TAKE FIVE: Tinsley Ellis

Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007 | 7:05 a.m.

Who: Tinsley Ellis

When and where: 8 p.m. Wednesday at Santa Fe Station; 8 p.m. Thursday at Boulder Station

Admission: Free

Info: Santa Fe Station, 658-4900; Boulder Station, 432-7777

"Fanning the Flames" (1989)

"Georgia Blue" (1990)

"Cool on It" (1991)

"Trouble Time" (1992)

"Storm Warning" (1994)

"Fire It Up" (1997)

"Kingpin" (2000)

"Hell or High Water" (2002)

"The Hard Way" (2004)

"Live - Highwayman" (2005)

Tinsley Ellis is the latest great performer to appear in the Station Casinos' blues series.

The hard-driving 50-year-old Atlanta guitarist draws comparison to the late Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Ellis plays Chrome at Santa Fe Station on Wednesday and the Railhead at Boulder Station on Thursday.

He's made Las Vegas a regular stop on his national tours for the past 15 years. This time around he's promoting "Moment of Truth," his latest album for Alligator Records.

"I'm very busy touring, but not in the pop music sense of the word," Ellis says. "I'm more of a journeyman doing what I love. If that's my lot, that's fine. I haven't had a day job in 30 years, and that's quite an accomplishment."

As a teenager, Ellis was first inspired by B.B. King and he gets a chance to open for his mentor from time to time.

"He has always, to me, been a great source not only of musical inspiration but personal inspiration," Ellis says. "The way he greets his fans. He really loves his fans. You have to love your fans to be a success in any kind of roots music. He's just a wonderful person, and the way he handles himself. He's never rude or inappropriate, on or off stage. He doesn't take himself too seriously, either."

He recently talked to the Sun by phone after a concert in Portland, Ore.

1. The new album

I started out to write all the music on there myself, then we found a really cool underrecorded Sam and Dave song so we put that on there - it's called "I Take What I Want" - then the closing song is an acoustic song that I've always loved that a songwriter in Nashville wrote named Gary Nicholson, who writes quite a bit for Delbert McClinton. The song is "Shadow of Doubt" and we put that on the end. So it ended up being 10 originals and two covers, and that's all right. I don't have to be piggish and write everything on every album. It usually works out where I write it all, but this time I had a little fun with a couple of covers.

2. "Moment of Truth"

I named it that because we're in the studio a lot and every time you finish an album it's very much the moment of truth. You've worked on it as much as you feel like you need to and put it out. The moment of truth is really how the listeners and the buyers of the CD respond to it. You can say the same thing about a concert you do. Every time you step onstage it's a moment of truth. You've got to deliver.

3. B.B. King

B.B. King was the beginning of my journey into blues and blues-rock music. I went to see him as a teenager in south Florida, where I grew up. He was doing a hotel gig, back when he would play lounges of hotels a week at a time. I think it was the Marco Polo Hotel in north Miami Beach. On Saturday afternoon they opened up the show for teenagers, which means they shut down the bar and just had a teen show. He played a set for us. I got there early. I knew all about B.B. King because I was a big fan of people like the Allman Brothers and the Rolling Stones and they always mentioned him in interviews. This was in the early '70s, before the big arena tours with U2 and things like that he did. I sat in the very front row and he broke a guitar string. I don't know why but I just sort of reached up and took that guitar string from him and I kept it as a memento of the first time I saw real blues being played. I still have it at my home in Atlanta, taped to a picture of him.

4. Stevie Ray Vaughan

I have no problem at all being compared to that man. I think he was in a league all by himself, much like B.B. King. I think my music can be compared equally to Stevie Ray Vaughan or B.B. King or even some of the British blues crowd, like Eric Clapton and early Fleetwood Mac and people like that. It's kind of eclectic. I've never tried to copy any one person in particular, although as a teenager the Allman Brothers band were local stars in the Atlanta area and we all tried to be like them. But Stevie Ray Vaughan was a hell of a musician and he was just getting better and better and better with age. You can look at the first time he played on "Austin City Limits." He was all wild and stomping on the guitar and stuff. Almost 10 years later he appeared on it again, and he had so much more control over his instrument.

5. Blues scene

It was tough in the '70s to do any kind of blues music and make any money at it, in the late '70s, I mean, because disco had taken over. Then in the early '80s, like 1983 and then 1986, you had Stevie Ray Vaughan and you had Robert Cray and they kind of held the door open and we all sort of followed in behind them. The problem is that nobody really came along after that to keep it going and then Stevie Ray's untimely death (in a 1990 helicopter crash) occurred and there goes our leadership and nobody really stepped up to the plate. It would be nice if some young guitar slinger like a Stevie Ray Vaughan, who emerged at the age of 28, would come in and sort of let people know that blues is a legitimate pop style of music because, now, it's gone back to being underground again. So, we could use another hero.