Just This Banjo

Enter The Dobro

I was sitting on our back steps smoking cigars and trying to play a guitar I had fished out of a trash can.

The guitar was junk. Somebody had gotten frustrated or had been trying to emulate The Honky-Tonk Man on WWF wrestling and smashed it to pieces. The entire lower bout was broken, and there was a large hole in the back like somebody gave the instrument a swift kick.

It may have been crap, but it was still a guitar! For years I had dreamed of becoming a guitar player, but my dad was convinced that I did not pack the gear. He said the guitar was too difficult, and that every kid in Philly has a guitar gathering dust in the closet. Everybody wants to play the guitar, but very few are willing to put in the time and effort it takes to learn.

My father did see that I was getting better with the banjo, and helping me satisfy my burning desire to be like old Tiny with his National resonator guitar, he purchased a Dobro banjo for me. This instrument had the wood body of a resonator guitar with a five-string banjo neck. The strings went over an aluminum cone inside the body to make the instrument ring with rich tones. It wasn't very loud, but it looked cool and sounded even cooler. Everywhere I went with my Dobro banjo people wanted to jam with me and talk about Dobro and National instruments. I almost forgot about the guitar, right up until Roger came along.

Roger was an almost-famous banjo player. He played bluegrass and frailing banjo better than anybody, but he never quite managed to get as famous as he thought he should be. Because of this and probably other things, Roger got mean. I would run into him two or three times a year, and I always walked away so mad that I would practice endlessly so that I would be stronger the next time we met.

When I got my Dobro banjo, I was so excited to show it to Roger. I was convinced that this instrument would help me start a real conversation with him.

He was such a good musician. I really wanted to learn from him.

Alas, it wasn't to be. Roger took one look at my Dobro banjo and frowned. "Why don't you get a real banjo?"

I tried to laugh it off and get the group jamming. After a few songs, Roger said, "Play that thing like a banjo or a guitar. You can't be both. It's distracting. Make up your mind."

As much as it pained me to admit, Roger was right. I wasn't frailing my Dobro banjo. I was wearing picks and playing rolls I had picked up from guitar players. As much as I loved my Dobro banjo, it was neither guitar nor banjo. I had to choose one and stick to it or get my grubby mitts on a guitar. Rather than scheme like a kid hoping for a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, I put my fate onto the drifting currents of the Tao. If I was supposed to be a guitar player, God or the universe would find a way to put an instrument in my hands.

Not long after that, I spotted the smashed guitar in the trash.

If my trashcan find had been a steel-string guitar, I would have left it. Steel-string acoustic guitars are engineering marvels. The wooden box of the guitar body is under immense strain from the tension of bringing steel wire strings to concert pitch. Luckily, I had found a classical guitar.

Classical guitars evolved from baroque instruments strung initially with gut. Modern classical guitars use nylon strings. It takes much less force to bring nylon strings to concert pitch. This meant that I would be able to make the trashcan guitar playable with Elmer's glue, popsicle sticks, and duct tape.

Lots and lots of duct tape.

In the space of an afternoon, I finally had a guitar of my very own. I did not care that it smelled like expensive cheese and looked like cheap junk. I finally had a guitar! Now I had to learn to play the damned thing.