Aaron Till profile picture

Aaron Till

(Composer Max Reger, responding to a critic.) I'm sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have y

About Me

In 1995 I abandoned a gloriously burgeoning career in the field of custodial arts to seek my fortune as an itinerant fiddler/guitarist in Nashville, Tennessee. Soon I discovered that the stories I'd always heard about struggling in Nashville were not exaggerated; people really do lose their wives/girlfriends and sleep in their cars and play songs for drunks and drink until their livers sue for separate maintenence...Of course, this is what makes the jukebox play. But I've also been lucky enough to play for the likes of Jerry Reed, Tanya Tucker, Mark Chesnutt, Joe Diffie, Pam Tillis, J.D.Crowe, Jim & Jesse, James Monroe, Jim Lauderdale, Wade Hayes, Mel McDaniel, and several others. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to keep a job! :-) Bluegrass and swing fiddling and fingerstyle guitar are great passions of mine. I also like to sing whatever I can remember all the words to, which can be a challenge for me. I joke and tell people that fiddling will ruin their lives, but that little instrument has taken me all over the world and allowed me to see places I might otherwise never have seen. I've gotten to play at the London Palladium, the Grand Ole Opry, the White House (with the Nashville Bluegrass Band) and as a strolling violinist at a French restaurant in Ellicott City, Maryland during a Bastille Day celebration. One year I spent six hours riding on a hay wagon at a fall festival, playing for little kids and their parents...mostly "Old McDonald Had A Farm." :-) I played at a barbecue for Col. Oliver North when I was 17, and in 2001 I played with Mark Chesnutt at the Texas Inaugural Ball in Washington,D.C. Please don't hold that against me; the bar was free, they needed a band, I needed the money, the bar was free, the music was loud enough to drown out most of the conversation, plenty of gorgeous women, the people there were generally friendly and well groomed. And did I mention the bar was free?


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My Interests

Music, life, people, history, politics, literature, philosophy, fiddles, single-malt Scotch.

I'd like to meet:

Living or dead? Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Uncle Dave Macon, Svend Asmussen, Bob Wills....perhaps some wealthy and eccentric patron of the arts seeking to contribute substantially to the economic welfare of a struggling-yet-promising fiddler. :-)

Music:

Stephane Grappelli, Django Reinhardt, Svend Asmussen, Stuff Smith, Eddie South, Joe Venuti, Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Benny Martin, Buddy Spicher, Vassar Clements, Bobby Hicks, George Jones, Ray Price, Faron Young, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Nathan Milstein, Bach, Wynonie Harris, Tower Of Power, The Temptations, Van Halen, Uncle Dave Macon, Tommy Jackson, Stevie Wonder, T-Bone Walker, Louis Armstrong, Brian Setzer, Spade Cooley, Speedy West, Jimmy Bryant, Scotty Stoneman, Seldom Scene, Sam Cooke, Sons Of The Pioneers, Roy Acuff, Roger Miller, Riders In The Sky, Ray Charles, Beatles, Osborne Brothers, Jim & Jesse, New Grass Revival, Nat King Cole, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and the Comets, Bob Wills, Bo Diddley, Buck Owens, Merle Travis, Louis Prima, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Asleep At The Wheel, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Stuart Duncan, Carl Perkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Mark O'Connor, Darol Anger, the Doobie Brothers, Fats Waller, Woody Paul, Lester Young, the Louvin Brothers, Maynard Ferguson, Vassar Clements, Glenn Miller, Hank Snow, Buddy Spicher, Jackie Wilson, Jelly Roll Morton, Jim Eanes, Don Reno, Red Smiley, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix, Harry Lookofsky, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Johnny Bush, Johnny Paycheck, Johnny Cash, James Taylor, Harry Chapin, James Brown, Ozzy Osbourne, Jean-luc Ponty, Jelly Roll Morton, Jerry Reed, Jimmy Martin, Jimmie Rodgers, John Frigo, the Johnny Burnette Trio, Johnny Gimble, Randy Howard, Larry Franklin, Lonnie Johnson, Lesley Gore, Dr. Lew Childre, Little Jimmy Dickens, Louis Jordan, The Delta Rhythm Boys, Take 6, Mac Wiseman, The Mills Brothers, The Marshall Tucker Band, Paul McCartney, Red Foley, Ricky Nelson, Tony Rice, the Four Tops, Wynn Stewart, Woody Herman, Willie Nelson.......and my mother wonders why I'm still single! :-)

Movies:

In no particular order (looking at my DVD collection): North By Northwest, The Shawshank Redemption, Harvey, The Inspector General, Wonder Man, It's A Wonderful Life, Rope, Lord Of The Rings (1-3), The Matrix, Murphy's Romance, Notting Hill, Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, The Marx Brothers (all of theirs), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, His Girl Friday, Smokey & The Bandit, Isaac Stern-From Mao To Mozart, The Red Violin, Amadeus, Going My Way, High Society, Master And Commander, Judge Priest, Tank, Hooper.

Television:

M*A*S*H, Barney Miller....these are two I'll watch anytime I run across them. Other than that, I watch movies and the news. Exciting, yes? :-) All the time I used to spend watching TV I now spend online.

Books:

Too many to list, but here are some good ones I keep coming back to: "Homegrown Democrat"-Garrison Keillor, "American Musicians"-Whitney Balliett, The World Almanac (any year), several books by Will Rogers, Mark Twain ("The Bible According To Mark Twain" is a favorite) Roy Blount Jr., Lewis Grizzard, Bill Bryson, the Foxfire books, "The Best" & "The Best; Encore"-Peter Passel/Leonard Ross, "The Big Picture"- A. Whitney Brown, several good biographies & autobiographies.

Heroes:

Meaning "people I wish to be more like"...My mom, my dad, both of my grandfathers, Elwood P. Dowd, Will Rogers, Vassar Clements, Jesus Christ.