Building A Banjo Company

We believe the banjo is the ideal first string instrument for kids. Most people think it’s hard to learn. Our founder, Zack, did too, until he picked one up.

1. 2019

   For years, Zack had set aside the part of himself that loved making music. Then he picked up a banjo, and everything he thought he knew about it was wrong. Its open tuning made every strum sound good, and its string order made scales and chords intuitive to figure out. For the first time, he felt like a musician. So why does everyone think it’s hard?

   

2. 2022

   Zack left his corporate job and hit the road to find out. In the Carolinas, he learned about banjo manufacturing at Pisgah Banjos outside Asheville, and was invited to play kids’ music at Hoppin’ John, a festival in North Carolina. The more he learned, the clearer it became: the banjo isn’t hard to play, it just looks hard. At the end of the trip, he saw Henry Ossawa Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson, an elder passing the banjo on to a child, and knew what came next: a kids’ banjo company.

   

3. Early 2023

   Zack traveled to Portland, Oregon, to study under Brooks Masten of Brooks Banjos. Together they built Zack’s first banjo, the one he still plays at every performance. Then he traveled to Fort Collins, Colorado, to meet Mark Austin of Cloverlick Banjos, who helped build the prototype for The Friendly Banjo: a banjo that keeps everything that makes it easy and leaves out what makes it look hard.

   

4. Late 2023

   We painted the friendly face on the prototype and added colors to the neck, to help beginners intuit where to put their fingers to make chords. A TikTok video introducing the Friendly Banjo quickly reached 2 million views, and that early interest became a successful Kickstarter campaign.

   

5. 2024

   We partnered with Magic Fluke, an American instrument maker located in Sheffield, Massachusetts, and today we’ve made hundreds of Friendly Banjos together. Kids pick one up and strum their first chord right away, proof that the banjo was never as hard as it looked. Our hope is that every child who picks one up grows up confident making music, and that families find a new way to connect by playing together.