Pickin’ on the Porch
Reflections of a Neighbourhood Nuisance
Having once picked up a banjo, I had difficulty putting it down.
Year One
At the music school where I first learned banjo, the other students, younger and older, sat nervously in the waiting room with their instruments primly encased at their feet.
Me? I whipped mine out before sitting down, tuned up and picked away in the ten minutes before Carl stuck his tousled head out the door and summoned me in for my lesson.
One thing I was blissfully unaware of as a banjo beginner was the radically different aural experience of the player sitting behind the instrument and the involuntary ‘audience’ sitting in front of it. A five-string bluegrass banjo is not a quiet instrument.
Happily playing forward rolls, backward rolls, square rolls, forward-reverse rolls and assorted neat licks at family gatherings, around the campfire and on the deck of the holiday cabin, I was puzzled by the pained expressions of my friends and family. Did these people not appreciate fine music when they heard it? Would they not be entertained? Surely a little gentle banjo music was the perfect backdrop to a relaxed after-dinner conversation?
‘The first year was hard going,’ admitted my wife, later.
