For some reason, the banjo is an instrument that lends itself to jokes. For example, one joke asks, “What’s worse than a banjo?” The answer, “Two banjos.” If that’s the case, the audience can ...

Danny Barnes has added a few items to his survival guide. Barnes, the former front man and banjo-pickin’ fool of the Bad Livers, left the loving arms of the red-hot Austin music scene in 1999, landing ...

Sometime last winter, Noam Pikelny grew restless. He’d recently wrapped up a tour with the Punch Brothers, plucking his banjo strings to songs from the group’s chart-topping album, The Phosphorescent ...

LIVERMORE — Jim Bottorff settles into a chair in his living room and a pack of his fellow four-string banjo aficionados pile in with him. Some, like John Green, travel from as far away as Fiddletown, ...

At the back of the pizza parlor sit five rows of musicians, plucking and bouncing away. They all wear red vests. They all wear black bow ties. And they all wear broad smiles. They say they can't help ...