The Glory-Beaming Banjo

This past weekend brought sad news for the old-time music community. We lost Mac Benford on Saturday and Clyde Davenport on Sunday. I first saw a post on Facebook that Davenport, 98, seemed to be on his deathbed, so it was a bit of shock to learn later that day that Benford, 79, had died. Benford, of course, was the banjo player in the Highwoods Stringband. According to his website , Benford began playing banjo in 1960, when he was a student at Williams College. He sought out living masters of the time to learn from, including Wade Ward, Kyle Creed, Tom Ashley and Roscoe Holcomb. Benford moved from the East Coast to California’s Bay Area in 1967 and began his professional performing career with Dr. Humbead’s New Tranquility Stringband and Medicine Show, which contributed a version of "Dubuque" on the 1985 compilation Young Fogies . The band specialized in recreating the old-time music found on 78-rpm records from the 1920s. The band played all up and down the West Coast...

This year marks the fifth annual Lake Erie Folk Festival, presented Feb. 21-22 at the Shore Cultural Centre, a former high school that has been transformed into an innovative arts center in Euclid, Ohio. With the festival a little more than a week away, this seemed like the perfect time to provide a sneak peak at the event. Located within the heart of the Lake Erie snowbelt, winter may seem like an odd time to host a music festival. But not to Laura Lewis, the Artistic Director for the Lake Erie Folk Festival (LEFF), who cited some precedent when asked why this was a good time for such an event. “I asked the same question about the Kent State Folk Festival when I first started coming to the area in 1991,” Lewis said. “I'm from Virginia where snow brings everything to a halt. But the Kent State Folk Festival happened regardless of the snow and cold, and provided a welcomed break from hibernation for the music community.” Considering that the Kent State Folk Festival ...

There are moments when watching Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves perform that you'll be grooving to the music, and then all of a sudden you stop. No warning. Your foot stops tapping. Your head stops bobbing. Your mouth stops ... being closed. These are the moments when the duo leaves you slackjawed by their brilliance and mastery of the five-string fiddle and five-string banjo. I experienced several of these moments last night at the historic G.A.R. Hall in Peninsula, Ohio, nestled within the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Northeast Ohio, where de Groot and Hargreaves put on a mesmerizing two-hour concert on a frosty, winter evening. De Groot and Hargreaves played two hour-long sets, with a brief intermission and an encore, playing through a good chunk of their 2019 debut album , as well as a number of tunes they had recently composed and arranged during a creative residency program sponsored by the Peninsula Foundation , which organized the concert as part of its V...

Something happened when I started playing fiddle. I stopped taking my banjo to jams and festivals. The rare occasions when I would lug both instruments somewhere, the unwieldiness of the two handheld, hard-shell cases was overwhelming. I needed a new solution. Granted, when I first got my current banjo, my wonderful wife offered to make me a well-padded gig bag as a present, but I snobbishly declined. I didn't trust the protective qualities of a soft-sided case. And yet, here I am today touting my new forest green Boulder Alpine Deluxe gig bag from Saga Music. My wife, rightfully, gave me the side-eye when I opened the gift over the holidays. She threw in a couple choice words for good measure. I admit it: I was an ass when I said no to her offer 10 years ago. That said, I'm excited to have this gig bag. I know a bunch of banjo players who use them, and they receive strong reviews. I hope to add mine to the list after a thorough testing. The features I like most ar...

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...