Bela Fleck – HuffPost 9.23.11

Mike Ragogna: Very nicely said. What advice do you have for new artists?

Bela Fleck: One thing is that selling out rarely works, so you might as well do stuff that you’re very passionate about because that works better. That’s probably the best advice I can give people. Every time I’ve ever tried, it’s blown up in my face. Now, there are some people who are doing things that are popular but are not selling out, you know what I’m saying? It’s very particular to the artist. If you’ve got something that you’re really into and that you really do well and then you have to change it in a big way because of what people are telling you, they may be wrong. Everybody is in a search for themselves as an artist and they have to find a way to package themselves and make it all work. I remember when I was in bands in the ’80s–bluegrass bands and progressive bands–and everybody would say, “Just put some drums on that, and you’ll make country music.” It seemed like everything we did just made it worse, and made it harder to be the band that we were. There have been times when people have said about The Flecktones–”Man, you need to make some records that are positioned for pop singles”–and every time we tried to do anything like that, it just wasn’t great. But when we tried to do our weird and wacky stuff in weird time signatures, it actually worked really good. I always regret it a little bit, and I shouldn’t because that’s part of how you find out, but I always regretted every time I tried to go down the pop path or tried to make a bigger audience by changing the music. All I’m saying is, it doesn’t always work. So, when people tell you that, just think about it for yourself and find your own truth.