Andy Chase

Early last month I wrote about feeling musically adrift, not knowing what instrument to concentrate on or what I really want to do with the skills gained by doing so.

Shortly after that I got myself back to a couple of the Thursday night old-time sessions at The Black Sheep, and I've had such a consistently good time that I began to think that I could see myself focusing on my clawhammer playing for a while; I pretty much hold my own with the crowd at the Black Sheep, and there's no end to the obscure fiddle tunes that I could go home and learn.

This past Thursday I was running late due to a fire I had to put out at work, so I arrived hungry and a little bit frazzled. Everyone was playing in G, and for some reason I couldn't remember which of the tunes I know in open G tuning are typically played in G, and which ones are played in A; when you're playing alone it doesn't matter, and if you don't feel like messing with a capo it's easiest to just play in G.

I didn't know any of the tunes being called, so I had to content myself with working out the chords on the fly and trying to find ways to vamp without sounding too repetitive.
Later on we switched to C, and I realized I don't know any C tunes, so it was more of the same. It was still more fun than not, but it gets mentally tiring trying to learn the chord progression of every song as it's being played. Usually there are a dozen plus tunes that I can pull out of the memory banks and play on autopilot.

Also, not long after I showed up another banjo player arrived with a sweet-sounding 1960's vintage Fender Leo. It was nice to see that the arrival of a resonator banjo didn't raise any eyebrows or indignation - I've read about plenty of snobbery going both ways between the bluegrass and old-time camps, but there was none of that here.

I don't think I had heard any live 3-finger picking on a resonator banjo (from somebody other than me) since seeing the Del McCoury band and the Béla Fleck Acoustic Trio last August, and it immediately cast me back into indecision and frustration over my current musical situation. It sounds so cool, how can I not devote myself to being able to play like that?

The remaining question is still "to what end?" I'm still not especially interested in pure by-the-numbers bluegrass, but I'm not sure I'll ever possess the vocabulary and proficiency to play dawg music on banjo. I think the real source of that doubt is frustration over age; at 31, with two years of half-assed and unfocused 3-finger style playing under my belt, I have a long, long way to go. Not that I'm planning on checking out any time soon, but there's just a sense of playing catch-up and making up for lost time.

The conclusion that I seem to be reaching through all of these inner dialogs is that

1. I'm not interested in building up 3-finger style banjo skill just to go participate in jam sessions. I will obviously need to participate in jams to really get timing and dynamics down, but that's not my daydream when I think about "being good on banjo." I've read way too many things about egos and pissing contests at bluegrass jams.
2. I am interested in writing and recording interesting things.
3. Performing interesting things in front of other people would be fun, too, although I'm not currently interested in being a full-time starving musician.
4. To be able to record and perform interesting things somebody else might actually want to listen to, my sloppy guitar and mandolin playing aren't going to cut it; I'm going to need to record with other musicians if banjo is going to be my instrument.

So it turns out what I'm really talking about is being in a band again, playing banjo instead of electric guitar. Jamming informally is fun, but I have always missed the band dynamic since Thermous/The Gavel disbanded in 1996. This conclusion pulls a lot of things to focus, first and foremost being the "always practice with a goal in mind" maxim. I have my long-term goal, and now I can start working backwards to come up with the short-term ones.

I already know what my big, if somewhat nebulous, medium-term goal is: to feel like I "own" 3-finger banjo; that is, to be able to pick up the instrument, put on the finger picks, and noodle around... and by "noodle around" I mean pull phrases out of my head and make them happen on the instrument, not just play forward rolls and switch chords semi-randomly or play songs and phrases memorized from tab. It's a crucial distinction, the musical equivalent of riding a bicycle; getting to the point where it's second nature, even if you put the instrument down for a while. Guitar is like that for me, and clawhammer banjo is getting there. When I put on the finger picks, though, I don't feel that ownership yet.

I've got my work cut out for me.