With “Speak No Evil,” Tinsley Ellis delivers a scorching, stripped-down and amped-up affair in which the guitarist attacks and crunches his chords on songs such as “Slip and Fall” and “Grow a Pair.” The 52-year-old Southern rocker and favorite Atlanta son took some time out from his tour to discuss this hard turn.
Q: You seem so nice, yet your album titles seem to suggest real forces of nature type stuff: “Storm Warning,” “Fire It Up,” “Speak No Evil,” “Trouble Time,” “Tore It Up.” How about something softer, like “Playing with Puppies” or “Stop and Smell the Flowers”?
A: That is a silly question. (Laughs.) Of course not! Then people wouldn’t know the real me. I’m actually a pretty mellow guy. But I put the guitar on, and something happens.
Q: “Speak No Evil” debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard blues charts. What does that say about your work at this stage in your career?
A: My fans like to rock, and this is the most rocked-out CD I’ve ever made. I’ve got a studio on Main Street in Tucker, where a lot of other Atlanta musicians live, like Oliver Wood [Wood Brothers[ and Col. Bruce [Hampton], and I just holed up there. We decided to use fewer outside instruments and outside players than ever before. We wanted to make it more raw because that’s how it sounded on the demos.
It certainly seems the more rock I put into my music, the better I do.
Q: When talking about your blues-guitar playing, you mention a slew of contemporary guitarists (and slightly older ones) but particularly Duane Allman, Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes. That’s a lot of Allman Brothers going on there.
A: The first time I got the nerve to tell my dad I wanted to be a musician, I was in South Florida, we were driving down a road, I was 14, and “Stormy Monday” from “Live at the Fillmore” came on the radio, and I’d never heard it. And I just announced to my dad I wanted to be a musician. That pretty much says it all in terms of how their music spoke to me.
The Allmans gave me something that was in between surf music and B.B. King that I was comfortable doing and not feel I was an impostor doing it.
Q: After once being called the most significant blues artist to come out of Atlanta since Blind Willie McTell, did you see the same potential in Sean Costello, who died last year just as he was turning 30?
A: That was a tough thing to go through, to watch him do so well musically only to die so tragically. A lot of people start off in the blues and, like me, mix it up with other stuff. But Sean was doing the pure music and didn’t care about the dollars. He kept it real. I may be his professional mentor, but he was my guitar teacher. He was 17 and I was about 40, but he knew every guitar lick you always wanted to know but you couldn’t figure out on your own.
Q: How did your collaboration with Col. Bruce Hampton in the Stained Souls starting about 20 years ago help you stretch the definition of your sound?
A: Bruce just has a knack of bringing the best out in players. And before that time, I was real interested in doing stuff like original blues tunes. Playing with him was like going way out on a high wire, by the seat of my pants. There’s nothing like the Colonel for bringing the best out in a player.
Concert preview
Tinsley Ellis
8:30 p.m. Oct. 23. $20. Variety Playhouse, 1099 Euclid Ave., 404-524-7354. www.variety-playhouse.com .
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