Banjo

I've been in a flurry of activity lately learning about the banjo. I'm looking to take up the instrument and am very excited about it. My dad played when I was young and I have always enjoyed the sound. I played guitar in high school, albeit poorly, and want to have another crack at a musical instrument. I want to make some music and the banjo seems very appropriate for the turkey woods once the gobblers have all gone to sleep. Who knows maybe with the banjo I'll finally have a shock call that works. I'm going to try to borrow my dad's old banjo to get me started until I can make a good decision about what kind of instrument that I want to get. One thing that is giving me a lot of angst is the bluegrass vs. open backed banjo dilemma. Here are some of the pros and cons for each. I love bluegrass music. Ever since I got XM radio I listen to the Bluegrass Track 14 a lot. I really like the hard driving banjo in bluegrass songs. The down side is a lot of bluegrass is very fast paced and will be hard for a beginner. As for the open backed banjo, there is a lot going for it. It is the instrument of choice for folk music. Folk music is great for singing around the camp fire, especially with kids. The instrument is lighter and cheaper. The problem is that it doesn't seem like as much fun to me. The open back lends itself to a technique called frailing, which I was less than interested in until my dad's friend shared a link with me to an artist/teacher named Patrick Costello. He can really make frailing look fun. It seems to me like a fellow ought to make a choice about what style he goes for at the beginning as both frailing and finger picking take a year or more to become proficient. Right now I'm leaning towards bluegrass. Before I talked to my dad's friend I was sure I wanted to do bluegrass, but now I'm not so sure. The downside of all this wonderful information on the internet is that every time you answer a question you find three more you need to answer.