"Beliefs and Obsessions"

I have an obsessive personality. When I decide that I NEED something—regardless of whether I truly need it or not (and usually, I don’t)—I can think of little else. Probably the worst thing to happen to me as a kid was receiving my older brother’s hand-me-down Musician’s Friend catalogs.

Contained within these pages were images of instruments, amplifiers and accessories so far out of my price range that they might as well have cost a million bucks. That didn’t stop my futile wish-listing, though. After trying to decide which guitar in the whole catalog that I’d pick, if given a choice between any of them—I foolishly chose the Steve Vai Jem 7V, complete with carved handle...ugh—I began to stare at the pages of drumsets.

I was convinced that I had to have a drumset, even though I’d not long since bought my first electric guitar—a D-grade Strat copy from Japan. I began poring over the images of drumsets, and they even began creeping into my dreams. I even went so far as to make a kit of my own out of differently sized boxes and using skateboard rails as sticks and pie tins as cymbals. After a few aborted attempts to craft a homemade bass drum pedal, and growing increasingly frustrated that the rails constantly pierced the box tops, I gave up. It was surely an unrecognized sign of the mania that would follow me into adulthood.

So, it should come as no surprise that I continue to find objects over which to obsess. The latest object of my desire? A banjo. Yes. A banjo.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted a banjo, though never enough to go out and actually buy one. I’m pretty sure—and I can’t believe I’m admitting this—that I can trace this desire back to the Hee Haw episodes I’d watch on Saturday nights. Between Stringbean, Grandpa Jones and Roy Clark, I thought that the banjo looked like a lot of fun, and I’ve always liked bluegrass music on some level. But, if it was a trip to see Alison Krauss & Union Station in 2004 that reignited my interest in the banjo, it was a chance to see The Avett Brothers in early November that finally sent me over the edge.

For the last two months, I have been banjo-crazy, and my poor wife has been suffering just as much as I have, though if only for having to put up with me. I’ve ordered catalogs, devoured retail Web sites, watched countless YouTube videos and even joined a couple of banjo-themed forums. I’ll not even speak about the dreams I was having, or the cardboard banjo that Stacey and Connor made me as a joke... I hope.

At Christmas, however, my obsessing over owning a banjo finally ended when my mom stepped up and gave me a banjo to call my own–although I had picked it out and ordered it myself and shipped it to her house several weeks before Christmas, which nearly killed me. She was footing the bill, which meant I had to wait, but it was more than worth it.

Now how do I play this damn thing?

Where to start with this picture? How about the super awesome stars-n-stripes guitar? How about Ernest Borgnine in the background? How about the fact that both Buck Owens AND Roy Clark were in the same place and the Hee Haw set didn't explode from an overdose of awesomeness?!