Georgia blues rocker Tinsley Ellis plays special acoustic set at Tybee Post Theater

Acclaimed blues-rock guitarist and singer Tinsley Ellis is returning to Savannah for the first time in more than 10 years with a special performance at the Tybee Post Theater as part of his coast-to-coast Acoustic Songs & Stories tour.

Ellis resides in Atlanta, but recalls his days of regularly playing in Savannah in the '70s and '80s at the former Night Flight Café with his early band, The Heartfixers.

“We’d go down and spend several days a month down there on River Street, and I have very fond memories of over 40 years ago,” said Ellis in an interview over the phone. “I’m going to try to recapture some of those moments —without the horrible hangovers.”

Before we continue our conversation about his career, his influences, and his new music, I have to ask Ellis about an unfamiliar word I came across in a review for his 20^th studio album, “The Devil May Care.” A music critic used the words “choogle” and “choogler” to describe some of his guitar work on the record. According to definitions it is a guitar strumming style that mimics the sound of train pistons.

It is also slang for having a good time.

“That’s good,” said Ellis. “I think in bluesy-type music, that’s a good thing. I’ll be choogling down there to Savannah next Friday.”

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Prolific pandemic songwriting session

Ellis, who is a dedicated road warrior, wrote “The Devil May Care” during the pandemic when he couldn’t tour. Over the course of a year, Ellis dug into his record collection for inspiration, pulled out all of his old guitars and amplifiers, and proceeded to write more than 200 new songs, 10 of which ended up on the record.

“After 40 years of being on the road constantly I was afraid of losing my chops, so pretty much every morning was me in my basement studio writing songs so I would have songs and not lose my chops,” said Ellis.

Although his fiery guitar style is often compared to Texas blues legend Freddie King, Ellis’ Southern rock roots really come out on “The Devil May Care,” and it has even been called “a love letter” to the Allman Brothers by critics.

“Back in the '60s and '70s, the Allman Brothers were our band and if somebody told me as a teenager that one day I would get to know them and open for them and actually sit in with them on stage, I wouldn’t have believed it,” said Ellis. “I knew some of the founding members like Dickey [Betts] and Gregg Allman, and they considered me to be a Georgia blues artist, so they would get me up and I would sit in with them.

“Gregg Allman always called me Ellis Tinsley, and I never once corrected him. Then at the final Atlanta show they got me up to do a song with them and he introduced me to the audience as Tinsley Ellis, and I felt like I finally arrived. After 30 years he got my name right.”

B.B. King and the Blues

Ellis was born in Atlanta in 1957 and began playing guitar when he was 7 years old.

“I’m old enough to have seen The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 and begged my parents for a guitar the next day,” said Ellis. “They rented me an acoustic guitar with the stipulation that I’d take guitar lessons, and I took about four or five lessons and then released myself on my own recognizance. I’m completely self-taught.”

Ellis first discovered the blues as a teenager through British Invasion bands like The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones, and Cream, but when his father took him and his friends to the Swingers Lounge in Miami Beach to see B.B. King, Ellis’ discovered where all of his favorite music really came from.

“On Saturday they had to do a teen matinee which means they shut down the bar and served soft drinks, so teenagers could come in there and hear the featured attraction of the week,” recalled Ellis. “My dad loaded up the station wagon with me and some of my friends and took us to see this guy who was supposed to be ‘the man.’ I sat right there in the front and all of the sudden I could see where Dwayne Allman and Eric Clapton and Peter Green were coming from, and seeing the real blues for the first time.”

During the show B.B. King broke a guitar string and handed it to Ellis. Ellis still has that rusted, totemic piece of string to this day.

“It was a real turning point for me because at that point my friends were starting to pull away from bands like Cream and getting into Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. I went the other direction and I was at every Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf show I could get to. B.B. was really my musical savior and I got to open a lot of shows for him, but he would always make time for me.”

Ellis received a first-class blues education when he was signed by Alligator Records and relocated to Chicago in the 1980s.

“The first musician I met up there was Buddy Guy and we stayed friends and I’ve done many shows at his club and I’ve got to jam with him on stage,” said Ellis.

During his Chicago tenure, Ellis also played with greats like Otis Rush, Coco Taylor, Albert Collins, and Son Seals.

“Unfortunately, all those folks are gone now except for Buddy Guy and Little Ed,” said Ellis.

“It was great to be part of a community that is now pretty much gone. I was really blessed to be there at the right time.”

Ellis is highly acclaimed for his blues work, but he is reluctant to call himself a blues artist. He says he would feel like an imposter if he didn’t incorporate rock and roll, folk, and mountain music into his work.

“There’s no denying where blues came from and the history of blues,” Ellis explained. “I feel more of a kinship with rock and roll. I’ve been described as rock and roll because isn’t that what Elvis Presley was? He was a white guy from the South playing rhythm and blues songs. Blues is my passion, but rock and roll is my heritage, so I like to call myself a blues-rocker. Southern rock is also a good description of what I do. There is an awful lot of blues in my shows and I talk about the old blues guys and women and I give them the respect they deserve because that’s kind of our royalty. We don’t have kings and queens here, but we have people like Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, B.B. King, Ray Charles, right up to Georgia music like James Brown and Little Richard. I’m kind of a name dropper up there because I feel like it’s my duty to talk about these people that came up with the blues in the first place.”

“I definitely didn’t come from the place that B.B. King or Muddy Waters came from. My dad was a lawyer, so I definitely had a different upbringing, but I feel like I can mix the music of blues and filter it through my own debauched experiences in life and come up with something that’s interesting and hopefully true to several things, because I do love mountain music, as well.”

Inspired by his current tour, Ellis is working on his first all-acoustic album using his beloved 1937 National Steel resonator and 1969 Martin D-35 guitars, with plans to release it on Alligator records in 2024.

Fans at the Tybee Post Theater on Friday can look forward to hearing Ellis play some of his own songs, as well as quirky selections by artists like Bob Dylan and Leo Kottke. And like the loquacious and witty Kottke, Ellis will tell some great stories as well.

“I’m probably going to evolve into a blues-rock conversationalist,” said Ellis with a laugh. “I think that’s a natural progression. B.B. King certainly talked a lot in his later years on stage. I do want to stop short of going into all of my medical conditions in front of the audience. Luckily I don’t have any, but if I ever do I want to keep them to myself on stage.”

If You Go >>

What: Tinsley Ellis

When: 8 p.m. Aug. 4

Where: Tybee Post Theater, 10 Van Horne Ave.

Cost: $25

Info: tybeeposttheater.org

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Georgia blues rocker Tinsley Ellis brings acoustic set to Tybee Post Theater