Elles Bailey

Elles Bailey is a British singer, songwriter, and bandleader from Bristol. Her work is a contemporary hybrid of raw blues-rock, rough-hewn blue-eyed soul, and stirring, gospelized Americana, all delivered with a forcefully expressive, deeply smoky instrument existing at the crossroads of Janis Joplin, Maggie Bell, and Kim Carnes. Wildfire, her 2017 debut album for Outlaw Music, was recorded in Nashville with some of its finest session talent. 2019′s Road I Call Home topped the U.K. blues charts and attained a Top Three finish at streaming. Bailey took home prizes for Album of the Year and Artist of the Year at 2020′s British Blues Awards. Its single, “Little Piece of Heaven” (co-written with Bobby Wood and Dan Auerbach), won Song of the Year at the U.K. Americana Awards 2020. During the pandemic, Bailey offered fans Ain’t Nothing But, a series of live-streamed cover song concerts that resulted in the release of a compilation album. Six months pregnant, she tracked a third studio album, and completed it just days before giving birth to her first child. Titled Shining in the Half Light, the ten-track outing was released in February 2022.
Elles Bailey was born in Bristol. Her singular voice with its requisite huskiness was actually the result of viral and bacterial pneumonia that she contracted when she was three years old. After spending 17 days breathing through a tube, she emerged from the crucible with her voice box forever changed with what became a silver lining: a distinctive low sound.
Bailey began performing in indie rock bands during her adolescence before falling under the sway of the blues, R&B, and Americana-country. She assembled a road band began playing live, and cut Who Am I to Me, her 2015 debut EP, with American producer Brian Banks, followed a year later by The Elberton Sessions. Bailey’s band — that alternated between four and eight pieces — earned a reputation for electrifying live shows across the British and Irish country sides. She formed the Outlaw Music label and traveled to Nashville to record her debut album with producer Brad Nowell and some of Music City’s most sought-after session players including keyboardist-songwriter Bobby Wood. She co-wrote all but one of its 12 songs, a souled-out cover of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.” Setting out on the road immediately after, Bailey and her band toured North America and the U.K. as the album registered on blues radio stations across continents. It stormed up the streaming charts and peaked at number two.
Bailey, a self-admitted workaholic, wrote and recorded 2019′s Steve Blackmon-produced Road I Call Home in Nashville between performances on 97 dates across the U.K. and Europe. The album went Top Three at streaming and earned a number two slot on the British blues charts. Bailey was presented with Blues Album of the Year and Blues Artist of the Year awards from the U.K. Blues Federation. (One of its singles, the uncharacteristically jangly pop/rock “Little Piece of Heaven,” was co-written with Dan Auerbach and session ace Bobby Wood. Released during the pandemic, it took home a 2021 U.K. Americana award for Song of the Year.)
While touring the U.S. in support of the album, the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. Bailey and her band started performing a series of live-streamed cover-song concerts titled Ain’t Nothing But, over the next 18 months, ultimately resulting in the release of a 16-track digital compilation album of the same title drawn from those performances. She was nominated by the U.K. Americana Awards 2022 in the category of U.K. Artist of the Year.
In the summer of 2021, and six months pregnant, Bailey entered a Devon studio with her band, producer Dan Weller and backing vocalists Izo Fitzroy, Jade Elliot, and Andrusilla Mosley. The resulting gospel-blues-tinged album was titled Shining in the Half Light. It was “inspired by those who spread love in a time of heartbreak, happiness in a time of fear & connection in a time of loneliness,” and completed less than a week before giving birth to her first child. Three advance singles, “Cheats and Liars,” “Sunshine City,” and “Stones,” ran up the blues charts before the completed album was released in February 2022. ~ Thom Jurek