The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Last year ended on a high note, all in the effort to avoid a new low in my playing time for 2025. To start off January, I was able to carry some of that momentum into the New Year. However, I'm not fooling myself into thinking I can rack up some crazy amount of playing time in 2026.  No. Instead, I'm working on not aiming too high. That is, I'm pursuing more manageable goals this year. Although I've started off strong, I know that there will be bumps in the road, and I might find myself not playing any music for long stretches of time. And that's OK.  This year is all about forgiving myself for not living up to my expectations. After going way too long, I changed the strings on my banjo and fiddle at the end of December, and I'm thinking of 2026 as a fresh start.  Glory-beaming goals for 2026 Because I do it every year, I'll share some actual goals for 2026. I have set some modest playing time goals, but I'm not going to get too hung up on them. Of cour...

April seems to have brought a bit of a lull to my banjo and fiddle playing. This blog has also felt a bit stagnant. Is this just the April showers that will bring May flowers?  I hope so.  This month has seen my least amount of hours spent playing music this year. And yet, I'm still on track to reach my stretch goal for the year, thanks to cushion I built up during the last few months . That's the silver lining to this dreary cloud.  And boy, has it been cloudy! While there have been splashes of sunshine in Northeast Ohio in April, it feels like we've gotten drenched with rain. The temperature has varied wildly from highs in the 70s and lows in the 40s. I'm ready for porch picking weather.  That said, I have enjoyed a couple days of playing on the porch, one of which was jamming with my son, who recently started playing guitar. The neighborhood was treated to a duet of clawhammer banjo and electric guitar. (Don't worry, I have the acoustic guitar I'm going to ge...

March has been a relatively quiet month. However, I've maintained my pace to achieve this year's playing time goal so far. Aided by a jam in January and a festival in February, I've actually managed to stay ahead of the curve. With a few days left in March, I have amassed a total of 42 hours of playing time (21.5 banjo, 20.5 fiddle). If I keep this up, I'll reach 168 hours, exceeding my stretch goal of 150 hours.  Of course, a lot can change between now and December, but it's encouraging that I've maintained such a steady pace of playing banjo and fiddle these past three months.  As a reminder, I played 41 hours on each instrument for a total of 82 hours last year, so my minimum goal is to reach 42 hours on each instrument (total: 84 hours) in 2024, and I'm already halfway to reaching that goal. However, my primary goal is to surpass my 2022 total by playing 62 hours on each instrument (total: 124 hours). As I already mentioned, I'm currently on pace to...

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...

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...

This has been a challenging year for my musical goals. While on the one hand I've learned several new tunes this year and was able to attend a couple festivals, but I've fallen well short of my playing time goals and have gone long stretches without playing any music at all. After a hiatus of almost six weeks between October and November, I've made the effort to recommit myself to banjo and fiddle.  Throughout my musical journey, I've had many instances where I felt like I was restarting. As we all know, unless you're a professional musician, life has a way of interrupting hobbies.  Like I mentioned in a previous post , I decided to train for a long-distance trail race at the end of July, something I hadn't done in over a decade. That took up a lot of my free time earlier in the year, and I've just had a hard time finding consistency in my practice time for banjo and fiddle.  In some ways, I feel a sense of guilt for not playing as much as I think I should. ...

Look, we've all heard that it's a good idea to record yourself playing music so you can gauge your progress. My problem has always been planning to record myself maybe once every few months and then failing to follow through. However, over the last six weeks, I've been a pretty good streak.  I have recorded myself on banjo or fiddle seven times since Feb. 9. Good or bad, I've also been sharing my videos on my Instagram account, which kind of makes it feel like there are stakes involved. I already don't like recording myself, but now there's that feeling like THIS IS A PERFORMANCE FOR MY FOLLOWERS. But let's be real, I get about 30 views and maybe 10 likes when I post these videos, so it's not big stakes. But it's enough to keep me working hard to play well. A big thing for me is I'm not recording multiple takes to get it perfect. If I get through the tune without going off the rails, then that's the one I post. If I need more than three attem...

This month, I received two bits of good news related to my local old-time music community. The news has led me to find a decent groove this month playing banjo and fiddle.  Two of my favorite local festivals announced they will return this year after having been canceled the last two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  First, the Lake Erie Folk Festival (LEFF) announced it will return to the Shore Cultural Center in Euclid, Ohio, on April 30. This festival was actually the last musical event I attended before everything shut down . I had interviewed organizer Laura Lewis prior to the festival for its fifth anniversary.  LEFF only missed 2021, due to the pandemic. Usually held in February as a way to scare away the winter doldrums in Northeast Ohio, the organizers moved the event to April to avoid spikes in pandemic numbers.  Second, the Raccoon County Music Festival announced it too would be coming back this year, returning to Century Village in Burton, Ohio,...

Last year was a challenging year when it comes to my banjo and fiddle playing goals. After hitting what I think was a significant milestone in reaching 500 days in a row of playing my instruments, I took a break. That break turned into a hiatus.  Ending my daily habit went from celebrating a major achievement to lamenting my demotivation . My positive turned into a negative. For 2022, my goal is to reverse that trend and get back into good musical habits.  The good news is December ended with an eight-day playing streak and by tying my highest monthly practice time for 2021. Now the challenge is to continue those positive vibes for this year and get back on track with my banjo and fiddle goals. The March to 10,000 Hours If you've been following the blog for a little while, you'll know that I track my banjo and fiddle playing time as a means to keep myself accountable to my goals. Although the 10,000-hour theory has come under scrutiny, reaching that vaunted milestone in my l...

Last month I ended my 500-day streak of playing banjo and fiddle. I followed that with two and a half weeks of not playing banjo or fiddle. It seems during my break that my fingers have lost almost all of their calluses. They haven't been this tender in a long time.  During the past week, I've been getting myself back in the habit of playing music on a semi-daily basis. I've been focusing on playing for longer stretches, rather just a few minutes to keep a streak alive like I'd gotten used to doing.  It feels good to be out of that rut.  The biggest thing I want to get back to is learning new stuff. I'm continuing to work on Michael Ismerio's online fiddle course , and I've been revisiting Ken Perlman's Clawhammer Style Banjo , the book that helped get my started on old-time more than a decade ago. I'm also thinking of digging out Mike Seeger's Southern Banjo Styles videos.  I've been trying to approach my instruments with a beginner's ...

The last two months signaled a turnaround in progress and mood. After a rough second quarter , I hit rock bottom in July with playing music. I lost focus on my goals for the year and barely played fiddle at all. I played the bare minimum to keep my daily streak going and that's about it.  Staying hydrated and working on rhythm. However, at the end of July, I decided to look into an online fiddle course to see if that might reignite my enthusiasm . Lo and behold my playing time skyrocketed over August and September to help me get back on track.  Although I may not be able to catch up to my fiddle playing time goal for 2020, I'm right on target for my banjo playing time goal that I set back in January. Embarking on this online fiddle course means that I've changed what tunes I'm learning this year. Sometimes plans change. I mean, no one planned on a global pandemic this year, did they?  Another bright spot this quarter was actually getting to play music with others. I att...

Things have really gone downhill this quarter. My progress over the first three months was strong. In the last three months, however, my playing time has slowly dwindled to the point that after June was over, I was 10 hours behind on my goal progress on fiddle and one hour behind on banjo. I'm still playing every day, but only the bare minimum to keep my streak going. Although, I am excited to have reached 200 days in a row . Otherwise, my motivation and enthusiasm is lacking, and I'm just not excited about the music. With jams and festivals cancelled, there's nothing to pull me out of this malaise. As I reported back in May, I attended a couple of workshops and a virtual jam, but otherwise I'm feeling very disconnected from my old-time community. My to-learn list hasn't inspired much joy, and I'm just not sure what to do about my current state of affairs. I've thought about taking some lessons, but I find it difficult to follow along through video ...

One upshot of the coronavirus quarantine is that I've been able to push my playing streak to new heights. Usually, I would have had to travel for work by now, forcing me to take a break for a day or two. Not so in these days of COVID-19. Yesterday, my string of consecutive days playing banjo and fiddle reached 200. That means I haven't taken a break since November 8, 2019. It seems incredible. Despite being able to play at least a little bit every day during this pandemic, however, I've actually been falling behind the pace of my playing goals the last two months. With all of us stuck in the house all the time, I'm having trouble finding time to play for extended periods. When I was going to the office for work, I would take my fiddle to play during my lunch break. It was easy to get at least 30 minutes per day. Now, I'm working from home while also trying to manage my son's time, with school work and other activities so he's not staring at a scree...

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...

Ordering my banjo felt like a back-alley deal. I had driven almost an hour to a travel plaza just off the interstate. I was looking for a guy in a minivan and a small arsenal of banjos. Were these some kind of contraband goods? All I knew is that I wanted one. I met Bill Van Horn in a gas station parking lot off I-76 in Lodi, Ohio, on a steamy summer day. We first corresponded through the Banjo Hangout, an online forum for players. He had compared the banjos he built to the Enoch Tradesman, only way cheaper and with a Dobson tone ring. His banjos felt solid in my hand, and I loved the sound. After the meeting, I devised a savings plan and placed my order in mid-September. The banjo would have a thin 12-inch maple rim, a Fiberskyn head, no-knot tail piece, 24.25-inch scale walnut neck with Chechen wood fingerboard, a frailing scoop and a paddle-shaped peg head. Van Horn said it would be ready by the New Year. Being unmarried and having relatively few financial responsibilities at...

These past three months have been a bit of a roller coaster when it comes to my world of fiddle, banjo and blogging. Work and family duties, as well as a general sense of ennui, led me to get way behind my goal progress. However, I managed to catch up at the last possible moment. As for blogging, this is only my fourth post since my First Quarter 2019 report . As has become customary , here is a review of my old-time music activities for the Second Quarter 2019, warts and all. My blogger version of a corporate earnings report shows I logged 52.5 hours on fiddle, 11.5 hours on banjo and attended two old-times sessions. I did not attend any festivals this quarter. However, I did turn 40. One of my main goals for the year was to try to get out and play more with others. In that respect, I did OK by attending two local jams, one in May and the other in June. At the most recent session, I attempted to lead "Leather Britches"  on fiddle, which I learned from the playing of...

Last week I had to go out of town for work. I couldn't take my banjo and fiddle, which meant I had to interrupt my daily playing streak . As you may recall, I started tracking consecutive days playing last year as a way to stoke enthusiasm and boost my overall practice time. My longest streak was 86 days on banjo and 89 days on fiddle, and then I finished off 2018 with a 50-day streak . I've been able to keep that streak going into 2019. It just so happens that my final day of playing before jumping on a jet to Texas was the 50th day of the year. It's nice to have a nice, round number as a new milestone. I restarted my streak at the fourth annual Lake Erie Folk Festival . While I didn't participate in as much jamming as in past years, the event provided plenty of entertainment. The Old-Time Banjo Summit delivered many amusing anecdotes from banjo luminaries Richie Stearns, Lukas Pool, Doug Unger and Mark Olitsky. I wish I would have taken my nice camera to d...

Happy New Year! Welcome back to Glory-Beaming Banjo. Last year ended on a positive note, and 2019 brings the promise of hope for another strong year of playing music and writing these here blog posts. With a bit of a hurdle yet to clear before 2018 ran out, I managed to surpass both of my playing time goals and end the year with a 50-day playing streak. I feel reasonably good about the tunes I learned last year, but I do still need to work on refining them. This year, I'm hoping to increase my playing time goals for banjo and fiddle and learn some more tunes, but I'm taking a break from the Ward Jarvis catalog . Instead, I'll be tackling some overlooked chestnuts as a means to improve my rhythm and expand my jam-friendly repertoire. When I started on the fiddle , I had little interest in learning the common tunes I already played on banjo. I jumped from Wayne Erbsen's Old-Time Fiddle for the Complete Ignoramus to Brad Leftwich's more complex bowing pattern...

Look who's back! It is I, your glory-beaming blogger, returned from my travels abroad. I hope you enjoyed the posts that I scheduled for you  during my absence. After almost a full month of vacationing in Rhodes, Greece, it's time to get back to business — and music! As I mentioned last month, I had to leave my fiddle and banjo at home while I was traveling. The closest I got to an instrument was listening to a traditional Greek dance band at a festival in the village of Psinthos, where I ate delicious chickpea and goat stew. The band was comprised of a lyra , bouzouki , guitar and what looked like a cajon that the vocalist played. It was a great time. I had hoped to find a record store so I could provide you with a Greek-flavored " Vinyl Hunter " post, but I struck out. The only time I saw any LPs was at a shop in Old Town that had huge selection of Greek music for sale on CD. Above the floor-to-ceiling shelves, I spied old album covers. But when I asked if t...

While you read this post, I'll be somewhere else in the world on a much-needed vacation. However, dear readers, I have not left you in the lurch. Although I am not on my usual continent nor will I have access to my computer for the time being, you will still receive a weekly dispatch from The Glory-Beaming Banjo. Upcoming is a preview of some local festivals, a plug for my recent freelance writing and a look at the essential films for banjo nuts like all of you. I'll also be sure to have some posts on the GBB Facebook page to keep you entertained in my absence. You see? I'm gone, but you're not forgotten. Consider this a reward for your loyal readership. I truly do appreciate it. It'll be a rough few weeks without being able to play banjo or fiddle. I was on a great roll the past few months, with a playing streak that exceeded 85 days on both instruments and starting to lock in "Forked Deer" for my latest Ward Jarvis tune . Despite the disappo...