Tinsley Ellis launches new album, new tour, with upcoming City Winery concert

The roots of the new Tinsley Ellis album, Devil May Care, extend back to 1972 and a car ride with his father in Hollywood, Florida, where the Atlanta-born Ellis grew up.

Ellis was listening to a local FM station when The Allman Brothers Band version of “Stormy Monday Blues” began to play. He was so moved and overwhelmed by the performance that he got up the courage to tell his dad that he wanted to grow up to be a professional musician. “He kind of grunted,” Ellis says with a chuckle. “But that was my ‘A-ha’ moment, like The Beatles on Ed Sullivan.”

Fifty years later, Ellis has tapped into his love for the Allman Brothers for Devil May Care and gone all in on a homage to the band that created and defined the Southern rock sound. Devil May Care is something of a departure for Ellis, but one that naturally evolved. Such songs as “One Less Reason” and “One Last Ride” and “Just Like Rain” would have fit seamlessly into albums recorded by the Allmans in the nineties. And Ellis plays more slide guitar — using an open tuned Gibson Moderna — on this album than he ever has.

“I had a collection of songs that went in that direction, so I rolled with it,” says Ellis, one of the most respected blues-rock guitarists of his generation. “This is our birthright to play this kind of music, so we should use that. There’s plenty of people in Norway who wish they had that birthright.”

Ellis celebrates the release of the album on the iconic blues label Alligator Records with two shows at City Winery on Friday. The concerts will be his first appearance in front of audiences in almost two years. Ellis was on tour on the West Coast in 2020 when the pandemic shut down the concert business, and he had to abandon a 60-date tour halfway in and drive home to Atlanta.

The long layoff was a system shock to Ellis, who has been a road warrior for his entire adult life and almost constantly on tour in the United States and abroad. “This is the longest time I’ve not been on the road since I was a senior at Emory in 1978 and 1979,” he says. “I graduated from college and joined the Alley Cats, and they were touring. So that was over 40 years ago.”

At the time, Ellis was on a career path to become a lawyer. He spent three weeks attending law school at Mercer University in Macon, but the guitar refused to yield. After playing with the Alley Cats, he formed The Heartfixers, signed his first recording contract and began to make a mark as one of the new generation blues-rock guitarists.

Ellis was a showman, often dapperly dressed and wearing snakeskin shoes. He was one of the first guitarists to use a wireless system and would roam through a club playing solos, often standing on tabletops and carefully making sure he didn’t spill the beer mugs resting next to his shoes. He’d even wander outside and sometimes play on a traffic island outside a club, many of the audience members following him into the open air. “I was so much younger,” Ellis says. “I kind of started with a wild act, wild clothes and a lot of hair, and I had all kinds of get-ups and stuff.”

In 1988, he signed with Alligator Records and began to forge an international imprint as he made his guitar playing the focal point of his concerts. He now has a catalogue of 20 albums and blues legend John Mayall just recorded “A Quitter Never Wins,” one of Ellis’s trademark songs. “That was huge,” says Ellis. “John Mayall was ground zero for my love of the blues.”

Devil May Care is a unique album born of unique times. Rather than climb into his van every morning to drive to the next show, Ellis spent the pandemic walking down the stairs to his basement studio every morning. He listened to old Allman Brothers live concerts on YouTube, along with B.B. King shows and rare Mike Bloomfield tracks. He practiced his guitar chops and, most importantly, wrote songs and recorded demo versions of his new material. “I was Freddie King in my pajamas,” he jokes.

Every Wednesday, he’d post a new song on his Facebook page. “Those tunes became this album,” Ellis says. “I listened carefully to what people said in the comments. I think my fans will really enjoy hearing the final versions of those songs.”

In retrospect, Ellis sees the pandemic as a blessing and a curse. “I’ve never had so much time to work on songs and I’ve written a couple of hundred,” he says. “I was so terrified of losing my chops. I got out every amp and every guitar I own, and I was able to do woodshedding. I feel like I’ve gotten better.”

Pandemic willing, Ellis is about to embark on a national tour. He is vaccinated and boosted, and scheduled to perform primarily in venues (like City Winery) that require vaccinations from audience members. 

Ellis says the long layoff has caused him to rethink his process. “I’m going to miss that time spent writing songs when I get back on the road,” he says. “It seems like you have to do one or the other. I might wind up cutting back on touring and do tours around a new album, and then spend long stretches of staying at home to write.”

But for now, Ellis is returning to his home away from home: the road. It’s been a long time coming. “I need to leave the basement,” he says, “go back out into the world and play.”

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Scott Freeman is executive editor of ArtsATL. He is a multiple award-winning journalist, and the author of four books, including the best-selling Midnight Riders: The Story of the Allman Brothers Band and Otis! The Otis Redding Story.