Scott Ainslie
Press Kit:
 | Biography |
| Reviews |
| Photos |
Solo Recordings:
| You Better Lie Down |
| Terraplane |
| Jealous of the Moon |
Teaching Materials:
| Robert Johnson: At the Crossroads (Book) |
| Robert Johnson's Guitar Techniques (Video) |
| Guitar Workshops |
Schools:
| BluesRoots Teacher's Study Guide |
| Teaching Concerts |
Bookings:
| Loyd Artists |
Contact:
| ainslie@musician.org |
Copyright © 2002
Cattail Music, Inc.
Last modified: April 09, 2004
In 2000, Ainslie received three awards for his work documenting, performing, and teaching traditional Blues:
| The 20th Annual Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award "for outstanding
contributions to the Fine Arts of North Carolina" presented on September 21,
2000 by St. Andrews Presbyterian College. Previous award winners include
Shelby Stephenson, Clyde Edgerton, Marvin Saltzman, David Brinkley, Paul
Jeffrey, and Loonis McGlohon. |
| The Living Heritage Award for "contributions to Slide and Acoustic
Blues" presented on September 23, 2000 at the National Slide Guitar Festival.
These awards are given in tandem, pairing posthumous and awards to living
players. In the previous year, Bob Brozman and Tampa Red were honored together
by these awards. The posthumous award in 2000 went to Mississippi Blues legend
Robert Johnson. |
| The Indie Triangle Arts Award presented on December 8, 2000 in Durham, NC, by the Independent Weekly for "enhancing the cultural life of our community" and "for having the grace--and the gall--to challenge us through art" and "to help us see the world through new eyes". |
Here's what the reviewers are saying about Scott Ainslie:
| You Better Lie Down |
| Jealous of the Moon (CD) |
| Terraplane (CD) |
| Robert Johnson -- At the Crossroads (book) |
| Robert Johnson's Guitar Techniques (video) |
| "North Carolinian Scott
Ainslie began exploring traditional music as an old-time fiddler. His most
recent travels find him playing blues guitar and mining the deep vein in the
Piedmont and Delta styles. Much of the music on You Better Lie Down was
learned first hand from players of the region.
His sound is big and robust with a strong voice and aggressive playing style. Standards such as Mississippi John Hurt's "Pay Day" get reworked with slide guitar punctuating the sweet John Hurt syncopation. Another standout track is Robert Johnson's "Phonograph Blues." Scott has written an instructional manual and produced a teaching video on the playing style of Johnson and his rendition is true to the source. There's power in those steel strings and voice! Most of the selections included on You Better Lie Down are much more obscure. "Losing Faith in You" is from a 1968 B. B. King album and Ainslie's strong vocals make it a standout. "Big Fat Mama" comes from the playing of David "Honeyboy" Edwards and includes mandolin, guitar and fretless bass in a loose and funky rendition ala Martin, Bogan and Armstrong. Lonnie Johnson's "Broken Levee Blues" is one of many tunes written about the catastrophic 1927 flood on the Mississippi. Once again Scott's strong guitar style makes this rendition work so well. Two more selections may surprise the listener: Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home To Me" and the traditional "Wade In The Water." Each spotlights Scott's wonderful voice and must be very effective in performance. I don't understand why Scott Ainslie is not one of the best-known interpreters. His style is both authentic to the source as well as highly entertaining to the blues neophyte and truly deserves wider recognition." [Sing Out! Winter 2003] |
| "From Blind Boy Fuller to the Reverend Gary Davis to Buddy Moss, Durham boasts a rich blues history. Now you can add one more name to the Bull City List: guitarist Scott Ainslie and his new release, "Jealous of the Moon" (Cattail Music). An outstanding National Steel player, Ainslie's a Robert Johnson scholar and his ability to recreate Johnson's guitar technique is uncanny. Ainslie has a straight forward voice, which he shades with a subtle vibrato. On 'Come On In My Kitchen', his coolly detached vocal delivery makes his version much more than a technical exercise. Ainslie is a well-rounded performer whose diverse musical interests make for an entertaining album. Notable is his cover of Van Morrison (a slow, soulful 'Crazy Love'), and Stephen Foster's starkly beautiful 'Hard Times Come Again No More' closes an excellent debut album." [John Knight, The Music Monitor] |
| "These tracks are not just astute: some are simply gorgeous. Ainslie's cover of Van Morrison's 'Crazy Love', for instance, or Robert Johnson's 'Come On In My Kitchen'. And 'Jealous Of The Moon' is a heartfelt love song. Ainslie's voice has never sounded more earthy and emotionally wealthy. Ending with Stephen Foster's 'Hard Times Come Again No More' was a stroke of genius. This album is a prize." [Arden Kelsey, The Spectator] |
| "Ainslie is an excellent guitarist...and an amazing torch singer." [Karen Mann, The Independent] |
| "His interpretation of Van Morrison's "Crazy Love" is simple and beautiful, while the blues tunes in the vein of Robert Johnson and the haunting "Wayfaring Stranger" show a grittier side of Ainslie. His forte is the ballad as evidenced by covers of "Date for Church" and "Hard Times," as well as the original title track, "Jealous of the Moon". [Linda Dailey Paulson, Dirty Linen] |
| "North Carolina's blues scene has blossomed in recent years. Our still impressive roster of master musicians has been joined by talented younger folk like Lightnin' Wells, Skeeter Brandon and Durham's Scott Ainslie. In his latest, Terraplane, Ainslie offers a moving and mature body of songs, new and old. Although Ainslie is a leading expert on Robert Johnson and the most Delta influenced of our bluesmen, Terraplane also provides strong examples of Piedmont and Chicago styles, gospel and several original pieces, including the hilarious "Change My Name." Most memorably, he reinterprets Johnson's "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day" on the primitive, one-string diddley bow." [Art Menius, The Independent] |
| "You can name your album after a
car, no problem. Name it after Robert Johnson's best-selling song, and you'd best be
prepared to back it up with some singing and playing. North Carolinian Scott Ainslie
proves he's up to the task---and then some---on this fine recording. By category, it's country blues mostly played solo on acoustic guitar (although Ainslie does plug in for three songs). A quarter of the 16 songs here are original compositions; the rest come from the pens or recordings of Blind Blake, Robert Johnson, the Rev. Gary Davis, John Hurt, Bukka White, John Jackson and Pete Franklin. Ainslie manages the best of East Coast and Delta styles with ease. His own "My Baby Walks On Fire" skirts modernity with its chunky rhythm and Scott Sawyer's tasteful lead electric guitar, but it's hardly blues-rock. Ainslie's Terraplane is superior to most traditional or revival recordings. His guitar playing is well-rounded---it's as strong rhythmically as it is melodically, and it's always inventive. Ainslie's a clean picker, so a minimum of finger-squeaks and palm-knocks intrude on the music. Even better, Ainslie can really sing. His powerful, emotional voice must have red-lined the studio meters more than once, yet he never sounds mannered, never sounds jive, never sounds forced. He's a natural. "Terraplane's sound nicely balances warmth and detail, with the character of Ainslie's acoustic, electric and National guitars coming through very clearly. The electric guitar is played like an acoustic, without any bad habits inspired by amplification. Rev. Davis' "Death Don't Have No Mercy" is among the album's best rendered songs, its busy runs translating surprisingly well to electric in Ainslie's hands. "Other high points are the original spiritual "You Gotta Get Up," one of a trio of songs played on the diddley bow, the makeshift single-stringed instrument that was the first "guitar" of so many Delta-born originals. Ainslie makes it sound like six strings and more, impressively highlighting complex rhythms and precise melodic figures with his slide. And his "Change My Name," which dryly plays on blues nicknames, is a future classic. Terraplane is convincing and satisfying. [Tom Hyslop, Blues Revue] |
| "Scott Ainslie is yet another of
the talented new generation acoustic blues playuers. His fine new CD, Terraplane, treads a
lot of familiar territory, covering tunes by Robert Johnson ("Walking Blues,"
"If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day," ), Blind Blake ("Chumpman
Blues"), Rev. Gary Davis, and Mississippi Jonn Hurt. "What distinguishes Ainslie's work is his fiery picking and slide work and his deep, passionate bluesman's growl. He also has a strong musical sense of humor that comes through in his animated version of Blake's "Police Dog Blues" and his own "Change My Name," which ponders the challenges of being a blues musician with a name that no one can pronounce. "This is an immensely entertaining and confident recording that is recomended to anyone who likes (or thinks they don't like) acoustic blues." [Dirty Linen, August/September 1999]
|
"Robert Johnson/At The Crossroads"
| "Scott Ainslie has taken on the monumental task of transcribing all of Robert Johnson's recorded blues songs and succeeded with flying colors...this book (Robert Johnson/At The Crossroads, Hal Leonard Corporation, 1992) stands head and shoulders above any other collection of transcriptions." [Brett Bonner, Living Blues Magazine] |
| "Robert Johnson/At The Crossroads just arrived and I've devoured it. It's wonderful in every respect! I wish I had had it when i wrote 'Black Culture and Black Consciousness' , but I'm delighted to have it now." [Dr. Lawrence Levine, University of California-Berkeley] |
| "...Painstaking detail, not only in the presentation of tablature and notation, but in the introductory biography and the deliberate introductory text and lyric transcriptions that accompany each song." [Steve James, Acoustic Guitar Magazine] |
"Robert Johnson's Guitar Techniques"
| "If you are one of the many
frustrated bluesmen who have considered selling your soul to the devil in exchange for the
ability to play like Robert Johnson, stop right there! Starlicks offers you a better
option: Robert Johnson's Guitar Techniques, a video instruction tape by Johnson
transcriber Scott Ainslie that will help you not only play Johnson's guitar parts, but
understand them as well. "Ainslie teaches seven of Johnson's tunes here, among them three of his most popular: "Sweet Home Chicago," "Come On In My Kitchen," and "Cross Road Blues." One reason the lesson works so well is that it does not require the student to rewind as much as most instructional tapes do. Ainslie explains an idea, then plays it several times before moving on. This allows you to keep your hands on your guitar instead of on your remote control. The booklet that comes with the tape is also helpful because it focuses on each section of a tune instead of giving you continuous transcriptions of the songs. "While one need not be an accomplished fingerpicker or even familiar with the structure of the blues to benefit from this lesson, Ainslie does gear part of his instruction to more experienced students by offering advanced variations on the tunes. In a couple of instances, he does this by examining the techniques of guitarists who influenced Johnson. In addition to making the student aware of other great blues fingerpickers, these segments drive home an important point---that contemporary guitarists shouldn't be afraid to be creative in their own arrangements of Delta blues." "The range of topics covered here is impressive for a 60- minute lesson: rhythmic variation within a tune, octave walkdowns, diminished chords, using a slide to play chords as well as clean-sounding single-string licks, and various tunings used by Johnson---standard, dropped D, open E and open A. Ainslie carefully shows how to integrate the bass patterns, percussive right hand work and melodic fills that made Johnson one of the gods of acoustic blues."
|
| "Best Blues Artist in the Triangle!" [1996 Readers Poll, The Independent] |
| "His guitar playing is so technically perfect, his feel for the Delta Blues so vivid, that I sat through his set with a dumb smile on my face...I would have happily gone on listening to Ainslie until Sunday breakfast!" [Arden Kelsey. The Spectator] |
| "Durham resident Scott Ainslie
led the way, accompanied by his trusty National Steel guitar and a heart full of the best
of Robert Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Blake. His set was a combination of
extremely well-played blues and brief sorties into the history of the music, the musicians
and even his guitar. "The most gratifying thing about Ainslie's performance was that while he talked blues like a historian, he played them like a bluesman. He lives in the groove, and he hears the passion and even the fear in the music. He treats the blues right, and he always takes care to catch up the crowd in what he's doing. Saturday's audience was no exception. They were into it, marveled at his work on the fret board, and brought him back for an encore." [Philip Van Vleck, The Spectator] |
| "Last, but definitely not least,
was Scott Ainslie, a virtuoso of Delta blues slide guitar. When he walked on stage, his
1931 National steel guitar shone like a polished silver chalice and he played it as if it
were sacred. Scott has spent a great deal of time learning from the traditional blues
players of Eastern North Carolina and has played with John Lee Hooker. He is an expert on
Robert Johnson and has written a book about him, "Robert Johnson/At The
Crossroads." "Ainslie has tremendous skill coupled with an awesome love for the music. His voice is at times soft and keening and at other times booms out to match the intensity and power of his guitar. There is no doubt in my mind that Scott Ainslie feels the blues the way the rest of us feel an electric shock; it courses through him like a current." [Ellen Arthur, The Spectator] |