Scott Ashworth - Love Ain't Around Anymore

[Steven Hicken Jr.]

The stars truly aligned on this one.

Manchester born and Scotland based, Scott Ashworth, got in touch late last year to overdub some steel on a song of his. This was a last minute call to finish his album as I'd already played on a few of his songs over a couple of years of production.

The next morning, I was prepping the session when a teaser video popped up on my Facebook feed from a different song of his. I played along to it for fun and instantly thought it would be perfect for steel. I kindly asked Scott if he'd considered having steel on it and if I could have a go.

Luckily for me, it turned out that him and his producer Barry Frame had left the solo space empty and they said I could play steel on the track. The song in question turned out to be "Love Ain't Around Anymore".

I used a little inspiration from one of my heroes, Lloyd Green for this song. Scott said I could play fills on the track but instead, I decided to take Lloyd's approach of his performance on Alan Jackson's "Remember When". Instead of cluttering the lyrics with steel, I decided to take just one big solo to let the steel shine and also the song itself (although a bonus finish I included also made the cut).

After bouncing over my steel, Scott said someone was cutting onions at the desk and to make it soar even more, Barry added a bit of extra reverb. This is definitely up there at the top of my favourite solos that I've played, and it came out of the pure luck of circumstance.

Hope you like it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpHkq6ICc1E

[Lee Baucum]

Hope you like it!

I do!

Nice work.

~ Lee

[Craig Stock]

Really nice Steven, really nice!

[Steven Hicken Jr.]

Thanks for the kind words!