Everything you've heard about playing the guitar comes either from bad guitar players or weak guitar players trying to could the issue to make a buck foisting lessons on the unsuspecting public.

Look at it this way, making music on the guitar, banjo or anything else is nothing but taking a set of simple skills and learning how to apply them together. Instead of worrying about how somebody with twenty years or more experience applying those skills it's a lot smarter to just start simply and make the most of what you can do right now.

Go here: http://www.youtube.com/Dobro33H

Mixed in with the banjo stuff is a series of free guitar workshops.
Start with lesson one, work your way through the stuff there and then move on to lesson two.

After lesson two, go to the folk song archive here and sing a few thousand folk songs. Then go to lessons three and four.

It's all you need. It's free. It works.

-Patrick Costello
http://howandtao.com