The Glory-Beaming Banjo

A s we did last year, here is a holiday gift guide for the banjo nerd in your life. Here are five glorious ideas for you last minute shoppers.

O  Brother, Where Art Thou? came out 15 years ago this month. My preoccupation with the soundtrack eventually led me to playing the banjo and old-time music.

F or a while it seems my fiddling has been stuck. The plateau has become a rut. The last time I talked about this I was trying to learn some "Ohio repertoire" tunes by ear. That has been a hard road to travel as the distance between what I hear and what I play still seems too expansive. Instead I've been playing the same handful of tunes over and over and over in the attempt to master them. But my limited playlist started to feel like a jail cell. There's no way out but to play through it. And that's what I'm doing.