Lying Back and Holding it Together

Yesterday, I drove from Nashville to Birmingham, via Atlanta. If you know any little thing about geography, you'd quickly deduce there was probably a quicker way to go. But I had to pick up the kids, spread some family love, kiss my cousins.

Had this simple thought as I was driving down I-20, racing along at 75 mph and listening to Doc Watson lead the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. There was a banjo ringing, a noodling fiddle, a harmonica that wouldn't shut up, a repetitively sweet shaky dobro, and Doc lying back and holding it all together.

Here I am driving, going down the road at a pretty good clip, leaning back and relaxing, but all the while keeping the car in drive, the direction solid, and the road beneath me. It's dad-blame banjo playing ain't it.

You see, I have gotten to the point where I am quite good at playing the banjo, or so I think 3 nights out of 7. Then I'll realize how limited I am and how unlike Mark Vann or Sonny Osbourne I am. But it's not the fact that I can't drive the Pike County Breakdown fast enough to play it in a crowd, or the sad sight of trying to sing and keep y rolls together. Those things will come in time, but the best part of it all I have already.

Folks around Birmingham lost a special friend some months back to a self inflicted shotgun wound. Something had made him too sad to want to keep playing music and teaching kids and chasing tail. Nobody knows why some folks get like that, or deep down I'd even say that we all know, because none of us is very far from it on any given day.

But one night a year and some back, I was out on a backporch pickin with my now lost friend. We were playing the Big Sciota. There were two other banjo players, each one really ripping up the melodies and impressing the snuff out of me. I decided to let them handle the loopdy-loops while I focused on the ever approaching edge of the tunes backbone. Doing my little chord pull followed by a neat easy roll, over and over again. ou see, I was just laying back, and my lost friend leans over real close and says to me, "That's just about the best back-up banjo playing I have ever heard." Then kept nodding and follwed the compliment with an even bigger one, "I'm serious." Nodding at me and looking stone cold serious.

After the tune was ended, he said just loud enough for everyone to hear, that he was impressed with one thing, how I could lie back and hold it all together.

Lately this scene has come back quite often, and it's become a point of meditation for me. The best way I can cooperate and bring others in is to go with the rhythm and avoid the need to try to use my steering wheel to change the direction of the road. That road is a permanent fixture, and I am only a movable piece.

I've tried my darndest to pick the jazzy notes, and in such a way that only silent admiration is an acceptable response. But it doesn't take anyone along for the ride, at least not now, even me I'd have to say.

Today I'm loving my wife and girls, and banjo playing has taught me something new. Today I'm following the road and I got room for a few more with me. I'm gonna lay back, stick to the chords and melody, and while it keeps me from going away, I am held together.