Today’s strip was really just an excuse to come up with fun names. “Chitners,” as a last name, made me laugh out loud. If you say it with a bit of Appalachia, it sounds so perfect.
Anyway! A lot of you wrote in to defend the banjo, which is great. It’s a pretty rad instrument.
A great many of you sent along great YouTube clips of cool people doing cool things with the banjo. (Note, though: Sending in videos with musicians named “Earl Scruggs” doesn’t particularly help the joke, but I suppose what’re you gonna do? There are no “Lord Biggles-worths” playin’ the banjo.)
Here’s a particularly nice YouTube video of Béla Fleck playing Bach and talking about the improvisational skills of the composer. Well worth the watch, both for the talent and the humility of the performer.