5 String Banjo

                       A Journey Interrupted. 

   Yep- I had purchased my first banjo in the 90's for a sweet deal at a small thrift store in North Hollywood. However,my journey into learning the instrument got derailed when the button for one of the machine heads fell apart from age,combined with being too much of a "yes" person to others. Alas,I hadn't learned the magic of the word "no" and to top it all off I was involved with a guy who really couldn't care less about my love of music at the time,so it went in it's case and stayed there........

I had even painted the rose stencil on the head to cover up the stains from a previous owner. (This was before I learned about the magic of soap & water on a synthetic head!) I had the Pete Seeger book & was buying issues of "Sing Out!" at a little coffee cafe on Lankershim Bl. I had aspirations of playing & performing,but they were not to be until...........

around 2010. My Dad had inquired about why I never played 5 string banjo. I still had my Peerless banjo,in the back of a storage unit that was rented. I hadn't seen it in years. The following week it came home,and I had forgotten about that broken button. Luckily,I had purchased a set of banjo friction tuners for another instrument I was refurbishing,but wouldn't work on. I had to make the holes in the headstock of the Peerless a little bigger,so Spring afternoons were spent on the porch with a file and being mindful of my task.

  All went well and I found another banjo teacher -Wayne Erbsen. I love his books! It was his book that finally enabled me to get the claw-ham-mer down and off I went.-I love the old time sound.  Since then I have gotten two more banjos-an openback wooden head model and an Aria resonator that was made in the 70's. I also play a little bluegrass style.  

 I teach mainly clawhammer style and have my students work out of a variety of clawhammer books as well as TABS I arrange myself.