Find a Mentor; Be a Mentor

by Robert French

I learned to play banjo in the early 1970's, beginning at the age of 13. My friend Ashley McGrew and I heard a local bluegrass group perform at our junior-high school in Norman, Oklahoma, and we knew immediately that we had to learn how to make that magic noise. Looking back, I realize that Scruggs-style picking was the functional equivalent of today's speed-metal: a flash of lightning which pierced my adolescent soul.

But it was hard to figure out where to begin. How was the noise made? Where do you find a banjo in central Oklahoma? Do they sell them, or do you have to make it yourself? Do you have to be born in Appalachia? What if your dad is a college professor and your mom plays french horn? Are you hopeless? In that day and age, there was no folk or string music store in Norman, there was no internet, no satellite radio, no bluegrass magazine (at least not on our newsstands), no coffee shop with live folk music in town, and most of all, there was no bluegrass festival in Norman. If these things existed in our world at all, it was apparent they were not within a bike's ride from my parents' house, and therefore might as well have not existed at all.

Ironically enough, it turned out that there was in fact a real-live banjo player within a bike's ride: He lived on my paper route and I didn't even know it. One evening, as I was riding past Lion's park, on the way to throw my load of Norman Transcript newspapers, I passed a screened-in front porch, the unmistakable sound of a banjo blasted forth, causing me to stop in the middle of the street, utterly transfixed. Ultimately, I was able to get my parents to help me figure out who the banjo player was. He turned out to be very helpful, and even had a used banjo for sale which he would teach me to play! My world was about to change.

The point of this rambling is that the last 35 years of my musical life can in no small sense be traced directly to the generosity and patience of Tony Essman, the front-porch picker. Tony opened the door to a new and exciting world of making bluegrass music, playing in a band, joining jam sessions, hanging out in music stores, meeting other pickers, attending bluegrass festivals, and learning an unending and wonderful world of songs and licks. From the banjo, I eventually started to make noise on all the various bluegrass instruments, which were - and still are - passed around from player to player at the festivals and jams. It no longer mattered that I was an awkward, shy teenager who was lousy at sports and too shy to talk to girls. I had an identity that all the social cliques of junior high and high school could not take away: I was a picker. I was in the band! Everything in my adult life to follow has been made richer by that generous gift, that opening door.

The fact is, even in this connected world where any instructional book or DVD can be ordered and delivered directly to your door, and any cd or instrument can be purchased with one click, there is still no substitute for an real-life experienced teacher who can hear you play, encourage you, show what you are doing wrong, show how to play a song or lick better, play it sloooowly over and over, make you count your notes and beats, help you learn to play into the microphone, how to listen to the other musicians, to hear the chord changes, and relax into the living flow of the song. Tony Essman, and the countless musicians whom I met through him, have done all of this for me ever since. They are teachers, counselors, coaches. They are mentors, and every player needs at least one.

The benefits to a beginning player from the mentor relationship are probably obvious: everything is easier with help. But I also want to address another aspect of mentoring which we often overlook, namely the incredible benefits which an experienced player can gain from helping someone else, from being a mentor. I cannot overemphasize how much my own musicianship has benefitted from the time I spend helping less experienced players improve. Although it seems like an outward gesture of encouragement and patience toward the student, mentoring has forced me to think about what I play, how I play, and why I play. I have to play clearly and slowly. I have to make the music make sense. I cannot merely play in the world of music heard in my head, with a soundtrack which plays what I intend to play at any given moment. I must execute and make the song sing for real, so no one can miss it.

Every time I help a young or less experienced player to make music, or make it better, I in effect take out an insurance policy against my own playing losing its edge or becoming stale. The sheer excitement and joy which players feel, when a song or lick finally comes together and sounds like the "real thing," takes me back immediately and profoundly to my own joy in the same experience, decades earlier. Not only that, it reminds me that they same joy of learning is still happening every day, and can happen for me today in the same way. In short, it's habit forming! I do it for me, not just for them.

So, you beginners out there: find an experienced banjo player and ask every question you can think of. Watch the way he or she holds the banjo, puts on the picks, grabs the neck, etc., etc. You are doing them a favor. As for you more seasoned banjo pickers: prepare to learn again!