Elles Bailey

Elles Bailey, a Bristol native, channels British roots into a potent blend of gritty blues-rock, earthy blue-eyed soul, and emotionally charged Americana with gospel undertones, propelled by her powerfully emotive and richly textured vocals that sit at the intersection of Janis Joplin, Maggie Bell, and Kim Carnes. Her first full-length release for Outlaw Music, the 2017 album Wildfire, was captured in Nashville alongside elite session musicians. Road I Call Home, issued in 2019, reached the summit of the U.K. blues rankings while placing inside the streaming Top Three; it secured Album of the Year and Artist of the Year honors at the 2020 British Blues Awards, and its track “Little Piece of Heaven,” co-written with Bobby Wood and Dan Auerbach, claimed Song of the Year at the U.K. Americana Awards 2020. Amid pandemic restrictions she presented the live-streamed cover series Ain't Nothing But, later compiled into an album, then entered the studio six months pregnant to finish her third record days before the birth of her first child. The resulting ten-song set, Shining in the Half Light, appeared in February 2022. She followed with Beneath the Neon Glow, her 2024 debut on Cooking Vinyl.

Born in Bristol, Bailey developed her signature raspy timbre after contracting viral and bacterial pneumonia at age three; seventeen days on a breathing tube permanently altered her vocal cords, yielding the distinctive low register that became an unexpected advantage. During her teenage years she fronted indie-rock groups before embracing blues, R&B, and Americana-country. She assembled a touring ensemble that ranged from four to eight members, built a following for its incendiary performances throughout Britain and Ireland, and issued the 2015 EP Who Am I to Me, produced by Brian Banks, followed a year later by The Elberton Sessions. Forming Outlaw Music, she headed to Nashville to cut her debut album with producer Brad Nowell and noted session players including keyboardist-songwriter Bobby Wood, co-writing eleven of its twelve tracks and including a soulful rendition of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.” Subsequent touring across North America and the U.K. propelled the record onto blues radio playlists worldwide and to a streaming peak of number two.

A confessed workaholic, Bailey wrote and tracked the Steve Blackmon-produced Road I Call Home in Nashville while fulfilling 97 dates across the U.K. and Europe; the album again reached the streaming Top Three and number two on the British blues chart, earning her Blues Album of the Year and Blues Artist of the Year from the U.K. Blues Federation. One of its singles, the atypically bright pop-rock number “Little Piece of Heaven,” was co-written with Dan Auerbach and Bobby Wood and later received the 2021 U.K. Americana Award for Song of the Year. While on a U.S. tour the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed live work, prompting an eighteen-month run of livestreamed cover concerts under the Ain't Nothing But banner that yielded a sixteen-track digital compilation. She received a 2022 U.K. Americana Awards nomination for U.K. Artist of the Year.

In summer 2021, six months pregnant, Bailey convened with her band, producer Dan Weller, and backing vocalists Izo Fitzroy, Jade Elliot, and Andrusilla Mosley in a Devon studio. The gospel-blues-infused result, Shining in the Half Light, was completed less than a week before she gave birth; the record was “inspired by those who spread love in a time of heartbreak, happiness in a time of fear & connection in a time of loneliness.” Advance singles “Cheats and Liars,” “Sunshine City,” and “Stones” climbed the blues charts ahead of the February 2022 release. Outlaw issued the limited-edition Live at the Fire Station in March 2024, which sold out within weeks, and in August she delivered Beneath the Neon Glow, again produced by Weller, marking her Cooking Vinyl debut and spotlighting her road band in the studio.