From English to Singer-Songwriter: Ellie Holcomb
English alumna Ellie Holcomb (’05) is an award-winning singer and songwriter who has performed and toured solo as well as with her husband and their band, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors. She is also the author of multiple books. She recently talked to Professor Stan Garner about her experiences as an English major at UT and how her classes made an impact on her career as a musician and writer. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
SG: Ellie, thank you for sharing your time with me. When you arrived at UT, what made you decide to be an English major?
EH: I was one of those kids that went to college not knowing exactly what I wanted to do. A lot of young people feel that way. In my high school English classes, I discovered that reading great books and discussing stories from different time periods gave me a passport to the entire world, but also a passport to understand my story better. Because I was profoundly impacted by each of my English teachers as a high school student, I thought, what if I could do for someone else what my teachers did for me? That’s how I landed in an English major, and I couldn’t have been more delighted by the incredible teachers and classes that were available to me at the University of Tennessee.
SG: Are there any courses or instructors that had a special impact on you?
EH: I took a Shakespeare class with Dr. Allen Carroll (1938-2016) that I loved. I fell in love with Shakespeare as a high school student. I was Feste the jester in a school production of Twelfth Night, and we set it in the 1920s so I was actually a flapper version of the character. I ended up writing melodies to a lot of my lines, so as an artist and a poet I fell in love with Shakespeare. Taking classes from Dr. Carroll opened up totally different perspective than I had ever had reading Shakespeare before. After this, I was privileged enough to take the off-campus drama course he led to Stratford-upon-Avon and London. It was a two-week trip, and we saw twelve plays. We had the opportunity to meet with actors and directors and makeup artists and to be immersed in the experience. I remember when he sold the trip, he said, “You walk the streets that Shakespeare walked, you breathe the air that Shakespeare breathed, you drink milk from the descendants of cows that provided the milk that Shakespeare drank.” He had a way of inviting me into Shakespearean plays that helped me connect them to the modern day. He made total sense out of plays that were written so long ago and helped bridge them to modern times in a way that gave a better understanding of human nature. It was just a delight.
And then Dr. Thomas Haddock, who taught a Southern Literature class that helped me understand the ache and the brokenness and the resilience of the story of the South. I am forever grateful for the way that helped shape my understanding of the South. I had a really limited view of the South as a white woman, and I feel like I gained an empathic understanding and even a lament for the sort of history that is literally in our fields and that played out in this area of the country. I am deeply grateful for the way my vision was expanded to see other people’s stories. That’s the gift of English and communication: that we’re able to get inside the experience of another person who maybe lived at the same time and in the same place but had a totally different experience.
SG: How have English and music intertwined in your career?
EH: I had a great class when I was earning my master’s degree in education at UTK. I’m blanking on the teacher’s name, but it was such a beautiful class. It was how to teach poetry, but it was really just an invitation to write your own poetry. There’s always something when I read incredible literature that makes me want to sing. It’s the way that I am wired. So I’ve always sung my way through novels. I sang in most of the notes that I took in class. I’d be listening to a class discussion and then writing song lyrics in the margins of my notes.
SG: Wow, that’s lovely.
EH: Being an English major at the University of Tennessee brought color and wordplay and a liveliness to my writing. It inspired so many songs, and I was always singing and writing my way through my classes. When I became an English teacher and taught iambic pentameter—fast forward: I’m in the classroom and I’m playing an Eminem song. I’m playing modern-day rap and saying “Look, he’s using this same rhythm to create a sense of, urgency, in the same way that William Shakespeare did,” and I bring a basketball in, and we dribble. I have always brought music into the way that I studied, and then into the way that I taught. So the two are very closely tied. There’s a wonderful singer-songwriter and author named Alan Levi, who just released a book called Theo of Golden. He always says, “If you want to be a great songwriter, be a great reader.” I’m a better writer when I read. And I honestly think I’m a better human when reading—more curious as a human and a participant in the world—because I’m being exposed to so many different perspectives. When you are writing, you pay more attention to your own heart, to beauty, to nature, to other people’s stories, and so I’m very grateful for the way that being an English major helped me learn to pay attention to the world around me.
SG: In addition to your devotional book, Fighting Words, you’ve published three books for children. What makes a good children’s book?
EH: Oh, I love this question. One of my favorite things about children is that they’re endlessly curious. Questions are a massive part of every child’s life, and I think sometimes, as adults, we lose this curiosity. I love writing children’s books that ask questions and invite children into the beauty of curiosity. A children’s book is very similar to a song in terms of the limited number of words you have space for. It’s challenging for an editor to print a children’s book because children have shorter attention spans. And then as much imagery and onomatopoeia that you can bring in, which enriches a children’s book. I always want any kid, anywhere across the globe, to be able to see themselves in the children’s books that I write.
What’s really beautiful about a children’s book is you get to tell a story with words, but also with pictures, with color, with images. It’s been such a powerful and beautiful thing to partner with an illustrator, and to dream up things in my mind that I could never put to a page with colored markers or pencils or paint—to get a partner in telling a story with images and then with words. And then for me, you know, because I’m a songwriter, I get to tell a story in a third way, with melody. A lot of times, I’ll use a song structure as a way to edit my kids’ books, which is really fun.
SG: What advice would you give to a student wanting to pursue a career in songwriting or children’s book writing?
EH: I learned this from Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within: she says that sometimes we have a filter that gets in the way of writing. So I would say, write often, as often as you can; the more that you write, the better your writing will be. Practice daily, if you can. Goldberg says that the work of an artist is to just show up, and the enemy of a good song or a good story is a blank page. Take the filter away, go for the jugular, and keep writing, because almost everything interesting happens when you feel a little bit out of control. If you think “I don’t know, this might feel too wild,” write through it. The novelist Anne Lamott tells writers not to be scared of the “shitty first draft.” You’ve got to just write and get it out there. “Dare to suck” is another phrase I’ve heard as a songwriter. Be brave, you know; keep saying it.
My dad is a producer, and I grew up in Nashville. He gave me a beautiful piece of advice when I was a younger songwriter: “Write songs all the time and play them for people. You’ll know it’s time to record a song when they start asking you for a recording of it. ‘I love that song, is there a recording of that?’” I’ve had the privilege of being in a couple of writing groups, so writing in the context of community and not being scared to share a work in progress has been a huge gift to me as a songwriter.
Honestly, I learned to hone the practice of inviting other people into my writing at the University of Tennessee. One of the most incredible gifts of my time there was for me to ask my professors, “How can I make my writing better?” And for them to say, “Come to my office,” and for us to talk about it. When you share something with somebody and ask, “What was strong and what stuck with you about that,” the perspective they give helps the stuff that’s not as great fall by the wayside.
SG: When you were an English major, did you concentrate in creative writing or literature or one of our other writing concentrations?
EH: I concentrated in literature, but it was such a delight that even though that was my concentration, there was such an emphasis on being a collaborative, creative, and powerful communicator.
SG: What would you tell someone who’s considering majoring in English?
EH: I would say maybe now, more than ever, we need people who write what’s true in a way that grabs and holds people’s attention in a creative way. What I learned is how to communicate the truth in a beautiful, connected, and powerful way that draws people in, and I really can’t think of a better major to practice that than English. To put that into practice in writing and then learn from the ways that other people have captured what’s going on in the world, and what’s going on in this time and place in history, I’m not sure that there’s a better way to learn that than as an English major.
SG: Thank you. I have a last question. You and your husband will perform at the Tennessee Theater in February, 2026 as part of your “Never Gonna Let You Go” tour. You’ve played here before, of course. What’s it like to come back to Knoxville as a performer?
EH: It feels like a true homecoming. My husband, Drew, and I met at the University of Tennessee on the steps of a barbecue at somebody’s house near downtown right before a game. So it feels like a full-circle homecoming moment every time we get to come back to Knoxville and perform. We went as students to shows all over the city, and never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that I would get to be performing on a stage in room like the Tennessee Theater. Knoxville is the first place that we ever performed on stage together (it was Sassy Anne’s, this tiny little spot). And so to go from those tiny rooms performing together as college kids to a room with so many stories and so much beautiful history like the Tennessee theater is just a dream come true. Singing the song “Tennessee” on the Tennessee Theater stage is maybe one of my favorite things we get to do in this job.
SG: Well, we can’t wait for you to come. Thank you again.