On July 19, 1989, Pete Wernick survived the crash of United Airlines Flight 232 in an Iowa cornfield, lost his instruments, and played a festival gig on borrowed gear 48 hours later. This deep dive uses that moment as a window into a life that refuses to follow any expected path: a Jewish kid born in New York City in 1946 who picked up the banjo at 14, hosted the city's only bluegrass radio program on WKCR while at Columbia, earned a PhD in sociology at Cornell in 1970, and formed the experimental Ithaca band Country Cooking with Tony Trischka and Russ Barenberg.

We follow his 1976 move to Niwot, Colorado, the guitar-free trio concept he developed with Tim O'Brien, the 1977 solo album Dr. Banjo Steps Out, and the January 1978 founding of Hot Rize with O'Brien, Charles Sawtelle and Nick Forster, a band that toured full time until 1990 and is ...