Tinsley Ellis

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.