The Glory-Beaming Banjo

More than a decade ago, I stopped into a record store in Ravenna, Ohio, and bought a couple New Lost City Ramblers albums, one of which turned out to be signed by Mike Seeger. I wrote a little bit about that visit in a post titled " Vinyl Hunter: The Origins ."  What I didn't mention was a record that I passed up ... and it has haunted me ever since.  While flipping through the folk/country/bluegrass/misc. of that store, I came across a copy of The Watson Family , originally released on Folkways Records in 1963. The album features Doc Watson and various family members, including most notably his father-in-law Gaither Carlton, son Merle Watson, brother Arnold Watson and wife Rosalee Watson.  You might remember in 2020 that Smithsonian Folkways released a latter day companion album, Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton , featuring concert recordings from two Greenwich Village performances in 1962.  The Watson Family was compiled from field recordings made by Ralph Rinzler, ...

Things got busy. That's why you haven't heard from me. That's also why my banjo and fiddle have sat dormant for about two months. All of a sudden I feel the urge to get back into the musical habit as several local festivals are on the horizon.  Between family, work, kids activities, a vacation, a death in the family and just the general schedule glut of summertime, I haven't found the time to play music lately. But I'm itching to get back to it. Thankfully, the upcoming Music in the Valley festival provides some much-needed motivation to resharpen my skills.  Music in the Valley The first event on deck is the annual Music in the Valley festival July 8-9 at Hale Farm in Bath, Ohio. This has been an excellent opportunity to play old-time music with others from my region. However, this year is getting a boost with Cleveland-based fiddler Paul Kirk assisting the programs manager to add instrumental highlights for banjo, fiddle and mountain dulcimer, as well as a fiddl...

Scrolling through the winners of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize , one name should stand out for banjo nerds like us: Rhiannon Giddens . The former Carolina Chocolate Drops member and renowned solo artist was awarded the Pulitzer for Omar , an opera about enslaved people brought to North America from Muslim countries.  Of course, Giddens is no stranger to awards. She has won two Grammy Awards as both a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and as a solo artist. She received the MacArthur Fellowship in 2017. She won the Steve Martin Banjo Prize in 2016. She has also won two International Folk Music Awards, three Living Blues Awards and several others, plus she's been inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame, and she has been nominated for countless other accolades. On the heels of the Pulitzer Prize news, Giddens also announced a new solo album .    Giddens collaborated with composer Michael Abels on Omar , which premiered on May 27, 2022, at the Spoleto Festiv...

Today marks 15 years since I started my banjo journey. Sometime in late 2007, I got the idea that I might  like to play the banjo. Pretty much all the music I was listening to at the time had a five-string, whether it was indie rock, alt country, bluegrass or old-time. Although back then, I didn't know the difference between bluegrass and old-time or that there were so many different ways of playing this plunky instrument. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, but I wanted to take the leap.  I try not to look back at my life with regrets, as I consider the mistakes I've made as opportunities to learn new lessons. That said, I did have one major regret. When I was in high school, I started to learn to play guitar. However, after a year or so, I gave it up. I can't help thinking how good I would be today if I had just stuck with it.  The idea of playing music has always appealed to me, but I didn't want to make the same mistake I made with the guitar as a teen...

Greetings, glorious readers! It's time for a quick update of my February five-string flings. Since my last update, I had two wonderful opportunities to play old-time music with friends.  First was a house jam to celebrate the birthday of Stephen Rapp , a regular player in Paul Kirk's Old-Time Tune of the Week videos. The festivities included a great gathering of Northeast Ohio musicians. I mostly played banjo. The group played a couple Ward Jarvis tunes for which I pulled out my fiddle, but I was too rusty to play along, so I went back the five-string.  Next was the 7th annual Lake Erie Folk Festival in Euclid, Ohio. I sat in on two organized community jams with an impromptu jam in the hallway in between the orchestra-sized sessions. I played banjo for the first couple hours and then switched to fiddle.  In addition, I finished work on "Hawks & Eagles" from Michael Ismerio's All-Access Online Fiddle Course and moved on to "Sally Ann." Because of s...