The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Every year, I start out the same way. Here are a list of goals. And when December comes, I look back on how it all went off the rails. With a mental cocktail mix of imposter syndrome and an inferiority complex, I've developed an ethos of constant improvement when it comes to playing old-time music. However, as a working stiff and a family man, I've come to accept the ebbs and flows of available bandwidth to focus on the banjo and fiddle.  Last year, was a down year. So naturally, I want to do better this year. However, I also want to be realistic. In the past, I've set somewhat rigid goals, and when I miss my target, I feel disappointed in myself. With the Super Bowl just around the corner, perhaps a football metaphor is in order. While the endzone never moves, sometimes a team winds up getting farther away from the goal line, rather than moving closer. Luckily, there is more than one way to score points. Of course, sometimes you might have to punt.  With that garbled messa...

Despite the proliferation of local music festivals, my banjo and fiddle playing time always seems to drop off during the summer. Perhaps it's having my son around all the time during the break or just the general glut of increased family activities, but I barely played music at all from May to July, and that includes attending a festival last month .  However, as August is coming to an end and as school has started back up, this month's tally exceeds my playing time for the last three months combined. Hopefully, that trend will continue as autumn approaches.  I'm happy to report that I did get to attend the Raccoon County Music Festival earlier this month in Burton, Ohio. Long-time readers likely know that this annual festival is one of my favorite events of the year. The Century Village is just a great place to host various pickup jams, as well as stage performances and workshops.  This year's event had to battle some serious thunderstorms in the area, but they were a...

Before I fell in the love with the banjo, I was a book lover. I mean, I still am. But when I was in college, I took so many literature classes for fun that I amassed enough credits to earn a dual degree in English, along with my bachelor's in journalism.  I was raised in a house of reader parents. My mom is the kind of woman who checks out a stack of books at a time from the library. My dad also reads constantly, usually history or mystery, but at a much slower rate. My love of books developed slowly. My appetite for reading was sparked when I began collecting comic books in the early 1990s, then graduated to graphic novels, then my love for Star Wars led me to the Expanded Universe novels, and finally I began to read the almighty ...  LITERATURE!   From high school onward, I have never not been in the middle of some book. Naturally, when I became interested in the banjo, I not only began amassing a large collection of associated music, but I also started compiling a stac...

This is not a new book, but I finally read it during this pandemic. Originally published in 2010 by the University of Illinois Press , Ray Allen's Gone to the Country: The New Lost City Ramblers & The Folk Music Revival is a biography that looks at the history of the band and its impact on the folk revival period and continuing legacy through an academic lens. Allen paints a portrait of a band that rode the wave of the commercial folk revival of the 1950s and '60s and weathered the storms of scant financial gains, public perception and personal conflicts to leave a lasting legacy that has influenced legions of old-time musicians since their inception in 1958. John Cohen, Tom Paley and Mike Seeger — the original lineup of the band — first played together on a radio show in Washington, D.C., in May 1958. After that performance, Cohen took the initiative and spoke to Folkways Records founder Moe Asch about making a recording and then to Izzy Young of the Folklore Center...

"You can learn a lot about America through folk music. It is not the music of any one group. You don't have to be a farmer or mountaineer to play it or like it." — John Burke In the world of clawhammer banjo instructional books, there are a few that have reached the level of collectors' item. There's the first edition of Pete Seeger's How to Play the 5-String Banjo and Art Rosenbaum's original Old-Time Mountain Banjo , but none are quite as sought after as the one written by John Burke. First published in 1968 by Amsco Music Publishing Co., John Burke's Book of Old-Time Fiddle Tunes for Banjo has become something of a legend among old-time pickers. It was one of the first banjo instructional books to focus on the styles of specific players, in particular Wade Ward, Hobart Smith and Kyle Creed. Burke wrote the book while still in college. Banjo tablature had not yet become standardized. The notation is handwritten and leans toward the melodic ...

Ever since I started playing the banjo in 2008, I have heard about Dwight Diller . He is renowned as a musician, teacher and historian of West Virginia music and culture.  As a musician, Diller is known for his heavy rhythmic drive. As a teacher, his weeklong instructional camps promote full immersion into the culture and music of West Virginia. As a historian, he has documented the legendary Hammons family of Pocahontas County, West Virginia. Diller has been the subject of many discussions on the online forum Banjo Hangout , and it was through this website that I met Lew Stern and learned of his newly released biography, Dwight Diller: West Virginia Mountain Musician. Released in April by independent publisher McFarland , the book is 216 pages and will run you $35. Stern started playing the banjo in the 1960s when he got “swept up in the enthusiasm of the folk revival.” He embraced Pete Seeger’s music and bought a long-neck banjo. He later “came under the spell” of Earl S...

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.

Aspiring banjo players are often told to go learn from the masters. One such master has made that task a little easier with the release of a new book of tunes . Walt Koken's upcoming release is a transcription of the tunes on last year's " Sittin' in the Catbird's Seat ," his first solo album in 15 years. Koken, of course, is well known in old-time music circles as a former member of the Highwoods Stringband , a current Orpheus Supertone , and co-conspirator of the " Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes ." "Sittin' in the Catbird's Seat" features original and old-time tunes and songs played in clawhammer and three-finger banjo styles. Sources include Dock Boggs, Hobart Smith, Mississippi John Hurt, Frank Hutchison, French Carpenter, and Scott Joplin. The companion book is 48 pages long and printed in an oversized, easy-to-read format with spiral binding so that you can lay the book flat. The book is suitable fo...

Just so you don't think I've gone down the rabbit hole chasing old-time fiddle , I've been devising ways to keep myself playing the banjo. It's true that the fiddle has taken up most of my music playing time so far this year, but I'm going to try something new — or rather old — to broaden my banjo horizons. While old-time string band music remains my passion, I've always been drawn to the low-tuned minstrel style of the 19th century. I can hear its influence on old-time musicians such as Dan Gellert . The early stroke-style of banjo during this period is said to be the precursor to the clawhammer style that I play. It only seems natural for me to take another step backward in time to explore this technique and see if I can add some tricks to my banjo bag. Tim Twiss , the preeminent master and proponent of stroke-style banjo, recently published a book on the subject, appropriately titled, "Early Banjo." The book is aimed at beginners and pre...

The G.A.R. Hall in Peninsula, Ohio, has been hosting a series of lectures related to the Civil War in recognition of the 150th anniversary of what southerners still call "the war of northern aggression." With "Dixie" being the song of the Confederates during the war and the song's ties to Ohio, it was fitting that last night's lecture should focus on Howard and Judy Sacks' 2003 book Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem,  published by the University of Illinois Press . The Sackses are both affiliated with Kenyon College , in Gambier, Ohio, and residents of Mount Vernon, Ohio, the town where Daniel Decatur Emmett was born and is buried. Emmett was a famous blackface minstrel of the mid-1800s and is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame for such  compositions  as "Turkey in the Straw," "The Boatman's Dance," "Old Dan Tucker" and of course "Dixie." The latter song...

On Feb. 25, a new resource for old-time enthusiasts was released. The Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes , transcribed and annotated by Clare Milliner and Walt Koken, is an 888-page book that contains 1,404 tunes in musical engravings, arranged alphabetically. The book also includes a main index of the tunes arranged by title, with references to source recordings and cross references to similar tunes and title; a tuning index arranged by fiddle tunings; a key index; and an artist index arranged by fiddler, showing the tunes included by that artist. Additionally, the book features an artist profiles section with brief biographies of the 347 fiddlers and bands represented in the collection. A majority of the fiddlers were born before 1900. Finally, a comments section contains further information about the tunes and fiddlers. The Milliner-Koken Collection is oversize format and cloth hardbound, which lies flat for easy reading. The ...