Interview with Tinsley Ellis
RON: Good morning, Mr. Ellis. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.
TE: My pleasure.
RON: That’s very kind of you. Now, I believe you and I are about the same age, so I guess we listened to a lot of the same music growing up: The Stones, Jeff Beck’s Truth album, The Blues Breakers and The Animals.
TE: I first got into music even before the British Invasion. I would hear stuff like The Ventures, Walk Don’t Run, Wipe Out, and songs like that on the radio. But when The Beatles came out, that just hit the sweet spot for me. The vocal harmonies, the twanging guitar, and the beat. And after that, there was, like you said, The Animals and The Yardbirds, and then Cream, which is a real revelation, too. And that’s kind of what led me to blues, it’s the whole Eric Clapton, Peter Green thing.
RON: What specific guitarist actually inspired you to pick up a guitar and try your hand at it? Was there one specific guitarist?
TE: Pretty much The Beatles were the first ones that I really noticed the guitar playing of George Harrison. But then, when Clapton hit the scene, he just tied it up in such a nice bundle. And I was also into the psychedelic music, I still am, and psychedelic blues became really my first passion.
RON: So, when Muddy’s album with Johnny Winter, Hard Again, the first one that he and Johnny Winter did together, was that something that really hit with you?
TE: I think it did for a lot of people our age that were in high school at that time, or maybe even college. And Muddy Waters was playing a lot, and I got to see him every chance I could. I saw him in little places where we sat cross-legged on the floor, and I literally sat at his feet. And then I saw him in big places, like if he’d open up for Eric Clapton or something like that, I would see all the blues people I could. Muddy Waters I saw many times, Howlin’ Wolf I saw, and of course B.B. King was around quite a bit.
RON: Yeah, I remember seeing B.B. in a club so small, I mean you had to go outside to change your mind.
TE: It was a great era, you know, the early 70’s for getting to see all those people who didn’t live much past that really.
RON: Out of the younger players today, that are coming up nowadays, are there any who really impress you?
TE: Well, we got a couple in Georgia that I really like: One of them are Jontavious Willis, an acoustic artist who plays some electric also I believe, but I first noticed him playing acoustic. And then of course we have the blues soul artist Eddie 9V, who is really gaining a lot of ground. I’ve been following him since he was, oh gosh, a 15 year old playing in the clubs in Atlanta.
RON: And that must be some experience for a 15 year old, having to go through getting special dispensations and things, playing clubs.
TE: Well, he was an old soul back then, much like Sean Costello was playing in the clubs in Atlanta. And you tend to grow up faster, you know, when you’re around older people, you know, carrying on and nightclubs and stuff like that. So, you know, that was not my experience. I had to pretty much get out of school first before I was able to go off on my own. And I remember I went right from college graduation to going on the road with older guys in 1979.
RON: And I read somewhere that when you finally hit Chicago, the older musicians wanted to know who this hippie kid was.
TE: Yeah, I think, you know, there was some questioning of, you know, why it was Alligator Records looking outside of Chicago for artists. But they went to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and signed Kenny Neal and then to the West Coast and got The Paladins, Little Charlie and The Nightcats and then to Atlanta and signed me. And so the Alligators started looking outside of Chicago and the first blues musicians that were nice to me in Chicago were Lonnie Brooks and his family.
RON: You still stay in touch with Ronnie Brooks?
TE: I sure do and Wayne Baker Brooks as well. Nice. Yeah. Great guy.
RON: It’s interesting you mentioned Kenny Neal being a Louisiana artist. I just recently read Chris Thomas King’s book. Have you read that yet?
TE: No, I haven’t, but I sure will get it because I have a lot of respect for those two families, the Neals and the Thomases from Baton Rouge. So, I look forward to reading Chris’s book.
RON: He makes a really strong case for the blues actually originating in New Orleans and not in the Delta.
TE: I did not know that. I thought it came from wherever Sun House and Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton and them were from, which was up in the Delta.
RON: Yeah, I mean, that’s what has always been the taken ideas that it started in the Delta, but his book, Chris goes back into like the late 1800s with the blues there in New Orleans and makes a really strong case. It’s an interesting read.
TE: Yeah, I’ll check that out for sure. I’d like to know more about the history of blues and there’s all different kinds of blues too. I mean, to somebody, blues would be Jelly Roll Morton and to somebody else, blues would be Joe Bonamassa. So it’s really a broad range.
RON: Well, that’s it exactly. I mean, there’s Texas and you get that swamp blues coming out of Louisiana and then you get the Delta and the Hill Country and Bentonia, and there’s just so many different styles, and I think the thing that most people are familiar with are the Delta and the Chicago blues because that’s what I’ve always heard with Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf and Etta James and Chess Records.
TE: That was kind of how I first started thinking of blues, but then I was listening to people like Eric Clapton and Peter Green playing it. So I mean, obviously I’ve got a broad range of what I like, but there’s a lot of blues that probably should be called blues rock and there’s a lot of blues rock that probably should be called hard rock. So I guess the music changes over time.
RON: It seems like it’s kind of like the same way with what they call country music now. I mean, a lot of it is pop music and not actually, I mean, when I think of country, just because of my age, I think people like Charlie Pride, George Jones and George Strait, people like that, where now it sounds more like pop music to me than it does country.
TE: Yeah, and I guess, I can’t really, with blues, I can’t really explain what it is, but I know it when I hear it, when they bend the guitar strings a certain way and you get the blue notes and then that’s one definition of blues is music that contains blue notes, where they bend the string a certain way and give it that kind of a raunchy sound or sexy sound and then you go, well, that’s blues or that’s bluesy.
RON: Yes, it’s funny you mentioned that. I was talking to somebody a couple of days ago. They were asking me, well, how do you define blues? And it’s like, I said to them the exact same thing. I don’t know how you define it, but I know it when I hear it.
TE: Yep, that’s a good definition of what it is. And it all comes down to, how does it make you feel or how does it sound? Because that’s something you can’t describe is what somebody, would make somebody feel good, would maybe run somebody else off. So there’s certain people that are universally accepted as blues, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed or B.B. King and then there’s people like me that kind of dance on the line between blues and rock and I’m comfortable doing that. I’m always changing the mixture up.
RON: That keeps life interesting.
TE: It does and I don’t want to try to be something that I’m not either. I’m not really a country kind of guy. I wasn’t, you know, raised on a farm or anything like that so for me to sing about mules and stuff or even trains, I better not do that too much, you know, because that’s not really been my experience. I’m more of a city guy.
RON: I read that over lockdown you wrote an astonishing number of songs: 200, I think.
TE: Something like that and, you know, they’re not all good songs, but I wrote them and I moved on to the next one and those songs pretty much made up the Devil May Care album that I did in 2022.
RON: Have any of those songs made it onto the Naked Truth album?
TE: Let me think. No, Naked Truth, you know, of course, being my very first all acoustic album, those were songs that I would play during the acoustic portion of our shows because what I would do is I would play electrically and then I’d switch to acoustic and then I’d do the big electric finale after that and so the Naked Truth album is a combination of songs I wrote specifically for the album and then other songs that I have been doing as a part of my acoustic show for decades.
RON: Your rendition of Death Letter on the Naked Truth album is just amazing.
TE: Well, thank you very much. That’s kind of, yeah, there’s been a lot of versions of that song, some of them being, you know, downright unrecognizable as being Death Letter Blues and then others, you know, being, you know, attempts to sort of channel what Sun House did and, you know, it’s kind of, be kind of like, you know, a band doing a version of Red House, you know, you’re always going to be compared unfavorably to the original version, but I’m willing to take the heat.
RON: Well, I’ll tell you, I mean, I heard that, and it sent chills down my spine. That’s probably the closest to Sun House’s version I’ve ever heard.
TE: Thank you. I’ll take that as a high compliment.
RON: When you write, do you write on guitar or like a lot of other guitarists sit down at a piano to write?
TE: Mostly on guitar, over 90%, but there has been some songs over the years, like In From The Cold off of my Tough Love album that was written on an electric piano, Wurlitzer piano, so sometimes I’ll write on the piano, but mostly it’s acoustic guitar and then I would adapt to electric, but, you know, with, of course, with a Naked Truth album that wrote on acoustic and recorded on acoustic and now I perform on acoustic, so it’s nice to really be able to do the exact versions that sound like the album instead of making electric albums where I might add horns or backup vocals that when I perform live, you know, they’re not there, so it sounds a little different.
RON: For the tour you’re doing with the Naked Truth album, is this just you and the guitars without any backup?
TE: Right, it’s me with my Martin D35 and then my old National Steel resonator guitars, so there’s two guitars, but I’m making another album right now and I’m adding some other instruments in like a mandolin and 12-string, so there’ll be a little more variety on the next album.
RON: How does the song typically start out for you? Is it just you sitting there noodling on your guitar and a certain riff or phrase catches your ear and plants the idea or is it something that maybe you’ve heard someone say or something that you’ve said that catches your ear and says, yeah, that’s catchy, I can do something with that.
TE: You said it catches your ear and said, yeah, that’s catchy, I can do something with that. Well, I got a list on my cell phone of song ideas, you know, titles and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. And if I hear something, that’d be a good song title, and then I put it in my phone. Well, then when I’m in Atlanta, and that could occur anywhere, you know, that could occur at home or driving down the road or just, you know, in a hotel room or something, I can add to that list at any time. But then when I’m back in Atlanta, I’ve got a home studio, and usually in the morning, I get a cup of coffee and go in there and turn the studio on and maybe put on a Skip James album or something like that and listen to it. And then I start messing around with my guitars, you know, and then, you know, I think I should write a song like this and check out what guitar tuning people are using, because that seems to be a big part of acoustic blues, and then, you know, which guitar I’m gonna play, whether it’s gonna be the Resonator or the 12-string or the Martin. And then I put my headphones on and start messing around, and then if I get something I really like, then I look at the list of song title ideas and see if any of those match up.
RON: Interesting. I would like to know, when you’re writing a new album, do you stay at home or write in your home studio, or do you travel somewhere for inspiration, like a lot of musicians and authors say they do?
TE: Well, sometimes, you know, I’ve got like a, everybody’s cell phone’s got a, you know, recorder on it, and if I’m in the hotel room, maybe changing guitar strings, and the idea comes then, I could just hit record and get a basic idea of a guitar lick or a chorus of a song or something like that. And then I, you know, I’d go back and listen to those when I get back to Atlanta and see if anything, you know, is worth actually doing a formal recording of it. And sometimes I record songs over and over, you know, different versions of songs that may stretch out over the course of years, you know, the songs that I wrote 10 years ago and demos and I recorded a whole entire different way and decided that that’s the best version. And on the last album, you mentioned Death Letter Blues. I went to studio and recorded that and realized that the demo version I had done that Eddie 9V produced, that was a better version than the studio recording I did of it. So we ended up using Eddie 9V’s demo production. That’s a, you know, that was done at an entirely different session. Ended up using that instead of the one that was done in the big studio.
RON: All your previous albums have featured electric guitar. What made you decide it was finally time to do an all acoustic album?
TE: Well, that’s, you know, Naked Truth is an album I always wanted to make. And, you know, I had done specialty type albums before, like I’ve done a couple of live albums and I did an all instrumental album called Get It. I did that in 2013. And I had, you know, with my songwriting, I collect songs and put them in certain files. Like I’ve got one file that’s called a JJ Cale file where I’ve written all these songs with JJ Cale in that style. And then I’ve got the acoustic guitar file and I got the traditional blues file. And so one day I was in my home studio and I was looking through that acoustic song file. I started putting the songs in a certain order and realized, you know, I’ve got a pretty cool acoustic album. It’s probably time to launch this on the unsuspecting public and it was really cool. Alligator Records thought it was a good idea and I did that. And my next album will be acoustic as well.
RON: Your Martin that you played on the album, is that the one your father gave you?
TE: Yeah, my dad got me that guitar in 1974-75 when I was graduating from high school. And I had already been playing in loud rock bands and stuff like that with Les Paul guitar and big Fender Twin Reverb amplifier. I think that he might have got me that acoustic guitar just to give the family a break, you know. Because there’s all these loud songs, loud noises coming from the bedroom and the garage all the time. And that guitar has been, I wrote a lot of my songs over the years on that. It’s a 1969 Martin D-35 and there’s been years where I didn’t hardly even touch the thing that was in the case. And now it’s right beside me here in the hotel bed. I mean, I don’t know why it took me this long to absolutely fall in love with it. And to me it’s the best sound a guitar can make is on an old Martin like that. And I guess I hear music different than I used to because I was all about the Stratocasters, Gibsons and Fender bass and stuff like that and drums. And I guess I just hear music different now or something. It’s a strange thing.
RON: To anyone who plays guitar or is a fan of Freddie King, his influence on your style of playing is pretty obvious. Now, was it his influence that helped you decide to do Four Instrumentals on Naked Truth?
TE: I’ve always loved guitar instrumentals. Like I mentioned earlier, some of the first music that I really noticed on the radio was when The Ventures came out. And Chuck Berry and Johnny Rivers, they had that twanging guitar sound. And there was a time where instrumentals were really all over the radio. Songs like Walk Don’t Run or Classical Gas. And so I’ve always put instrumentals on my albums, whether it’s electric or acoustic.
RON: You’re touring behind this album. It seems like it’s going to be a much more intimate tour with just you and your guitars and the audience instead of the full band. Are you doing interaction with the audience on this? Telling stories or Q&As or anything like that?
TE: Well, there is a lot more interaction. And I do talk about how I wrote some of the songs off the older albums and share a story or two or three or four. And I talk about the old blues guys, you know, and the people that I saw in concert or met and toured with. And tell some stories about, you know, Alan Wolfe, seeing him and almost meeting him. And B.B. and Greg Allman, you know, stuff like that. People I’ve known and tell some funny stories.
RON: I’m sure you must have some fantastic stories about some of the older blues guys you’ve met.
TE: I’ve been told that the stories are interesting, so that encourages me to do more. But I never want to be somebody that just talks too much on stage. I think I’ve kind of pushed the limit on that a time or two. Yeah, there’s a lot more talking. I really like entertainers that talk and tell stories and stuff like that, whether it’s blues or whatever. To hear somebody talk about how they wrote a song is a pretty special thing. So I talk in the show, stuff like that. Crack a joke or two, you know. And then sometimes people say, shut up and play, and I’ll play a couple songs. So yeah, there’s some messing around with the audience. It really is more of an invitation for hecklers than any other form of performance that I’ve done, but I can take it. I’ve got a few things I can say in return if I need to.
RON: That was one of the things I always enjoyed about the field recordings that were done in the thirties and early forties was when people started telling the stories in between the songs.
TE: Oh yes, B.B. King was great at that and in the modern age, Captain Wise was really good at that and Marshall Ball was real good at it. I think that you know you got two different types of entertainers. One is the type that just like Bob Dylan or Eric Clapton gets up there and plays and then you have the Paul McCartneys who get up there and you feel like you’re you know it’s a narrative somewhat and I gravitate towards that. I mean B.B. King did it so well and John Hammond a really great storyteller of course his stories pretty much kick all the rest of our stories but you know because he actually hung out with these people, Sun House, Fred McDowell, Big Joe Williams, Brian Jones, you know and so John Hammond is really when it comes to blues he’s really the standard by which all the rest of us must be judged.
RON: I don’t think I ever laughed so hard as when I heard B.B. tell the story of how Lucille got its name.
TE: Oh yeah that’s uh and there’s certain stories that I will tell every night like the first time I met saw B.B. King when I was a teenager 14 or 15 or however old I was so I will tell that story every night but then the other stories kind of come and go and engage an audience to see whether they want a good talking to or not.
RON: And one final question if I may, well I was going to ask you what’s next for you but you’ve already mentioned you’re working on another acoustic album.
TE: I’m on tour right now, actually I’m in St. Louis a day off in a big snowstorm and heading west all the way up to California and then back and then I got the Midwest and the Northeast and there’s a lot of tour dates I’m still touring for Naked Truth and I’ve been really working hard on the next album.
RON: All right well I just want to let our listeners know they can purchase Naked Truth and any other Tinsley Ellis albums on Bandcamp and Tinsley Ellis.com
TE: If you get it at Tinsley Ellis.com I will autograph it and my staff aka my family will mail it to you.
RON: I was just going to mention that they could also get tickets to your current tour there on Tinsley Ellis.com as well.
TE: And I’ll be everywhere in America this year just like I was last year and like hopefully I will be next year. So this is the kind of music that you know we’re not on the Johnny Carson show with this kind of music. You gotta come see us when we come to your town so you can see where we’re playing.
RON: All right well thank you for taking time to speak with us today. Take care.
TE: Take care now. Bye bye.
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