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I play banjo, and in Britain, it's easy to get away with playing banjo because you don't often see it on U.K. stages. In America, people know when you're a good banjo player, so I was really nervous about playing out there. But we actually went down really well.
When I first heard the minstrel banjo - I played a gourd first - I almost lost my mind. I was like, Oh, my god. And then I went to Africa, to the Gambia, and studied the akonting, which is an ancestor of the banjo, and just that connection to me was just immense.
I know about the sweet home. I went to school with 'em boys, what became Lynyrd Skynyrd; I knew Allen Collins, the skinny girl-beautiful guitarist. I put Allen Collins in every travel piece I do. Travel writing is harrowing, going to Bermuda with a banjo on my knee.
You know, I only claim to play three instruments. My dad is a banker, but a drummer at heart; and my mom used to teach piano lessons when she was younger. So I can play some piano, play a little drums, and fake the bass - but banjo, mandolin, and guitar are my thing.
Uncle Dave Macon was a great balladeer and banjo player from the early part of the 19th century... He would take a social problem or something that he was looking at and make up a clever little song about it, you know, in a language everyone understood, a man of the people.
I'm into old-time music; I'm not very interested in modern, popular music at all. And if I'm really into some particular old-time musician, some fiddler or banjo player, I'm always dying of curiosity to see what they look like. So there's some connection between visual images and music.
Well, you know, the original banjos were all handmade instruments. Gourd - it would be made with gourds and whatever, you know, materials would have been around. And, you know, first hundred years of its existence, the banjo's known as a plantation instrument, as a black instrument, you know?
I would get records by Earl Scruggs... I would tune my banjo down and I'd pick out the songs note by note. Learned how to play that way. I persevered. There was a book written by Pete Seeger, who showed you some basic strumming and some basic picking... And I kind of worked out my own style of playing.
John Fahey, thought during his lifetime to be possibly more than a little crazy, was the author of some thirty albums of gnomically introverted droning guitar instrumentals, which I listened to heavily in my teens and twenties; I even produced an hour or so of banjo music in an imitative John Fahey style.
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
My grandfather played a mandolin, so I got my hands on that. Then on down to a banjo, and I found I couldn't play any kind of soft or mournful music with that so I took up the fiddle in my late 20s or early 30s - and that was far too late. But it keeps me off the streets. It has been a love of mine since I was 17 maybe.
I play a little acoustic bass and a little guitar. In our house there are instruments everywhere, and I love picking them up and just noodling around. I pick up my husband's tin whistle sometimes. He's really proficient, but it's about the second most annoying instrument - after the banjo - if you don't know how to play it.
In order to understand the history of the banjo, and the history of bluegrass music, we need to move beyond the narrative we've inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scotch-Irish tradition with influences from Africa. It is actually a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures.
When I first started playing the banjo and miraculously fell into a record deal in Nashville, TN, there was a period when I didn't go to China. It hurt. Like a pain in my gut... that pain you feel when you know it's time to connect with your parents or your God or your child or your past or your future... and you don't do it.
My son, Walker, has a band called The Dust Busters. You know, he plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, so a lot of my interest in that kind of music comes from him constantly listening to this stuff. He's taught me the history of it. It's remarkable how these young kids are now turned on to more traditional old-time music.
My family was always playing music; I always enjoyed it. My cousin, who is a little older than me, he started playing music, so I wanted to, also. I asked my dad for a guitar, and he got me a banjo, so that was my introduction to playing. I played it like a guitar. I had a few lessons, learned out a few chords, and figured it out right away.
I wrote a post about wanting to buy a banjo - a $300 banjo, which is a lot of money, and I don't play instruments; I don't know anything about music. I like music, and I like banjos, and I think I probably heard Steve Martin playing, and I said, 'I could do that.' And I said to my husband, I said, 'Ben, can I buy a banjo?' And he's like, 'No.'
