Mark Dvorak remembers the first time he saw a banjo. He was a
child, maybe seven or eight years old, visiting a historical
reenactment park with his family – the kind of place where they
have log cabins and a mule farm – and he came across an old man
strumming the classic five-stringed American instrument. “This
guy seemed ancient to me. He’s sitting there playing this thing
– I’d never seen anything like it,” Dvorak recalled. “He called
it an ‘old fashioned boom box.’ He told me that when he grew up
he didn’t have electricity and so forth, so if he and his
friends wanted to make music had to do it themselves.” Dvorak
channeled that ethos of communal music-making as he grew up, and
now the multi-instrumentalist – who WFMT once called “Chicago’s
official troubadour” – can be found doing regular gigs around
the region and teaching at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
He’s also developed a strong interest in the history of American
folk music and instruments, especially when it comes to the old
Appalachian moun