Biographical notes
Hi, my name is Hans B. Holzherr. I was born in Bern, Switzerland, and currently live in Thailand. My first exposure to banjo was through Dixieland jazz I listened to a lot when I was a teenager. However, I didn't have any further interest in the instrument. That changed in 1967 when a friend of mine turned me on to Western music, and when I heard 'Dooley' played by "Dillard's Cowboy Quartet", as the radio host put it, I was sold on the music! For lack of better information, I actually took the music for cowboy music for quite a while.
When still in highschool, I had already bought a few bluegrass records including the Dillards' 'Back Porch Bluegrass'. I was completely fascinated by the rounds of notes fired from the banjo. Then, with a medium tempo song on an LP called 'Bluegrass Hall of Fame' I was finally determined to get to the bottom of that, and by slowing the record I wrote down the notes of the banjo break to 'The moon saw me crying last night' (I had learned to read and write music as a child when I took piano lessons). I noticed right away the periodical chime of a high note, and by comparing that to pictures of banjos, I put two and two together and concluded that this solo must have been played on this funny banjo with the short string. The long and the short of it is, I have a long history of analyzing breaks. It is longer than the actual time I have been playing banjo.
On 29 March, 1969, I bought my first banjo, a Framus long-neck 5-string, and got me the only banjo book I found, Pete Seeger's 'How to play the 5-string banjo'. I started with the 'basic strum' at the beginning and after about a year, I took on the challenge of learning my first bluegrass tune. It was the banjo break in 'When the work's all done this fall' from an LP called 'Song of the West' by Ed McCurdy (this Western stuff sure had made an impact....). I wrote the tab myself, just as with most of the others that would follow. I remember that it drove me nuts that I couldn't seem to go past a certain speed.... but eventually I got the hang,
and a year later, I was ready for my second banjo, also a Framus, and to form my first band, the Bernese Three, with Heinz Kempa on guitar and Gérard Theiler on mandolin. Soon, we changed our name to Bluegrass Blossoms, and it was that name under which the band, with the addition of a bass player, a new guitarist and a fiddler, reached national fame in folk circles. Roughly a decade down the road, Gérard had also become 3-time winner of the mandolin contest at the Old Fiddlers' Convention in Galax, Virginia.About 2½ years into playing banjo, I learned about and got hold of Scruggs' book, but by that time, I had already been irreversibly influenced by a number of other players, above all by the fabulous Doug Dillard, so I never really became a Scruggs player or 'Scrugg' in the strict sense. That trend continued with the appearance of Alan Munde, Carl Jackson, Ben Eldridge, and other notable stylists.
By the mid-70s I had already learned a good portion of Carl Jackson's tunes and of course, Bill Keith's rendition of Sailor's hornpipe. But then, I had the chance to get to know Bill Keith (1939-2015) in person. Listening to and watching this humble and fascinating person in concert and in many 1-on-1 situations, who loved to share his knowledge of banjo (and things not related to banjo as well) would change my perception of banjo playing forever... With a very clean recording of a concert that Bill gave in my hometown, I spent the next two or three years learning practically every note that he had played that night.
On another track, at the same time, I fell in love with the pedal steel guitar, and started learning to play it in 1975. This unwaning love keeps me struggling with this instrument to this day.
In the 80s, several bands I played in came and went, both bluegrass and traditional country. From the 90s onward, the main focus was country music, but in the new millenium I did teach banjo for 2½ years at a music school in Geneva. For instance, the sheet '5-String Banjo Fretboard and Chord Patterns' was created during that period.
I still love to work out arrangements for music that wasn't written for banjo. I played mostly pedal steel and some banjo with Rodeo Ranchers and Straight Ahead until both bands dissolved.
On yet another track, my badly neglected love related to my day job as medical illustrator I had until I retired is painting (yes, with tube paints and real paint brushes...!!!). This painting (oil on canvas board) is a self portrait from my "hairier" past I did while attending the Academy of Art University in San Francisco (formerly 'Academy of Art College'), 1994 through 1996.
To end this section on a more philosophical note, who would have thought that a simple device such as a finger pick could serve as a metaphor for life's ups and downs?
Yawn. We've had this old mask thing for 2,500+ years.
Time to replace it with something we can relate to.