WATCH: Tristan Scroggins, “Seneca Square Dance”

Artist: Tristan Scroggins
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Seneca Square Dance”
Album: One-Ring Circus
Release Date: October 15, 2021

In Their Words: “The Seneca are a group of Indigenous Iroquoian-speaking people who historically lived south of Lake Ontario. Many were moved to Oklahoma after the War of 1812 which might explain why this tune has been traced to the Southwestern Missouri/Oklahoma area. I learned this tune from Molly Tuttle and we would play it together a lot. Its simple melody makes it easy to experiment with different harmonies and picking techniques. I had already experimented with a solo arrangement of this tune for mandolin, but when I started playing tenor banjo I was really excited about the possibilities that the extra sustain of the banjo presented. This particular arrangement utilizes crosspicking techniques to present melody and rhythm at the same time similar to three-finger banjo playing.” — Tristan Scroggins


Photo credit: Natia Cinco

These Artists Take Irish Banjo Beyond Four Strings

Editor’s note: Tunesday Tuesday is changing slightly in 2021. What began in 2017 as a bi-weekly tune feature and short review will now be expanded into a monthly roundup of interesting, engaging, and groundbreaking instrumental music and the themes we trace within it. 

One of the most thoughtful and virtuosic clawhammer banjoists around, Allison de Groot (Molsky’s Mountain Drifters, The Goodbye Girls) has released a brand new video with fellow Canadian, guitarist Quinn Bachand. The two old-time musicians found themselves with free time hunkering down on British Columbia’s coast last fall and joined together on a gorgeous rendering of a couple of tunes — not rousing old-time or bluegrass fiddle melodies, though. Instead they chose a pair of Irish jigs: “Tom Billy” and “Trip to Athlone.” 

“I love working up fiddle tunes outside of the American old-time repertoire,” de Groot relays via email. She arranges old-time and bluegrass with a striking, clean precision and unmatched rhythmic pocket for a frailing banjo player — facets of her playing style which might not seem to lend themselves to the often staccato or triplet-heavy or frenetic flurries of licks and trills in Irish music. 

“When I’m playing in a new style,” she goes on, “I try to capture aspects of what makes the music special to my ear while still embracing the unique qualities of clawhammer banjo.” And on “Tom Billy” and “Trip to Athlone,” she does just that, impeccably so. De Groot is a player that at times can perfectly disappear into her source material, but her obvious embrace of clawhammer’s idiosyncrasies is what makes these Irish forays so entrancing.

 “Adapting jigs to the five-string banjo is not a historically new endeavour, but there is lots of room to explore clawhammer banjo in this setting. I find a lot of freedom in that space!” That freedom is perhaps the most charming aspect of this set of tunes — second only to the joy always apparent in de Groot’s picking. 

Though perceptibly rare, other banjo players have indeed been enticed by that very same freedom (de Groot is right that it’s not a new endeavor). The five-string banjo, especially post-Earl Scruggs, is an instrument with intrinsic qualities of innovation, acrobatics, and thinking outside the box. The physical instrument itself and the lore driving the mystique behind it lend it perfectly to Irish and Celtic folk music. 

Ron Block, longtime member of Alison Krauss’s band, Union Station, and an award-winning multi-instrumentalist, has long been an acolyte of five-string Irish banjo. On a 2018 duo release with Irish songwriter and picker Damien O’Kane entitled Banjophony, the pair explore not just the mind-bending beauty created by a five-string banjo’s interpretations of traditional Irish musical vocabularies, but also the ways in which the five-string and four-string instruments bump into each other — often delightfully — in these contexts. The linear-laid-out four-string banjo and the more bouncy, melodic five-string each naturally settle into their roles in this dialogue, like old-time and bluegrass’s primordial band structure of fiddle and banjo, but with more aggression and dissonance — and a heavy dose of the stark sort of beauty that grows from the spine-tingling friction between such gregarious and bold instruments.

Irish music fully embraced the banjo — the four-string iteration of the instrument, most often tuned in fourths (C, G, D, A) — by the mid-twentieth century, closing a transatlantic feedback loop that began in Africa, landed the banjo’s precursors in the Americas brought by enslaved Africans, and then transported the instrument in its modern form back across the Atlantic to Ireland. This conclusion occurred after the four-string banjo (and any/all banjos with varying counts of strings) skyrocketed to the height of fame in America’s popular music of choice throughout the nineteenth century: minstrelsy.

Its punchy volume, its bubbly, single-string triplets, the low buzzing of the wound strings were each folded into the greater sound of Irish folk so naturally, from the purest traditional instances to the most daring punk affectations. The banjo’s subversive, trailblazing tendencies are ripe for exciting forays and experiments. One such experiment is banjo player, builder, and inventor Tom Saffell’s behemoth Infinity 8-String Banjo.

In this 2007 video with acoustic Irish-bluegrass band Plaidgrass, Saffell demonstrates how the Infinity 8-String Banjo combines Irish banjo approaches on both four-string and five-string instruments. The two lower, wound strings, while droning or being picked, round out the natural high-end of five-string banjos, bringing in some of the punch and gravel we know and love in Irish banjo. Meanwhile, the higher strings — with one additional above the typical D first string — equip Saffell to efficiently execute Irish turns of phrase with a simple bluegrass roll of the right hand. 

Whatever it is about Irish banjo playing that just works, these pickers demonstrate there’s an entire world to be discovered not just in other genres that may be seen as outside of the norm for our instruments, but even more so in the space created between those genres. That’s as close to a definition of American roots music as we might get, the “melting pot” quality we all know and love, evident and flamboyant in each of these examples of Irish banjo on more than four strings. 


Photo credit: Patrick M’Gonigle  

BGS’s 15 Favorite New Emojis

If you haven’t heard by now, Apple released a host of new emojis — 398 to be exact! — with the rollout of iOS 13.2 earlier this week. Among them are soon-to-be-favorites such as an otter, a sloth, a yawning face, a bulb of garlic, and oh so many more. To take you into the weekend we thought we’d poll the BGS staff and list our favorites here. Which new additions are you most excited for? Comment below!

The Banjo

I mean, DUH!! We finally get a banjo emoji! Props to Apple for getting it right with the fifth string peg and the armrest. It’s clearly a beginner model (the tuning pegs parallel to the headstock, for instance), but this machine can clearly get the job done. An obvious fav.

The Banjo

Can you blame us? A BANJO EMOJI IS HERE, Y’ALL!!

The Banjo

No, seriously. This isn’t a “paddle faster” situation. This is a “the quintessential American instrument is finally given its due alongside a violin, stratocaster, trumpet, saxophone, and a Shure SM58” situation. Or perhaps, a Bluegrass Situation?

The Banjo (Samsung version)

Are those… are those ugly tuners!? Unfortunately, no. If you peer really closely you’ll see it’s actually a six-string banjo, which is just as important a part of American vernacular music as the five-string, to be sure. Good job, though, Samsung. The detail is spot on, even if six-string banjos don’t have headstocks like this.

The Banjo (Facebook version)

Facebook isn’t getting much of anything right these days, but damn if their banjo emoji doesn’t just almost cover a world of sin. Another six-string (forgivable), yes, and the inlays and gold plating are a nice touch.

The Banjo

We just missed it, okay? TAKE IN ITS RESPLENDENT GLORY!!

The Banjo (Google version)

Another budget model, given the flange styling, and they certainly phoned in the details — is it four-string? Five-string? Six-string? NO-STRING!? But hey, it’s a banjo. Banjomoji. (Still testing out that term. You can use it if you like.)

The Banjo

If you scrolled down this far to see if we’ve chosen any others… Nope! Still banjo.

The Banjo (Microsoft version)

It kinda feels like this one should be cut out and promptly slung around a paper doll’s neck, right? Cute as can be. But really, did any of y’all know Microsoft has their own versions of emojis? Who knew??? [Windows phone users, don’t @ us.]

The. Banjo. Damnit. 

Banjomoji! Banjomoji! Banjomoji! Banjomoji! Banjomoji!

The Banjo (Twitter version) 

The participation trophy of banjo emojis. The “nobody else in the group project turned in their work” of banjo emojis. The Nickelback of banjo emojis. Four tuners, two strings, six brackets — is this a functional instrument or a toy, Twitter? Oh right. Neither. It’s an emoji. Still a banjo, though!

The Hatchet

The only other AXE to be released in this round of emojis. Lololol. Get it?

The Banjo

You see what we’re doing here, right?

The Banjo

If only Earl Scruggs could see the magnificence he hath wrought.

The Banjo

Whether you got here the long way or scrolled right down after reading the intro, yes, this is a real thing you just read. We just love the banjo emoji, okay? We’ve waited a while. Let us have this moment.

Now to begin lobbying for a mandolin emoji! Who’s with us!?


Photo credit: Foter.com
Emojis: Apple designs / Emojipedia