This story originally appeared in The Centre County Gazette.
STATE COLLEGE — Tony Trischka doesn’t talk about the banjo like a museum piece. He talks about it like something alive. Something that keeps changing shape the longer you stay with it.
Trischka, widely regarded as one of the most influential banjo players of the past half-century, will bring his Earl Jam project to the State Theatre on Saturday, just one day after the release of his second Earl Jam album. The show, he said, is a chance to let audiences hear parts of Earl Scruggs’ playing that few people have ever heard before.
“Earl Scruggs himself considered what he played to be Scruggs style because he had these licks and ideas that were uniquely his,” Trischka said. “He was just a shy guy from North Carolina and he changed the world of music, certainly for bluegrass.”
Scruggs’ arrival in Bill Monroe’s band in 1945 reshaped bluegrass almost overnight. Trischka noted that Grand Ole Opry announcers would often highlight Scruggs’ banjo playing before even naming Monroe.
“No one had heard banjo playing like that before,” Trischka said.
For Trischka, that sound was life-altering. He began playing banjo in 1963 at age 14 after first hearing Scruggs, even though he had started out as a folk guitar player. Scruggs became what Trischka called a “north star” even as his own musical path branched outward.
Growing up in the late 1960s, Trischka absorbed influences far beyond bluegrass, from the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix to Frank Zappa, jazz fusion and experimental music. That curiosity pushed him toward a more progressive style, writing compositions that moved beyond the traditional three-chord structures common in bluegrass. Still, he said, he always returned to Scruggs.
That return deepened several years ago when Trischka gained access to rare recordings of jam sessions featuring Scruggs and John Hartford, recorded between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. The tapes captured Scruggs playing material he had never recorded and using licks no one had previously documented.
“No one has these recordings except me and a few other people,” Trischka said. “I decided I wanted the world, at least the bluegrass world, to be able to hear what Earl Scruggs did.”
Trischka began transcribing Scruggs’ playing note for note, turning those jams into what became the Earl Jam albums. The second volume, releasing March 13, features solos that are almost entirely Scruggs’ own notes, faithfully reproduced.
“It’s been kind of a passion project for me,” he said.
That sense of musical exploration extends beyond bluegrass history. Trischka has collaborated with musicians ranging from Sam Bush to Billy Strings, who appears on both Earl Jam albums.
“It’s really exciting to be able to play with my friends and people I’ve known for years,” he said.
His upcoming State College performance will reflect that balance between tradition and originality. Trischka said the first half of the show will focus on Scruggs’ music and selections from the Earl Jam albums, while the second half will shift toward his own compositions.
Looking ahead, Trischka shows no signs of slowing down. Alongside touring, he has been setting Emily Dickinson poems to music, composing chamber works and preparing future recordings, all while continuing to teach through his online banjo school called ArtistWorks: Banjo with Tony Trischka.
“It’s from absolute beginning, how you hold a banjo to more complicated things and everything in between,” Trischka said. “So people can learn the banjo from that and they can be anywhere from Thailand to State College, Pennsylvania.”
For someone who once drove around Syracuse in winter just to catch a crackling signal of the Grand Ole Opry, the journey still hasn’t lost its wonder. For Trischka, he truly living the dream.
“I’ve had so many of my dreams come true,” he said. “It’s really been an amazing life.”
