Before I moved to Olympia, I was "that banjo guy". I was a part of the punk scene, but was "all in" on the banjo. A friend from way, way back visited after years of no contact and was like "oh, you're now of THOSE now". Rude. But I also know what he meant, I think. There is a cliche, in my mind at least, of the punk who gets into old timey music and either A) starts playing music from the 1920's & '30s in mock tradition style or B) starts using the banjo as a shitty acoustic guitar to create their naive, starry eyed political creeds. That cliche exists and is a revelation to those partaking in it. But that wasn't me. I wanted to use the technique of clawhammer banjo in the same vein that Thurston Moore used the guitar. I wanted to stretch, expand and be ambitious. The main sign of any success of this goal was the rare person who actually likes the sound of the banjo didn't dig what I did. That, or worse, they did like what I did, but just put the image of the banjo they had from old movies on to whatever I was playing. I'd be doing a ragtime tune or a 5/4 experimental tune and inevitably some well meaning yahoo would say "That reminds me of the south... someone on a porch... with a hound dog and bottle of houch!" They're seeing the banjo, not listening to it. I kinda sorta like music like that too, but I never ever made anything like that. Not a once!

Moving to Olympia a decade ago, I put the banjo away. I didn't want to be "that banjo guy" anymore. I aimed to become "a multi-instrumentalist". Well, "it's a BINGO!" cuz if anyone knows me as a musician, it's for that. I make all kinds of music. Lofi synth pop, mucho romantico acoustic music, weirdo experimental, rock n roll adventure music, even some dark folk that might use that five string instrument. I do it all! The banjo is just a tool in the tool box. Success.

This is the first song I have written on the banjo in probably ten years. It started as working a Bob Dylan song into something new. It started as learning two finger picking technique, Doc Boggs style. It was probably the most simple sounding banjo song I had ever written, but I think it's just boiling down what the banjo does to a pure form. Nothing flashy or experimental, but decidedly what the banjo sounds like. I liked the music I wrote so much, I scrapped that Dylan cover and just made up a new song.

Considering how much I like the lyrics for this song, it's astounding how quick this song came about. It's usually a bit of work, editing, making the timing work, editing more, practicing singing it and editing it even more. This was done in a morning. It started from wanting to make a song like the first few verse of the poem "The Man With The Blue Guitar" by Wallace Stevens:

They said, 'You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.'

The man replied, 'Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.'

The idea that art can change the world is attractive, but does it really? Really? I don't know. I think art is a sign post of changes already happening and maybe an encouragement to those changes, but not the instigator. That doesn't happen. Does it? If it happens, it's not in popular culture. It's not popular. It's not understood. Dots are connected in hindsight. It's complicated and contradicting. It needs to be explained over and over but isn't understood. “If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.” Louis Armstrong was supposed to have said. Maybe that happens, but anyone who says they have their finger on the pulse is probably full of it. Louis Armstrong might as well have said "If you think you know what jazz is, you don't."