A Conversation with Bela Fleck – HuffPost 9.23.11

Mike Ragogna: Good day, sir.

Bela Fleck: Good day.

MR: You’ve got a new album, Rocket Science. Can you go into how this project came together? For instance, you’ve got Howard Levy back in the group for this one.

BF: Well, Howard was in the group when we first started out–he’s the guy who played the harmonica and piano, when the band started we had that “classic” Flecktone sound with the harmonica in it. He’s an incredible inventor on the harmonica, an amazing musician, and also a phenomenal piano player. Jeff Coffin has been playing with us for the last 14 years, but we weren’t playing very much, so he joined the Dave Matthews Band because they needed a saxophone player when Leroy passed away. So, Jeff started subbing with them, and eventually went full time with them, so we had an opening in The Flecktones when we were ready to tour again. We thought about what it would be like to have the harmonica back and to have Howard back, so we talked to him and he was into it. That led to us getting together and making this record and then going on tour. We’re on about an eleven month tour, and we’re about four months into it now.

MR: Between all the time you spend playing on other people’s projects, how do you find time to make your own record?

BF: Oh, I mostly do my own music, actually. I mean, I’ve done a lot of sessions over the years, and I still do them when it’s somebody who’s music I like–it’s a friend of mine or I find something interesting about it. But it’s definitely not my main thing. My main thing is playing my own music. That changes from time to time–sometimes I’m playing with African musicians, sometimes I’m playing with some amazing jazz musicians like Chick Corea, and then The Flecktones have been the center of what I do now for twenty-four years. Even with The Flecktones, though, we take pretty extended times off so that we can go do these things. Now, I’ve been writing a banjo concerto, which premiers next week. That’s taken about a year to do, and I’ve been doing that while making the Flecktones record and doing that tour. I usually have a couple of major projects going on, and then I fit in little sessions in between.

MR: It still sounds pretty busy. The Chick Corea project was wonderful, how did that come about?

BF: Well, I’ve always been a big fan of his, ever since I first heard him when I was 17. He’s been a hero to me because he does pretty much what you’re saying I do, which is a lot of different things and a lot of creative projects, only he’s been doing it for a lot longer. He has immense creativity, and he’s always looking for new things to do with his playing and his musical concepts. Guys like that are really inspiring because they kind of show you the way, and they show you that it’s possible to have a lot of musical styles and outlets. It really keeps the passion up, and you never get into this scene where it’s like, “Oh, here we go again. I’m so tired of doing this same thing.” That’s why I think The Flecktones have been pretty smart about doing things that will keep us together for a long time–giving everybody freedom to go out and do things. Now, we do it less often, but we do it with a lot of intensity and joy when we come together.

MR: On Rocket Science you, of course, have Roy and Victor Wooten. When you went into the studio for this project, what were the dynamics like? Was it a little different than your other projects?

BF: Well Roy Wooten, known as “Future Man” because he invented that crazy synth guitar/drum–he’s really a drummer, and he plays the drums on a weird guitar instrument. Victor Wooten, since he’s joined The Flecktones and we got together, has been essentially known as the top electric bass player in the world. Those two guys have been with us for the entire 24 years, and that’s really a wonderful thing because as fun as it is to play with a lot of people, long relationships yield a lot of wonderful things if you realize that and commit to it. So, the three of us are so tight at this point that I can show them a tune and three minutes later it sounds like a record. Then, bringing Howard back into it was very familiar and very new at the same time because we did a lot of stuff together between ’88 and ’92, when he left the band. He’s changed a lot since then, though, so everything that he brings to it is fresh just because it’s been so long since we’ve heard that sound, but it sounds so right because that’s the sound we started with. He’s developed a lot ever since then, as we all have, so it’s like we’re all back together again, but all of our skills are stronger, you know? We’re all better musicians.

MR: It must be rejuvenating too. It’s like an influx of another mind into the brain trust.

BF: It is, and we had a great run with Jeff Coffin. I mean, 14 years, he was with us way longer. But when he left, in my mind, he reinvigorated The Dave Matthews Band with a lot of fresh energy, and you could see how happy they were. Of course, they miss Leroy. But this is one of the things when a band gets a new member, if they’re strong it can really juice things up. So, we were thinking, “Well, since Jeff’s not available, we should try to find someone that has that same effect on us.” And Howard was the perfect candidate for that, for all those reasons.

MR: And 5 of your 14 or so Grammy Awards have come through The Flecktones. I guess you are the player’s player, as they say.

BF: Well, there are folks that have won a lot more than that, but it’s pretty incredible to be a banjo player that that’s happened with.

MR: Now, is it right that you were inspired early on by Earl Scruggs on The Beverly Hillbillies theme?

BF: That’s exactly right. He’s just one of the most profound musicians on the planet, and hearing him play had a huge effect on people that weren’t banjo players yet, you know what I’m saying? Once they hear him play, they go, “Wow, what is that? I’ve got to find out what that is,” and they could be from anywhere. They could be from Japan or they could be from Canada somewhere, or they could be from New York–it’s not all about the country part of it or the rural part of it. It’s just a sound, it’s an iconic sound…his playing. Anyway, he had that effect on me. I was in Queens, New York at the time. For me it was The Beverly Hillbillies, but for some people it’s “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” or it could be anything he plays on because he just has this spirit and this tone to his playing that really knocks people out…if they’re going to be banjo players. Now, some people it repels–the one’s who hate that sound–and I understand that too because everybody has different likes and dislikes.

MR: Is it also true that you were named after Bela Bartok?

BF: Yeah, that’s right. I actually hadn’t spent a lot of time with his music until just recently, when I was getting ready to write this piece for banjo and orchestra that I’m doing. I started listening to him, and boy, what a crazy dude he was–an incredible thinker and a really intense writer.

MR: When you’re in college taking Piano I, I think you get deluged with Bartok.

BF: Yeah, that’s just how you understand how dense and complicated music can be and how beautiful dissonance can be, I think. He really uses it in an artful way, and it’s like, “This is not going to be vanilla,” that’s what they’re telling you when they start playing Bartok for you.

MR: I’m a big fan of the song “Life In Eleven” on Rocket Science, and in some ways, it reminds me of Dave Brubeck. You mentioned Chick Corea before, but are their other jazz artists that are important to you?

BF: Oh yeah. Lot’s of different Miles stuff, Coltrane, Charlie Parker–I’ll just go on and on. About “Life In Eleven,” that tune was a lot of fun for us because we love playing in odd time signatures, and “eleven” is kind of like the king of odd time signatures. It’s actually quite difficult to get comfortable with, but folks in Bulgaria dance in eleven because it’s so natural for them. Whole towns of people are dancing in eleven. So, Howard loves a lot of that music from that part of the world, and we had always talked about doing something in eleven, way back in the early ’90s when he was still in the band. Then, he left and we never got around to it. So, when he got back, I said, “Hey, we should do that eleven that we’d always talked about doing.” We tried to figure out a lot of different ways to do eleven, and “Life In Eleven” is subdividing that eleven in a lot of different ways. Every section in that tune is in eleven, but you can count eleven with a lot of different combinations of numbers–not to get too egg-headed here–but every different combination that you use to get to eleven gives it a different feel. So, that keeps that tune percolating and moving in different directions through the whole thing–until we go into something that almost sounds like 4/4, but it’s really a slow eleven with a gospel feel. You have to count slow to feel the eleven there, but it is in eleven as well.

MR: Nice. “Joyful Spring” is another of my favorites, and of course, Howard starts that song. Can you tell us about that song?

BF: “Joyful Spring” is a tune that Howard wrote. He’s had it sitting around in sort of a simplified form for many years, and when I went up to Chicago to talk about writing tunes, he played me some things that he had never really completed. I said, “Well, that’s a really cool idea. Why don’t you try some stuff and go through some chord changes on it?” and he said, “Like this?” and he basically just improvised the whole arrangement. In one sitting, he took what used to be literally a two chord song, and he came up with this arrangement. Luckily, the tape was running, and then we transcribed it and learned it. So, that was how this piece came about.

MR: How does it work when you guys are in the studio?

BF: I don’t know if everybody knows this, but in the recording studio, you’re usually separated into different rooms, and that’s so you have a lot of control of the sound. For instance, you don’t want the banjo mic to also be getting the drums and harmonica, you want separation so that you can get all the sounds perfect. Also, sometimes you want to put a mic far away from instruments to get a really cool sound, and if there are other people in that room, that will mess it up. So, we have to separate into different rooms, but before we go into those rooms, we sit in a circle and work on the arrangement until we think we’ve really got it down. That really kind of bonds us in terms of what the feel is going to be and what we’re after with this piece. Then, we go to our booths and play it until we think we have a great version of it.

MR: In Nashville, everybody is into writing charts, but are you guys writing actual notation?

BF: We do a form chart, where it will say, “First part: Howard plays.” You might call the first part “A” and the second part “B” or something like that, but sometimes, there are ten different parts in some of our songs, so you have all those sections. Then, you just write down next to that letter who is doing what. Howard reads music fluently, but none of the rest of us really use music very much. We might have a chord chart if there are tough chords, or if there is one really hard line I might jot it down in banjo tablature, which is a number system that I read. I try to have it so that there are only the one or two pages to look at there on a music stand. In the old days, we used to always tour the music and play it in front of people for months, and then go into the studio where we didn’t have any paper at all–we would just play it. But these days, Howard hasn’t been in the band and there was no time to go out and tour it before the record, so we actually just had to sit in the circle and work it through, and I’m really pleased with how well it worked. We knew the end product we were looking for because we knew what kind of records we had made in the old days, and we all had been recording a lot since in different groups. So, we knew what we were looking for in terms of what level of quality it needed to be, but in terms of learning it and working it through, we didn’t have the ability to play it in front of people. I think that gives this record a certain immediacy, but we didn’t back off in any way on the quality. We really worked on it until we were happy.

MR: What about the improv element?

BF: That’s the other thing. When you haven’t been playing together for a long time, there are good and bad parts to that. The good thing is you surprise each other, and it’s really spontaneous that way because there’s no chance to sort of plan anything. The negative is that you haven’t had the time to really know each other’s playing and learn how to react to people’s spontaneous ideas the way you do when you’re playing with them all the time. Victor and I had been playing together this whole time and we read each other so well, Howard was just like throwing the special hot sauce in on top. He’s very spontaneous too. Also, if you didn’t like what happened, you could just do it again.

MR: Let’s talk about the concerto a little more. Can you go into some specifics about the approach and the inspiration behind this project?

BF: Sure. This is a piece that I was commissioned by The National Symphony to write. It’s a piece for banjo and orchestra. For people who don’t know what a concerto is–because I wasn’t sure–it’s a piece that’s written for orchestra and a soloist. Since I’m not exactly a classical composer, even though I was named after some of them, this is a long term goal for me. I’ve wanted to do this my whole life, and finally, I was hired to do it by The National Symphony and I’ve been writing this piece since October. The Flecktones recorded half our record in September, then I went on a writing retreat to start trying to figure out how to write a concerto when you don’t know how to write music notation. I wrote all through October, and then we came back and recorded the rest of The Flecktone album followed by more work on the concerto until we started out on tour. So, literally, I’ve spent months and months just sitting in a room, trying to figure out what my banjo concerto would be. It’s all done now, and it’s being premiered in Nashville. So, that’s what a lot of my energy is in right now. The Flecktones’ tour ended September 5th, and we’ll start back up in October, but this is some time I took out so I could stress out and figure out how to play a 35 minute piece with an orchestra. We’re also filming and recording it, just to get the stress level up, and I have to memorize it.

MR: (laughs). No pressure.

BF: I’m glad you let me mention it because I’m kind of fixated on it right now.

MR: Maybe it wasn’t necessarily this particular concerto, but had you had one in mind before this?

BF: Well, I’ve gotten to co-write two concertos, which is like getting a master class with a great composer, this guy Edgar Meyer. For people who don’t know, he’s one of the greatest upright bass players in the world–in the classical sense, with the bow and everything–but he also plays a lot of different kinds of music really well. He’s a really great composer, and he really knows what he’s doing, Unlike me. When it comes to classical type composition, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but being around him and being able to write these two pieces together for bass and banjo…also, we did one with a great Indian musician, Zakir Hussain. I learned a lot by watching how Edgar and Zakir worked, and then it was finally time to do it on my own because when you’ve done that a couple of times, you go, “Gosh, I wonder if I can do that. I’d better find out.” There wasn’t really a banjo concerto out there that I would want to go and play, so I thought it was a great opportunity to put the banjo in another setting where it could really be effective and be seen with an open mind. People are often confused by the idea of a banjo concerto because they don’t see banjo in classical music, but it works great because there’s no other instrument in the orchestra that is like the banjo, so it has its own unique character and it fits well.

MR: While this is your first solo attempt at concerto writing, you are no stranger to classical music. You’ve played with John Williams, Joshua Bell, and you’ve won a Grammy with Edgar Meyer, who we were talking about before.

BF: Well, I did an album called Perpetual Motion around ’00, and that was while I had a deal with Sony where I was on the jazz label, the classical label, and the pop label, and I was doing records for different ones. I had never really done anything in the classical world except collaborate with Edgar on these original music projects that weren’t actually classical at all. I was talking to this guy, Peter Gelb, who now runs The Met, and he said, “Well, what if you did transcriptions of well known pieces?” Most of the time, you would want to avoid that, but since none of the stuff had really been played on the banjo before, I was like, “That would be really cool.” Because I love a lot of Bach pieces, Chopin and Beethoven, it would be a real effort and accomplishment, and I would become very familiar with the music in these pieces if I did some of those. So, that’s the record I got to do where Joshua Bell played on a couple of tracks. I also had Evelyn Glennie on marimba and John Williams on guitar. These are just top people in the classical world. So, it was one thing to play that music, and now it’s something different to create your own music because trying to learn these violin pieces and cello pieces on the banjo is a great challenge, but they’re not written for the banjo, so in a certain way, you can never really win, you know? The banjo has all these properties, and I started to think that it would be great to have some repertoire that was written around what the banjo does the best rather than imitating these other instruments that people have been playing for centuries and have taken to these heights…take some of those concepts and bring them into the banjo to infuse them with what the banjo does as well. So, this classical piece is kind of the beginning of me trying to do some of that.

MR: And of course, that isn’t at the expense of other genres because you’ve played with Dave Matthews, Ginger Baker, and Phish.

BF: Yeah, it’s all fun. I love music, and I love a lot of different kinds of music. I just feel fortunate that I’ve gotten to the point where I can play with some of the best people out there, and that makes me want to keep doing it. It makes me want to keep trying things and exploring while I’ve got the stage here for a minute because I know it won’t last long.

MR: What about this Abigail Washburn? Do you think she’ll amount to anything? (laughs)

BF: (laughs) Yeah, she’s great. I’m a big fan of her music, and I’m a big fan of her, personally, too.

MR: She makes some great music, wouldn’t you say?

BF: Well, I fell in love with her music and her–we’re married now for a couple of years. I’m a big fan of what she’s doing. With all the things that she tries to do, she has the ability to connect in a very deep way with the listener, and I’m jealous of what the human voice can do, but not every singer knows how to do what she knows how to do. There’s a purity and a sense of self that is very clear.

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

BF: 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.

MR: Very nicely said, and thank you so much for that. So, how many years ago was it that I picked up a CD from the MCA Master Series, Telluride Sessions?

BF: Are you thinking about Strength In Numbers? There was a really great period in Nashville when this huge megalith label started doing these small artist records for some of the session players in town. Some of these guys turned out to be incredible artists, like Jerry Douglas and Edgar Meyer. We did one project with a group called Strength In Numbers, which was Mark O’Connor on fiddle, Jerry Douglas on dobro, Sam Bush, Edgar and Me. That was just such a great period. There were a lot of records coming out on that label and we were always in the studio exploring the edges of what we were doing.

MR: It was really good stuff. At the time, I was in Nashville and everybody was talking about it. And I loved those covers. It was like someone just sat down with a crayon and drew them.

BF: Yeah, that gave them some continuity. I think that was around the time that Windham Hill had just had a huge success with sort of a brand of instrumental music, and I think MCA was saying, “Hey, we’ve got musicians that are so great here, and nobody really realizes how amazing these guys are. Let’s make our own brand that has a look and a vibe, and represents this world.” And that’s what came out of it.

MR: And around this same period we had The New Grass Revival.

BF: That was the band that I was in with Sam Bush, from ’81 to ’90, when The Flecktones started. That was just a really great, wide ranging, creative band. I learned so much from being in that band.

MR: Here’s a question–would there be a possibility for a New Grass Revival revival?

BF: It’s not looking like it. You know, for a reunion, you need everyone to want to do it, and at this point we’re not there. If it ever happens, I’ll be the first guy to get on the bus and do it. I would love to see that happen, even just for sort of a completion of some kind. But everybody moves into different places after they leave a band, and sometimes it’s just not what they want to do. So, that’s where that’s at.

MR: I’m going to ask you a difficult question now–do you have a favorite on this project that we could play at the end of the radio broadcast part of our interview?

BF: It’s really hard…that’s like choosing your favorite kid. Well, let’s see, what’s on that record? (laughs)

MR: There’s “Earthling Parade.”

BF: That’s really crazy. I don’t know what your format is, or what works, but I think “Earthling Parade” is a favorite because it is so out. It’s a strange tune.

MR: Well, everything is our format, by the way.

BF: Well that’s cool. Okay, well hang onto your seats because nobody could have done this tune but The Flecktones, it’s just very odd, and proudly odd.

MR: Can you go just a little into the creative process behind this piece?

BF: Well, it was something that I originally envisioned as a solo piece, or maybe as a classical piece, and I showed it to the guys just as a fluke. They said, “Hey, we like that.” That just shows you how great Victor and Future Man are at following me after all these years. This piece–I don’t even know what time signature any of it is. It’s just moving around constantly, and when you play it by yourself you just intuit the rhythm and it just works, but to play it with a group and with a groove is actually a whole other story. Then, Howard had to learn it and he was like, “Do we really have to do this?” Then, he learned it and was like, “Oh, I like this. This is pretty cool.” Now, we’ve been playing this live for a little bit, and I always tell the people, “This is a terrible piece of music and it’s long, but we’re going to get it out of the way right now, and then we’ll move on to some nice music.” It really isn’t a terrible piece–we’re actually very proud of it–but it’s a lot for the listeners at a live show if they’re not prepared somehow for a real excursion.

MR: Well, then it’s going to be a learning experience, isn’t it?

BF: Yeah. I actually wanted to call the album Earthling Parade, by the way. I thought that was a great album title, and nobody did but me. I just imagined Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles or something–people from our planet doing some sort of march down the street of a strange planet of aliens.

MR: Have we forgotten to talk about sci-fi? Are you a sci-fi fan?

BF: Oh, yeah.

MR: Oh no, we could do a whole show on that.

BF: Yeah.

MR: Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors of all time.

BF: Oh yeah.

MR: He matched intellect with heart, and I don’t know of any sci-fi writer that can do that as well as he.

BF: Right. He’s such a poignant writer, and it happened to be science fiction stories. I think there is so much soul in his writing. There are other guys who were really heady, or complex, or just otherwise made really darn good reads. But he was heavy somehow in that way.

MR: Yeah, his A Medicine For Melancholy truly is an amazing collection of short stories.

BF: There’s also The Illustrated Man, and what a brilliant idea. It’s a collection of short stories that are all tattoos on this guy. You look at the tattoo’s and each tattoo is a separate story. I think that’s brilliant.

MR: Maybe that’s the theme of your next album.

BF: That could be. It’s a really good idea, actually.

MR: Bela, this has been really phenomenal. Like I said, we could do a whole show on sci-fi if you want to come back any time. Best of luck with the concerto in Nashville, and the new album, Rocket Science.

BF: Thank you. Thanks for the time, it was good to talk with you. This was a lot of fun.

Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney