Labor Of Love Tinsley Ellis

• 1 Hoodoo Woman 03:10
• 2 Long Time 02:55
• 3 To A Hammer 03:40
• 4 Sad Sad Song 02:33
• 5 The Trouble With Love 02:59
• 6 Sunnyland 02:50
• 7 Whole Wide World 02:58
• 8 Sweet Ice Tea 02:53
• 9 I'd Rather Be Saved 04:20
• 10 Too Broke 02:59
• 11 Low Land Of Sorrow 03:18
• 12 Fountain Of Love 02:57
• 13 Lay My Burden Down 03:28
• Total Runtime 41:00

Info zu Labor Of Love

Tinsley Ellis cuts right to the bone on Labor Of Love, 13 original compositions spinning modern tales of floods, conflagrations, voodoo spirits, personal hardship, and heaven-sent prayers.

After forty years on the road and a lifetime spent absorbing the lessons of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and Howlin’ Wolf, Tinsley Ellis returns with Labor Of Love, his most unfiltered acoustic record yet and the first fully original set of its kind in his catalog. The album follows his Blues Music Award-nominated Naked Truth and pushes even deeper into the raw, elemental corners of his craft.

Recorded with nothing but six and twelve-string Martins, a 1937 National Steel, and a mandolin he finally decided to put to work, Labor Of Love is a stripped-to-the-bone collection of 13 new songs that shift between beauty and bruise. Ellis leans hard into the Hill Country grit that shaped him, opening with the feral “Hoodoo Woman,” a stomper steeped in the spirit of R. L. Burnside. From there he jumps the rails into a John Lee Hooker churn on “Long Time,” slides into the Skip James shadows for “To A Hammer,” and channels Son House on the hard-driving “Sunnyland.” These are modern blues stories about floods, fire, voodoo, heartbreak, and the prayers that get whispered when no one is looking, delivered with the weight and weary humor earned from tens of thousands of highway miles.

That wisdom sharpened even further during a mid-album pause in Bentonia, Mississippi, birthplace of Skip James and home to Jimmy “Duck” Holmes. Ellis soaked up the atmosphere of the Blue Front Café and carried its ghostly tuning and feel straight back into the studio, adding another layer of backroads Americana to an already deep set.

Early reviews are coming in strong. Living Blues hears “a joyous and triumphant celebration of acoustic music.” AllMusic has called it “glorious, raw and propulsive.” And Blues Music Magazine praised the “glistening melodies fingerpicked with delicacy,” while Premier Guitar takes it even further by declaring Tinsley Ellis “an American music treasure.”

Ellis shrugs at the accolades, the way lifers tend to. “For me, just playing this music is a labor of love,” he says. That is the spine of the record. Not nostalgia. Not polish. Devotion. After four decades of grinding it out across clubs, cafés, juke joints, and theaters, Tinsley Ellis is not reinventing himself. He is burning down to the essence. Labor Of Love might be the purest signal he has ever sent.

"After more than four decades on the road, Tinsley Ellis sounds not diminished, but sharpened. Labor Of Love stands comfortably alongside the finest work of his career—a testament to resilience, tradition, and the enduring power of acoustic blues when placed in the right hands. This is not simply an acoustic blues album. It is a statement of belonging. A reaffirmation of lineage. And above all, a true labor of love." (Stevie Connor, thesoundcafe.com)

Tinsley Ellis, guitar, vocals

Tinsley Ellis
has been immersed in music his whole life. Born in Atlanta 1957 and raised in southern Florida, he acquired his first guitar at age seven, inspired by seeing The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. He took to guitar instantly, developing and sharpening his skills as he grew up. Like many kids his age, Ellis discovered the blues through the back door of British Invasion bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals, Cream and The Rolling Stones as well as Southern rockers like The Allman Brothers. One afternoon in 1972, he and a friend went to see B.B. King at a local theatre. As fate would have it, King broke a guitar string while playing, and after changing it without missing a beat, he handed the broken string to young Tinsley. And yes, Tinsley still has that string.

Less than three years later, Ellis, already an accomplished teenaged musician, left Florida and moved to Atlanta. He soon joined a hard-driving local blues band, the Alley Cats. In 1981, along with veteran blues singer and harpist Chicago Bob Nelson, Tinsley formed The Heartfixers, a group that would become Atlanta’s top-drawing blues band. After cutting four Heartfixers albums (three for the Landslide label), Ellis was ready to step out on his own.

Georgia Blue, Tinsley’s first Alligator release, hit the unprepared public by surprise in 1988, as press and radio brought his music to more people than ever before. His next four releases—1989’s Fanning The Flames, 1992’s Trouble Time, 1994’s Storm Warning, and 1997’s Fire It Up—further grew his reputation as well as his audience. (His song A Quitter Never Wins, a highlight of Storm Warning, was recorded by Jonny Lang, selling almost two million copies.) Features and reviews ran in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and in many other national and regional publications. And he backed it all up performing hundreds of nights per year. Rolling Stone declared, “Feral blues guitar…non-stop gigging has sharpened his six-string to a razor’s edge…his eloquence dazzles…he achieves pyrotechnics that rival Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.”

In the early 2000s, Ellis released albums on Capricorn Records and on Telarc, returning to Alligator in 2005 with Live–Highwayman, which captured the fifth-gear energy of his roof-raising live show. He followed it with two more incendiary studio albums, 2007’s Moment Of Truth and 2009’s Speak No Evil. He self-released four successful albums on his own Heartfixer label before coming back home to Alligator in 2018. That year, he released the fan favorite Winning Hand, followed by 2020’s Ice Cream In Hell just before the pandemic sidelined all touring. With 2022’s Devil May Care, Ellis embarked on another relentless, coast-to-coast tour, further cementing his reputation as one of the most prolific and exciting blues rockers on the scene. On 2024’s Naked Truth and 2026’s Labor Of Love, Ellis swapped his blistering, guitar-fueled full band workouts for equally passionate, soul-searching acoustic folk blues.

Tinsley Ellis has delighted fans live in person in all 50 United States, as well as in Canada, across Europe, Australia and South America. He’s earned the love and respect of many of his fellow musicians, having shared stages with The Allman Brothers, Warren Haynes, Oliver Wood, Buddy Guy, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Gov’t Mule, Widespread Panic, and more. Over the years, legends including Otis Rush, James Cotton, Gregg Allman, Jimmy Buffett, Son Seals, Koko Taylor and Albert Collins invited Ellis to join them on stage. Mega-star guitarist Joe Bonamassa calls Ellis “a national treasure.”

Ellis delivers a powerful punch of deep roots blues and wicked guitar prowess…Hold on to your hat and get ready for a foot-stomping, raucous and raw good time…a joyous and triumphant celebration of acoustic music. You’ll feel it down to the bone. - Living Blues

Glorious, raw and propulsive acoustic blues...Ellis’ resonant, crystal-clear baritone delivers chilling lyrics like an Old Testament prophet accompanied by an unruly slide guitar…killer vocals and biting, dazzling guitar work. - AllMusic

Stripped down and raw, rousing and surprising…gruff unembellished vocals…glistening melodies fingerpicked with delicacy…so genuine it seems like a lost recording from decades ago. - Blues Music Magazine

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