Just This Banjo

Amish Elvis

Amish Elvis towered over me, bellowing, "Is this your cheater, boy?"

Amish Elvis was talking to me?

Okay, what the hell is a cheater?

I racked my brain until Amish Elvis finally waved my expensive Shubb capo under my nose between his thumb and index finger. His lip curled in a moue of distaste—like a hypochondriac who just found a toenail clipping in his cornflakes.

I plastered a relived smile across my face. "Oh! My capo! Thank you, sir. I did not realize that I had dropped it."

I reached out to take my capo, but Amish Elvis closed his fingers around the gadget in a tight fist.

Crap. This was about to get weird.

We were back at the Lyons Park Fiddle Festival. The place where I had performed with my dad for the first time a few years ago. The crazy person holding my capo hostage was a guy I thought of as Amish Elvis.

Amish Elvis was a big guy. His imitation gold belt buckle was the size of my head. He wore immaculate white suits with music notes on the lapels, so you knew he was a musician even before he started singing or banging out a rhythm on his Martin dreadnaught guitar. Between his snazzy outfit and his Amish beard (sans mustache) I just thought of him as Amish Elvis.

The first time I saw Amish Elvis, he was playing a gospel medley with a pickup band, and they were good. As they began to play, I Saw The Light somebody from the audience rushed the stage and started flat-footing. Just dancing up a storm.

Amish Elvis sees the guy dancing and yells, "Stop the music!" Then he leveled a finger at the humiliated dancer saying, "Son, you don't dance to gospel music."

The crowd went ape.

The second time I saw Amish Elvis was not as pleasant. We had arrived early at an open stage event and had been among the first performers to sign up. I don't know how, but our names were erased, and Amish Elvis got our spot.

Now he was holding my capo hostage.

"Sir, could I have my capo back?"

"Son, you are a lazy musician."

"Excuse me?"

"Too lazy to learn the fretboard?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't sass me, son. I'm trying to teach you something."

Amish Elvis was in full Foghorn Leghorn mode, and it was drawing a crowd. Pickers old and young gathered around us. Amish Elvis read me the riot act about capos.

Apparently, he thought that using a capo was cheating, which explains why he called it a cheater earlier. He verbally let me have it for a little while. Then he dropped the capo in my hand and strutted off.

I stood there feeling lower than a snake's belly.

One of the old-timers I liked to jam with walked up to me and said. "Come on. There is something you need to see."

It took some coaxing, but I finally walked with him to a spot where we could see Amish Elvis on the stage.

"Aw, I don't want to see that fucker."

"Just wait. Be patient."

Amish Elvis introduced his first song. He tuned his guitar. He cleared his throat. He reached in his pocket and produced a large capo. Then he put it on his guitar and started to play.

My friend started to laugh.

"That dirty son of a bitch!" I growled as Amish Elvis sang and played with a cheater on his guitar.