Alligator Recording Artist

Tinsley Ellis

(solo Acoustic)

"Living Room" House Concert

Wednesday, March 18th, 2026

Doors 6:30 PM / Show 7:00 PM

Reservations / Details: Info@codaconcerthouse.com 

"Feral blues guitar...non-stop gigging has sharpened his six-string to a razor's edge.. he achieves pyrotechnics that rival Beck and Clapton." -- Rolling Stone

“An exciting, emotional guitarist and a strong, evocative songwriter…One of modern blues’ greatest performers.” –Vintage Guitar

“A legend of American blues music…An American music treasure…Ellis delivers a sermon on the power and glory of the blues.” –Premier Guitar 

“Powerful, spine-tingling guitar and gritty, soulful vocals.” –Relix

Tinsley returns to Coda in support of his brand new release, “Labor of Love”, due out January 30th, 2026!

Atlanta-based musician Tinsley Ellis – known for decades as one of the greatest electric blues-rock guitarists of his generation – is now also recognized as one of the very best contemporary acoustic blues guitarists, songwriters and performers in the world. With 2024’s critically acclaimed, Blues Music Award-nominated Naked Truth, Ellis unplugged with his first-ever acoustic album. On it he mixed his own striking original songs -- inspired by Son House, Skip James, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters -- with a few reinvented covers. According to No Depression, “Even though it’s just Ellis and his acoustic guitars, there’s plenty of hell-raisin’ blues going on. With the ghost of Elmore James looking over his shoulder and Wolf leaning in…Ellis proves he’s an icon.” 

Now, with his new album, Labor Of Love, Ellis delivers a raw, edgy, self-produced set of 13 original compositions, all performed with pure, emotional honesty. The songs spin modern tales of floods, conflagrations, voodoo spirits, personal travails and heaven-sent prayers. From the feral opener Hoodoo Woman to the John Lee Hooker-groove of Long Time to the evocative, Skip James-inspired To A Hammer to the Son House-style stomp of Sunnyland, Ellis inhabits his songs in a way that is simply astonishing.  Each performance carries the weight, experience and hard-earned wisdom Ellis learned over four decades on the road, making Labor Of Love as profoundly deep and moving as any music he has made in his career. It covers the gamut of emotions, finding good times in the hard times, mixing gentle beauty with foot-pounding ferocity. 

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.

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.

Tinsley Ellis has brought his music to fans live in person to 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 Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, 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.”