Becoming a Musician Late in Life

​Evidently, I am a completely unreliable blogger.  I take a journal on my travels, and they come home as empty as they left.  I depend on my wife to keep the travel log. Yet, in reading back what I wrote here almost a year ago, I find it valuable, and I see others enjoyed it as well.

I've been practicing and playing tenor banjo for just about a year and a half- never enough hours in the day, and never do I put in "enough" practice time. Since New Orleans Traditional Jazz Camp last June, I've been studying with Cynthia Sayer here in New York. Cynthia has supernatural ears and a dedicated approach to teaching.  Before leaving for New Orleans last year, I had been taking lessons with someone who had a rather academic approach, and I was getting itchy. When I sat down opposite Cynthia that first time, she said simply, "Okay, let's play something". We've been "playing something" almost weekly ever since.

I recently re-connected with an old friend who left his youthful career as a reed player to go to law school and practice that trade for over twenty years.  He just retired, has resumed playing music, and we met at Jazz Fest last month. He commented that I should be careful in my music pursuits, as it will bring me to the edge of one abyss after the other. I know what he means. The further I go, the more there is to learn and discover.  It seems endless, but it is very exciting. I habitually remark to friends that it has taken my brain out for a big-time joy ride, not to mention the physical exercise.  Some jokers ask if I hadn't thought of taking up a "more difficult" instrument.

I did play trombone and string bass in high school. I did play what we call "a little" guitar during the late '60's into the 1970's, but in neither case did I really know what I was doing. But like it or not, know it or not, I was headed for jazz banjo all along. Aside from grade school exposure to happy little tunes like "I've Been Workin' on the Railroad" ("strummin' on the old ban-jo"), I'd have to say it was my parents' slim collection of Paul Whiteman 78's and the like, and the soundtracks to Max and Dave Fleischer cartoons that got me started. Then in my teens, listening to Jean Shepherd on late night radio, I was smacked silly by his regular airing of the Dixieland Jug Blowers' feverish classic "Banjoreno".

Postwar jazz got my attention, early rock and roll and Southern-style R&B took me away, and then the great morass of "classic" radio pop-rock managed to sweep everything else aside like a tsunami for a long time. But Banjoreno was still hiding in there somewhere, and then when I was somewhere in my sixties, I discovered the Beau Hunks' recordings of old LeRoy Shield tracks for the Hal Roach Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy movies. Between the weight of those excellent recordings and then suddenly remembering who Louis Armstrong was, I just snapped.

That's when I logged on to eBay and found my May Bell tenor, and trundled off to Traditional Jazz Camp.  

I just received the downloads of this year's band camp charts, and took the day while waiting for the dishwasher repair service guy to go through them one by one, playing along with the sound files.  I have SO much to learn, SO much to practice.  String fingering.  Chord patterns. Chord melody. Triads. Major/minor/seventh/diminished/augmenteds, up and down the fingerboard.  The note locations on the fingerboard itself. Tremolo, triplets and everything else that's at the bottom of the next abyss.

I leave for band camp June 10.  No matter what I do and don't know now, I'll come home with much of that under my belt and a whole lot more I don't know yet.  I do know that with practice and by playing with other musicians, I can get to places I can only think about now.

Like to the edge of the next abyss.

Notes from Band Camp