Steeped in traditional music from both sides of the color line, Scott Ainslie is a renowned acoustic blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He learned southern old-time ballads, banjo and fiddle from senior musicians in North Carolina and West Virginia and blues from his black elders in North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi: his roots are deep.

Ainslie has spent more than 30 years looking for the right story, the right set of facts, the right piece of history, to introduce a song. He offers a personality, a moment in history, a vignette to entice you into a song and to give that song a chance to wake and breathe among us like a living thing.