Ah, but have you ever heard Bela Fleck? He plays with the Chieftains on Down the Old Plank Road, and it is amazing. All of his stuff is. And even on Water from the Well Barney McKenna does a great job leading “Within a Mile of Dublin.” Banjo can be great.
I greatly admire Bela Fleck, and I like his more traditional stuff. Some of what he does seems a bit aimless for my taste. My limited mind requires a theme of some kind.
Plectrum banjo is a whole 'nother thing. It seems like it would be hard to play softly. I need to get my hands on one and try it out.
Not to hijack the thread, but this will make you feel better, Annie. A lady I know went into the kitchen one morning to discover a mother possum had come in the cat door, pulled a kitchen drawer out several inches, emptied it of everything save suitable nest materials, and had a litter of little possums in it. She didn’t have the heart to toss them out.
The mother possum raised those babies right there in the kitchen, eventually taking them for forays into the wide world. They all went on their way after a time, but continued to stop by for visits. She was thrilled to have the females bring their first babies back to see her.
Hmmm… I’m not sure I’d have been able to put up with that, and I know the cats would have a mite to say about it! LOL!
What a great little story! Here’s mine:
We had them come through the cat door on our first country ‘home’ (it was actually a bus - talk about throwbacks to hippiedom )… and they went across our bed to get to the cat food.
It seemed the more noise we made, the bigger the threats and more times a foot or thrown object made contact, the better they remembered where to come back to the next night.
It was an exciting first year on the place, let me tell ya!
edited to ad, in effort to return to original topic… it may have something to do with my regularly frailing the banjo… ?
I’ve got a nice 1934 Washburn banjo and I’d like to learn frailing but haven’t figured out the trick yet. My fingers keep flying away and I’m not getting that bum-de-de rhythm.