No one individual in recent times has done more to promote and preserve clawhammer banjo playing in SW Virginia than Thomas (“Mac”) Traynham.  His contributions as a tune collector, performer, teacher, banjo builder and promoter of clawhammer banjo playing have had a deep and lasting effect on the continued popularity of the style in the region.

            Unlike many of the masters featured on this page, Mac did not grow up learning banjo in his family. Raised primarily in Oxford, NC and Crewe in Northern Virginia, Mac came to the music of SW Virginia later in his life, during his college years.  Raised by a Presbyterian Minister and his wife, Mac grew up in the music of the church and listening to his father play the harmonica.  His folks, like many parents of the time associated fiddle and banjo music with partying and non-“church like” behavior, so old time music wasn’t a part of his home life.

            In the early 1970’s, Mac took some of his high school graduation gift money and went to a music store in Crewe and bought his first banjo. With his new banjo in hand, he headed off to college.  His first exposure to banjo music was bluegrass, and he started playing in the dorm with small trios who played mostly folk music.  He also began to learn guitar.  After a two year stint at a small liberal arts college, he moved back home and took work roofing houses.

            Soon, he met a college dropout fiddler by the name of Bob Freeman, and started backing him up on guitar.  Bob widened Mac’s musical tastes, playing an eclectic mix of American fiddle tunes, Shetland Island tunes and Irish melodies.  When Bob decided to move to Richmond, Mac followed and the two formed a trio with a young female singer.  With pressure from parents and the scarcity of jobs in Richmond, the trio decided to move to Blacksburg, in SW Virginia to continue both their music and their formal education.

             It was in Blacksburg that Mac first encountered the music and dance of the mountains. There was a vibrant dance scene and string band music was alive and well.  In 1975, he took his first trip down the road to Galax and was stunned by the sights and sounds of the Old Fiddler’s Convention.  There, on the stage and in the camping areas Mac first heard such luminaries as Wade Ward  and Kyle Creed and his musical tastes were changed forever. He recalls strolling through the camps and being approached by a young man selling an album entitled “Play Banjo the Wade Ward Way.”  The man’s name was Pete Parrish and he had moved from his home in England to live and learn from the elder clawhammer master.  Mac offered to purchase a record if Parrish would show him how to play in the clawhammer style.  There, on the grass at Galax, he took his first clawhammer lesson.

            Once he mastered the clawhammer technique, after hours of driving his roommates nuts with constant frailing, Mac began to master what Pete had shown him.  In 1976 he met a young guitar builder and saved the money, by doing carpentry work, to purchase his first handmade instrument, a Wayne Henderson guitar.  In 1977, Mac took the resonator off of a banjo he had bought from its maker and began to take clawhammer seriously.  He was listening to and reading every album and article he could find on SW Virginia old time musicians and soon traveling across the region to learn from the last of the old time masters still living at the time.

            “Everything opened up to me all at once,” recalled Mac who soon was playing knee to knee with Tommy Jarrell in his NC living room and visiting Kyle Creed’s banjo shop.  In 1978, graduating in Forestry from Virginia Tech, Mac headed up to Vermont to take a forestry job.  There he found a wild bunch of untamed young old time musicians like fiddler Pete Sutherland, George Ainsley and Ahmet Baycu.  They not only encouraged his banjo playing, but convinced him he could build his own instrument.

            Soon, Mac yearned for the music and friends he had left in Virginia and he headed back to find a vibrant clogging and stringband scene alive and well.  In 1980, he moved deeper into the Blue Ridge, in Grayson County with his girlfriend, Jenny.  In 1981, the two were married. Jenny was a nurse who played guitar and sang and in between jobs and family, the two quickly became a popular duo on the festival circuit.

            In 1990 the two moved to Floyd County, on a farm near Willis and Mac began to expand his banjo building capabilities and his musical endeavors.  Soon he was a regular at the nearby Floyd Country Store, and was instrumental in the revitalization of Floyd as a center of old time music in Virginia.  Working with Helen White and many others, Mac helped found the Junior Appalachian Musicians program in Floyd, as well as the Handmade Music School. Perhaps his most successful student is his daughter, Hannah, who also lives in Willis and is a successful clawhammer player in her own right as well as a renowned potter.  Mac has released several albums of old time music with Jenny, Hannah and many other collaborators and is featured on many compilations.  He also began to win many local banjo contests including first place at the Appalachian String Band Competition in Clifftop, VA. 

            Currently, Mac is considered one of the premiere builders of open back banjos and old time guitars in the nation and is a frequent performer and teacher in the region.  His music has taken him across the world and his teaching has resulted in the development of many find young musicians who carry on the clawhammer tradition of the region.  Mac’s incredible encyclopedic knowledge of the music of SW Virginia has been instrumental in the creation of this project.