"I just always wanted to be Mehrey," says Emily Ellis, 23-year-old singer of local rock band Valentine, about her older sister.
"And I always just wanted to be Emily, so it worked out well," counters folk singer Mehrey, 24.
We're having lunch at the Pink Taco inside the Hard Rock Hotel, and the Ellis sisters look very much the rock stars. Born 18 months apart, they're not exactly twins, but they share the same wide eyes and easy grins, the same high-spirited laughter. Even in a place full of fashionable pretty people, it wouldn't be surprising if someone asked for their autographs. Emily, whose band is like screamo with a pop edge, is dressed in the de rigueur emo uniform, including a studded belt, tight jeans, dark nail polish and plastic bracelets. She's got on a T-shirt that's like a visual representation of her music: It's pink, with pictures of guns on it.
"I'm rocking a Mehrey pin," Emily also notes, pointing to something on her belt I can't quite see. Mehrey, whose music is more earthy and subdued, also looks her part, with muted colors and slightly unkempt hair. They may look in many ways like yin and yang, but Emily and Mehrey are as close as sisters can be, the middle children in what Mehrey calls a "big Italian, Catholic family." Growing up with two younger sisters and two older brothers, there was a clamor to be noticed in the Ellis household. "Because it's four girls and two boys, and we're just overpowering, who could be the loudest, and who could make Dad laugh," Mehrey says. "There was a competition for attention, for sure."
Mehrey and Emily entered that competition early, pushed by their music-industry mother, Pat (who works as a concert promoter and booker and has managed local bands in the past), to take piano lessons starting at age 5, to learn other instruments (violin and trumpet for Emily, saxophone for Mehrey) and to participate in creative electives at St. Viator, where they went to school for 10 years. "You would get to choose two electives a semester," Mehrey explains. "Ours was band and theater. She wouldn't allow us to take anything else." The entire Ellis brood was subject to the same requirements. "It's a way of life," Pat says. "It's all they knew."
"Then, I kind of hated it," Emily laughs. "Now, it's cool." All of the musical education fueled the sisters' ambitions to go to high school at the Las Vegas Academy, where they both participated in musical theater and graduated early. While still in high school, Mehrey hooked up with the guys in local rock band Trip and started gigging around town, but she always felt like the token female. "They used to call me 'the ornament,' which I hated," she says, "and that's why I learned to play guitar, because I was like, this is pissing me off. I'm not an ornament."
Executives from Sony took notice—of Mehrey, not Trip—and offered her a solo development deal when she was just 17. "I dropped the band. I didn't want to, but there were internal problems anyway," she says. She ended up living in LA for two years, working with legendary A&R man John Kalodner, known for collaborating with such acts as Aerosmith, Foreigner and AC/DC. "He'd just walk around and every time he saw me he was like, 'Superstar,'" Mehrey says of Kalodner. "He was hell-bent on the fact that I was a rock star."
She wasn't, at least not yet, and Mehrey and the label parted ways. "They just kind of had a different vision for me," she says. "They wanted me to sing other songs; I wanted to sing my own. They didn't think mine were good enough. Which is okay, which is fine, I'm cool with that. And so I just bowed out gracefully." Offered the chance to extend her contract for another six months, Mehrey instead returned to Vegas and regrouped.
In the meantime, her sister was pursuing musical dreams of her own. One of the first opportunities Sony offered Mehrey was a place in a girl group (this was at the height of the teen-pop boom), and although Mehrey didn't feel that it was right for her, Emily jumped at the chance. After a few showcases, though, the group (which went through several names, including C's or Better) fell apart. "The songs were just terrible," Emily says bluntly.
Back in Vegas, Emily joined the Kickwurmz, a goofy funk-rock band in which she was known as "Lil D." That association led to an offer to sing on a parody song called "My Reply," designed as a rebuttal by Christina Aguilera to jabs made at her in the Eminem song "The Real Slim Shady." Written and produced by Mike Spencer of KLUC 98.5-FM, the novelty song, initially intended just for KLUC listeners, became an international phenomenon. Emily's voice sounded so much like Aguilera's that Aguilera had to deny in interviews that she had recorded the song herself. "All of a sudden I had calls from, like, the BBC," Emily says. "My cousin in Florida heard it." Las Vegas Life magazine named Emily one of the "Ten Most Intriguing People of 2000."
But despite initial plans to release a commercial single, the Aguilera song never led to anything bigger for Emily, and the Kickwurmz eventually split. Emily took time away from the music scene to go to UNLV, where she majored in broadcast journalism and dance. Her dad was adamant about his daughter getting an education and only returning to music afterward if she was still interested. "So I did that," Emily says. "Literally, I graduated last May and started putting the band [Valentine] together right after. Like, 'Okay, I'm done.'"
It happened that both Ellis sisters re-emerged on the local scene at around the same time. After coming home from LA, Mehrey got married and had a son, Evan, who's now 2 1/2 ("He's the cutest little shit ever!" Emily says gleefully). Unhappy in her marriage and unsure about her musical future, Mehrey found herself in the hospital after being hit by a drunk driver last July 4 while driving with her son, who wasn't hurt. She broke 18 bones, cracked her skull and couldn't walk for three months. Yet she calls the accident "a blessing. It got me back into my music and got me out of the situation that I didn't want to be in anymore."
Now divorced and with a new boyfriend (bassist Gareth Davies of the Welsh hard-rock band Funeral for a Friend), Mehrey has found renewed purpose: writing raw, honest music that she performs by herself with just an acoustic guitar. "When you're not honest with yourself, it's hard to write honest things," she says. The first song that Mehrey wrote after her accident was a collaboration with Emily. Her music now directly addresses her past relationship problems and her hopes for the future, as well as her newfound dedication to feminism. "It's real," she says of her music. "Every single word I wrote, every single note I wrote. It's just like an extension of myself."
Given all of their past flirtations with fame, the Ellis sisters are taking it slowly this time around. Valentine has played shows in LA and made tentative connections with producers but are waiting for their sound to jell further before pursuing anything serious. Emily still works as a dancer in the Tournament of Kings show at the Excalibur. Mehrey waits tables at one of her family's restaurants (they own the local Village Pub chain, as well as the Ellis Island casino), but is quitting to start a weekly open-mic night at the Ice House. Both see music as their ultimate purpose, and as far as their mother is concerned, that's perfect. "I'm very proud of them because they're very happy in what they're doing," Pat says.
"The only reason I think that I'm still doing music is it's the only way I can get what I want to say off my chest and say it without directly saying it in front of their face," Mehrey adds. "I don't make any money doing it, but who does?"
"I don't mind if I don't make any money," Emily says. Even if the talk about wanting to be each other was mostly in jest, the sisters are, as always, perfectly in tune.