Acoustic Live:Ainslie Issue
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FEBRUARY 2004 AAccoouussttiicc VOLUME 5 ISSUE 9 IN NEW YORKand BeyondCITY PERFORMANCE LISTINGS AND FEATURES ON ACOUSTICLive! ARTISTS The Compleat Folksinger Scott Ainslie Consummate: It’s mid-November, 2003, and I’m sitting in the darkened Starlight Guitarist Room of Kutscher’s Hotel & Resort. We’re listening to blues singer Scott Ainslie preface a performance of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroad Singer Blues.” He’s one of the featured main showcase performers at Writer the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance Conference. In the mid- dle of the brightly lit, circular stage, he gives us the facts Historian behind this classic blues song. For the first time, I learn of Activist the after-dark curfew for black men that existed in the deep South in Johnson’s day. A black man caught out on the high- way after dark risked death at the hands of the Ku Klux by Klan or the local sheriff. As the bottleneck glides over the Richard Cuccaro strings of Ainslie’s 1931 National Steel guitar, I can envision Johnson standing on a dirt road, guitar case in hand, with the sun setting. I’m reading Johnson’s mind with grim clarity as Scott sings: “I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees / Asked the lord above for mercy, say boy, if you please / The sun’s goin’ down, That sun’s gonna catch me here / Lord I’m standin’ at the crossroads, I believe I’m sinkin’ down.” There’s something about Scott Ainslie that spurs a desire to sit down and share a beer or two. Maybe it’s the way his face lights up when he’s telling you about the dusty delta history behind a blues ballad. Perhaps it’s the powerful baritone that holds each song aloft like the crown jewel he believes it to be. Could be the impres- sive slide guitar technique honed from years of traveling around the country, learning from the masters. The beard and sideburns have gone gray, but there’s a gold earring in his right ear. While he’s a master of the blues idiom, he also covers songs by Sam Cooke and Van Morrison. Aside from his technical virtuosity, a fire for human rights burns inside of him. His left-of-cen- ter political orientation bleeds into his conversation both on and off stage. After the concert, I spoke to Scott briefly, to secure an interview for Acoustic Live. He agreed. In early January, we set a time for a conversation. At the appointed time, my phone rang, and, after exchang- ing greetings, I asked him how old he is. He said “52.” Given his musical tastes and societal perspective, I expected him to be older. I said that I anticipated a higher number. He laughed, photo: Richard Cuccaro www.acousticlive.com responding, “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.” No doubt “Piedmont,” played in North Carolina and below, in the there’s been a lot of blacktop and white lines that have Southeastern states. He’d find out later, about the “Delta” passed beneath his wheels. My mouth watered for that blues style. beer. I was eager to know about the trajectory of his life. I He started playing on borrowed guitars the rest of the sum- asked about his early years and the story unfolded. mer, before getting his own. The liner notes of his first CD, Early Upheavals Jealous of the Moon, read like a memoir of a lover’s tryst: “We Scott was born in Rochester, New York. After spending part had a big front yard… when my brother was outside play- of his first ten years there and part in northern New ing football, I used to sneak upstairs to his room to play his Jersey, his parents moved to Virginia in 1960. He was guitar. On the edge of his bed, with the late afternoon sun eleven when John Kennedy was assassinated, and stood pouring in onto the carpet around my feet, I’d guiltily fin- watching in Washington, D.C. as the funeral procession ger her strings and listen as she whispered under the made its way down the esplanade. He said, “I watched his sounds of the game outside.” body roll down a very, very quiet, very, very packed When he got to college -- Washington & Leeds in Constitution Avenue. The quiet of a crowd that size is more Lexington, Virginia -- he met a geology professor named awesome than the applause that they would make… It was Odell McGuire. Odell was interested in old-time music and deafeningly quiet. I also got to go to the Poor People’s learning to play banjo and decided to visit old musicians March on Washington and watch a local live TV feed of and try to learn from them. Rather than go off by himself, Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. I grew up he extended an invitation and Scott jumped at it. going to the Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. I grew up Together, on weekends, they visited the aged members of with an eye on politics. ” the Hammons family in West Virginia and Tommy Jarrel A Gravedigger’s Seduction in North Carolina. Jarrel and the musicians of the ‘I watched his Hammons family were in their 70’s and 80’s. Word was cir- By his early teens, Scott still hadn’t body culating that Library of Congress researchers were coming taken up the guitar. His brother roll down a to record the music of Jarrel and the Hammons, and even- had. Scott felt that “He’d gotten to very, very tually, they did. Although the records became available in that territory before I had quiet, the mid-1970’s for those interested in learning the music, and sibling rivalry very, very Scott felt blessed to have visited them and learn it first- being what it was, packed hand. I remember hearing seminal folk artists at outdoor Constitution festivals in the early 70s’. Something happens on a cellular Avenue ’ level when the sound of a banjo or fiddle played by an early master reaches my ears. A sense of connection with a pri- mal source takes hold, especially when the sound is filtered through a leafy glade. I can only imagine that this effect was heightened by visiting the source and learning the music there, on the porches and in the parlors. Scott said, “I learned this music from their hands, and it made a dif- ference to me.” Sitting in the company of these legendary practitioners made their music live and breathe. Scott inhaled it and it became part of who he is. Scott played fiddle, guitar and banjo in college. In the fall of his sophomore year, he built a banjo and in his junior photo: Richard Cuccaro maybe I shouldn’t pursue that.” In 1967, when he was fif- year, he bought a fiddle. During the week, he was compos- teen, that changed abruptly. He went to a Mike Seeger con- ing, analyzing and performing atonal music as part of his cert to further his curiosity about folk music. In the middle Music Theory and Composition degree. In addition, he’d of the concert, a black gravedigger named John Jackson pick up the guitar and emulate the recorded work of was introduced to play three songs. Jackson walked Mississippi John Hurt. On weekends he’d accompany onstage in denim overalls and sat down to play. He’d never Odell to West Virginia and North Carolina. He said, “It was heard a roots-style guitarist. Scott had been expecting kind of a schizophrenic world. Maybe bipolar would be a something in between the strumming styles of Dylan and more apt expression.” Simon and Garfunkel. What poured forth was an alternat- Describing the pull of the guitar during those weekend ing bass line plucked with Jackson’s thumb underneath runs, he remembered, “I usually pulled out the guitar sweet-sounding, rollicking treble notes played with his when the rest of the fiddle and banjo players collapsed. forefingers. Scott was stunned with wonder, thinking Then I would grab a guitar and play into the wee hours of “What kind of guitar playing is that?” He was getting his the morning as people fell off to sleep.” He recalled that, first taste of the ragtime fingerpicking style called after graduating: “I ran into John Jackson four or five years after I had seen him again at a fiddler’s convention.” another human being shows up, they’ll go, ‘Oh yeah, we’re He says, “It was a great piece of timing. John and I went in the same tribe.’” on to become friends for almost 30 years before he passed Asked about his performance philosophy, he states: “This away. He was a dear man.” is not about self-expression… It’s only about self-expres- In late 1979, early 1980, Scott was living in New York and sion to the extent that you can express the community was cast in an original production of the Broadway show around you.” His performance goal in a nutshell : “What “Cotton Patch Gospel,” a bluegrass retelling of the New do we have to do here, to make this place better?” Testament. This proved to be a turning point in his devel- Songwriter and Activist opment as a singer. Harry Chapin wrote about 15 or 16 Scott’s talents as a singer and songwriter deserve a close songs for the show. His brother Tom Chapin, a singer/song- look. The title track of his first CD Jealous of the Moon is one writer known for his children’s shows, was the musical of the finest love songs (written for the woman who is now director.