The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Happy Inauguration Day! Here is your inaugural Glory-Beaming Banjo post of 2021. Usually, I start the New Year with a post about my goals for the following 12 months. So far, I've been dragging my feet when it comes to figuring out exactly what those goals should be.  After a difficult and stressful year that forced us all away from our typical social and communal interactions, I often found myself sapped of motivation to practice and ended up falling short of last year's goals. Quite frankly, I'm not especially interested in coming up with new bars to meet ... or not. Sure, I want to get better and learn new tunes. Sure, I will continue to log my playing time and keep striving for that mythical 10,000 hours benchmark. But I don't want to feel beholden to a specific set of parameters right now.  I think my biggest goal this year is to reconnect with the old-time community in Northeast Ohio and beyond. I want to be able to attend an in-person jam. I want to go to a festi...

Tradition states that I provide a summary of my banjo and fiddle playing over the past year. Give you a glimpse at how I did regarding my goals . What I learned. The things I did. The places I went. You know, the normal stuff.  In a year that saw the worst global pandemic in more than a century, there's not much to say about the places I went. My goals went out the window. I changed course on what I had planned to learn . Nothing was normal.  This year has been a rollercoaster. My motivation has risen and fallen on a week to week basis. Mostly, my aim has been to keep my daily streak going and just get to the end of the year. Goals be damned.  Fourth Quarter Review While I'm recapping 2020, this post also serves as my final quarterly report. Here are my previous 2020 quarterly reports:  First Quarter Second Quarter Third Quarter The fourth quarter was highlighted by a virtual fiddle lesson with Michael Ismerio (not to be confused with the workshop I attended earlier...

If you're a subscriber to The Old-Time Herald -- and if you read this blog, you should be -- you may have been wondering where your magazine has been these last nine months. The quarterly magazine published it's last issue in January 2020. The next issue would have been the annual Festival & Camp Guide in March, but then the COVID-19 pandemic dashed those plans.  Ad revenue dried up. Production came to a halt. In the meantime, however, the publication team redirected funds and efforts to revamp the OTH website. Unveiled this month, the new oldtimeherald.org has undergone a major makeover, replete with a new digital edition of the magazine, robust content and access to PDF downloads of past issues.  Editor Sarah Bryan sent a message to current subscribers on Dec. 7 explaining the delay in printing and unveiling the revamped website. But most of all, she wanted to let readers know that the magazine is still in business.  "When the pandemic struck early this year, we had...

This has been a low production year. I can't see myself putting together a post that will top any of the posts that have already been published here in 2020. I'm always thankful for those of you who continue to visit this site and read my ramblings about banjo, fiddle and my adventures in old-time music.  I'm all ready to reflect on what can be reflected upon and move on to 2021. The following are the top viewed posts of 2020.  Sustainable Banjos: An Interview with Pisgah Banjos Founder Patrick Sawyer By far the most popular post this year, this interview was published the week after I started working from home for what I thought would be a short-term period. I think Pisgah Banjos is making some of the best banjos available today. Patrick was a very interesting interview, and here's a belated congratulations, as he and his wife welcomed their son in August.  5 Years, 5 Questions: Talking to Laura Lewis About the Lake Erie Folk Festival Here we have an interview and prev...

On Nov. 8, 2019, I returned from a work trip and began a new playing streak. Until then, my longest streak was 100 days . Now, partly thanks to the global COVID-19 pandemic canceling any travel I normally would have had this year, my new streak has surpassed the year mark.  Having played every day for 368 days and counting, I wish I could say my playing has advanced by leaps and bounds in that time. However, I'm not sure I can sure I can say that. There have been days where I only played a 5-10 minutes. A lot of times, my practice time comes at the very end of the day, and I just don't feel like logging a long session of banjo and fiddle playing.  The pandemic has made for a strange year in all aspects of life, and my attempts at musicking are no different. As I mentioned earlier this year , I felt stagnant and lost my motivation to practice. Despite those mental hurdles, I'm proud to have been able to keep playing every day, no matter how brief.  Since the end of July, I...