Tinsley Ellis: "Labor Of Love" Tour at The Ute Theater

Atlanta-based musician Tinsley Ellis—known for decades as one of the greatest electric blues-rock guitarists of his generation—is now also recognized as one of the very best contemporary acoustic blues guitarists, songwriters and performers in the world. With 2024’s critically acclaimed, Blues Music Award-nominated Naked Truth, Ellis unplugged with his first-ever acoustic album. On it he mixed his own striking original songs—inspired by Son House, Skip James, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters—with a few reinvented covers. According to No Depression, “Even though it’s just Ellis and his acoustic guitars, there’s plenty of hell-raisin’ blues going on. With the ghost of Elmore James looking over his shoulder and Wolf leaning in...Ellis proves he’s an icon.”

Now, with his new album, Labor Of Love, Ellis delivers a raw, edgy, self-produced set of 13 original compositions, all performed with pure, emotional honesty. The songs spin modern tales of floods, conflagrations, voodoo spirits, personal travails and heaven-sent prayers. From the feral opener “Hoodoo Woman” to the John Lee Hooker-groove of “Long Time” to the evocative, Skip James-inspired “To A Hammer” to the Son House-style stomp of “Sunnyland,” Ellis inhabits his songs in a way that is simply astonishing.
Each performance carries the weight, experience and hard-earned wisdom Ellis learned over four decades on the road, making Labor Of Love as profoundly deep and moving as any music he has made in his career. It covers the gamut of emotions, finding good times in the hard times, mixing gentle beauty with foot-pounding ferocity.

During a break from the recording of the new album, Ellis spent time in Bentonia, Mississippi, birthplace of Skip James and home to blues legend Jimmy “Duck” Holmes. Ellis soaked up the spirit of this tiny Delta town, hanging out with Holmes and getting a deep insight into genuine Bentonia blues. Later, Ellis performed with Holmes at his famous Blue Front Café, soaking up every moment. “Once I got home,” notes Ellis, “I went right back to the studio and incorporated everything that I just experienced into my music.”

For the album, Ellis used six different open tunings on his beloved 1969 Martin D-35, his 12-string Martin D-12-20, and his 1937 National Steel O Series guitars. He also, for the first time in his career, played mandolin on three of the album’s songs. The instrumentation and the tunings, he notes, create endless possibilities, and he finds himself constantly invigorated by the music.

Since the 2024 release of Naked Truth, Ellis has been travelling on his own, performing solo all over the country in his jokingly named “Two Guitars And A Car” tour. For Ellis, playing solo, acoustic blues has helped him tap into the raw essence of the music. “I love doing these shows,” Ellis says, with plans to continue touring solo for the foreseeable future. “No matter what I play, I like to have an edge. For me, just playing this music is a labor of love. I sat at the feet of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf. I got into this music because of them. I always told myself if I could just make a living playing the blues, I’d be, at least in my own mind, successful.”

Premier Guitar believes he’s more than reached that goal, declaring, “Ellis is a legend of American blues music...he’s an American music treasure. He delivers a sermon on the power and glory of the blues, and is one of modern blues’ greatest performers.”

BIOGRAPHY

Tinsley Ellis has been immersed in music his whole life. Born in Atlanta 1957 and raised in southern Florida, he acquired his first guitar at age seven, inspired by seeing The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. He took to guitar instantly, developing and sharpening his skills as he grew up. Like many kids his age, Ellis discovered the blues through the back door of British Invasion bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals, Cream and The Rolling Stones as well as Southern rockers like The Allman Brothers. One afternoon in 1972, he and a friend went to see B.B. King perform at a “teen show” at a local hotel lounge. As fate would have it, King broke a guitar string while playing, and after changing it without missing a beat, he handed the broken string to young Tinsley. And yes, Tinsley still has that string.

Less than three years later, Ellis, already an accomplished teenaged musician, left Florida and moved to Atlanta. He soon joined a hard-driving local blues band, the Alley Cats. In 1981, along with veteran blues singer and harpist Chicago Bob Nelson, Tinsley formed The Heartfixers, a group that would become Atlanta’s top-drawing blues band. After cutting four Heartfixers albums (three for the Landslide label), Ellis was ready to step out on his own.

Georgia Blue, Tinsley’s first Alligator release, hit the unprepared public by surprise in 1988, as press and radio brought his music to more people than ever before. His next four releases—1989’s Fanning The Flames, 1992’s Trouble Time, 1994’s Storm Warning, and 1997’s Fire It Up—further grew his reputation as well as his audience. (His song “A Quitter Never Wins,” a highlight of Storm Warning, was recorded by Jonny Lang, selling almost two million copies.) Features and reviews ran in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and in many other national and regional publications. And he backed it all up performing hundreds of nights per year. Rolling Stone declared, “Feral blues guitar...non-stop gigging has sharpened his six-string to a razor’s edge...his eloquence dazzles...he achieves pyrotechnics that rival Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.”

In the early 2000s, Ellis released albums on Capricorn Records and on Telarc, returning to Alligator in 2005 with Live–Highwayman, which captured the fifth-gear energy of his roof-raising live show. He followed it with two more incendiary studio albums, 2007’s Moment Of Truth and 2009’s Speak No Evil. He self-released four successful albums on his own Heartfixer label before coming back home to Alligator in 2018. That year, he released the fan favorite Winning Hand, followed by 2020’s Ice Cream In Hell just before the pandemic sidelined all touring. With 2022’s Devil May Care, Ellis embarked on another relentless, coast-to-coast tour, further cementing his reputation as one of the most prolific and exciting blues rockers on the scene. On 2024’s Naked Truth and 2026’s Labor Of Love, Ellis swapped his blistering, guitar-fueled full band workouts for equally passionate, soul-searching acoustic folk blues.

Tinsley Ellis has delighted fans live in person in all 50 United States, as well as in Canada, across Europe, Australia and South America. He’s earned the love and respect of many of his fellow musicians, having shared stages with The Allman Brothers, Warren Haynes, Oliver Wood, Buddy Guy, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Gov’t Mule, Widespread Panic, and more. Over the years, legends including Otis Rush, James Cotton, Gregg Allman, Jimmy Buffett, Son Seals, Koko Taylor and Albert Collins invited Ellis to join them on stage. Mega-star guitarist Joe Bonamassa calls Ellis “a national treasure.”