Tinsley Ellis
Speak No Evil
Alligator CD4932
There’s lots of ways to chase the demons that haunt you. You can look for salvation in the bottom of a bottle. You can slip in the side door and hope the devil doesn’t find you cowering under the pew. Or you can strap on a guitar, turn the amp to 11, stand up straight and look him right in the eye. This is the method Tinsley Ellis chooses: to Speak No Evil, on his 11th release, and 9th for Alligator Records.
In the title track, Ellis states, “I’ve been mad enough to kill someone, but I couldn’t face the time. So I try to shout them down with this big mouth of mine.” And he backs that bravado up with a big, bag guitar tone that screams and shouts his blues – evil stands no chance against such a wall of sound.
Every one of the 12 tracks on Speak No Evil tells the blues Tinsley’s way – up front, in your face and without compromise. His lyrics of reality and survival in a harsh and gritty world are backed up with his powerful blues/rock guitar. Ellis wrote all the tracks himself – he’s got a story to tell of the things he’s seen – and he doesn’t need to tell it through someone else’s words and music. Having spent all of his adult life a musician, he’s learned to sort through the crap and find the gem, adding it to his Mojo bag, and moving on down the road to the next show, the next heartbreak, the next adventure.
Like many of the musicians of his time (Ellis was born in 1957) he found the blues through the British Invasion, when the Brit’s took our own woefully undervalued music, lovingly and respectfully studied it, then made it their own and unleashed it on an unsuspecting U.S. of A. Even now, you can feel those influences in Tinsley’s style – along with his worship of the Three Kings – Freddie, B.B. and Albert. No-nonsense tales of real life layered on a rock solid foundation of power chords.
Salvation from the storms of life inside a plastic case. Power chords, deep pockets of bass and drum grooves, wah-wah pedals – Tinsley Ellis carries a big guitar and Speaks No Evil.
- Blue Lisa -
Southwest Blues CD Review - November 2009
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