TINSLEY ELLIS KNOWS he’s “always been a pretty high-voltage electric” guitar player, at least since he was recording with the Heartfixers back in the early ’80s, and certainly during the 36 years since he signed with Alligator Records as a solo act. But the idea of a solo acoustic album — which he released in February as Naked Truth — has been in Ellis’s head for almost all that time.
“I’ve been threatening to do it for almost 30 years,” he says from his home in his native Atlanta, where Ellis recorded the 12-track collection of originals and covers using his 1969 Martin D-35 and a 1937 National O Series steel guitar, which he plays with a brass slide. “On a couple of occasions, I had asked [] Bruce Iglauer what he thought of the
