barbbanjo - Posted - 11/01/2009:  01:25:58

I was wondering what got all of you started on your banjo journey? I remember hearing Dueling Banjos on a record and that did it for me. I was entranced, excited, amazed and in love. I think I still have that record someplace but now I don't have anything to play it on - (it doesn't fit into a CD slot!) Then I had kids, finished college, taught school before I finally had a banjo of my own. But I would love to know how some of you got started.

Edited by - gottasmilealot on 11/01/2009 05:29:33

JedNeedsCoffee - Posted - 11/01/2009:  01:20:22

I've been playing for about 5 years and honestly I can't remember why I started playing. All I do know is, that I USED to play guitar (for about 10 years.) and when I picked up the 'jo, I put the guitar down and never looked back. Sure, I still like the rich sound of a fine guitar but for me personally, I no longer have the desire to play anything OTHER than the banjo.






"This is the best of all possible worlds" - Leibniz 1710

"If this is the best of all possible worlds, I'd hate to see what
the others look like" - Voltaire (paraphrased) 1759

khol - Posted - 11/01/2009:  01:55:46

i saw hayseed dixie live in alocal bar and just loved the sound of the banjo.

i had my deering goodtime within 7 days and the journey started. i have seen live bands for over 20 years and never had one made me want to play a instrument of any kind , but the first time hearing a 5string live i was hooked.
why i don't know but i'm sure glad it did ,..since then i met some good people and heard a whole different genre of music i never would have listened too.

happy days and long may they continue

1four5 - Posted - 11/01/2009:  02:07:36

The friends I jammed with were putting a band together, but we were all guitars. One of them (not me) bought a banjo and brought it to a jam...but didn't know how to play it. I was into finger picking and open tunings, and asked to try that banjo. I had never seen one in real life before. I was playing simple finger patterns and jamming with it several minutes later. I was hooked. It was the most fun, the quickest, I had ever had with an instrument. I ordered one that night, and have been the banjo player ever since. At first I would switch between banjo and guitar, but soon was playing banjo for everything.

Dean

steve davis - Posted - 11/01/2009:  02:46:27

I come from a musical family.Mom played piano using sheetmusic.
Dad played pedal steel and other instruments by ear.

They played music almost every day and there were instruments
in the house ready to play.
I just grabbed the banjo one day when I was 7 or 8 and tried to play along with them.
Dad would tell me when to change chords til I got it.

Banjov1 - Posted - 11/01/2009:  02:50:37

A five string showed up under my Christmas tree 2 years back and I've been sucked up into it ever since.

Tony

kcjc69 - Posted - 11/01/2009:  03:39:14

I've always loved the sound of a banjo and had expressed my desire to play for about 20 years. I would have never bought one for myself but my wife suprised me a few years ago at Christmas with a new jo. It's been a love hate relationship ever since then (with the banjo not my wife).

.

Faith, Family, Football and picking the banjo could life be any better?

Want a quality built banjo or individual instruction? http://www.bennettsmusicstudio.com
Need a website for your band? http://www.designsbydorothy.com/

richmondgeorge - Posted - 11/01/2009:  03:43:02

For me it was seeing Earl on the Beverly Hillbillies.

JoeDownes - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:08:52

I live in the Netherlands, where it's not very likely to become a banjo enthousiast. I wouldn't pick the banjo now if I hadn't been to Kentucky as a student for six weeks.
My teacher on the theater school I was attending had the great idea to send me to work as an intern on a big theater project in Whitesburg, KY. The project was hosted by Appalshop, which features documentary film making, a radio station, music workshops, a theater, etc, all focusing on Appalachian culture.
During the six weeks I spend at Appalshop I got to meet some fine folks and I listened to Appalshop's radio station WMMT a lot. Listening to the sound of old time and bluegrass music, which was really new to me, while driving through the hills of Eastern Kentucky made me fall in love with the place and music.

When I was back in Holland, bluegrass and old time music were in heavy rotation on my stereo and I decided to get myself a banjo. I've been playing for 2,5 years now and it really begins to come together. I'm loving it more and more.

Grey Dog - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:10:32

My wife played Foggy Mountain Banjo, Track 2: Home Sweet Home

Hooked since.
That simple.

][ Grey Dog in NH

Kevin B - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:14:17

Hearing "The Theme to Deliverance" on the then rock station WLCY in Tampa, FL. It was a crossover smash that played probably every hour. Like any 16 year old kid I was all caught up in rock and roll but I begged my parents to get me a banjo.

Kevin ( )=='=~

'Possum, It's what's for dinner . . ."

KANINJACK - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:17:55

My Grandpa played old time banjo and guitar and he got me into it. Unfortunately he passed before I got really into it, but he is still my inspiration.

Bitbender - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:29:34

Umm.. I put a bunch of reasons in my blogs here why I started. That was all fine and good, but the truth is I was born to Bluegrass in Virginia as a child. Now as my working years begin to wane, I need the passion I felt for music as a youth. Banjo has brought that back for me.

I spent most of my school years in orchestra, band, etc, and them kid bands playing sock-hops and locl stuff - n'er any thing professional. But the synergy and good feelings music gives a soul were always present.

The more I play, the mor I need to play - Wyfe came in about midnight last night and said "Did you know you have been working on this for three hours?" - Just two months ago, that would have been three wasted hours computer gaming on gaming servers.

This is real. This is Banjo

daytripper - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:36:16

I wandered into a music shop near where I had lived for 30 years simply because it had always been there & I had never been inside. They had a single banjo hanging and, despite me being a lefty, I picked it up and it just made a wonderful noise. That was it really...

marc

beegee - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:37:55

Washington Square(Village Stompers)& Tom Dooley(Kingston Trio) were the tunes. Chick magnet was the reason. Christmas 1964. Santa Claus brought me a pawn-shop Kay with a skin head.

__________________________
"It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing." -Seneca

Edited by - beegee on 11/01/2009 04:42:25

justryin2play - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:44:45

quote:

---

Originally posted by Banjov1

A five string showed up under my Christmas tree 2 years back and I've been sucked up into it ever since.

Tony

---

MitchellB - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:47:46

Fell in love with bluegrass as a small child. My great uncle and his family had a bluegrass and old-time band and when I heard my cousin Aubrey Hall play his dad’s RB150 for the first time, I knew that was what I wanted to play. My parents got found an old tenor banjo and a Flatt and Scruggs album that I wore out trying to teach myself how to play. I didn’t know then at 6 years old, how bad of a handicap that was.

Mitchell

fotolars - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:48:00

At the age of 12 (in ´62), I got my first banjo, tenor, and played Jazz. In `66, I got a record with the Weawers, and started, first on a tenor to play finger picking, it didn´t sound like Pete Seeger, so in `68 I got a Framus long neck 5 string, played Seeger style and frailing, later I by luck got a record with Scruggs and Flat (The Golden Area, now I had found my way, Scruggs style, didn´t know anyone who could teach me, so my playing style was simpel, in `73 I bought a Fender Artist, while I wqas working for the US Airforce in Greenland, and had the luck to meet a banjo player who was preforming there (Bill Baylock)who had published an instruction book, and for the first time I had something to build my playing from, I´ve been playing on and off since, recent years very serious.

banjowannabe - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:49:46

My friend "dragged" me to a John Hartford concert. Decided I needed one of those things he was playing.

rb4player - Posted - 11/01/2009:  04:59:02

The sound of Earl, probably heard him first on TBH on TV, since I'm a northerner and there wasn't much local bluegrass outside live peformances.

Jim

(I didn't know who Bill Monroe was until quite a bit later)

Edited by - rb4player on 11/01/2009 05:00:15

Brian - Posted - 11/01/2009:  05:08:15

Hee Haw!

Brian

loggerhead - Posted - 11/01/2009:  05:11:29

Was lucky enough to find a small fishing cabin on a local river. It just seemed to need a banjo. Haven't caught alot of fish, but I'm hooked.

Edited by - loggerhead on 11/01/2009 05:12:23

walshb - Posted - 11/01/2009:  05:14:24

My grandfather played banjo and I used to beg him to play it every time we visited. So I was hooked at a very young age. I started playing guitar at 18 yrs old, then picked up the banjo at about age 37. I still play both (plus mandolin), but have way more fun with the banjo of course.

"I need a louder banjer, my hearing aids just quit on me!"

Vermin307 - Posted - 11/01/2009:  05:31:38

Same as Richmondgeorge for me, I heard the Beverly Hillbillies on TV, I was hooked after that, and instant love with bluegrass...

49ford - Posted - 11/01/2009:  05:53:07

Won a banjo on a $5:00 ticket ,some one was telling me something like i should learn to play it.

jcm

Grinnin&Pickin - Posted - 11/01/2009:  06:01:18

Listening to Pete Seeger and how he could captivate and motivate an audience with his music. Thank you Pete!

Edited by - Grinnin&Pickin on 11/01/2009 06:02:15

philip4229 - Posted - 11/01/2009:  06:11:13

Avetts.

_________________________

Gold Star GF-85 - Posted - 11/01/2009:  06:15:42

I come from two generations of guitar players and wanted to play something different, and I confess that Hew Haw and the movie Deliverance got me hooked.



Big John,
1987 Gibson Earl Scruggs Standard
1986 Stelling Sunflower

gunnah - Posted - 11/01/2009:  06:17:52

After watching Scott Vestal play that thing like a rock star!

Skyraider50 - Posted - 11/01/2009:  06:23:55

Foggy...Mountain....Breakdown, By Earl

Life is hard. Being stupid makes it harder--John Wayne

Fermanagh Lad - Posted - 11/01/2009:  06:44:58

Was a rock guitar player for 4 years, then my father dragged me to a Bluegrass festival here in Ireland, and I saw a band from Austin, Texas, the Boxcar Prechers. They blew my mind open!! I knew about the tenor banjo from Irish traditional music here and always liked the sound of it, I never knew that the 5 string was a totally different instrument. I fell in love that day and I've never played ''Whole Lotta Rosie'' or ''Black Dog'' since.

Richie

dustinTN - Posted - 11/01/2009:  06:51:46

Well, I just got a banjo this month (though I had one for about 6 mos. ten years ago but had to sell it.) I guess the seed was planted when I used to go see Bill Monroe play for FREE every Wednesday night at a tiny bar in a boat marina in Hendersonville, TN (my home town.) It was The Bell Cove Club (anyone here see those shows or the ones at the Long Hollow jamboree in Goodlettsville?) Bill was old by then and would only play a twenty minute set in between two longer sets by the house band. I think I really fell in love with bluegrass then.

What really made me fall in love with banjo, in particular, was the Doc Watson Family album on Folkways and the Bad Livers.


Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn [or your banjo]. ~Charlie Parker

RaYhOLio - Posted - 11/01/2009:  07:01:32

'Dueling banjos' caught my interest at a young age.. Then when I was 27, I heard Iron Horse covering metallica.. That got me thinking about the banjo.. Around that time ROCK BAND came out on the Xbox.. and after beating the game on the highest difficulty setting, I had the confidence to start learning a REAL instrument...

So I got my wife drunk, and took her to the local music store, where she happily (at the time) purchased my 1st banjo for me :)

-RayHoLiO
Makin' grass grow in Joplin, MO
www.joplingreenscape.com

Want a bail out plan that actually works??
www.fairtax.org

mike gregory - Posted - 11/01/2009:  07:03:48

Listen to Dave Guard, on the first 2 Kingston Trio albums.

That sunny beach was having a tremendous lot of FUN.

Of corpse, I didn't HAVE a banjo.
So I was picking on a uke.
My uncle walked by, heard me, and asked if I'd like to have his old banjo.
Fiftysome years later, I still have it.

5all - Posted - 11/01/2009:  07:34:52

It happened in 1964. My cousin was hired by the New Christy Minstrels in 1962 as the banjo player. I would see them on the weekly Andy Williams show and the Hootenanny shows. So of course I wanted to play banjo (all my friends were listening to the Beatles!). He loaned me a banjo. It was a real dog and really hard to play. And he loaned me an LP record. I wondered who the heck are these guys on the front cover with cowboy hats. He said if I could learn to play like the guy with the banjo that I would become a pretty good banjo player. The album was Foggy Mountain Jamboree by Flatt & Scruggs. And the rest is history!

The Old Timer - Posted - 11/01/2009:  07:59:46

The first memory I have is of my Dad playing Wildwood Flower and Free Little Bird for me on his Gibson guitar. The house was always full of old fashioned country music. When the banjo/folk "boom" started in the late 50s/early 60s friends started to show up at house music parties with banjos that they attempted to play. I was 6 or 7 years old and fascinated by them. After I learned to play guitar at age 7 and could "join in" a little bit before bedtime, a neighbor lady showed me how to hold her banjo and play the Notre Dame fight song (Beer Beer Beer for you and for I, bring on the whiskey bring on the rye) in a half-two finger/three finger style. I thought that was the greatest thing in the world.

I fooled with old junker banjos my dad would find but they were never playable (or tune-able).

In 1964 Dad bought his first new car, AND a new Gibson RB 100. I was 11. I was instructed very firmly NOT to touch that banjo. Then in August 1964 we went to Sunset Park in Pennsylvania and saw F&S live!

You know, or can guess, "the rest of the story".

Those were the days of every music store carrying Flatt & Scruggs, Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe, Reno & Smiley, Osborne Brothers, Bill Emerson, "Stanley Alpine", the Dillards, etc. LPs along with the pop music and country music. Even in Maine we had an excellent local bluegrass band (with Jimmy Cox on banjo) playing LIVE bluegrass once a week on an evening local TV program. F&S on the Tonite Show with Johnny Carson. Beverly Hillbilllies ("that's what they call 'em now"). Local tv weekly kids talent show that I played guitar and later banjo on. A weekly Saturday night live "open mike" TV show that welcomed banjo pickin' teenagers. How could I NOT sneak out that RB-100 and learn to play it? Thank God we found a local man who was a flat musical genius and had taught himself to play his new RB-250 perfectly to the Foggy Mt. Banjo LP! He (Carl Francis) was my only model, until later Jimmy Cox used to stop at our house every 3 weeks on his statewide sales circuit (I think he sold sewing goods to department stores then). Jimmy REALLY taught me the finer points.

Those were heady years! Practice, practice, practice, and listen, listen, listen to those LPs (slowed down to 16 rpm). By the time I left for college in 1971 I was pretty well equipped with an RB-250 and a solid repertoire, and ready to go "deep catalog" when the bluegrass festivals started up in the northeast in the early 70s.

Just lucky how I was born, I guess!

The Old Timer

I can win the attention of most any girl, wherever I may roam -- But singing and playing on a banjo alone, won't work against a trombone! Uncle Dave

Edited by - The Old Timer on 11/01/2009 08:02:33

R.C - Posted - 11/01/2009:  08:15:22

for me it was my interest and music.made me realise that there was more out there then just guitar,drums and bass.
plus i think,in ireland anyway, that not many people see it as a proper instrument especially in young people like myself. the sound of the banjo is unique and the songs that come from it are amazing! i also like the skill it takes to play it and play it well! its not the sort of thing you just pick up like you have to have dedication to it.
dueling banjo's was the first banjo song i heard but what really got me was "masons apron". such an amazing song.

Edited by - R.C on 11/01/2009 08:19:06

chaosfrailer - Posted - 11/01/2009:  09:05:24

I was 10 years old and I was with my Mom and Dad on the Blueridge Parkway near Floyd, VA. when we stoped at a visitor center and my Dad came back to the car with a Charlie Poole cassette tape. I've never looked back.

Take care, but take it!-Harold Hausenfluck

RB3 - Posted - 11/01/2009:  12:45:29

When I was a teenager, my father watched the Beverly Hillbillies every week at 8:00 pm. At the time, I thought the show was very un-cool. (It's now one of the few intelligent shows on TV!) We had only one TV and my father owned it, so he got to watch what he wanted to watch. When the Hillbillies were on, I'd go to my room do my homework. There was nothing on at 8:30 that my father wanted to watch, so I got the TV for at least the next half hour. I'd come down from my room as the show was ending and I can remember being frustrated when the announcer did a "voice-over" as Flatt & Scruggs were playing the theme song. In retrospect that has to be my first awareness of the sound of a banjo. I think that I also may have seen Reno & Smiley on the Jimmy Dean TV show.

Later, during summer vacation from college, a good friend had a part time job working for a Cincinnati company that serviced juke boxes and pin ball machines. He mentioned to me that one of his company's locations was a bar that had a "country and western" band that had a banjo player. One night when we could think of nothing to do, I suggested that we check out the bar that had the banjo player. The bar turned out to be the Ken-Mil Cafe in the Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati. The "country and western" band that played there was Earl Taylor and Jim McCall and the Stoney Moutain Boys. At the time Jr. McIntire was playing banjo. Hearing the banjo live for the first time was a life-changing epiphany.

The next day, I went to the nearest record store to find an album with "banjo music" on it. The record store clerk sold me an Eddy Peabody album. When I got home, I played the first 15 seconds of each cut on the album. It was a banjo, but it just wasn't the same thing that I had heard at the Ken-Mil. After a few weeks of detective work, I found out that what I was looking for was Earl Scruggs and Bluegrass music. Within in a couple of months, I had a $40 pawn shop banjo, a Kingston Trio bluegrass banjo instruction book, a couple of Flatt & Scruggs albums and an obsession that would not go away. I'm still workin' on Cumberland Gap.

BNJOMAKR - Posted - 11/01/2009:  13:10:29

I always liked the sound of a banjo. My Mom played piano and organ. My Dad could not play anything, but he loved to watch all the "country" shows on t.v., like Porter Wagoner and the Wilburn Brothers. I was in my mid 20's and one day I walked into the local music store "Galaxie III Studios" in Taylorsville, NC , just looking around. I saw a banjo hanging on the wall, one of those Japanese aluminum pot banjos, and the lady asked if I wanted to buy it. I told her I couldn' t play, and see said "We give lessons". I asked the price of the banjo..."$100"... and price of the lessons... $15 a- month"... So $115 later I was learnin' to play... I'm still learnin'!!

"Those who never try... never will!"

BNJOMAKR

rvrose - Posted - 11/01/2009:  13:27:32

I took a trip to branson and visited Silver Dollar city. Bluegrass groups would roam around playing bluegrass. I had never seen it before - but was impressed with the banjo player. I remember thinking I would never be able to do that. I did however buy a mountain dulcimer there and learned how to play it for a couple years. I finally took the plunge and bought a cheap $100 used harmony banjo, bought books and tapes and started playing. Later a guitar player came along and wanted to play together - which was the beginnings of our little bluegrass band.

Bluegrass - Posted - 11/01/2009:  14:03:48

Mom got a cheapo banjo for 50 bucks at a yard sale about 3 years ago.

John

Banjov1 - Posted - 11/01/2009:  15:17:52

quote:

---

Originally posted by justryin2play

quote:

---

Originally posted by Banjov1

A five string showed up under my Christmas tree 2 years back and I've been sucked up into it ever since.

Tony

---

Zactly what happened to me........

---

Edited by - Banjov1 on 11/01/2009 15:18:42

banjerman - Posted - 11/01/2009:  19:46:58

Earl playing "The Beverly Hillbilliys". Lord

Tommy5 - Posted - 11/01/2009:  20:21:20

FMB from the movie Bonnie and Clyde.

Booger McGee - Posted - 11/01/2009:  21:26:01

Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Movie first hooked me with his banjo playing.

Booger

gdoc - Posted - 11/01/2009:  22:36:19

Easy, Beverly Hillbillies.... I was awstruck by the sound. Later to drive the point home was Bonnie & Clyd. (sp?). All that banjo in the background....

I was still just a kid mowing yards, but I took that money and got my first Sears Silvertone banjo. (thank gawd for Deering and their Goodtime banjo now... think how much better I could have been with one of those.)

gdoc

Catman - Posted - 11/02/2009:  07:01:41

Back in the 70's I saw the "Country Gentlemen" at a show in Virginia that featured Bill Emerson on banjo. After hearing him play "Down By The Waterfall" and "Breaking It Down", I've been hooked ever since.

"Weee doggies, listen to that boy sipher !!

Gary Blanchard - Posted - 11/02/2009:  07:07:58

In about 1965 I picked up an album, "Pete Seeger Live at Carnegie Hall." I was hooked. I had heard banjo in the Kingston Trio but it took Pete Seeger to show me the power of the banjo. I now own a long-neck banjo.

Gary Blanchard
"an outlier among outliers"
http://www.gbandf.com