Liz MacDonald Oct 17, 2018
After the latest news cycle, we could all use some rebalancing. Musician, educator and storyteller Scott Ainslie aims to bring a bit of that to his upcoming performance at The Lab on Sunday, Oct. 21.
read the rest: MontereyPress.pdf
“…I am interested in venues that are actively building communities of interest and in expanding my touring while I can,” he said. “Hearing that Hattiesburg was hard hit by the recent tornado, I contacted David Walker at the Coffeehouse to offer to tithe a portion of the evening’s proceeds to tornado recovery for the town.
“I am not well off. I am coming a long way to play. But I have my house and my family is safe. There are those in Hattiesburg today for whom this is not true. We have to all make provisions as we can to help our neighbors, even the ones we don’t know.”
John Benson/The Chronicle-Telegram
The last time veteran singer-guitarist Scott Ainslie was in Northeast Ohio, he appeared at a late ’90s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum event celebrating the life of Robert Johnson.
“The first time I heard Johnson’s music I sat down on the floor and stared at the turntable for half an hour and then turned the record over and did it again,” said Ainslie, calling from his Vermont home. “I was transfixed. I think everybody who is interested in blues or roots music who hears Robert Johnson’s music for the first time knows where they were. It’s like Kennedy’s assassination or The Challenger blowing up.
“I was fascinated by his work, and I was delighted to be invited to the Rock Hall as a special guest. I had a lot of fun just walking around. What’s fun about coming now is that I get ot atually play.” Continue Reading
Experience the diversity of the blues this weekendDeerfield Valley News, June 12, 2015
READSBORO, VT–There are several things about a Scott Ainslie concert that make it different from many others. For one thing, no one knows what songs bluesman Ainslie will lay at the E. J. Bullock building on June 19, not even Ainslie.
“I can’t give you a set list because they generally don’t exist. When I take the stage, I generally know what I’m going to start with and how I’m going to end a set. What happens in between is almost entirely driven by a combination of my instincts and my relationship with the audience.”
To kindle this relationship, Ainslie takes the time to meet with people in the audience before the show, instead of waiting until curtain time, waling on stage and starting to play, as many performers do. Continue Reading
Guitarist tells stories through pickin’ strings
By Stephen Nielsen
The Winchester Star, Thursday, February 5, 2015
BERRYVILLE–The Barns of Rose Hill is spreading the blues with a guitar workshop and concert by professional musician Scott Ainslie.
“I think it’s a great way for people to learn from a master,” said Kelli Hart, executive director of the Barns. “As long as you can play, he can teach you something on slide techniques.”
Ainslie is a traditional acoustic blues signer, guitarist, historian, and songwriter. He is a graduate of Washington & Lee University and has studied in the old-time southern Appalachian fiddle and banjo traditions as well as with black gospel and blues musicians, according to scottainslie.com. Continue Reading
By Robin Tolleson, Times-News Online, Hendersonville NC
July 22, 2011
Scott Ainslie has a high calling. He’s a blues and traditional roots musician, a bluesvhistorian, storyteller, teacher, record producer and ethnomusicologist. He’s developed a strong voice and conscience to match.
“Folk music has always been a vehicle for commenting on what’s going on,” he says. “It’s not surprising to find musicians invested in social justice causes. I’m just one of those guys.” Continue Reading
Contacts:
Executive Director Shelley Ritter and musician/historian Scott Ainslie examine over 100 instructional DVDs donated to the new Delta Blues Museum Digital Media Archive.
[Clarksdale, MS – May 11, 2011] Delta Blues legend Robert Johnson was born in Mississippi on May 8, 1911. Following closely on the centennial celebrations of Johnson’s birth, a new Delta Blues Museum Media Archive has been established at the Delta Blues Museum as a way of assuring that the legacy of original performers of this great American musical tradition will live for another hundred years. Filled with hundreds of hours of Blues instructional DVDs for guitarists, singers and keyboard players – as well as archival footage of senior performers like Son House, Skip James, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters – the archive promises to be a windfall for the life of the museum.
[DATELINE: LOUISIANA, Spring & Summer 2011]
Scott Ainslie, blues musician, songwriter and scholar, was traveling through the Mississippi Delta in the Spring of 2010, when he shot the photographs that make up his “Delta Blues Pilgrimage,” currently on exhibit through August 20, 2011 at The Historic City Hall Arts & Cultural Center in Lake Charles, LA. The show was first exhibited at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, LA. These are the first exhibits of Ainslie’s images and constitute his debut as a visual artist.
See photos of the show, and a slide show of the images
with captions at the Delta Blues Pilgrimage website.
Here we find the Tutwiler railroad tracks where W.C. Handy – the man billed as “The Father of the Blues” – first heard a slide guitarist in 1902. And then there’s Dockery’s Plantation where Charley Patton influenced three generations of bluesmen, the black river town of Friars Point, and the towns of Robert Johnson’s birth and death.
Ainslie first came to Louisiana more than a decade ago under the auspices of the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette where his work helped inspire the development of the Louisiana Crossroads concert series.
The Louisiana Crossroads season 11 series poster and program guide contain many of Ainslie’s images as well as his essay “The Walkin’ Blues: Tracing Robert Johnson.” 2011 marks the centennial of Johnson’s birth.
Scott Ainslie at the Windham Tonight
by Michael Witthaus, The Eagle Times
It’s common knowledge that the vast majority of popular music owes a debt to American blues, but few have set about repaying it with Scott Ainslie’s sense of purpose. He brings his musical teach-in to the Windham on the Square in Bellows Falls tonight at 8.
Ainslie, whose live shows channel the ghosts of Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt and other icons of the blues canon, explains that it’s “about redressing our musical history,” and acknowledging that he’s made a career in “a musical culture I wasn’t born in – I played my way in. Presenting blues to non-blues audiences is 90 percent of the work I do,” and he tries to “introduce songs in ways that open them up to audiences both emotionally and historically.” Continue Reading