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Eli grew up as a foster child that was never adopted for reasons that were not revealed to her until her adult life. As a young girl, she would sit at the beach shore of Long Island writing poetry. It was her catharsis for the internal desires and pains she felt while growing up. With a darker colored skin than most of her friends, and looking very Hispanic, she didn't actually know her ethnicity. She was very much a loner, but first and foremost, she had a deep concern for her surroundings and the well-being of others. Her life wasn't easy compared to most of her schoolmates and her immediate family was lower middle class, but her foster-parents did the best that they could. They knew unconditional love even though they were ostracized for taking Eli and her siblings in as foster children.

Following high school, then quitting college, Eli protested the Vietnam war even though her then fiancé had enlisted in the USAF. After a decade in a tumultuous marriage, they divorced, and she moved to Florida with her mom and 3 children. Working many minimum wage jobs to survive, life moved forward. Eventually, when Eli's children grew up, she took on other challenges and was never one to shy away from confrontation. Eventually, Eli would meet and marry her new husband Bill Perras, and over time he would rediscover his passion for music, especially the folk music genre that was appreciated by his mother while growing up. Quite often, albums from liberal minded folk music from artists like Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez, John Denver, and the likes, were spinning on their home stereo record player while growing up in a small Central Massachusetts town.

Before long, Bill & Eli combined their talents as she began writing poems again. Bill would pick up his Gibson Hummingbird guitar and together they would transform the poems into songs, mostly with socially-conscious ideals woven into the lyrics. Many topics of interest were suggested by one of their mentors, the late Ann Thomas. She was a master Librarian who encouraged Bill & Eli to read about historical injustices. Soon this would become the essence of their music and with their songs we would try to educate others about things that society would rather forget or not mention at all.

Due to chronic health issues, Bill left his corporate career as an electrical-mechanical design engineer. Fortunately, Eli's experience of raising her own multi-handicapped son was more than enough to qualify her to work with handicapped children. After Eli's son, Adam, entered a group home, she took on a job as a para-professional in the Exceptional Education Department with the Volusia County, FL school system. A book that Eli authored, “Raising Adam - In the Face of Adversity” explains much of that time caring for him from birth to the age of 15. Now, since Eli's days of raising Adam were somewhat over and Bill & Eli were in an empty nest situation, they both decided to combine their expertise and talents on an amateur level just to keep themselves busy. Since Bill was only 13 years old when he took it upon himself to learn and play acoustic guitar and a variety of other stringed musical instruments, he became rather good at it, especially his highly skilled capacity to play finger-style guitar.

On the other hand, Eli had the gift of writing poems that could be combined with Bill's guitar expertise. So, as time passed, they would write and compose many songs along with finding out that that they could share these songs at open-mics and song-circles where they lived in central Florida.

Now that you know a bit about Bill & Eli, this website is meant to share some of their songs (mostly original), photos, videos, performance dates with hopes that you will host this singing, songwriting, storytelling duo at your library, listening room, festival, church, and any other venue that you feel would fit their songs and stories.

Within a few short years Bill & Eli recorded an album of their original songs in their antiquated home studio, and the venues where they performed began to increase in number They would perform their original songs just about anywhere that we were accepted and began to gain notoriety in the Florida folk music scene while being invited to play real shows at venues around the state including the Florida Folk Festival, Will McLean Music Festival, Gamble Rogers Music Festival, and more.

In the post-pandemic years they are beginning to return to the Florida music scene and performing at festivals, spiritual gatherings, libraries, house conserts and other listening room venues. So now that you know a bit about Bill & Eli, this website is meant to share some of their songs, photos, videos, performance dates with hopes that you will host them at your venue in the future.