A man and the blues: Tinsley Ellis performs in concert with his 1969 Martin D-35, which was a gift from his father.
Acoustic blues is a form of interdimensional travel. And on his new album, Naked Truth, Tinsley Ellis displays his mastery of being everywhere, all at once. I’d say that he has one foot in the red clay of the Delta and the dust of Africa, where the music arose from; another in the present, because breathing life into this style requires committed intention; and another in the future, where his own songs and selection of covers urge the genre. But that would be a weird choice of metaphor, because, like most of us, he only has two feet.
Besides, Naked Truth is more a matter of the head, brain, voice, and heart. Playing a 1937 National resonator and a 1969 Martin D-35, and stomping his foot for rhythmic emphasis, Ellis travels a well-plotted course through the music’s dimensions. The past eloquently echoes in his roughhouse performance of Delta-blues grandfather Son House’s parable, “Death Letter Blues,” one of the greatest stories of love and loss ever told, and his own “Windowpane,” which borrows the haunted, high-singing, minor-key template of Skip James. Ellis’ rowdy “Devil in the Room” gets its title from a line by his late friend, the musical eccentric Col. Bruce Hampton—who always instructed his bands to “put the Devil in the room.” And Ellis’ “Tallahassee Blues” and “Grown Ass Man” look at heartbreak from positions of sadness and strength, respectively. It’s the instrumentals, often, that lean hardest into the future, as Ellis’ fingerpicking and open tunings step away from blues tradition with a balance of pedal tones and melody that sync more easily with the American primitive movement and acoustic, textural music. That’s familiar territory for fans of Will Ackerman and trailblazer Leo Kottke, whose “The Sailor’s Grave on the Prairie” offers a gently assertive display of Ellis’ slide and fingerpicking prowess on Naked Truth.
“I didn’t want to sit down and practice. That’s just … oh God! But writing songs is another thing.”
“Playing acoustic solo blues is a totally personal statement,” Ellis observes. “Historically, we’re talking about musicians who could do the whole thing on their own. Men like R.L. Burnside had players who accompanied them, but they weren’t needed. They could make a roomful of people dance or smile by themselves.”
It’s only recently that Ellis has come to his acoustic solo reckoning, but his singing and playing have always sounded personal. For most of his 49 years onstage, he’s been a bandleader, earning a reputation as a skilled electric bluesman. The Atlanta-based guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter’s 22 previous studio recordings have reflected steady artistic growth—from his tenure in the Heartfixers, which he formed after college, and through a chain of albums bearing his name. Storm Warning, in 1994, was a hallmark, packed with originals, blues classics, and even Joe Zawinul’s punchy soul instrumental “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.” That album’s “A Quitter Never Wins” was, at the time, the best summary of his electric vocabulary: a six-minute exhibition of rich, powerful singing with a touch of grit in his soulful vocal phrasing; a guitar tone that free-ranges from sweet and pure to scooped, attenuated-wah mids to hairy raw-edged soloing; and dynamics from mouse to lion. Ellis broadened his propensity for risk with 2013’s Get It!, an all-instrumental, retro-guitar freakout with eight original compositions that ricocheted from his early surf- and garage-rock influences to the mighty, Jeff Beck-like “Anthem for a Fallen Hero.” More recently, his trilogy of Winning Hand, Devil May Care, and Ice Cream in Hell helped jolt him to the Olympus of modern blues rock. Joe Bonamassa, a fellow Olympian, has described Ellis as “a national treasure.”
“I did it myself in my studio—just miked my foot and put a mic on the guitar and vocals and did take after take until I had what I wanted.”
Ellis recorded his first acoustic album in his home studio, save for a track cut at his Atlanta neighbor Eddie 9V’s recording room.
Ellis spent 10 years dedicatedly working his way to becoming a musician who could “do the whole thing on his own”—which requires not only exceptional playing but great storytelling to keep an audience engaged. Onstage, his between-song tales of blues history and encounters with its characters, the fizzled romances or epic friendships that became a source of lyrics, and his wonder at the discoveries he’s had during his musical life bring his audiences closer, creating a palpable bond.
“I think it has a slight tear in the cone, so it makes a slight rattle.”
“Naked Truth is an album I’ve wanted to make since I started posting acoustic videos on social media—my Sunday Morning Coffee Songs—in 2013,” says Ellis, referring to his regular series of Facebook performances. During the pandemic, when his steady diet of gigs ended, “I was off the road for almost two years. I didn’t want to lose my chops, so I started designating every morning.... Well, I didn’t want to sit down and practice. That’s just … oh God! But writing songs is another thing. I designated Sunday mornings for posting songs and watching my news shows. The other six days, I wrote songs and dragged them into different folders on my computer. One folder was called ‘Acoustic,’ and it became apparent that I had a cool, quirky mixture of blues and folk songs in there. I approached Bruce [Iglauer, head of Alligator Records] about the concept of an acoustic album, and he was open to it.”
Tinsley Ellis' Gear
Ellis is currently on a cross-country solo concert tour—one musician, two guitars, and a car.
Photo by Joseph A. Rosen
Acoustic Guitars
- 1937 National O Series resonator
- 1968 Martin D-35
Recording Microphones
- Shure SM57, Neumann TLM 103
Strings, Slide, & Picks
- Ernie Ball Earthwood (.012–.054, for the Martin)
- Ernie Ball Not Even Slinky (.012–.056, for the National, with an unwound G at the advice of Warren Haynes)
- Brass slide
- Medium-gauge picks (typically for standard tuning)
So, the next step was recording in earnest. “I did it myself in my studio—just miked my foot and put a mic on the guitar and vocals and did take after take until I had what I wanted. One song on the album, ‘Death Letter Blues,’ was from a demo I did at Eddie 9V’s studio here in Atlanta. I just couldn’t get a version that sounded as good as that demo.” Ellis depended on two microphones to achieve the rich, slightly dark guitar tones on Naked Truth: a Neumann TLM 103 and a Shure SM57. (The recordings were mixed and mastered by Atlanta-based producer Tony Terrebonne.) The rest was in his touch, which is determined, tough, and precise—exactly the way he saw Muddy Waters and other blues legends bear down on their guitars as he was coming up in the music. The various tunings on the album—standard, drop D, open G, open Dm, and DADGAD—also add variety to its sound. And then there’s his National, which has been appealingly raucous since he bought it years ago at Willies American Guitars in St. Paul, Minnesota, while on tour.
“I sat at the feet of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters a bunch of times.”
“I think it has a slight tear in the cone, so it makes a slight rattle,” Ellis explains. “The salesperson there said, ‘Now, you’re going to want to replace it,’ and I did, but it didn't sound right. It was too precise, too bluegrass, too Jerry Douglas. So, I put it back in there. I like it, and nobody’s ever complained about it.” Consider it the organic equivalent of a low-gain distortion pedal.
As a child of the ’60s and early ’70s, Ellis grew up on the original wave of garage rock, when bands like the Standells and Nightcrawlers were setting teenage angst to three nasty chords, and more expert pickers, like Johnny Rivers and Lonnie Mack, were clearing the path for the arrival of the first generation of classic rock-guitar heroes. Thanks to an older brother, blues also seeped into his listening. That led to a pivotal experience at the Swinger’s Lounge in the Marco Polo hotel in North Miami Beach, Florida, not far from where the Ellis family lived.
Backstage, all 87 years of its life are reflected in the finish of Ellis’ National resonator.
Photo by Jim Summaria
“B.B. King and his band were playing there for a week, and whoever played there had to do a teen matinee,” Ellis recalls. “My dad loaded up the station wagon and took me and my friends to see this guy, who was supposed to be ‘the Man.’ My brother had come into my room when I was listening to Mike Bloomfield, on the Al Kooper Super Session album, and said, ‘If you like this guy, you’ve got to hear B.B. King.’ So, there we were. I sat right in the front. It just blew my mind! I could see where the real blues was coming from—where Duane Allman, Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, and Johnny Winter were getting it. And then, after the show, he greeted us in the lobby and talked to us for what seemed like hours. It was probably really 45 minutes or something. He was the nicest man. And that was it for me. After that, I was always in the front row. I sat at the feet of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters a bunch of times.”
Ellis has performed with and observed a coterie of his blues influences since the late 1960s. Here, he poses backstage with the high-octane “Master of the Telecaster,” Albert Collins, in 1980.
Photo by Lisa Seifert/Courtesy of Tinsley Ellis
The die thus cast, Ellis played through junior high, high school, and college, and got hired by an Atlanta-based touring blues band called the Alley Cats after he graduated. Later, he put together the Heartfixers, who became one of the Big Peach’s favorite musical sons, and cut their first album with folklorist and musicologist George Mitchell as producer. Their 1982 debut was made in one night, for $105. And from there, Ellis made his way into the international blues scene. Over the decades of constant touring, Ellis landed at the Alligator label, then to Capricorn Records, then to Telarc, and back to Alligator. (“I got passed around like a joint,” he observes, laughing.) He also released music independently, on his Heartfixer label, and made his return to Alligator again in 2018, with his electric blues style now fully grown. Songs like that album’s “Kiss This World,” where Ellis echoes the furious expressionism of Buddy Guy, and the epic “Saving Grace,” which recalls both Jimi Hendrix and Robin Trower in its roaring, swirling, Uni-Vibe vibe, mark him as a player for the ages.
Which brings us back to his navigation of the omniverse of acoustic blues. “One thing I’ve noticed about these shows, as opposed to my electric shows of more than 45 years, is that people are smiling. With my electric show, there was so much snarling and stuff onstage that the audience was also making serious faces. I didn’t see a lot of smiles. So, I think really what I need to do is get to where I’m playing some music that’s going to put more smiles on people’s faces, because with what’s going on in the world, people really need to lighten up. Maybe I can be somebody that will help them do that, and maybe this album is doing that—for them and for me.”
YouTube It
Tinsley Ellis and his slightly rattling National resonator faithfully conjure the fire-and-brimstone spirit of the Delta-blues great Son House in a performance of the latter’s “Death Letter Blues,” from Ellis’ new album Naked Truth.
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Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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