JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times

Abbey Hoekzema sets up a shot Sunday while Michael Randolph (center) and Lorenzell Wilson play the keyboard in Roanoke.

Lorenzell Wilson is going to learn to play the banjo. In 48 hours. On film.

And if it all works out, the results, however meager or ugly, will wind up on national television.

If he gets nothing but laughs, OK, he's used to it. For close to 10 years, Wilson, 43, made his living on the stand-up comedy circuit.

But what he's doing now is not like anything he's done before. In fact, he's banking on it being nothing like anything anyone has done before.

After years away, the Roanoke native is back to make a reality of an idea born just eight months ago. It's the pilot for a documentary TV show called Universal Musical Connection that he hopes to sell as a series to the Travel Channel. In each episode, Wilson and co-host Sarah Garrison will track the place of origin of a musical instrument, follow that instrument from birth to the present, and talk to and record those who play it.

The banjo, for example, commonly associated these days with bluegrass music, was born in Africa and brought to Virginia and other Southern states hundreds of years ago by slaves, Wilson said.

And then either Wilson or Garrison will get 48 hours to learn just enough to strum or plink or bang or blow out something that sounds like a real song.

The journey is a big part of it for Wilson.

"There's no way I'm going to learn to play 482 instruments. I'll probably barely be able to play the banjo," he said Sunday at Kirk Avenue Music Hall in downtown Roanoke, where the last filming for the pilot was taking place.

Another big part of it is the "musical footprint" Wilson hopes the show can leave behind in each place it visits -- some contribution, monetary or otherwise, to music and music education in that community to advance the art that he was raised to love.

Wilson started making music about age 3 -- if you count slamming out rhythms on pots and pans. He had his first drum kit before his legs were long enough to reach the bass drum pedal. He learned keyboards from sitting at the church organ while his mother played for services at Garden of Prayer No. 6 on 19th Street in Roanoke, where his father was pastor.

But his greatest success in show business came from stand-up comedy, a career he started in Roanoke at the old Roanoke Comedy Club run by Jimmy Butler -- one of the first people he called to help out with Universal Musical Connection.

He burned out on comedy and turned to restaurant work to make his living in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Las Vegas, while playing music on the side.

It was in a single conversation with a band-mate in Las Vegas in July that the idea for the show was conceived and took the shape it retains today. They were talking about how many instruments there are. "What if we could learn to play every instrument known to man?" Wilson wondered.

Soon after, he moved back to Roanoke to get it going. And within three days, he stumbled across the people who would become the show's co-host, production manager and director.

That made it all feel meant to be.

"If you want to change your life, all you have to do is try something new," said Garrison, 28, who is formerly of the Roanoke-based The Wading Girl. She'll take the challenge of learning new instruments, she said, but "for me, it's the people, it's the stories."

There's no short of enthusiasm on the show, but cash to get the pilot completed is not so plentiful. To date, Wilson said, they've survived on the kindness of restaurants providing food for filming days and music venues such as Kirk Avenue being made available for free.

And they've had donations from a few companies and individuals.

After that, it's the pitch to the Travel Channel, and maybe other cable stations. And if the show gets bought, it's onto other places and other instruments.

"This show happens to be the banjo," Butler said. "The next could be, I don't know, the bagpipes, or the didgeridoo."

Online: www.umcllc.net