Howdy Reader!

Time for something I don't bring up much. I've been playing the five-string banjo since before junior high.

I know what you're thinking. How did a banjo kid keep the girls away all through junior high and high school? The guitar guys had nothing on me. Nothing! Because guitar says “sensitive singer-songwriter.” A banjo says “I enjoy being stuffed in a locker with my underwear pulled up around my ears.”

Here's how it started. A few of my buddies were deep into bluegrass, and I loved it (the picking, anyway… the singing, not so much). But mostly I was obsessed with Steve Martin. So funny, a magician AND a real banjo player. Not as a prop, but the real deal. I wanted to be him so badly I'd have worn the fake arrow-through-the-head to school if my mom had let me.

One problem. In my little town of Rossville, Kansas, nobody played the banjo. There was no internet, no YouTube, no tutorials. My mom found me lessons at a music store in Topeka, but that guy taught banjo the way I'd teach ballet: totally faking it and no business doing it. Eventually she tracked down a fella who could play, and he offered to teach me. So once a week, my mom drove me out to this stranger's house (who, over the years, became a good friend).

We'd sit across from each other. I'd bring my boombox and a couple of blank cassette tapes, he'd play a lick, and I'd copy it. Then I'd go home and listen to those tapes over and over and over until one day it finally clicked, and I could play a whole song. (Ask a teenager to rewind a cassette with a pencil today and watch their soul leave their body.) That went on for years. Once I could drive, I made the 30-minute trip to Topeka myself every single week.

And this is the part that still gets me. He never charged me a dime. “Just put it toward a good banjo someday,” he'd say. We didn't have much money, and good banjos cost a fortune. He taught a broke kid an instrument nobody else in town could play, purely out of the goodness of his heart. (And my parents did eventually give me a custom banjo from Stelling).

I bring all this up because I just watched a Rick Beato video called “The Death of Music Culture.” A little click-baity (I see you, Rick), but I get his point. Hardly anyone sits in the park with an acoustic guitar anymore.

This is where he and I part ways, though. I refuse to be the “get off my lawn” guy. (Besides, if you're on my lawn, grab a weedeater and help out) There has never, ever been a better time to learn how to make something.

I had to hunt down a stranger and copy licks off cassette tapes. You? You can learn banjo, guitar, drawing, animation, wood carving, piano, whatever's been tugging at you, right from your couch, tonight, for free. I'd have given anything for that at twelve!

I just turned 54, and I'm done waiting. I'm changing my Man Cave into a Creativity Cabin, with stations for painting, wood carving, and music. The beat-up couch stays, but now it faces an easel instead of the TV.

So instead of doom-scrolling through everybody else's stuff, I'm going to go make more of my own. My watch history is full of “how-to” videos and my idea list is full of “haven't yet.”

My friend Lou Mongello handed me a challenge coin years ago at his Momentum conference. On the back is a line from Walt Disney: “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” So that's the plan. I'm going to stop WATCHING, and begin DOING.

What about you? What's the one thing you've always wanted to learn, and what's stopping you from starting tonight? Hit reply and tell me. I'd love to know!
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See ya around the interwebs,

-Jeff

P.S. Okay, that subject line was a fib. The banjo didn't ruin my love life, it's the reason I have one. Jodi still remembers the first time she saw me, 30 years ago, out on the dorm steps, jamming with a couple of buddies. That's what caught her eye (go figure). The banjo has been very, very good to me.