Floyd musician to kick off Milepost Music Series
As a student at Washington & Lee University (as he says, "the youngest freshman with the longest hair, on scholarship"), Ainslie took up with Geology professor, Odell McGuire. Together, they began visiting traditional Old-Time musicians in West Virginia, southwest Virginia, and North Carolina.
Scott Ainslie, a new Floyd resident, will present the inaugural concert of the 2026 Milepost Music series at Mabry Mill, Milepost 176.1 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Sunday, June 7, from 2-4 p.m.
Ainslie is widely regarded as an authority on acoustic Blues, playing and singing Piedmont and Delta Blues, and has a long history of presenting programs in educational settings on the African roots of American music.
But most audiences don't know he's a fine Old-Time fiddler, too.
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Working with elders on both sides of the color line, Ainslie learned traditional music in the traditional way, sitting with senior musicians and learning in their homes from their hands.
As a student at Washington & Lee University (as he says, "the youngest freshman with the longest hair, on scholarship"), Ainslie took up with Geology professor, Odell McGuire. Together, they began visiting traditional Old-Time musicians in West Virginia, southwest Virginia, and North Carolina.
Iconic traditional musicians like Albert Hash, Tommy Jarrell, Kyle Creed, as well as the Hammons family of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, became important touchstones as Ainslie learned their fiddle, banjo, and singing styles.
Ainslie toured Ireland during the Bicentennial year, performing concerts for the United States Information Service, joined the Fly by Night String Band in New York City, and was in the original cast of Harry Chapin and Tom Key's "Cotton Patch Gospel" which ran for eight months in the Broadway district at the Lambs Club Theater in 1981-82.
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In the mid-late 1980s, Ainslie worked in North Carolina's prestigious Visiting Artist Program with two-year residencies in Ahoskie and Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he sought out elder traditional Blues and Gospel musicians, befriending them and learning music.
"I had been visiting Mr. George Higgs of Speed, North Carolina, for a couple years," Ainslie said. "He was a fine Piedmont Blues harmonica player, guitarist, and singer.
"I stopped by his house one afternoon. It was summer and hot as can be. I brought my guitar into the house as I always did, and Mr. Higgs offered me a Coke. We sat at the kitchen table and talked for about two hours – comparing the happenings in our families, catching up on work–and at the end of that time, I had to go. We parted on his porch. I picked up my guitar by the door and walked toward the car.
"And I thought to myself: we made it! We hadn't played a note!
"Across all the barriers that are said to separate people – race, educational background, economic class – we had gone from being musical friends to being friends.
"George Higgs was born into the Jim Crow south in eastern North Carolina in 1930. He came up hard working first in the fields, and then as a house carpenter. He was as fine a person as he was a musician.
"It is with him, and other men and a few women like him – my elders in both these traditions – that I play. My musical grandparents, now long gone, accompany me to the stage."
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The author of "Robert Johnson/At The Crossroads" (Hal Leonard, 1992) – a book of transcriptions and fully annotated lyrics of the recorded work of the now famous Mississippi Delta Blues musician – and video instructor for Robert Johnson's Guitar Techniques (Hal Leonard, 1997), Ainslie brings nearly a half-century of performance experience to the stage.
On Sunday, June 7, at Mabry Mill near Meadows of Dan on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Ainslie will be showcasing the senior musicians and Southern music that changed his life.
"I am not the man I was born to be," Ainslie says. "What we love changes us, and the music and the people who gave it to me are as deeply loved as anything you can imagine."
Sponsored by the Blue Ridge Music Center and the National Park Service, the Milepost Music series features free, traditional acoustic performances on the first and third Sundays of the month throughout the summer.
Other scheduled performers in this year's series includes:
- June 21: Jesse Smathers
- July 5: Jared Boyd and Friends
- July 19: Ashlee Watkins & Andrew Small
- Aug. 2: Jason Phillips & Friends
- Aug. 16: Slate Mountain Ramblers
- Sept. 6: Lovely Mountaineers
- Sept. 20: Eulalie
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