The Boogie Banjo Blog
The 2021 Banjo Boogie Scholarship will award an instrument and 15 private lessons to a deserving student. All are open to apply. We’ll be looking primarily for students in the Phoenix-metro area. Lessons can be online, but will be offered in person if possible and necessary. The purpose is to promote the 4-string banjo and …
At the end of January, 2021, a new banjo album was released by the group known as Banjomania. Almost anything fun in 2020-2021 is seen as just what the doctor ordered, something to uplift our spirits in troubling, rapidly changing times. This music though, is completely timeless. Banjomania is always about spreading joy, and this … Continue reading Banjomania (album review)
This year’s sweeping cancellations of events caused a near complete shut-down of banjo gatherings. It was in this void that Sean Moyses and Banjo Sjoerd stepped up and organized The Global Online Banjo Festival (GOBF). In the face of challenging times and limitations, the festival surpassed expectations and showed the possibilities of a new kind … Continue reading Global Online Banjo Festival 2020
Eddy Davis “The Manhattan Minstrel” was a musician’s musician. Someone who’s dedication and passion for the music could be felt in his performance on and off stage. His style on tenor banjo was not of the flashy pyrotechnic nature. He possessed a swinging feel that sounded true, relaxed, beautiful, and intelligent. He was an active … Continue reading Eddy Davis
Don Vappie is a New Orleans banjo player, carrying on the tradition while embracing all his musical influences. With a particularly funky touch, and a warm tone on his open-back OME tenor, Don makes the banjo sound real pretty. You can find Don Vappie playing solo banjo in the French Quarter every Friday 4pm-7pm at … Continue reading Don Vappie
The Boogie Banjoist values musicians who pave there own path. People who make creative choices, eclectic individuals who are not bound by the public perceptions of our instrument. You will have a tough time finding a more eclectic musician than Eugene Chadbourne (aka Doc Chad). His songwriting is both clever and poignant, his improvised music … Continue reading Eugene Chadbourne
Plectrum Banjoist Ron Hinkle grew up in a banjo playing family, where the four-string banjo and the music of the 1920’s was perfectly natural. After playing what he calls “Pizza Parlor Revival” banjo music, he discovered other music and has become an accomplished “Classic Banjo” player. The British music publishers, Clifford Essex, hired Ron … Continue reading Ron Hinkle
The proto-Scruggs picker DeWitt “Snuffy” Jenkins played authentic traditional banjo while innovating the styles that paved the way for the bluegrass banjo sound that came out of the 1940’s. Snuffy has got a little funk and bounce to his music that will make anybody smile. Like many old banjo players, he learned clawhammer and … Continue reading Snuffy Jenkins
Dink Roberts is everything you could ever want out of a classic old-time banjo player. His style is raw and unpredictable. His singing has character and is full of humor. It sounds like he’s from another time, and he never was recorded in a studio or on a stage. Listening to him sing his … Continue reading Dink Roberts
Stumbling around the internet for banjo music, you might come accross an album or two by a guy called Banjo Jimmy. His CD’s “Playing Songs to Remember” or “Favorites of New Orleans” are quite wonderful with his style appropriately dubbed “folk ragtime.” He sings and plays 4-string tenor banjo in the New Orleans tradition, but does a … Continue reading Banjo Jimmy LaRou
The Boogie Banjo Blog - Roots, blues, jazz, traditional, experimental folk banjoists 