Funny to come across this thread today. I was just laughing to myself last night during a gig - several pub gigs this week and a couple of daytime shows and I just keep turning to my banjo (I'm primarily a guitar player) and thinking, "boy I love playing this thing." What a great instrument! I really don;t work at it much, I hate to admit. It's a secondary instrument for me, but I just love it! I too use an open back (Vega long neck by Deering, real nice banjo) and bare fingers - or finger nails, to be more accurate. I do play at home - and use the Fielding mute when I play for any length of time. The mute itself gives a really pretty pretty sound to the banjo. It doesn't just mute the sound. Anyway - I am just amazed at how much a banjo junkie I've become, and how very different an instrument it is to guitar. People LOVE banjo. They joke, but they LOVE it.

I play my Arnie Naiman & Chris Coole, 5 Strings Attached - Volume 2 CD all the time, and listen to the whole thing from start to finish on a regular basis. Here is a great album by a couple of really fine folkie banjo players with lots to interest banjo junkies and normal human beings too. If you ever want to tell the uninformed about why banjo is such a fine instrument - just pay 'em this record. They'll get its beauty right away, without you havin' t say a word!