Eli Winter

<a href="spotify:artist:2g4lvjVSHVht7kc9nKgH11" data-name="Eli Winter">Eli Winter</a> is a composer, self-taught guitarist, essayist, and Houston native. His music synthesizes aspects of folk, rock, jazz, and devotional music, maintaining a waggish disregard for genre constraints emblematic of Chicago, his adopted hometown. Across six LPs and counting for labels like Three Lobed and American Dreams, the scope of his music has grown to include guitar soli, instrumental duets, and bandleading. He’s collaborated with a wide range of artists live and on record, including <a href="spotify:artist:4j8CsPzssbM8TCjSvgnmSs" data-name="Yasmin Williams">Yasmin Williams</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:54T6Gso8zGPk4czyWlnUw5" data-name="Jaimie Branch">Jaimie Branch</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:06W84OT2eFUNVwG85UsxJw" data-name="Caroline Rose">Caroline Rose</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:03XSVbjjgDX2hrw1VXlj87" data-name="David Grubbs">David Grubbs</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:23AZoLIuQTmTt3jK7VOMkP" data-name="Cameron Knowler">Cameron Knowler</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:1TQhvHMVoECTNs3Xxo3RMv" data-name="Asher White">Asher White</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:7xwppARWdjgnJSKLhbGzFc" data-name="Ryley Walker">Ryley Walker</a>, and leads a trio featuring Chicago musicians <a href="spotify:artist:59bFyc9ZKZZuecz79EePKB" data-name="Sam Wagster">Sam Wagster</a> (pedal steel guitar) and <a href="spotify:artist:2IFPw6y6q3XBATttL8e89U" data-name="Tyler Damon">Tyler Damon</a> (drums). His concert history spans prestigious music festivals like Primavera Sound and Big Ears, pristine listening rooms, laundromat bars, and small rooms in shotgun houses. In music and prose, Winter’s writing often considers subjects including memory, grief, endurance, literature, and trauma. He’s written about touring, literature, illness, and the lives of working artists for the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Economist, and others, and has often written liner notes for the American Dreams label. He was a 2024 Ox-Bow Resident and 2022 Ragdale Resident, received the David Blair McLaughlin Prize in Nonfiction from the University of Chicago, and is a 2021 Luminarts Fellow in Creative Writing.