Buddy Wachter

The experience of banjoist Buddy Wachter performing live is a jaw-dropper; identifying him as to genre is confounding. He descends from a line of banjo players who use the instrument to express sheer virtuosity in the face of complex music, much the way a mountain climber arrives at the foot of a treacherous peak packing his assortment of ropes and special climbing tools. Wachter is not a bluegrass banjo player, and although he can perform pieces by Beethoven on the banjo with an ease that would make a listener think the works were originally composed for this instrument, he is not a strictly classical player. He is more the type of player who will move through music from a half-dozen distinct genres, making it all seem like part of a single style that would best be described as banjo playing, or to be technically specific, plectrum banjo playing. Since Wachter's plectrum-packing idols such as Eddie Peabody and Harry Reser tend to be classified as jazz banjoists, then perhaps Wachter won't be too seriously miffed being included in their ranks. Certainly these sorts of players display some of the important traits of jazz, such as the ability to interpret music from other genres and make a personal statement from it. Listeners are expected to pay attention to this kind of music, not put it in the background at a weenie roast. On the other hand, if a jazz musician is a person who plays a theme, then follows it up with a lot of weird, unconnected noodling and whose discography is some kind of vision quest toward the ultimate in weirdness, then that isn't Buddy Wachter at all. He was born Andrew John Wachter and had already learned the mandolin by the time he was nine. He switched to banjo and by 15 he was already well-known for his skill on the instrument. The...