Patrick Costello My Dobro 33H guitar. It was my first good-quality guitar, and it his been my main musical companion ever since.

"What the hell do you think you’re doing? You don’t think that’s the blues? My God boy, give me that guitar before you hurt somebody!"

The next thing I knew the guitar was out of my hands and the guy was touching up the tuning with one hand and lighting one of my cigarettes with the other. Cussing me the whole time.

"A nice guitar like this being played by a chump like you out in public. What’s this city coming to? Marlboros? Why can’t you smoke the right brand? Smart mouth little . . ."

It was all happening too fast. I was minding my business riding the subway from the 69th street terminal into the city stopping at every other station to play my guitar and make a few bucks. I’d find a corner on the platform, pick a spot to play and keep my case open in front of me. People walking by usually threw something in. Sometimes it was a used Kleenex and sometimes it was money.

Getting paid to play was kind of cool and it beat being in school as long as the police didn’t roust me.

Now I had this crazy old guy swiping my cigarettes, handling my guitar and swearing at me a mile a minute. Once the shock wore off I started to get mad.

"Hey, who are you?" I said "And give me back my guitar!"

"I ain’t gonna hurt your guitar, boy. And it’s not like a nice white boy from the suburbs couldn’t afford a new guitar. If you shut up you might learn something. I’m gonna show you something now, son. Think of it as a public service because I can’t let you keep going like that. Hurt people’s ears playing like that!"

Before I could say anything in my defense (I mean I wasn’t that bad, at least I didn’t think I was) the guy started playing.

Playing isn’t a strong enough word. He took that guitar and just tore into it. It cried. It screamed. People on the subway platform stopped in their tracks.

The sound of my big Dobro 33H metal body guitar filled up the subway tunnel like a wind.

Stuffy looking guys in business suits started bobbing their heads and tapping their feet. A couple of people started clapping along and a scary looking dude in a rain poncho (he was scary for two reasons: it wasn’t raining and I don’t think he had anything on under that poncho) broke out into this Martha Graham style dance routine.

And the whole time he’s playing the stranger who abducted my guitar is grinning at me.

He stopped playing with a flourish. "Now, that ain’t nothing. Nothing! Put a guitar like this in the right hands and then you’d have something. I can pick a little blues now but you, well I don’t know what you were doing."

"That’s what my dad says. He comes out when I practice and says, ‘that ain’t the blues, that’s crap.’ And goes back inside."

"Your daddy is a smart man."

He handed my guitar back to me. "Make an E chord . . . ok, now we know that you’re smart enough to know what an E chord is. Now I’m gonna show you something. Gonna show you how to bounce that E chord. You put that bounce into that E chord and you’ll have something. You’ve got to bounce it, son. You put some bounce in that chord and even though you can’t play the blues these folks won’t ever know the difference."

"Why do I have to bounce it?"

"Because you can’t play the guitar! Now do like I tell you, give me some bass. I said give me some bass, son! Hit that thing like you mean it. You’re acting like you’re afraid of that guitar. It ain’t going to do nothing you don’t tell it to so hit that thing!"

We sat like that long enough for a few trains to go by. I couldn’t play exactly what he was showing me yet (it took me a few years of concentrated effort to make it work) but I could see the logic of it. I had an idea that I might be able to become a half decent country blues guitar player after all.

Strike the bass and let it ring. Hammer on the full chord while the bass is ringing and while that’s ringing hammer on an extra note in the chord. Dropping in the note to make it an E6 is cool. An E7 isn’t quite as cool but it will work in a pinch. Slide into the A and slide into the B. Go back and bounce the E again.

I had never heard a guitar played in this manner before and I have yet to run into anybody else who plays that way. It was a simple approach to the guitar in some respects because the melody line is dropped in almost as an afterthought. In other ways it was mind-bendingly complex because it took the rhythm and did things to it. Instead of a boom-chuck or a bump-dit it took basic patterns and twisted them into a running shuffle beat that to this day makes my heart beat faster.

This wasn’t the blues or country guitar I used to hear white guys playing in coffee shops. This wasn’t trying to copy a bunch of meaningless notes out of a book. This was power. Power of a kind that up until then I had only heard people talk about and pretend to understand. Power to make the bunch of stuffy looking office drones close their eyes and daydream about driving into the night in a ’59 Caddy wearing Ray-Ban shades with an electric guitar on the rear seat, a blonde in the passenger seat and a bag of mojo hand in the glove box. Power to bring out the good inside of you with a cheer and bring out the bad in you with a scream.

I remember sitting there while that Philly subway station reek covered me like a wet towel. I held my guitar and thought that maybe, just maybe, this was the key that my father told me Ineeded to find before I could make any sense out of the guitar.

"This" I said to myself, "is the blues."

"What did you say?" He asked me. "Did I hear you say blues? Don’t be saying that word around me! Maybe if you could do something but not yet, not now!"

"Ah, nothing. What am I supposed to do about this B chord?"

We sat there on that bench for a while longer in the funky stink of that subway station. People were stopping to watch us bicker at each other like we were putting on some kind of show.

Every time I started to acknowledge the crowd the old guy would yell at me to pay attention to him. He answered all my questions by first swearing and then yelling at me that nothing mattered but the rhythm.

He was still cussing me as he got up to leave. I said I didn’t know how to thank him. He took my cigarettes and the money from my guitar case, said that would do just fine and got on the train. He was cussing me the whole time. As the train pulled away it hit me that I had never gotten around to asking him his name.

I waved goodbye and wondered if I was going to have enough money to cover the fare to get back home.

Twenty years later I started teaching his E-chord bounce over the internet. I call it The Subway Shuffle.

My mother makes patchwork quilts. She takes these little bits and pieces of cloth and makes beautiful geometric patterns that come together one piece at a time. It always amazes me that something as useless as a handful of calico scraps can become something beautiful and useful when put together properly. That’s a good analogy to keep in mind as you take the first steps towards learning a musical instrument because learning to make music has a lot in common with one of my mothers’ quilts. We don’t learn from one source but rather a collection of chance encounters. After a while every song you play becomes a patchwork of ideas that you picked up along the way. Sometimes I’ll be playing a song and it will hit me that in just that one tune I can see bits and pieces from almost every musician I’ve ever met.

A lot of the musicians who added a scrap or two to my patchwork fall into a category that I like to refer to as "the cool old dudes." I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had some old guy who didn’t look smart enough to find his way home grab my banjo or guitar and just, to use a phrase from the drag racers in Crisfield, take me to school.

They weren’t always gentle. Sometimes they were pretty rough but they were almost always honest. When I got it right they’d say so. When I got it wrong they’d say so. There was one cool old dude I met years ago at a festival in Pennsylvania who informed me that I was playing "bad enough to hurt his feelings." After I managed to stop laughing he sat down for an hour and helped me work out some Mississippi John Hurt songs.

Wherever you live I promise you that there is more than one cool old dude in your neck of the woods. They are not always easy to find. In fact it almost seems that when you go out looking for them they go into hiding or something. But if you get in the habit of taking your banjo with you everywhere the cool old dude in your town will find you.

When the weather is warm move your daily practice routine out to the front porch. Get a gig bag with a shoulder strap and get used to keeping your banjo close at hand wherever you go. The first step is to get out and be seen with your banjo. Don’t wait until you are "ready" or "good enough" because that never happens. You don’t have the luxury of being overly self-conscious if you really want to learn your instrument. If all you can do is play three songs that’s three more songs than most of the other people out there can play. Get out and, as Woody Guthrie once put it, "inject yourself into the bloodstream of the people."

I’ve jammed with cool old dudes in parking lots, libraries, grocery stores, shopping malls, doctor’s offices, train stations and most anyplace else you might think of. If you just sort of wander around you’ll hear some old guy say, "Hey, is that a guitar?" or, "is that a banjo?" Take the time to talk to him and things will take off from there.

There is an old saying that goes, "When the student is ready the master will appear." Get out there and be ready. Accept the criticism as graciously as you accept the help. Always offer to at least buy the cool old dude a cup of coffee and be sure to keep a couple of bucks in your sneaker for the fare home, just in case.

This week we have five more workshops for banjo, guitar and harmonica.

In Harmonica Lesson Three we learn to play “Amazing Grace”.

Frailing Banjo Lesson Three introduces the C chord, 4/4 time, 3/4 time, “Amazing Grace” and “Mountain Dew”.

Easy Folk Guitar Lesson Three introduces the C chord, left and right hand coordination and “Mountain Dew”.

Folk-Blues Guitar Lesson Three introduces the C chord, 4/4 time, 3/4 time, “Amazing Grace” and “Mountain Dew”.

Advanced Frailing Banjo -explores my original banjo tune “Fat Bastard”.

Be sure to visit us on the web at http://frailingbanjo.com.

Also check out The Maryland Folk Musicians Retreat and think about joining us for a wonderful weekend of music on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Until next time, keep on picking!

God bless,

-Patrick