“Beat The Black Friday Blues” in Floyd, VA

10:30-12:00 The Music of Mississippi John Hurt Guitar Workshop
1:30-3:00 Slide Guitar Techniques Guitar Workshop
7:30 p.m. Hotel Floyd Concert

On Saturday, November 30^th acoustic blues master performer and teacher Scott Ainslie will be presenting two ninety-minute workshops during the day and an evening concert at Hotel Floyd, right in the middle of the beautiful and intriguing little mountain town of Floyd, Virginia.

Where is Floyd?  Click the map to see driving distances from locations in Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina.

A haven for artists and musicians with a lively community life, Floyd has earned a reputation for inventive musical and artistic community-building and is the envy of small towns all over the country.

The Floyd Country Store hosts jamborees, the monthly Floyd Radio Show, concerts and dances.

Workshop tickets ($30 each, or both workshops for $50) are available through the Handmade Music School at the Floyd Country Store and online at https://handmademusicschool.com/events/.   Workshop descriptions below.

Concert tickets ($20, with $5 off for workshop participants)  are available below
( https://cattailmusic.com/floyd  will get you back to this page.)

Make a day of it!

We are inviting guitarists and other music lovers to come for a day of workshops and an evening concert and to stay overnight with a discounted room rates available only to participants in the workshops or concert at Hotel Floyd on a first come, first served basis. Contact Hotel Floyd at (540)745-6080, to make your room reservation and be sure to tell them that you are participating in the workshops and concert.

There are lots of fun small shops and artist studios in Floyd for your non-guitar-playing partners — bring them along for the adventure!

Workshops – take one or both!

The workshops will take place from 10:30-noon and, following a break for lunch on your own in town, 1:30-3:00.

The evening concert will be at 8:00 p.m.

All events will take place at Hotel Floyd. (If we get a great response with lots of reservations, the concert may be moved to the EcoVillage in Floyd, a short distance from downtown.)

Costs:

The Mississippi John Hurt and Slide Guitar workshops will be $30 each (or two for $50). Workshop participants will also get $5 off the $20 evening concert ticket price.

Tickets for the workshops are available through the Handmade Music School at the Floyd Country Store and online at https://handmademusicschool.com/events/.

Concert tickets are available below  ( https://cattailmusic.com/floyd  will get you back to this page.)

Workshops:

Even before John Hurt was re-discovered in 1963 at the age of 71, his 1927 and 1928 recordings had influenced a small coterie of guitar aficionados.

Hurt’s re-introduction to a wide audience at the height of the folk music revival allowed him to play a pivotal role in establishing fundamental fingerpicking techniques that left their mark on the music of everyone from Doc Watson to Beck, Bob Dylan to Bruce Cockburn, Jerry Garcia, John Sebastian, and many others.

In this workshop we’ll explore Hurt’s repertoire while focusing on his right and left-hand techniques with a special eye to establishing the right/picking hand muscle patterns necessary to maintain a steady alternating bass while developing syncopated independence on the high strings to play melodies.

When we’re done, you’ll understand what Hurt did, how to begin to train your hands to do it, and have a great appreciation for a player who influenced country blues and folk guitarists of all sorts.

To see a video of Ainslie introducing and performing Hurt’s Monday Morning Blues, click here.

If you have ever wanted to play slide guitar, this is the workshop for you.

I’ve been teaching slide guitar for more than twenty-five years. About four years ago, on impulse, I reversed the order in which I teach the core skill sets.

In subsequent classes, I had large groups of people successfully making musical sounds with their slides in one class period – sounds that I had failed previously to solicit after an entire week of classes.

So, we’ll begin in standard tuning, one string at a time, mastering five new hand skills that I call ‘the keys to the kingdom of slide guitar.’

We’ll look at slide in standard tuning first and all the muting techniques necessary to make the music work without the harmonic support of open tunings. Then, having established the basics, we’ll move to open tunings.

When we’re done, you’ll understand and possess the keys to the kingdom of slide guitar.

Three concise slide guitar video lessons Scott recorded in 2019.

I’m excited to bring these workshops and this concert to Floyd’s playing and listening community.

Workshop Tickets are available through the Handmade Music School at the Floyd Country Store and online at https://handmademusicschool.com/events/. $30 each workshop or $50  for both workshops.

Concert Tickets