I’ve been playing the banjo now for … let’s see, that would be 46 years … the same number of years I’ve been married. Yep, I bought my first banjo on my honeymoon. It was a Harmony banjo, made of plastic, which I bought at a pawn shop in L.A. We were on our way to Palm Springs (from Ventura County, where we were living at the time) and as I recall, Marci was OK with me buying the banjo with some of the money we were given at our wedding. We both were singing in a folk trio at the time called the Accidents (patterned somewhat after Peter, Paul and Mary) and we figured a banjo would be a nice addition if I could learn to play it.

Me and Earl at the IBMA Awards Show (1997)

And I did for the most part. Like most banjo players, I learned to play by listening to Earl Scruggs. There were other banjo players (Doug Dillard was one of my favorites) but as I soon found out, they all learned from Earl.

Earl passed away last week at the age of 88 and he was still making music well into his ninth decade of life. He won a Grammy award for best country instrumental performance at age 78.

HIs memorial service was held last Sunday afternoon at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, home of the Grand Ole Opry for so many years. I listened to a broadcast of it on the web and it was very moving. It’s amazing how many people were there to pay tribute.

If you would like to listen to my radio show honoring Earl Scuggs, you can listen online at www.kson.com/bluegrass.

Slacker Radio also asked me to program an Earl Scruggs tribute station and it is now available for listening at http://www.slacker.com/station/earl-scruggs-tribute.

Three banjos! Steve Martin, Tony Trishka and Bela Fleck. Enjoy!

Alison Brown

Marci and I went to see Alison Brown last night at a local San Diego supper club called Anthology.

Yesterday’s San Diego Reader carried an interview with Alison which included a nice mention for my radio show:

“And I tuned in every Sunday night to Wayne Rice’s Bluegrass Special on KSON. He’s still on the air and probably has one of the longest running bluegrass radio shows in the country. So, as it turned out, San Diego was a great place to learn to play bluegrass, even though that might sound a little counterintuitive.

Alison grew up here in San Diego, then went to Harvard University where she majored in finance.  She became an investment banker with Smith-Barney but later ditched her banking career for a stint with Alison Krauss and Union Station.  She later formed her own group The Alison Brown Quartet, which is more jazz-oriented than bluegrass.  She now owns her own successful record label with an impressive roster of artists.

Her show at Anthology was fantastic.  Yesterday was Marci’s birthday and while Marci doesn’t usually allow banjos at her birthday parties, she made an exception for Alison, who wished her a happy birthday from the stage.

An interesting post from the Dallas Morning News religion blog:

“My grandfather had this conversion experience and went to West Virginia Wesleyan. He was kicked out of a church in 1919 for playing the banjo with the youth group. Obviously everybody knew the banjo was an instrument of Satan! … Beware the demon banjo.”

Funny, same thing happens to me all the time.