We recently connected with Rita Bliss and have shared our conversation below.

Rita, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Practice and a variety of musical experiences put me on a successful path to learning clawhammer banjo, singing, and writing songs. Before taking a handful of lessons with banjo player Richie Stearns, I had been playing guitar for about 15 years. Learning guitar was mostly a series of informal living room sessions with my parents, who both played, and learning from chord charts in songbooks. The internet existed in those years, but was not what it is today. If I wanted to play a new song, I had to find someone who was already familiar with it and ask them to teach me, or listen to a recording on repeat in order to figure it out by ear. Going into clawhammer banjo, I had a well-established dexterity with my left hand, which I’m sure helped. Of course, the tuning, all of the chord structures, and the idea of a drone string were all brand new. My right hand technique took work. I had some slap bass experience, which meant fully re-training my right thumb in particular to do something new and different.

A description of my experience with learning to write songs is much harder to pin down. I was exposed to songwriting early on when my mom would make up silly songs and rhymes about events as they happened, like loading into the car or something funny that the dog did. I don’t remember any of them specifically, but the idea of creating a story on the spot and simultaneously setting it to a melody and a beat is something that I was constantly involved in. We also played a lot of word games like Scrabble, Boggle, Balderdash, Mad Libs, Taboo, and Scattergories. I’m sure that built a skill of finding words quickly according to what letters were available, definitions, and categories. I gravitated towards poetry in school and have a degree in creative writing, and I bet that also contributed to my songwriting process from a stand point of practice and exposure as well.

Singing is similar, it’s just something that I’ve always done but never took lessons in.

Looking back, I wouldn’t change anything. The most essential element for learning the banjo, writing songs, and singing was just exposure and experience. The only thing that has really stood in my way is time – I’ve worked at least part time since about age 15. I don’t know how to read music, there are some chords that I play on banjo that I don’t even know the names of, and I couldn’t tell you what notes make up any of the chords that I play. A lack of formal musical training has not been a hinderance.

Rita, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I write songs and play the banjo. After playing in what I would call hobby bands since high school, I turned towards playing solo and being serious about it during this past year. Music was a big part of the environment that I grew up in, and I’ve been writing songs with varying levels of earnestness since I was a kid.

Queer musicians and female-identifying musicians are vastly underrepresented in the musical landscape as it is now. There are not many solo banjo players, and not many banjo/harmonica players. I didn’t set out to be unique in those ways but the combination of who I am and what I do is unusual.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Streaming services are not meaningful sources of support for artists. Art for the sake of art should will continue to exist, but it sure would be helpful if it were self-sustaining for creators. Go to shows and buy a CD if you can.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Honestly, no. There were no YouTube lessons available when I was learning to play and I’m grateful for that. If I wanted to learn a song badly enough, I just had to sit with it until I figured it out. There was no awareness of that being “the hard way”, it just was one of the only ways to learn and progress. It taught me to have patience with myself and helped me build a habit of persistence.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ritabliss.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ritablissbanjo
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ritablissbanjo
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RitaBlissBanjo