs,” Craig said.
Ellsworth and White, both songwriters, live together so they can wake up, go down to the basement and work on songs anytime. The MacDonald brothers, who played in the rock band Chamberlane, live five minutes away so rehearsals and after show beer guzzling gatherings are frequent and convenient.
“When you consider how hard it is to find people who understand the music that you’re writing and can play it with you and they’re right at your fingertips it doesn’t make sense to change that. Not one bit,” Ellsworth said.

Battery point, nominated this year for three PEI music awards, preformed their second show with the new line-up at the awards gala. They have a self-titled CD out with more to come in the near future. Their music is written in a folk style but delivered with a powerful rock sound.
Ellsworth, who led up Island group The Rude Mechanicals, plays electric guitar in Battery Point instead of his usual acoustic, but softer songs are on the horizon, he said. As an Ellsworth song in process goes “It’s good to be back with a purpose and a plan,” and now he’s back he doesn’t plan on going anywhere, he’s going to make the music work from home, he said.
“I believe you can live here and have what you want out there.”

- The Buzz - Charlottetown, PE