Pop’s Banjo

Annual #tellastory day and Pop’s birthday, and so another pop tale. I wrote a few years ago about the emergence of the banjo for Pop, and more recently I had a chance to look back at old photo albums so I was able to narrow down its arrival in my life. This photo is from Christmas 1970, and the confidence with which Pop is holding the instrument suggests he had had it for a while. I don’t know when or where he acquired it or learned to play it – for me, he just always did.

I was reminded of Pop’s banjo affinity at a recent theatre experience – Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me, But Banjos Saved My Life at Pacific Theatre. (Grammar aside: why the different spelling for the plurals of tomato and banjo?) The performer, Keith Alessi, told of his own life journey with banjos, how he accumulated them for years before learning to really play them, and the life-affirming joy he finds in playing with other musicians at local “jams”. The play is moving and heartwarming, with some terrific music to boot.

Thinking back on Pop’s musical explorations, I see two significant differences that perhaps reflect his own challenges. First, he was not a collector of banjos (even though he was an accumulator of a different sort). I can see in the photo albums that he may have had two banjos at some point, but he favoured his Framus 5-string the most. It became one of his most precious items, accompanying him even at his most nomadic.

Another difference is his solitary playing. I never knew him to play with others, except for playing along with songs on the stereo. I imagine he would not have been a great jam player, with his insistence on playing songs over and over and his overall lack of cooperativity.

His preference for a single instrument and for playing alone strike me as very Pop.

In my memory, Pop is sitting in his favourite chair, legs crossed or outstretched, banjo in his hands, and strumming and picking while talking about anything at all. A cigarette and a glass of wine or scotch is not far away. Every now and then he plays a few bars or part of a verse of some song, maybe inspired by a snippet of conversation or something on TV. There’s maybe a wink, or his cackling laugh.

In later years, Pop also played the guitar, the better to play along with the Eagles and Harry Chapin, Gordon Lightfoot and Joan Baez. But the banjo was always there, with pride of place in the living room, close to the stereo.

Pop’s banjo is a lost treasure now. The internet tells me that the Framus company produced banjos in the 60s and 70s, but shut down in the 80s, so their instruments can only be found used. Hopefully his has found a good new home with another picker who regales their friends and family with inappropriate bluegrass tunes and classic 70s rock songs.