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As a kid, I desperately wanted to be a cowboy. I dreamed of owning a horse, riding the range, and doing what cowboys did. And why wouldn’t I? Every night I slept under a cowboy blanket and my lunch box was fully decorated with a decal of a handsome cowboy twirling his lariat. Growing up at the dawn of the age of television, all my heroes were cowboys: Hopalong Cassidy, Shane, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and John Wayne. I watched “Gunsmoke,” “Have Gun Will Travel,” “The Rifleman” and “Bonanza” while eating my TV dinner. My favorite actor was Gary Cooper,
Playing by ear is, or should be, the holy grail of playing music. You just about never see a banjo picker, fiddler or mandolin player performing with their nose buried in a book of music notation or tab. It just ain’t done. Of course, there are plenty of beginner musicians who completely depend on tab to get them started. For these people, when they get to the point where they’d like to go out and jam with other musicians, they find it difficult or next to impossible to give up the addition to tab or music. Like quitting smoking, playing 
Wayne Erbsen is a master of a number of styles of music including old-time, bluegrass, folk, Appalachian, cowboy, pioneer, railroad, gospel, and music of the Civil War. As a solo performer living in Asheville, North Carolina, he plays clawhammer and bluegrass banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and guitar. His repertoire is over one thousand songs. A typical program would include songs, stories, history and humor mixed with hot instrumentals. Wayne can design an educational musical program perfectly suited to the occasion and the audience.