We’ve all heard the line, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Be that as it may, guitarist Tinsley Ellis is making something of an about face. Though he has built a reputation as a fiery electric blues guitarist since releasing his debut solo album in 1988, this year Ellis has released an all-acoustic record. Houston fans can hear the new material live at Main Street Crossing on Tuesday, November 19.
“I’m really excited about the new album, The Naked [pronounced ‘nekkid’ according to Ellis] Truth,” he says, while driving to his next gig in Florida. “This is an album I always wanted to make. The tour in this format is a real challenge and a whole lot of fun for me. It’s also an album that fans have asked for. I usually put an acoustic section in the middle of the electric shows. In the middle of the show, I usually break it down and pull out the National steel [resonator guitar] and do my thing on that. So this is the ultimate extension of it.”
Business types in the entertainment industry are often wary about changing a winning formula. Was Ellis’ label, Alligator Records, supportive of the acoustic project? “I have well over 20 albums in the electric format,” Ellis notes, “and I think it was time to do something different. [The label] had some criticisms and some ideas, and then I worked on it some more, and we got it to where we all wanted it. So they were really behind it. There’s a whole lot of electric blues out there, but not as much acoustic blues.”
Ellis describes the current tour as “two guitars and a car,” mentioning that there is much less gear to haul around than with a full electric band. One of the guitars is a 1937 National instrument, which uses a metal resonator instead of a sound hole to project the sound. That’s what Ellis uses for slide playing. For songs that require finger picking, he has a 1969 Martin D-35, which was given to him by his father when Ellis graduated from high school. There may have been some enlightened self-interest on his dad’s part. “He was just happy that I wouldn’t be blasting out with a Les Paul and a Twin Reverb [amplifier] from the bedroom. He was happy that I would be doing more strumming in there.”
Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia once said that he preferred to play just one guitar for an extended period, so that he could understand the instrument’s idiosyncrasies and its personality. Do these guitars speak to Ellis in a similar fashion? “They definitely do,” he says. “Real blues artists, like B.B. King or Albert King, they just had that one guitar up there [on stage]. This whole notion of where you’re on stage and somebody is handing you a different guitar every other song, that’s very much a rock and roll creation, as opposed to blues. In fact, the whole notion of having a blues band is, well, I can’t think of any real blues musicians that had a band. So maybe that’s a creation of rock and roll too. A real blues or folk artist would probably be going around by themselves. Maybe some people would jump in there with them, but they would probably think that bands are for people who are insecure.
“I was certainly guilty of hiding behind amplification and a rhythm section and effects pedals and wah-wah pedals and things like that. And now it’s just sort of baring my soul in the songs.”
“I don’t agree with that,” Ellis says. “I’m a rock and roller who loves blues. I don’t claim to be Son House or Muddy Waters. But blues and folk music are what I gravitate towards. And Leo Kottke is a hero of mine, so there’s some of that in the mix as well. But I would never want to claim to be something that I’m not.”
Despite his modesty, Ellis absorbed much and drew inspiration from the original acoustic bluesmen. “Definitely the Delta musicians,” Ellis says. “Son House and Robert Johnson and Skip James and Fred McDowell.” Any contemporary acoustic blues influences? “John Hammond, who I worked with many times over the past 40 years. I remember that I was playing with John Hammond – gosh, this was 1981 or so – and I had the Heartfixers, a band, going at the time. John was performing solo, and I asked him, ‘Why do you play solo?’ because he had always made albums with bands, with really good people like Duane Allman. And he said, ‘Tinsley, if you can do this, you should do this.’ And I remember saying, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘Because not many can.’
“And I was certainly guilty of hiding behind amplification and a rhythm section and effects pedals and wah-wah pedals and things like that. And now it’s just sort of baring my soul in the songs, and during the show I tell some stories about how I was fortunate to come up in the early ‘70s, and I literally sat at the feet of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and all the guys. I watched what they did and, in some cases, actually got to know them. And then when I got with Alligator Records in the 1980s, I found myself onstage with some of my idols like Otis Rush and Albert Collins and Koko Taylor. It saddens me that most of them aren’t with us anymore, so in my show I talk about the old blues guys, because I think that people need to remember where this came from.”
Aside from a few covers, The Naked Truth is comprised of Ellis originals. A standout track is “Devil in the Room,” which Ellis says was inspired by the late Col. Bruce Hampton, an Atlanta-based musician who was instrumental in establishing the jam band scene. “When I would do a concert with him – not really a concert, a performance, because his music really did border on performance art – before we went on stage, he would say, ‘Let’s put the devil in the room!’ And I thought, ‘That is a great song title.’”
Tinsley Ellis will perform at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, November 19, at Main Street Crossing, 111 W. Main in Tomball. For more information, call 281-290-0431 or visit MainStreetCrossing.com. $46 and up.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
