Pennsylvania banjo player Michael Abrams has launched a new interview-oriented banjo publication, which he calls Banjo Head, using the popular online platform, Substack. It’s been up a little more than a month, and already he has posted transcribed discussions with top players like Tony Trischka, BB Bowness, Anthony Howell, and clawhammerer Aaron Tackle.
Abrams includes tab examples with the interviews, though those are reserved for paid subscribers. But he only asks $5/month to get full access, or $36/year, which seems a fair if not generous price structure for as much work as he is putting into the magazine.
We turned the tables a bit, and interviewed Michael about his own background as well as his plans for Banjo Head Magazine.
He says that he works currently in publishing, and with the loss of Banjo NewsLetter in 2021, decided to pick up the banner himself.
“I grew up in Central Pennsylvania and heard bluegrass during my formative years. But, since my efforts at fingerstyle guitar had led to tendinitis, I always assumed fast banjo picking would give me the same. At one point I was in a band with another guitar player and his family and I started playing ukulele, just so there’d be fewer guitars.
My mother loved the ukulele and for my birthday she bought me what she thought was a ukulele instructional book, only it was actually a banjo instructional book. I made the mistake of asking her if that meant a banjo was coming too. Subsequently, wracked with guilt at having thwarted my expectations, she bought me my first five-string. As it happens, with the banjo’s low string tension and absence of alternating thumb (no, I don’t play Adcock style), I have no issues with tendinitis.
That all happened when my first daughter was two-years-old, an incredibly stupid time to start a project like the banjo. I remember picking it up to learn when I had my first hour alone with the instrument, and realizing within half an hour that just getting mediocre was going to be a years long affair. But it didn’t matter, I was done for. Then, after years of being a closet picker, I ended up being dragged to jams (then backing up and reworking my skills to survive them), and was recently recruited for a band, the Sourland Mountain String Band (then backing up and reworking my skills to survive it). So I’ve needed help and insight on the banjo every step of the way.
As anyone who has tried knows, the banjo is not a straightforward instrument, like, say, the piano or the tuba, and beginners have more questions than beginners on other instruments. And there’s also this kind of secret history that only banjo payers know about: Snuffy Jenkins to Earl Scruggs and Don Reno to Bill Keith and all the variations between. So Masters of the Five-string Banjo was like balm to the soul. And when I’d finished that, I asked Banjo Hangout what was next and everyone pointed me to Banjo Newsletter, which instantly became my favorite publication (competing, you know, with the likes of The New Yorker and The Palindromist). Not only were there interviews with banjo royalty and up-and-comers, but there was tab every month. It was really the only way to be informed about who was doing something new on the instrument, and also how they were doing it.
Unfortunately, Banjo Newsletter ceased publication about six years ago and I have mourned its loss. Professionally I’m in publishing and it soon became apparent that if I wanted there to be a banjocentric magazine, it might be up to me to do it. I was soon convinced by most everyone I talked to that nobody reads magazines any more, and maybe I should try something like a Substack newsletter.”
Is the idea to mostly focus on three-finger, bluegrass players?
“That is the plan, as of now, mostly because that’s the style I play, so those are the people I want to talk to (and, secretly, hope to get them to explain their secrets to me). It would be great to cover clawhammer too, as I love the sound, but having picked up the instrument as an adult I realized immediately I’d have to choose one path or the other.
If this should ever become a fuller-time gig, or if I eventually team up with some collaborators, it could be its own section. Clawhammer players also need a banjo magazine, after all. A compromise, for now, is to have the occasional three-finger old-time player (like Aaron Tacke, who I recently interviewed).
I really hope to have an interview posted every two-weeks or even every week, but that leaves me little time to expand outside the three-finger niche.”
How about the tabs?
“So far, I’ve got tab of every player I talk to. Sometimes they provide it, and sometimes I tab it out myself (figuring out songs and writing them out is, for me, one of life’s great pleasures. I guess that really puts the emphasis on the nerd in ‘banjo nerd’).
Right now all the interviews are free, as is a basic subscription. So if you play banjo, there is no reason not to sign up. Most of the tab is for paid subscribers at the moment. As it grows I plan on having a beginners section, a ‘forgotten classics’ section, and a letters section (titled, brilliantly, by a friend of mine, ‘Fireball Mailbag.’).”
When did you go live with Banjo Head?
“It’s been up for a month and a half now. And I have some really great interviews coming up with pickers that go deep into banjo and deep into life. I just can’t wait to post the conversations I’ve had with Max Wareham, Cody Looper, and Ryan Cavanaugh.
I mean, Cody Looper is playing behind Michael Cleveland and Jason Carter, and loaned tremendous power to Blue Mafia, and yet, if you look him up online, there’s next to nothing about his biography.
That’s the kind of gap I hope to fill, and that interview is profound.”
Michael mentioned that the next interview set to go up is with Hayden Bramlett, banjo player with Brad Kaylor & Mineral Bluff Revue.
Tell us about the referrer subscription offer.
“That is a feature made to help get the word out. If you just share the site you get a free subscription that includes all the tab and all the back ‘issues.'”
What are your goals with Banjo Head?
“I’m hoping to keep this going as long as I can, to shine the light on the many many, many amazing pickers out there who deserve a lot more attention than, say, similarly-skilled guitar players, and to give pickers from all walks of life a place to read what’s going on in the world of their instrument.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned talking to banjo players, it’s that banjo players want to talk banjos. Most of these interviews end up being two-hour affairs, and it’s not all my doing. I edit them down to a more digestible size, but have found out that the readers want them long.
So the current goal is to give banjo players a continuous supply of banjo fat to chew on.”
Sounds like he really knows banjo players!
Slide on over to Banjo Head on Substack if you are banjo inclined, and check it out.
