Tinsley Ellis adds a Nov 20 date at The Southern

The Atlanta blues guitarist, touring this year's acoustic album Labor of Love, plays the 300-capacity Downtown Mall room on a Friday at 8 p.m.

Some bookings are worth jumping on the day they're announced. Tinsley Ellis added Friday, Nov. 20 at The Southern on Oct. 30, which leaves about three weeks between announcement and downbeat, in a room that holds 300.

The show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are through Ticketmaster via the show's ticket link. With that little lead time and that few seats, this is one to buy now rather than think about.

Ellis has spent 2026 behind *Labor of Love*, released Jan. 30 on Alligator Records. It's his second acoustic record and his first acoustic album made entirely of original songs, following 2024's *Naked Truth*, which earned a Blues Music Award nomination. The tour behind it opened Jan. 29 at Capricorn Studios in Macon, Ga., and the Albuquerque Journal framed this stretch of his career as an acoustic shift for a player known for blues-rock. He plays Sellersville Theater 1894 in Pennsylvania on Nov. 16, four nights before Charlottesville. Check the venue listing for the night's format.

A blues-rock lifer making the quietest records of his career.

That blues-rock reputation runs deep. Ellis co-founded the Heartfixers in Atlanta in 1981 with singer and harmonica player Chicago Bob Nelson, and the band became one of the city's top-drawing blues acts, per Alligator Records. His vocals debuted on the Heartfixers' 1986 album *Cool on It*, which caught Alligator's ear, and in 1988 he signed with the label as a solo artist with *Georgia Blue*. He spent the 2000s on Telarc before returning to Alligator in 2005, and came back again in 2018 with *Winning Hand*. Four decades in, he's still on the label that first signed him, still touring like a working musician.

The room suits him. The Southern Café and Music Hall opened on the Downtown Mall in fall 2009, at 103 S. First St., in the ground-floor space of the Terraces building that once housed the Gravity Lounge, per Cvillepedia. It runs roughly 150 shows a year, and Visit Charlottesville calls it the city's leading club-level music venue. At 300, it's small enough that a guitarist's touch carries to the back wall, which is exactly what you want from someone who has spent 45 years refining it.

If you're going, the Downtown Mall makes it easy to make a night of it: dinner first, then the show. An 8 p.m. start on a Friday leaves time for both.

A guitarist this seasoned, three weeks' notice and 300 tickets. Don't sleep on it.

Sources: Alligator Records: Tinsley Ellis announces first leg of 2026 Labor of Love tour (alligator.com); Keys and Chords: Tinsley Ellis announces new album Labor of Love, out January 30, 2026 (keysandchords.com); Albuquerque Journal: The anti-Dylan — Tinsley Ellis on his blues-rock background and acoustic shift (abqjournal.com); Ckord: Tinsley Ellis 'Labor of Love' at Sellersville Theater, Nov 16, 2026 (app.ckord.com); Alligator Records: Tinsley Ellis — Cool On It (alligator.com); Alligator Records: Tinsley Ellis — Georgia Blue (alligator.com); Making a Scene: Tinsley Ellis returns to Alligator Records (makingascene.org); Wikipedia: Tinsley Ellis (en.wikipedia.org); Cvillepedia: The Southern Cafe and Music Hall (cvillepedia.org); Visit Charlottesville: The Southern Café & Music Hall (visitcharlottesville.org); The Vendry: The Southern Café and Music Hall (thevendry.co); JamBase: Tinsley Ellis at The Southern (jambase.com)