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Michael Keyes - Beginning the Irish Tenor Banjo, Part 3 | Dan Levenson –The Old Time Way
Gerald Jones - Finding the Melody in Many Different Keys

Dan Levenson –The Old Time Way

Dan Levenson grew up sharing a love of music with his parents. Growing up in the 50's and 60's he grew to appreciate and then explore the music and dance traditions of southern Appalachia. He went from being a home and weekend hobbyist in his mid twenties and performing with the Coal County Cloggers to a semi-professional doing dances and band gigs with the well known Boiled Buzzards. Then ten years ago he became a full time musician as a solo performer and instructor of clawhammer banjo and old time fiddle. Dan and his banjo playing wife Miss Jennifer, now spend half the year on the road performing and conducting workshops throughout the country, and half the year authoring instructional and tablature publications on the banjo with an old time fiddle companion to his classic Banjo From Scratch published by Mel Bay on the way. Home base is the Homestead in southern Ohio where Dan and Jennifer are lovingly restoring a farmhouse built in the late 1800's and nestled in the Appalachian hills.

On a recent trip through Texas I had the opportunity to hear Dan present his concert, An Evening with Dan Levenson .Dan brought new life to such tunes as The Fox, accompanying himself on a fretless minstrel era styled banjo and Leaving Home, a tune recorded by Charlie Poole, during which Dan playfully invites the audience to sing along with the chorus played at breakneck speed. He relates his personal experience letting the audience in on his feelings about the old time music he loves and plays. For the finale, Miss Jennifer joins Dan on stage and accompanies a rousing fiddle medley by Dan with solid banjo playing of her own; crowning a very satisfying evening of old time music done in the old time way.

I had a chance to visit with Dan about his music and his experiences on the road and some of the things he is doing.

DLT -  You have been traveling around the country, playing and singing old time music for about ten years, how has the market for old time music changed in your ten years on the road?

DL -  I don't think the old time market has changed that much. I have always believed the market and the jobs were out there. Is it easier now? Well, yes, because I have been doing it for a while and have gotten better at it. I have always considered it as a business since I began doing it full time. Does it pay enough, is it on my route are questions I have to consider when booking jobs and my experience has helped answer those questions. I look at it as a business, not to the extent of business over music, but if you look at it as a business then you find the opportunities. Are there more opportunities now than when I started? I don't really know because I have never found a lack of opportunities.

DLT -  You do a lot of workshops for people who have never before played the banjo. How are you feeling about that endeavor?

DL -  I really enjoy it. It's fun to take something that people have always wished they could try and give them the chance to do it. I don't want to get stuck there. Sometimes I feel as though I'm getting placed in a pigeonhole where people just think; Dan deals with beginners. The good news is I feel good about getting people started in the right direction and I'm starting to see people who started within the last six years, when I started this, come back to see me on the next level to continue to progress.

DLT -  Your Meet the Banjo Workshops come about because of your association with Deering Banjo Company and the Good Time Banjo.

DL -  That's right. I've had a very good relationship with Deering that started right after the Good Time Banjo come out. Actually, while at the Winfield festival, I bought the first one they sold. I had been looking for someone to make a good banjo that would cost around two hundred dollars, so people could start on the banjo.

I basically wrote Janet and told her this is the banjo I've been looking for. Would you give me ten of them so I can start a workshop? She wrote back and said, "How about if we give you fifteen. That's how the meet the Banjo workshops come about. I've had a very good relationship with Deering and the Good Time Banjo has been a tremendous success.

DLT -  When you do a beginner's class were people are putting their hands on a banjo for the first time, what concepts are you trying to convey?

DL -  That the banjo is an entertaining instrument. That, today, there is a primary difference between the two styles of bluegrass and old time and help them learn which style they are most interested in learning. I also try to convey that this is something that they can do and it doesn't take years and years to learn how to do it. By the end of three hours I try to teach them that it's fun to play, you have to make philosophical decisions about what style you want to play and which ever way you want to go, it's easy.

DLT -  You don't just teach, you're also a performer of old time music vocally and on the fiddle as well as the banjo. What is your goal as an entertainer during your performances?

DL -  My main goal is to entertain and to do it with the music that I grew up with. When I began doing shows I tried to determine, what's going to work. In a conversation with Pete Seeger at a Tennessee Banjo Institute we were both doing, I asked him how he put his show together and decided what was going to work for this audience or that audience. He just kinda looked at me puzzled and said, ‘Well Dan, I just play what I know'. I took that to mean, you just tell your story. So I decided to basically tell the story of someone who grew up in an urban area of the Southern Appalachian Mountains and had music growing up in his home and school. Toward the end of every show, I try to explain that it is music that we all own and enjoy and have developed. I will leave town but the music lives on in if you keep it alive, and in doing so, help develop our sense of community.

This tab and sound clip of Durang's Hornpipe is from a new tab book Dan is working on this summer of 100+ parking lot tunes with a CD. The format provides the notation of the tune, a basic tab, and an advanced tab. Durang's Hornpipe is also on Dan's just-released CD Traveling Home.

Listen to an mp3.

This is the more well known festival version of the tune these days.

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About the Author

Lee Thomas began playing the five-string banjo in 1971 while attending college. There he met and performed with Ernie Taft, fi ddler with the ‘Irish Rogues' and ‘Glass and Taft', in the band Salt Lick which performed old time, bluegrass and original acoustic music in Dallas and Fort Worth through the 90's.Currently he performs with Glass and Taft and the Salt Rock Rounders a string band playing traditional American music. He plays three fi nger, bluegrass style as well as the older stroke or clawhammer style banjo heard in early recordings of rural American traditional music. He's a lawyer also but don't hold that against him...