The Glory-Beaming Banjo

A s we did last year, here is a holiday gift guide for the banjo nerd in your life. Here are five glorious ideas for you last minute shoppers.

Having just looked back on the progress I've made playing the fiddle this year , it seems appropriate to revisit some of the other blog-worthy events of 2013. This has been a momentous year. By far, the biggest highlight of the year was becoming a father , but there were some pretty cool things happening in my old-time music realm as well. Here are a couple notables. Interviews We kicked off the year with an interview with Chris Valluzzo of Horse Archer Productions about the upcoming documentary on the Highwoods String Band. At the time, the documentary was scheduled to be released in the spring or summer, but a wild goose chase for more footage of the Highwoods playing live has delayed the project. Valluzzo provided an update in October on Facebook, saying the film should be ready around Christmastime. In March, Greg Galbreath of Buckeye Banjos spoke to the Glory-Beaming Banjo about creating custom banjos. Since then, Galbreath has closed his custom orders list to begin f...

With all his regular banjos in the shop, Frank Lee showed up to an old-time gig with a bluegrass banjo. How embarrassing. The Freight Hoppers, with Edward Hunter standing in for David Bass on fiddle, at the Beachland Tavern, in Cleveland, Ohio. 

The Freight Hoppers are on the move. Unlike those wimpy birds that fly south for the winter, this hard-driving old-time string band is headed to the northern Midwest for a brace of shows this January. The short tour will see the band traveling through Wisconsin (tonight), Minnesota (tomorrow) and finally to my dear old Ohio (Monday and Tuesday). Freights fiddler David Bass is originally from the Cleveland area, but word has it he won't be playing with the band for Monday's show at the Beachland Ballroom and Tavern . In his place will be Edward Hunter, who joins banjo enchanter and band co-founder Frank Lee (who will hopefully be playing the banjo that Jeff Delfield built for him), with Isaac Deal on guitar and vocals and Bradley Adams on bass. The Freight Hoppers were the hottest old-time string band of the 1990s, performing all over the world and even climbing the Billboard charts, but the group took a five-year hiatus in the early 2000s when Bass underwent heart trans...

After college, my oldest friend moved to Charlotte, N.C., for a job, while I stayed in Northeast Ohio to start my career. In 2007, my company put on a small trade show in Charlotte and sent me down to help staff the event, providing me the perfect excuse to extend my stay and visit my friend. During that time, I had not yet begun playing banjo, but I was getting close, as I was in what I call my "anything with banjo" music listening phase. That trip proved to be my first experience listening to a live old-time string band. My buddy picked me up from my hotel, and we started driving west to the Blue Ridge Mountains. We both like to hike, and then we planned to stay in Ashville for a little nightlife and local beer. A park area near where my grandparents used to live provided the hiking; Jack of the Wood would provide evening entertainment. When we got to the bar, we had no idea that there was live music that night, and there wasn't much hint of what was to come whe...