Randy Ellefson started playing guitar in 1984 after seeing someone play for the first time. Growing up on twin-guitar metal bands, he soon wanted to form one with himself as one of the guitarists and writers. He wrote an album’s worth of material by high school graduation, when he tried to form the band with little success. He’d also built two electric guitars as a teenager and has since exclusively used these (and a later third one) on albums.
Becoming interested in classical music, he became a music composition major at the local junior college, but when transferring to a four-year school, he was forced to become a classical guitar major (long story).
Even as this began that summer, he became an instrumental guitarist, merging his rock/metal playing with classical composition techniques (variations, counterpoint, functional chord progressions, and structural key changes). Doing a metal band gave way to this, and he began writing the Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid album (and others).
For college, he now needed to acquire four years of classical guitar skill in half the time to earn a Bachelors of Music, Magna Cum Laude. After succeeding, he recorded many of those pieces at home weeks later, not knowing he’d release the recordings 15 years later as The Lost Art album. A year later, he was preparing for a masters degree, and he’d written 29 rock/metal instrumentals and a half dozen acoustic ones, the latter inspiring the all-acoustic album (Serenade of Strings).
Then disaster.
In August 1996, all the classical guitar practice caught up with him. A tendonitis injury to both arms was so extreme it left him severely disabled. Having lost his guitar playing, however devastating, was the least of his problems. He lost everything but his home and possessions – job, savings, friends, hobbies, career plans. He dropped off the face of the Earth for years.
A full year passed with no guitar, then with limits like only playing simple music 30 minutes, twice a week. Five years passed before he could play electric guitar enough to record his debut album, The Firebard. Released in 2004 to good reviews and airplay in Canada, Australia, and the United States, he earned endorsements with Peavey, Alvarez Guitars, and Morley Pedals. A live band followed but it was difficult to get shows and the group disbanded in 2007.
He released the follow up, Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid in 2007, and after a decade of being unable to play acoustic guitar, recorded Serenade of Strings and released it with The Lost Art in 2010.
By then, he decided to stop doing instrumentals and return to twin-guitar metal. Dusting off old songs and writing new ones, he recorded the Utopia album between 2009 and 2011, but when getting the vocals done became problematic, he resumed doing instrumentals, too.
Unsatisfied with production and performance issues (he hadn’t really recovered his guitar playing enough) on The Firebard, he’d been re-recording it. He now also finished Now Weaponized! and released it in 2013, with The Firebard re-released in 2014; many songs on both were at least partially written before losing his guitar playing.
By 2016, he retired due to difficulty recouping instrumental album expenses, seven years worth of frustration with singers on Utopia (long story), and having become a father with another child on the way. He’d also backburnered writing novels for music for a decade+ and wanted to resume. There’s only so much time in the day. Something had to give, and it was music. He would write and publish dozens of books in the years since.
By 2023, he decided to return to music. While he’s resumed instrumentals, the focus was Utopia, with a previous singer returning and, as of this writing (May 2024), the album is nearly done after 15 years of delays. It is to be released under the band name Black Halo, though it was always a Randy Ellefson solo album. Multiple Black Halo and Randy Ellefson albums are also in the works.