LIVERMORE — Jim Bottorff settles into a chair in his living room and a pack of his fellow four-string banjo aficionados pile in with him. Some, like John Green, travel from as far away as Fiddletown, ...

Sometime last winter, Noam Pikelny grew restless. He’d recently wrapped up a tour with the Punch Brothers, plucking his banjo strings to songs from the group’s chart-topping album, The Phosphorescent ...

At the back of the pizza parlor sit five rows of musicians, plucking and bouncing away. They all wear red vests. They all wear black bow ties. And they all wear broad smiles. They say they can't help ...