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The unfairness of things (6): The banjo monologues

Note: This rhapsody, courtesy a new album of banjo songs and stories by Joel Mabus, revives a periodic effort to use this space to write about music which won't find its way into the confined spaces of our print edition.

Truth is, I don't know from Joel Mabus, and if his name seemed familiar when I opened his padded envelope it's probably because his name sounds something like that of classic country guitarist Joe Maphis. The Banjo Monologues, on Fossil Records is, according to Mr. Mabus' website, his 18th recorded offering.

I have a soft spot for the banjo, in no small part because there was one in the house when I was growing up. As the story went, though I probably have the details scrambled, my father's mother ran a boarding house during the Depression. One of her tenants had a banjo which fascinated father, who spent a lot of his youth listening to country and big band music on Los Angeles radio. Anyhow, this fellow hit the road and left the banjo to dad because dad wanted it and it was a bit heavy to carry wherever he was going. Far as he remembers, dad never really played the thing, but when his mother died (I can't call her grandma because she died when I was three or four and declined the honor of meeting either of her grandsons) it came up to Seattle from Glendale with the piano and some of her furniture and a rum bottle that supposedly came over on the Mayflower.

One of my earliest memories as a little boy is sitting in our second living room, in Wedgewood, while my mother ironed and listened to music on the Fischer Hi-Fi. One of those days the Seattle earthquake hit and spilled tropical fish on the floor, and I remember announcing at roughly that moment -- moved by a Mozart quartet, I think -- that I wished to be a concert violinist. That sentenced me to six years of piano lessons (beginning in first grade). Most of those days I remember folk music of the kind popular in Berkeley in the 1950s, which is why I keep going on about Billy Faier, and that's what Mr. Mabus's album reminds me of. It is the sound of a man comfortable with himself and his instrument and his absent audience. It's a talkative record, and I wonder if maybe little Maggie will like it later today.

Come sixth grade Deliverance was a hit movie and "Dueling Banjos" was on Top-40 radio. I was surprised to read in Joe Boyd's autobiography that he had produced that track, and cared so little for it. Later, I accidentally pissed off T Bone Burnett by comparing O Brother to "Dueling Banjos," though I still think I was right and he couldn't have understood how much "Dueling Banjos" meant to me though I presume it still has a pejorative stain in the bluegrass world.

Mom and dad had the banjo fixed up, which I suspect was no small undertaking. And the fellow who fixed it -- Mr. Bakovich, though that's probably not right -- taught me for a while. I remember playing "Salty Dog" that first lesson, and not much else. One of the problems with me playing banjo -- and piano, and anything else -- is that I have no rhythm. Or a short attention span to rhythm. Or I play to a different drummer. I've always said that because I could practice the banjo upstairs, where I was more easily heard, I was allowed finally to quit the piano because my lack of talent was now painfully manifest. Mom may also have been tired of taking me to classes three days a week, what with both instruments.

I am deeply grateful for that, both for the playing (six years of Pace Method didn't teach me piano, but it gave me enough theory to write for Guitar World when I needed the money and the ink; and when I came to typing I did it well, and quickly) and for the license to stop. If you were to meet me today I would shake your hand gingerly, for I also love basketball and I have, these 40-odd years, broken or dislocated every finger on both hands (save my thumbs) at least once playing that game. I am 5'9" tall and near-sighted. I had a little quickness and stubbornness, the latter of which I have retained, but no especial aptitude for the game. And yet I loved to play, and would still if it were possible, if my little finger didn't hurt every cold morning, if my middle finger were a little straighter, if my knees didn't creak when I sat too still too long. If I had any wind.

Had I a modicum of talent with a basketball, I hesitate to imagine what I would have given up to chase that dream. Everything, I think. Had I a modicum of talent with a musical instrument, I fear to guess what I might have given up to chase that dream, for I can imagine no greater joy -- no more perfect communication -- than singing. And not even our four-year-old can bear my singing.

But I lugged the banjo around the country with me anyhow, threatening to play slide, tuning it like a guitar so I could pick blues licks on it, tinkering late at night like Sherlock Holmes on his violin, only worse. It's an old five-string without that wooden resonator on the back, just a naked metal and skin affair that dug into the belly when you clutched it too tight. When I came to Nashville I asked around town and took it in to Grune's on lower Broadway, because I was told they were the most fair experts in the field. The gentleman looked over my banjo, and told me it had been built in 1860, that it wasn't especially valuable (but worth enough that it would've paid my rent for a month, which at that moment was a comfort), but that they'd buy or sell it if I wished. I didn't wish, and took it back to my apartment over the garage.

A few years later, married and somewhat more stable financially, I had occasion to borrow some musical equipment from a musician for a photo shoot. On an impulse, I took the banjo with me when I returned the gear. In the hands of somebody who had real talent, the poor thing sounded like a whole new instrument. It sounded musical. It sounded alive, in ways it never had nor would in my hands. I asked if they wanted it, and the answer was, maybe. I explained how I'd come by the instrument, mentioned the appraisal price, and asked that, if it had a new home, a donation be made to the W.O. Smith Music School in Nashville, which seeks to teach music to poor kids. A few weeks later I received a letter from W.O. Smith indicating that a donation had been made, and I felt the circle complete.

And so hearing Mr. Mabus pick and talk and sing was like running into an old friend. I used to hear Ed McCurdy sing "Three Nights Drunk" while mom ironed and still confuse "John Henry" with "John Hardy" when not paying close attention. And if you can listen to "The Uncloudy Day"/Leonard Lively and be unmoved, then, jack, you dead. Mabus writes on his website that "[h]e was born and raised in a working-class family in a modest Southern Illinois town, about 105 miles southeast of Mark Twain, 190 miles northwest of Bill Monroe, 110 miles southwest of Burl Ives and just over the river and up the hill from Scott Joplin." And that, plus a family history that might have come from one of Mike Perry's books, about covers it.

The weird thing is, little Maggie asked a couple days back if we had a banjo. But, then, she also has an imaginary pet tarantula.

Posted by grant on April 18, 2007 9:35 AM | Permalink