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New England Presenters, Scott Ainslie is a new NEST eligible artist!
New Live Performance Video!

Scott Ainslie’s The Last Shot Got Him was released in late October, 2014 and in two short months climbed into the top albums of the year lists all around the acoustic music radio dial. In December it was chosen as the Recording of the Month on the music blog Sound Stage Network and in January was awarded Best Recording of the Year, a Tammie Award from the Times-Argus in Vermont.

1934 Gibson is the concert of material from The Last Shot Got Him performed on, what else, a 1934 Gibson. If you are attending the ArtsMarket in Durham, NC, see Scott showcase the concert on November 4. Contact Susan Lounsbury at Loyd Artists for informaiton about the concert and bookings.

Check out the music!

A cut from the interview with Scott Ainslie featured in BluesBlast magazine. (Scroll to the bottom of the page to read the full interview.) The album – with just Ainslie on guitar (plus a touch of banjo) and vocals – is like a love letter to another glorious time, a time when legends like Robert Johnson, the Rev. Gary Davis and Mississippi John Hurt were still alive and in their prime. Ainslie’s sixth solo offering seemed to strike a responsive chord with lovers of authentic acoustic blues far and wide.

From our sampling of early reviews:

Scott Ainslie is a country bluesman of the highest order.

Brian Owens, Metronome Magazine

Four out of Five Stars: [This CD] is a must-have for fans of old-school blues.
– Jeffery Sisk, Pittsburgh In Tune

Ainslie is a well-respected performer and this album will only deepen the groove he has established as one of the finest blues guitarists and singers in the country – The Rutland Herald, Rutland VT

[The Last Shot Got Him] is a brilliantly conceived ‘concept album’ . Sheryl and Don Crow, The Nashville Blues Society

Ainslie offers a three-hour arts integration workshop for teachers involving Blues & The Science of Sound. This workshop begins with call & response singing and outlines significant African retentions (parts of African culture and music) that are still operating in American music today. Ainslie introduces the homemade one-string instruments common across the South (cigar box guitars/Diddley Bows) and together with the teachers experiments with the physics and science behind musical stringed instruments. By working with simple tuning forks, the group will zero in on how vibrations, sound waves, sound transfer and the mechanics of human hearing work. At the end of the workshop, if there is interest and time, Ainslie often does some group Blues lyric writing with the teachers, essentially demonstrating how this work can be done successfully with students of all ages, down to 2nd grade.

Concert Offerings

Scott Ainslie is known for his ability to sing, play and speak the Blues into life. Concerts filled with stories as well as song from the lives of the traditional players, the culture of the songs and the history that brought about the music. Scott performs concerts of traditional Blues and some Blues-inspired originals. He also offers two multi-media concerts featuring music, story and his original photography as well as offering numerous educational opportunitites.

Delta Blues Pilgrimage concerts are available with projections of original photography from Ainslie’s Delta Blues Pilgrimage collection. These multi-media concerts can be tailored for public general audience Blues concerts and educational concerts with older youth. Give your audience a visual experience of Blues history with Scott's moving original prints.

One Hundred Years at the Crossroads, Dedicated to the Work of Robert Johnson: In this special solo show, singer and multi-instrumentalist Scott Ainslie explores the first Blues music and the times that gave birth to it, with soaring acoustic performances of the songs that electrified Robert Johnson's contemporaries and went on to make music history. Robert Johnson scholar and author of a groundbreaking book on the legendary Bluesman, Ainslie celebrates Johnson's influence on 20th and 21st century music as he takes the audience along Johnson's own path in history and song.

“Performed before a near-capacity audience Saturday night at the Carnegie Lecture Hall, Ainslie's music touched on everyone from Piedmont blues legend John Jackson and Delta bluesman David "Honeyboy" Edwards to the great Robert Johnson.”–Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pre-concert talks and presentations, some with slide images, are an option frequently taken by presenters who want a separate pre-concert talk/illustrative tour of the history and musical territory in advance of a scheduled concert, whether a teaching concert or a regular performance.

Teaching Performance Programs

Peppered with humor and stories, Ainslie's teaching concerts help students and teachers learn to listen for the musical building blocks that continue to influence the music they hear all around them today - contemporary Rock, Bluegrass, Country, Gospel, Metal, R & B, and Hip-Hop. Question and answer periods are welcome at the end of each performance.

Call & Response: African and American Musical Traditions - In a program of spoken words and live musical performances, diverse audiences of all ages will sing and clap with Scott Ainslie through a survey of the hidden history and the dynamic interplay of more than a century of American and African musical traditions.

Across the Color Line: The African South - In this varied program featuring the calabash gourd banjo, diddley bow, and guitar, Ainslie tours the music of the American South where European and African musical traditions cross-pollinated to make the powerful hybrids that have long dominated popular music in our nation and, subsequently, the world. Suitable for all ages, this is a tour-de-force in Southern musical traditions that exposes their roots from the Scots-Irish fiddle tunes of the Appalachians to the musical traditions of West Africa.

Before Rock ‘n’ Roll - Where did our music of today come from? This program will help teachers and students explore the music that came before today's Rock 'n' Roll. With interactive call & response singing and syncopated hand clapping, Ainslie leads a fast-moving tour of early spirituals, work songs, East Coast Ragtime, and Delta Blues. Playing fretless gourd banjo, one-string diddley bow, acoustic and slide guitars, he encourages guided, appropriate participation and makes the learning fun.

Workshops

Scott Ainslie offers a wide range of workshop for teachers, students and master classes for guitar players of all levels and full weeks of instruction for music camps.