Get it!

Father Time has a patented knack for sneaking up on us, making hours fly by like minutes and years pass by like months. That would explain how you can go from being a young, up-and-coming firebrand guitarist to a grizzled, wise old veteran of the blues highway in what seems like the blink of an eye. Of course in reality, Tinsley Ellis’ climb through the ranks of the Atlanta blues world – from ‘can’t miss prospect’ to elder statesman – has been a journey that has enveloped the better part of the last 35 years. But as Ellis recently found out, Father Time’s console is also equipped with a rewind button, too, and just for fun, he’s not opposed to a little role reversal every once in a while. “I just did this tour called Blues at the Crossroads II –a tribute to Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf - with the Fabulous T-Birds, Jody Williams, Bob Margolin and James Cotton. And I was the youngest one on that tour. And it felt great,” laughed Ellis. “Margolin was calling me ‘sonny boy.’ They busted my balls good on that tour. It was like going back to school and I loved it.” He may not possess a framed doctorate degree in playing the blues, but Ellis has sure taught a lesson or two of his own in the last three decades. Logging enough miles that would make even the toughest road warrior give up and throw in the towel, there are not too many stages anywhere in this great land of ours that have not been graced with Ellis’ powerhouse brand of the blues. After all, they don’t call Tinsley Ellis the ‘Highwayman’ for nothing. That title has certainly been well-earned. Perfect then, because the open highway is the ultimate place to give Ellis’ latest hot rod of a CD a spin. An all-instrumental affair (Ellis calls it TIN-strumental music), Get It! (Heart Fixer Music) is road trip music on steroids. Music that harkens back to the glorious days when bands like The Ventures and The Shadows roamed the earth and dominated the charts. “I think that’s one of the highest compliments that you can pay a record – that it makes you want to get up and go,” he said. “There are a couple of mellower things on there (Get It!), too, but for the most part, it is driving music. People have given it a really good response and that makes me happy.” Ellis has earned a reputation as one of those performers that truly is thankful for his fan base, and when that fan base speaks, he aims to do what he can to deliver. “It seems like people are really hungry for guitar instrumentals, almost like the early 60s or something. And the types of albums that fans have requested from us have been a live album – which we did in 2005 with Live Highwayman – and which was a big success, the biggest success I’ve had since the hey-day of Storm Warning and albums like that, some 20 years ago,” he said. “And fans also have wanted to know when I was going to do an acoustic album. That’s a tough one, because to me, that’s something that you do when you’re already famous, not something you do to get you famous. And then another type of album that people have been asking about for literally decades is an instrumental album. I kept hearing that over and over again. So that’s always been in the back of my mind.” Get It! is not only a showcase of Ellis’ impressively fluid chops, it also serves as something of a thank-you note to the guitarists that have influenced and inspired the Georgia-born bluesman over the years. “I wear my influences on my sleeve – they’re that obvious. I mean, I’m not really a ground-breaker, but I’m also not an interpreter, either,” Ellis said. “If I set out to do a song with that Memphis feel, it’s going to have that Booker T and The MG’s, that Stax Records kind of thing on it. And if I do a rock song, it’s going to have that British feel, that Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck type of thing on it. The influences are just there. And the cool thing is, sometimes I can string a few of them together.” Ellis also manages to channel good portions of legendary axe-slingers Albert Collins, Chuck Berry, Freddie King, Bo Diddley and Duane Eddy on Get It!, all with seeming ease. “It’s easy to play their styles, because when I was coming up playing in blues bands as a sideman, almost 30 years ago, we played a lot of Chuck Berry songs, we played a lot of Freddie King songs and a lot of Bo Diddley songs. And even before that, in high school, some of the rock influences you may hear on the album –Jeff Beck or Roy Buchanan – was the kind of music that we were playing,” he said. “So those are a real comfortable pair of shoes for me to slip into. And some of the songs are pretty much tributes, like “Berry Tossin’” is a tribute to Chuck Berry, obviously, and the two cover songs on the album, the Bo Diddley song (“Detour”) and “Freddie’s Midnight Dream,” those are pretty darn true to the originals, because it would be hard to do them better, so the best thing is just to do them in that style. But I’ve been doing those songs since the early 80s, when I was in The Heartfixers.” A lack of vocals is not the only brand-new thing about Ellis’ latest release. It’s also the inaugural release on his own label, Heart Fixer Music. So, after long being a staple on the Alligator Records’ roster, why did Ellis decide the time was right to strike out on his own? “Well, I’ve had a long, fruitful and prosperous relationship with Alligator Records over the years and I really wanted them to put this album out. But Bruce (Iglauer) thought it was a crazy idea,” said Ellis. “He thought it was a crazy idea, and you know what? It is a crazy idea. In a market that’s shrinking anyway, to put out a record without words is crazy - it limits you even more. But this is something that I felt like I had to do. It had to be done to purge my soul of this instrumental music that goes to my head all the time. But he (Iglauer) gave me his blessing to put this out on my own, so he’s been real cool with it. I think he really wants this album to succeed. This is my first attempt at being a record label. I’ve been with some of the best in the business and have learned a lot, especially from Bruce. He’s pretty much sort of mentored me in terms of the business of making albums. In the old days, we used to make albums to make money, and frankly, some of my albums over the years have made a lot of money, but nowadays, I think a better way to think of it is; how will an album advance my career as a performing artist, because that’s what I really do for a living. And low-and-behold, my name has been getting out there, more this year than in the past two when I didn’t make albums.” But just because he’s shaken things up on his newest album, that doesn’t mean that wholesale changes are in for the concert stage, as well. “Well, it’s not like I’m going to take away the vocal mike at my shows. When people come to see me, they’re still going to hear songs like “To the Devil for a Dime” and “A Quitter Never Wins” and “Highwayman” – songs that made up the bulk of the live album,” Ellis said. “I don’t want to scare people (with an instrumental album) into thinking I’m never going to sing again. But maybe some people would find relief in that. That’s always been the biggest criticism of my albums – they’d go, ‘Oh, it’s too bad he doesn’t sing as well as he plays.’ But in a way it’s cool, because on this album, I can let my guitar be the singer. If you get a guy that’s a real singer – like Gregg Allman for instance – they can sing the phone book and deliver it. Well, for me, I can’t sing the phone book, but my guitar can. You know what I mean? Let the guitar do the singing.” Though he has always championed the cause of playing blues music, that doesn’t mean that Ellis isn’t versatile enough to switch gears from time to time. You’re as likely to see Ellis trading licks with jamband stalwarts like Gov’t Mule and Widespread Panic, or with southern rockers like Lynyrd Skynyrd, as you are to see him laying down the blues with Jimmy Thackery or Otis Rush. But at the end of the day, for Ellis, it’s really simple; it all comes down to the blues. “I can tell you, when I’m lucky enough to be invited to get up and play with a band like Widespread Panic, or Derek Trucks or the Allman Brothers, I don’t change my style of playing one bit,” he said. “And when I get up and play with The Fabulous T-Birds or James Cotton, it’s the same thing. That’s one of the good things about the blues – they work anywhere in any kind of musical setting. And some of the best proof of that was when David Bowie hired Stevie Ray Vaughan for his album (1983’s Let’s Dance). That seemed like a pretty nutty idea, but if you listen to it, his guitar playing fit perfectly with Bowie’s songs. And all he did was channel that Albert King thing – and Albert King guitar playing works with anybody, whether you’re Pink Floyd or Roomful of Blues. It’s like a universal language.” Ellis has long been a constant presence on the Atlanta blues scene, even back in the days when playing that sort of music might have been frowned upon by a lot of the city’s club-hopping residents. But thankfully, times have changed in Hotlanta. “We definitely kind of pioneered the blues here in the 1970s – when people didn’t want to hear it. When I was in The Heartfixers with Chicago Bob Nelson, we were doing the blues when people sure didn’t want to hear them. But now, there are lot of great blues bars and a lot of great blues acts (in Atlanta). You can go out and hear live blues seven nights a week here. It’s exciting,” he said. “But unfortunately, a couple of years ago, we lost the guy that might have been the next big thing – Sean Costello. He could have been the next Stevie Ray Vaughan.” Ellis’ legendary work ethic began in earnest with The Heartfixers, and the group earned their stripes by playing anywhere they could, at anytime they could. The group also backed up R&B legend Nappy Brown on his excellent 1984 album, Tore Up. As The Heartfixers drifted apart in the late 80s, Ellis hooked up with Alligator Records, and to date, has issued eight albums for Iglauer’s Chicago-based label. But the journey to get from promising young guitarist, to king of the road and now, to record-label head honcho, started much earlier than 1988 for Tinsley Ellis. It started on Feb. 9, 1964. That was the date that changed the lives and career paths of countless youngsters all across the world. Tinsley Ellis was one of those youngsters. “I was one of the guys that watched The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was 7 years old. I watched it with my parents and they were down on The Beatles, which made me like them even more,” he said. “And I went out right after that and got a guitar. In fact, on the album (Get It!) cover there’s a picture of me getting a guitar as a kid. But I got a guitar and got into the British Invasion thing and then that led me to the real deal. Someone said, ‘If you like that music, you need to check out Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.’ And it just so happened that B.B. King was coming through town about that time, so I went and saw him. And then I realized where The Beatles, the Stones and The Yardbirds and The Animals got their stuff from. But I’m still primarily a fan that’s been blessed enough to make a living by playing the music that I love.” (by the blues blast)