"After all," I finish their thoughts in my mind, "how hard could it be? You play it."
And, let's be honest, they're right.
The left hand gets the easy layout of a fiddle -- they're fiddle tunes for a reason -- but has frets so you don't even really have to put your fingers in the right place. The right hand requires no technique at all. Plus, no one watches your mistakes.
The guitar player in your band has to be good. Everyone plays guitar. If someone has walked up to the stage and is watching the band, odds are, he's watching the guitar player, thinking, "Is he as good as I am? Could I do better?"
If you're the guitar player on stage, and you're not that good, you have to wear really short skirts. If you're female, you'll draw lots of attention, yet they'll overlook any shortcomings in guitar technique. If you're male, same thing.
If you're a mandolin player and you're not that good, you can relax because no one's watching. They all know they could be as good as you are.
No one plays fiddle. Everyone knows it's hard. No frets. A bow. You have to have taken orchestra as a kid.
Piano? Years of lessons. Cello? Oboe? Ditto. Hammered dulcimer? Too many strings. Banjo? It's weird and heavy and even other banjo players will say they could never get the hang of clawhammer.
But mandolin ... how hard could it be?
So if you're a mandolin player, what can you do to add flash and glamour to your aura?
You can tell jokes. Every mandolin player is in awe of Jethro Burns; everyone else knows he's a funny, if not overly bright, hick. Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk. You can hang with the Grateful Dead, do lots of acid, and invent a new musical genre, like David Grisman. You can take up a real instrument. Andy Statman switched to clarinet.
Or you can just not care. Like bass, if you're easy to get along with and show up on time, your fellow musicians will hire you for gigs. I can think of three mandolin players who got dropped by their bands, all three because they were egotistical and unreliable drunkards. If folks tell you that describes you, switch instruments.
When someone tells me he's just bought a mandolin because mandolin looks easy, I smile, nod, and assure him he's right. I offer help and advice.
Dave Taenzer says that right after he bought his first set of bones, he went to a bones workshop. He walked up to the experienced bones player about to lead it and asked, "Are bones hard to learn to play?"
The guy considered the question, then smiled and shook his head. "No," he said. "No harder than any other instrument."
