The Glory-Beaming Banjo

This month sure has changed the outlook on my yearly goals for banjo and fiddle. While I'm able to keep up my playing at home, getting out to play with others this year has been interrupted. I only made it to one old-time session and one festival before Ohio was ordered to stay at home because of the coronavirus pandemic. Recent estimates show that we'll likely be asked to continue social distancing until May. That means no playing with others for at least another month, and it wouldn't surprise me if that lasted longer. The pandemic has changed my music-making activities in other ways too. Since I'm now working from home, I'm not taking my usual lunch break to play fiddle in the park. Instead, my playing time is typically relegated until the evenings, when everyone else has gone to bed, or other spare moments. The good news is that the weather is starting to warm up, and I've gotten to play outside on my porch a couple times in the last couple weeks. ...

Welcome to the new decade. As is usually the case, we start the year off with a statement of goals and purpose to carry us through to December. Last year ended pretty strong, finding success in learning some old chestnuts on fiddle and singing with the banjo. I wanted to continue that theme for 2020, so my theme for this year is "Jam Favorites" on fiddle and "John Songs" on banjo. Once again I'm hoping to increase my overall playing time. While I'm not sure how much more practice time I can wring out of my schedule, I'm hoping to reach those goals by finding a little more time to play with others, whether at local festivals, public old-time sessions or more intimate musical gatherings. A big goal of mine is to play my banjo more in a group setting, as I'm worried my jam skills are withering away with so much focus on the fiddle. A general goal is to record myself more often. This was a goal I set last year, but only managed to do once . To pu...