It has been one year and one month since Gainor & Friends last performed its weekly Sunday afternoon gig at the brewpub to benefit the Children’s Hospital. A mid week picking session at a nearby rural burger shop is in abeyance, and a pre-weekend evening jam session once convened in the basement of a hardware store has been quieted. The world has been overcast with the cloud of a global pandemic that has left no one untouched. While patiently hoping for better days somewhere ahead, the G&F musicians confined themselves last autumn (seen below) to jamming on weekends behind the BRC workshop to the occasional applause of lakeside neighbors.
Lately, a flicker of light blinks at the end of the coronavirus tunnel suggesting that perhaps some kind of end or new normal might be just around the corner. Maybe, this sub microscopic organism is beginning to loosen its grip on us?
Embracing a cautious sense of optimism, the G&F band patiently polishes its repertoire on the BRC front patio in hopefulness of resuming brewpub performances on Sunday afternoons before socially-distanced customers. After 13 months of community tumult and uncertainty, spring flowers are a floral prelude to sunnier days that await our music and future audiences.
From the G&F musicians: Get in tune, get picking, get the vax.
Located in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, the Windsor banjo factory manufactured thousands of banjos over its lifetime until it was destroyed during World War II by an air raid in 1940. Hussey eventually donated his banjo, signed by all the crew, to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. In 2013, with the help of a Kickstarter campaign, the Great British Banjo Company was founded and launched its commemorative “Shackleton Banjo” model which became a runaway best seller.
