Hi, I’m Tom Collins —a clawhammer banjo player and instructor with a different approach.

After years of watching banjo players struggle to play fluidly, it dawned on me that the traditional banjo teaching mode of piling tune after tune onto a player’s plate was not helping them realize their goals of playing beautiful music.

Pulling from my background as a professional drummer, I started to shift my students’ focus to mastering the building blocks of clawhammer, and they started experiencing real positive change in their playing.

Great music doesn’t come from memorizing hundreds of tunes. It flows from mastering the fundamental mechanics of clawhammer. That’s what I teach. And it’s what sets Banjo Quest apart.