I start mandolin lessons this week. I never took any guitar lessons, and thus I haven’t gotten any better on guitar in 20 years. But I find the mando more fun to play than the guitar, and I really want to do the things on it that I have not mastered on guitar  — single-string runs and so on. If I rise to reasonable mediocrity on that instrument, I can probably keep playing out into my 60s. I found a decent teacher at a decent price near my house, and we’ll see how things go. I’m looking forward to the new challenge.

None of this has stopped me from playing on a few songs with one of my bands. A little visual reference: