Bluegrass & Banjo Hats

Bluegrass has a long tradition of joking at the banjo player's expense, and the banjo players are usually the ones laughing hardest. An online "Canonical List of Banjo Jokes" runs to 271 entries, and a San Diego bluegrass writer notes that at a modern festival the audience is almost certain to hear a bluegrass joke or two. The music itself traces to Bill Monroe, whose "high lonesome" tenor named the sound and whose mandolin chop is often compared to a snare drum. The culture lives in the parking lot as much as on the stage. A parking-lot bluegrass jam in Ocoee, Florida has met every week for 32 years, and festival players camp among hundreds of RVs, tuning up between sets. These Bluegrass & Banjo hats borrow that jam-circle voice: BANJO IS THE BACON OF MUSIC and MY GRASS IS BLUE already sell on TeePublic hats, the fiddle-versus-violin gag is the one about spilled beer, and the tuning line is the oldest joke in the case. Two plain badges cover the search terms for anyone who just wants to say what they play. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Wear one to the next festival, or give one to the picker who already knows all 271 jokes.