Quotes About The Banjo

#1. They think the banjo can only be happy, but that's not true.

Bela Fleck

#2. This all came of a conversation I had with [John] Steinbeck once when we were standing in a men's room somewhere. Steinbeck asked me why I didn't play the banjo any more and I told him that went out with the high-button shoes.

Eddie Condon

#3. Nothing says 'dropping out of society' like learning the banjo.

Daniel Roth

#4. I didn't grow up on the porch of a cabin looking out over the 90 acres that the mule was plowing with Paw-Paw playing the banjo. But I was always interested in folk music.

Ketch Secor

#5. I'm interested in all kinds of art. I draw and paint and don't know how to play the banjo, but I do play the banjo.

Ellar Coltrane

#6. A gentleman is a man who can play the banjo, but doesn't.

Mark Twain

#7. The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils, but give me the banjo.

Mark Twain

#8. The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.

Steve Martin

#9. Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside?

Jackson Browne

#10. I think I'm getting better at being verbal. I used to have a lot of problems with it. I had my own little demons that I was fighting, and I used the banjo as an escape.

Bela Fleck

#11. The banjo am the instrument for me.

Grandpa Jones

#12. I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar.

Jackson Browne

#13. Being from New York, I wonder why am I inspired by bluegrass and Earl Scruggs? But when I look at the whole history of the banjo, I feel really good about it, including the Earl Scruggs part.

Bela Fleck

#14. I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It came from Africa and even for the first years that white people played banjo they would put on blackface.

Bela Fleck

#15. When I first started doing my stand-up act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it all in. I didn't know you were supposed to just stand up and tell jokes. Essentially, that's what my act became: those five elements - except I dropped the poetry.

Steve Martin

#16. The energy in the banjo, and the beef in the bass. They're good tools to express yourself.

Ben Lovett

#17. I never knew you played the banjo!" cried Harris and I, in one breath.
"Not exactly," replied George: "but it's very easy, they tell me; and I've got the instruction book!"
From Three Men in a Boat

Jerome K. Jerome

#18. A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't.

Mark Twain

#19. There are a lot of chapters to the banjo's history. Part of it are the roots in Africa, where it's a more primitive instrument. Then it comes to the United States where it morphs into the slave music that they created here, which was very African in origin.

Bela Fleck

#20. What I'm worrying about is what Tom is going to say when he starts talking."
"Uncle Tom?"
"I wish there was something else you could call him except 'Uncle Tom,' " Aunt Dahlia said a little testily. "Every time you do it, I expect to see him turn black and start playing the banjo.

P.G. Wodehouse

#21. And then Earl Scruggs comes along and transforms the banjo into a virtuosic modern instrument. For the first time, the Southern banjo style becomes the identity of the banjo, and everything from before is wiped off of people's consciousness by the power of that explosion.

Bela Fleck

#22. If I have something inside me that I want to get out, I'll just beat it out on the banjo right then and there.

Valerie June

#23. I just loved the guitar when it came along. I loved it. The banjo was something I really liked, but when the guitar came along, to me that was my first love in music.

Doc Watson

#24. I was 18, at art school, and saw this cute boy playing banjo. I was obsessed. I taught myself how to play. I listened to a lot of country and just messed around. The second song I wrote on the banjo was 'Good to Be a Man.' That what's got me signed.

Elle King

#25. I started with the guitar around 12 years old but didn't learn the banjo until I was about 18 or 19.

Elle King

#26. But when I make a good [taxidermy] mount I feel like I beat God in a small way. As though the Almighty said, Let such critter be dead, and I said, 'Fuck You, he can still play the banjo.

Christopher Buehlman

#27. The thing about the banjo is, when you first hear it, it strikes many people as 'What's that?' There's something very compelling about it to certain people; that's the way I was; that's the way a lot of banjo players and people who love the banjo are.

Steve Martin

#28. My mother played a little bit of the old time clawhammer. She tuned the banjo up and picked one tune for me, and it just become natural to me. When she picked it, I just started and picked it, too.

Ralph Stanley

#29. The banjo is such a happy instrument
you can't play a sad song on the banjo - it always comes out so cheerful.

Steve Martin

#30. I happened to take a photo, and there was my wife, my dog and my banjo, all in the same shot - and I thought, "Oh, that's like a family portrait right there."

Steve Martin

#31. 'A guitar would work.' But then again so would a flute. A horn. A banjo. A tambourine. A trombone. The drums. When you're mixing music and love, there really is no bad combination." -Elvis Ruby

Nan Marino

#32. A sip of wine, a cigarette, And then it's time to go. I tidied up the kitchenette; I tuned the old banjo. I'm wanted at the traffic-jam. They're saving me a seat.

Leonard Cohen

#33. English banjo players really were a law unto themselves - you don't find that kind of brisk banjo playing on the original Louis Armstrong or Bix Beiderbecke records.

Pete Townshend

#34. I always loved the guitar, from when I was quite little. My dad had a G banjo at the house that he played. When he had parties, my sisters always played piano, and my dad played banjo.

Dave Davies

#35. It took me the bulk of my twenties to write one book about a family of alligator wrestlers. Whereas somebody like Steve Martin is releasing his latest banjo symphony, having just completed another movie and acclaimed, best-selling novel.

Karen Russell

#36. There are some people who do great stuff singing and playing fiddle at the same time and doing that kind of arrangement. But I think [I don't do that] partially because I'm still a loner on the guitar and banjo.

Sam Amidon

#37. When we moved back to the US, folk music was all the rage. So I traded in my banjo for a guitar.

Michael Storm

#38. For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know,

Banjo Paterson

#39. You know, I only claim to play three instruments. My dad is a banker, but a drummer at heart; and my mom used to teach piano lessons when she was younger. So I can play some piano, play a little drums, and fake the bass - but banjo, mandolin, and guitar are my thing.

Charlie Worsham

#40. Perfection can be overdone; a rift in a lute relieves melodious monotony, and when discords cease to amuse, one can always have the instrument mended or buy a banjo.

Robert W. Chambers

#41. The real beauty of it - key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing.

Vince Gill

#42. There's a lot of hip-hop that would be great with a banjo in it. It would just groove like crazy, and I hope I get to be one of the guys who does that, because it's coming. It's coming.

Bela Fleck

#43. The major labels, they roll with whatever is making money. I don't know if R&B turned into making banjo music and it sounded like blue grass, they'll buy it if it's selling.

Warryn Campbell

#44. I first thought maybe I'd do a banjo presentation record, where I'd play a couple of songs and get a bunch of other players to do the rest. Then I realized I had enough of my own songs to do an album of them.

Steve Martin

#45. The artistic side of our family was very important because one person encourages the other. It was a vey enlightening place to be as a kid because of all the music and dancing, and my dad played banjo; my sisters played piano and sang.

Dave Davies

#46. Id be happiest standing at the back, strumming my little banjo where no one could see me.

Rupert Grint

#47. I feel sorry for little babies ... When a little baby is born into this cold world, he's confused! He's frightened! He needs something to cheer him up ... The way I see it, as soon as a baby is born, he should be issued a banjo!

Charles M. Schulz

#48. I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes.

Jonny Greenwood

#49. I'm, I guess you could say, the Chinese-speaking, banjo-picking girl.

Abigail Washburn

#50. In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It'd be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.

Steve Martin

#51. Woodrell's storytelling is as melodic, jangly and energetic as a good banjo riff ... Sammy Barlach's story is a tragedy, but the telling of it is a pleasure.

Valerie Sayers

#52. She dropped miserably on the first chair she came to and sat there staring through the oriel, oblivious of Good Luck's frantic purrs of joy and Banjo's savage glares of protest at her occupancy of his chair.

L.M. Montgomery

#53. I know about the sweet home. I went to school with 'em boys, what became Lynyrd Skynyrd; I knew Allen Collins, the skinny girl-beautiful guitarist. I put Allen Collins in every travel piece I do. Travel writing is harrowing, going to Bermuda with a banjo on my knee.

Padgett Powell

#54. My dad also plays a little banjo and guitar, my mom plays the mandolin.

Page McConnell

#55. I wi-li-lished I li-li-lived in Molahonkey la-la-land The la-la-land where I-li-li was bo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lorn So I-li-li could play-la-lay my o-lo-lold banjo-lo-lo My o-lo-lold ban-jo-lo-lo won't go-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo.

Jojo Moyes

#56. I reside in a new colony for the Chinese-singing banjo player, with a population of one. At least I have something I have to do with my life.

Abigail Washburn

#57. I went to my room and packed a change of clothes, got my banjo, and started walking down the road. Soon I found myself on the open highway headed east.

Burl Ives

#58. My first stringed instrument was a cigar box banjo where I cut and turned the pegs and strung the wires myself.

Carl Sandburg

#59. There was talk of the Centaur being moved into the elephant cages to make room for a banjo-picking Minotaur. Surrendering his meager furnishings to a musical half man half bull was all bull.

Don Roff

#60. Emotional abuse is like being continuously kicked in the shins. It can be worse than getting one punch in the face, and it cements itself.

Ashley Banjo

#61. She dumped me for the quarterback after she'd played my body like a banjo. So Sad."
"I bet"
"I'm serious. I was heartbroken."
"For how long?"
"A whole week." An eternity in the life of a teenage boy.

Nalini Singh