The BRC 5-string picker has antique, vintage, and home-crafted banjos decoratively stationed on each floor of the three-story lakeside BRC domicile. In his travels overseas, he has seen many iterations of this cherished instrument.

Touring India, he encountered a banjo variant (above center) in a street band performing near a railway station.

In South East Asia, he listened to a dinner hour trio which included a musician who played a traditional banjo variant with a wooden head.

Traveling in the Middle East, the BRC picker played an oversized and almost unwieldy wooden instrument shaped like a banjo.

On a street corner in Paris, France, two banjo players overcome a language barrier and exchange musical ideas on the instrument.

Despite diverse musical discoveries observed in faraway places, the BRC 5-string picker is most at home when he journeys to the Lake of the Ozarks in southern Missouri for a weekly jam session with Bluegrass pals.

From the BRC:  Like the many iterations of the banjo, we are all cousins in one way or another.

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A nearby rural community hall has been the site of a monthly square dance for many years. These Saturday evening assemblies begin with a sumptuous pot luck dinner carried-in by farmwives. While the buffet is set out, a white-haired championship fiddler (center right) gives a tutorial to a flock of eager youngsters who have brought their violins to the evening gathering to hone their skills on the instrument.

After the hearty meal and freshly baked desserts, the floor is promptly cleared, and the dancers assemble while the musicians tune their instruments. A caller instructs the couples to line-up, and the kinetic foot work begins to the pulses of the band.

On the evening above, the tempo of the dancing was driven by the BRC bass player (standing) with his amplified BC15E Jumbo Acoustic Cutaway C. F. Martin bass guitar that he purchased years ago. His instrument is outfitted with nylon tapewound medium gauge strings to give it a warm acoustic sound.  Years previously, he discontinued using the popular stainless steel flatwound and nickel wound strings on his Fender bass because these metal strings would sometimes growl against the metal frets.

Alas, Shakespeare is no stranger to the bass. His play Henry IV, Part 1, chronicles a conversation in a tavern in Eastcheap between Prince Hal and Poins. The young Prince exclaims, ” I have sounded the very bass string of humility.”

The above festive dance music goes on for hours with only an occasional break to give everyone a brief pause for refreshment. The whole evening is a unique vision from the pages of rural Americana.

From the BRC: Hopefully, Springtime is finding its way to your countryside.

The BRC banjoist surpasses another yearly milestone this coming week; and so he revisits, yet again,  his all-time favorite birthday card sent to him by a sibling years ago.

Below is an archival press clipping depicting the BRC musician jamming in his younger days at the McBaine Country Club, a nearby rural saloon not far from the shoreline of the Missouri River. Springtime flooding in the Missouri River Valley would not infrequently creep up to the premises, but the jammers convened on the upstairs second floor. In the below caption, the Stelling banjo was misidentified as a mandolin…alas. For more on the fated McBaine Country Club, please enter boogie in the search engine and tap the enter key.

From the BRC: Have a grand St. Paddy`s Day.