Back on Alligator Records after a hiatus in the early 2000s, his new CD Live-Highwayman has Ellis pouncing on a set of songs like a bull dog on a hound. “Fanning the flames,” he “fires it up” while issuing a “storm warning” that come “hell or high water,” he takes “the hard way” and goes for broke, his grasp equaling his reach. Ellis is by no means just a virtuoso blues guitarist, however, as his vocals and songwriting have caught up to his chops since leading the Heartfixers in Atlanta in the early 1980s. Wry, witty and self-effacing, he knows his blues roots while always looking towards the future.
The new record features your most popular numbers
I’d call it a “greatest hits,” but you have to have a “hit” before you can call it that, so we’ll just call it a “best of.” It’s a long one though, isn’t it?
You have some lengthy tracks
It’s the Southern rock way.
You have two numbers, “Pawnbroker” and “”Double-Eyed Whammy,” not to mention “The Last Song,” that placed together in the 1960s would have been the entire side of a vinyl LP
Um, hmm, kind of like “Mountain Jam,” or something.
Besides your guitar playing, your vocals have matured
I think with each record I make they become more “palatable.” I’ve done these songs so many times live, some for 25 years, that we picked ones I did well and stayed away from others that I didn’t. There are no overdubs; it is totally live, which I am very pleased about. It just sort of flowed out of us… which is a good thing.
It’s a lot different from your last release, The Hard Way
That was more of a songwriter album than a guitar player album. If you go by sales, people prefer the guitar album. So that’s fine, I will give them what they want (Laughs) instead of trying to make an artistic statement. People want to hear me rock more, so that’s what they’re gonna get on the live CD. A lot of guitar. Every blues and blues-rock artist that I can think of has got a career-defining live album, and I wanted to have one, too.
Were you encouraged by Alligator to take that approach?
Bruce Iglauer (Alligator prexy – Ed) likes the “houserockin’” stuff. He kept saying to me, “Be what you is, not what you is not.” I’ve never had more fun making an album. It was so easy, so damn easy. I think it will entertain the fans and not make them ”think” too much. Maybe that’s what people want nowadays, there’s so many horrible things going on in the world. “Thinking” is what the rest of life is about right now. If people want to escape the current political regime in power, they can do it through song. If they’re afraid to leave the country, they can do it through music. (Laughs) I’m more interested in singing about what goes on between men and women than between nations. (Laughs)
How are you dealing with the “hard times” in the blues world?
The blues has never been the same after Stevie Ray Vaughan died. What we lost there was not just a great player, but leadership. With him you had someone that everybody agreed is the “guy.” And now, nobody can agree on anything. We don’t have somebody who could get the doors open at radio stations like he did. “If he was alive now could he get on the radio?” is a question Bruce Iglauer asks. It’s a terrible question, because the answer is “no.” And where are all the Stevie Ray Vaughan imitators that used to annoy me so bad? The only thing more annoying than a Stevie Ray Vaughan imitator is the lack of a Stevie Ray Vaughan imitator. Bring ‘em back! At least they were people grounded in blues and blues-rock. Stevie came as a breath of fresh air. Something like that will happen again. Perhaps it will come from the Warren Haynes/Gov’t Mule/Derek Trucks camp. That’s something I can get into. The music has not gone away, it’s just hiding.(Laughs)
So what do you do?
I just prefer to pretend that things aren’t that tough on the radio and that we are making something for them. Every time I make a record I have a fantasy with that and it seems to work for me. I would hate to be just starting out now, hitting the road for the first time; that would be tough. I’m somewhat “grandfathered in” without being an actual grandfather. I still think I can get on the radio somewhere…maybe satellite radio. It’s a fast-growing medium for the listeners. Overall, it’s not as bad as it seems...and if it is, I’m going to still pretend that it isn’t… or bury my head in the sand. (Laughs)
When was the last time you heard blues on commercial radio?
I heard some good stuff in the late 1980s… that was “then,” this is “now.” But, you take a band like Los Lonely Boys. Who would’ve thought they would have been as big as they are. If you’ve got a good song, you just can’t keep it down. The first single chosen by the record company from Stevie Ray Vaughan’s first album was “Love Struck Baby.” But the masses said, “No, that’s not the single, it’s ‘Pride and Joy.’” You could not keep that song down. It was the “Statesboro Blues” of 1983 - what we all wanted.
Los Lonely Boys have made it
Yeah, and they made it on their musicianship and their singing and their songs and their story. And the people embraced it and requested it on the radio. So, there is hope, and I can point to them as someone who is good, and they encourage me.
Did you see the Grammy awards this year?
Yes, it was great to see Dickey Betts and Elvin Bishop. I almost cried when they came on, it was like, “Yay!” Maybe I’m stuck in the past, but that’s my music and Dickey went for it, “balls to the wall,” for about eight seconds (Laughs), but still he went for it. It reminded people that there is such a thing as a guitar solo in pop culture. Whether you stick with the blues idiom on guitar or not, blues is still the “keys to the kingdom.” It’s the “well” you want to drink from. If I drink from the well, I want to drink deep from it, down to that sweet water.
You are “Mr. ES-345.” Do you play differently on it than a Strat?
After I heard Stevie Ray Vaughan play a Strat in a small club I decided I was going to be a Gibson guy. (Laughs) The Strat is so much more percussive and it’s really good for the funkier-type songs that require lots of rhythm guitar, like on “Pawnbroker,” “Leavin’ Here” and “Real Bad Way.” The Gibson is just a pissed-off sounding guitar. (Laughs) It doesn’t even have to be plugged in. It is a loud guitar from across a crowded room. So, it’s pretty different. You know, with the Gibson I get that “Freddie King fantasy” going on. With the Strat I get my “Eric Clapton fantasy” going on, which is one of my favorite fantasies. (Laughs)
Freddie King still stands out from the pack and you have been the one to carry his mantle
He was really unique and funky, incorporating a lot of stuff from his label-mate James Brown (both were on King/Federal Records in the early 1960s – Ed). He was equally as great a singer as a guitar player; what a voice! As a player he did so much with hand muting which you do with the inside of your palm. That’s the “Freddie King sound.” I’ll bet he had a big old callus there on his right hand; I know I do. And he had a way laid back feel and great tone along with a killer Texas vibrato going with his left hand. He’d bend up to the 5th on the high E string and just shake the hell out of it, just wore it out. I channel him so much. On the live CD we ended with an obscure Freddie King number, only available on a 45 RPM record, called “Double-Eyed Whammy” with Lonnie Mack on rhythm guitar. I asked Lonnie once if he remembered that session and he looked at me like I was a crazy man (Laughs). It all kind of ties together if you see the music passed down from one of the first Chicago blues players, Jimmy Rogers, to Freddie King to Lonnie Mack and to me. Hopefully I’ll pass it down to somebody. Maybe I have, I don’t know. It doesn’t happen when you’re thinking about it, it just happens.
TINSLEY ELLIS GEAR
Guitars: 1967 Gibson ES-345, 1959 Fender Start w/ 1961 rosewood neck
Strings: Ernie Ball Power Slinkys .011-.046
Amps: Pre-CBS Fender Super Reverb
Effects: Are you kidding?
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