Aaron Till

I was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and grew up near Baltimore, Maryland. When I was little, one of my favorite things to do was to listen to my mom & dad's old records from the 50's and 60's...great old rock & roll. :-) My dad got me a guitar when I was 11, and from then on that was pretty much all I wanted to do. I started figuring out the licks on all the old blues and rockabilly records I had. Somewhere along the way I started to get interested in country music, and then I heard bluegrass for the first time through a friend in high school, and I was absolutely sold. It had never occurred to my 14-year-old self that such a full and rhythmic sound could be achieved with no drums and without plugging anything in. I made it my new mission in life to learn as much as I could about that music, and my unfailingly supportive parents, Butch and Lauralee Till, made sure I had the tools to work with. I started learning mandolin, banjo, dobro and fiddle. The fiddle was definitely the hardest one for me at the beginning, but that must have been why I stuck with it, because once I felt myself making some real progress it became a real addiction. :-) It didn't take me long to figure out that Maryland/Virginia/Pennsylvania at that time was just about the best possible place to learn to play bluegrass, and by 16 I had made many wonderful friends in the local bluegrass community. I started getting calls to play in bands at bluegrass festivals and venues around Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Delaware. After two years living and playing in Wheeling, West Virginia, performing occasionally on the WWVA Jamboree, I moved with a fiancee to Nashville in the summer of 1995. I worked a day job at Opryland and ventured out at night to places like the Station Inn, where I could hear world-class musicians like Randy Howard and Stuart Duncan. I found such wonderful new inspiration in the next-level skills of the players I met in this new town, and I tried to absorb as much knowledge as my head could hold. After the slow period most of us go through when we're new to Nashville, I began to get calls to go on the road, and in 1998 I landed a job with Mark Chesnutt, whom I worked for off and on until 2006. During my 13 years in Nashville, I've had the privilege to perform and/or record with Jerry Reed, Tanya Tucker, Mel McDaniel, Pam Tillis, Gail Davies, Dave Evans, Joe Diffie, J.D.Crowe, Vassar Clements, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, Ralph Stanley, Ernie Ashworth, the Nashville Bluegrass Band, Vince Gill, Sonya Isaacs, Matthew Ryan, Tom T. Hall, Annie Sellick, Pat Burgeson, Tommy Emmanuel, Jon Jorgenson, Wade Hayes, Richard Smith, Randy Kohrs, Jim Lauderdale, and several others. I've been blessed to be a part of several fine projects, such as Gail Davies' "The Songwriter Sessions.".....Disney's "O Mickey Where Art Thou" with Sonya Isaacs.....A Mel Bay DVD showcasing award-winning guitarist Richard Smith.....A gospel-bluegrass album by Rual Yarbrough featuring live twin-fiddling with the late Vassar Clements.....Mark Chesnutt's album, "Heard It In A Love Song".....Jim Lauderdale's Grammy-Award-winning album "The Bluegrass Diaries." * * * I've always had a great love for old jazz and swing music, and in 2004 I recorded "Out Of Nowhere," a duet album with my very good friend Richard Smith, a highly-acclaimed guitarist from England. Richard's specialty is fingerstyle guitar a la Chet Atkins/Jerry Reed, but he's really a master of many styles, able to leap from Tony Rice through Django, Mozart, Scott Joplin and John Phillip Sousa in a single bound. In a city overrun with outstanding guitarists, Richard truly stands out as one of the finest, with the most astounding technique and the most massive and diverse repertoire I've ever seen! One of our tracks, "On The Sunny Side Of The Street," is posted on this page....To hear a little more of my work, check out the pages of Matt Raum and Tabea Anderfuhren.

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Special thanks to Kasey for this clip of Aaron performing the first song he ever learned, exactly as he heard it on the original 78 rpm record. (Note: Before attempting to play the video clips, remember to turn off the music player.) A clip of Aaron, five years (and 110 pounds!) ago, jamming onstage with Tommy Emmanuel and Eddie Pennington at the 2003 Chet Atkins Appreciation Society convention in Nashville. With Raul Malo and his band at Robert's Western World, November, 2007. "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down." With the Hot Club Of Nashville....Richard Smith and Pat Bergeson, guitars, Dan Immel, bass, Tommy Emmanuel, snare drum. Rietberg, Germany, August 2006. Jim Lauderdale, 2007 - "This Is The Last Time I'm Ever Gonna Hurt."