When I was a kid I thought anyone who could play an instrument was a god. There were commune bands like Spirit in Flesh and talent show bands with light shows and 'battle of the bands' for all the cool kids in school, and even Doc Williams came through Ashfield with a pantheon of pickers. My dad played guitar, but when I picked it up I couldn't mash the strings down. I'd get camel foot fingertips in about two seconds and give up. I was just a camp follower.

I kept hanging around musicians all through college, reverently picking up little things until one snowy winter break on a remote island in Maine I picked up a banjo and started seriously wasting time on it. Things started to fall into place as I realized mere mortals could play music. Back at UVM my friend Paul Gittelsohn taught me enough about chords and keys to keep me busy for decades. Paul had a great collection of early bluegrass and old time records (many borrowed from roommate Chris Jones) that really got me going on that primitive sound.

When I met Chad and Joe Fallon in Boston I was already a fairly lame banjo player. There was always a better banjo player around, and one banjo player is more than enough, so I had a problem. One rainy day I bought a banjo-uke that was hanging on someone's wall, put metal strings on it and took it to Brandywine. I found I could infiltrate the hot sessions much better with uke (there weren't many around then) and I ended up hearing some really great music. I began to notice the strong backbeat the southern bands like Gary Silverstein of The SwampCats had. I got way into that offbeat chop.

I've always liked the old songs – mules and moonshine, love and death, trains and food, etc. - and the unadorned hard edged voices that sing them on the old 78s. The Chokers have a lot of fun with the songs, and sometimes get a little irreverent with the lyrics. We're not reenactors, we're just trying to carry on.