The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Part 2: Béla Fleck on the Banjo, His Journey, and Handling Success

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Russillo is joined by Béla Fleck to discuss how he chose the banjo, his path to success, and what it’s like to have other artists look up to him. (0:00) Welcome to The Ryen Russillo Podcast! (4:03) How did you become proficient at the banjo? (6:30) When did you feel like you were taking this instrument in a different direction? (12:44) How did your plan differ from the outcome? (19:07) On the magic of performing live (27:02) What did playing with bigger bands do for your awareness? (29:27) What does it mean to you that other artists look up to you? (31:37) Do you have to be obsessed to reach greatness? Check us out on YouTube for exclusive clips, livestreams, and more at https://www.youtube.com/@RyenRussilloPodcast. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Béla Fleck Producers: Steve Ceruti, Kyle Crichton, Mike Wargon, and Jonathan Frias Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He is one of my favorite musicians. Somebody I probably go back now, 35 years of listening to his work. He is maybe the man when you think of the banjo in music today. It's Bella Fleck. Thanks for doing this, Bela. Good to see you. Thanks for having me.

So I guess it probably starts a lot of interviews this way, because you're a little kid and you're like, all right, the guitar's cool. The banjo sounds cool, but maybe the guitar is cooler. But why the banjo for you? Because the banjo's cooler.

No, it's really bizarre. It's a question that I still try to figure out because I grew up in New York City on the Upper West Side in the 60s, born in 1958. So, yeah, banjo music was not going on. I mean, it wasn't a pop culture thing, really, right then. And if it was, people laughed at it.

up in New York. It was a joke. And people didn't really understand where it came from, you know, that it was actually came from Africa and that it was in the beginnings of jazz and Louis Armstrong's music and stuff like that. People only knew about like dueling banjos, you know, and male rape scene and he-haw, you know, crackers with, you know, with hay bales and, you know, all that kind of stuff, which is part of the history of the banjo and a beautiful part of it. In fact, I wouldn't play banjo if it wasn't for Earl Scruggs and Bluegrass. But there's a lot more to the story that really is quite late in the story.

So anyway, I found a banjo. It took me until I was 15 to actually find one. But I started hearing banjo when I was five or so. And it just blew me away. I didn't know what it was. I didn't care about the country aspect of it. I just liked the sound of that banjo. I didn't know what was going on.

Yeah, it is such a distinct sound, obviously. right? And I think it's intimidating. It feels like, okay, if you play a guitar and you go, okay, well, I could probably figure this out. Now, granted, if you can't finger pick that it would just be like a completely different language. But I imagine it intimidates a lot of people because it feels like such a harder starting point. Yeah. And it intimidated me. Like I said, I heard it when I was five and I found out what it was eventually. But I never had the nerve to think I could play it. I just became a fan of it. It was so impossibly perfect. and yet it had this connection to, you know, to ancient tones and something, something about it, it's old, but yet almost computer perfection. And I never thought I could play it. So I never, never got one. But then I went to guitar, you know, the second best instrument around, and started learning a bit about the guitar. And then just by fluke, my grandfather got a banjo for me.

The day before I started high school, I went to visit him in Peakskill, New York. And he said, oh, I found this at the garage sale. you like it. I know you like the guitar. And it was, oh my God, I was flipped out because I hadn't even told anybody I loved the banjo. It was like my secret. And there is one just drops into my lap. And on the train home back to the city, there's a guy who taught me how to tune it up, gave me a little lesson. And I turned into a type B guitar player into an A banjo player in that I played the guitar and I liked it. You know, one of those kids, he likes music. You know, when I got the banjo

I was obsessive I couldn't turn it off I didn't want to go to school I didn't want to do anything but play the banjo and in three years I was at a professional level so it was very fast

three years my God yeah right into bands and started touring in you know very able groups so it was it was like I was supposed to

all the guitar definitely gave me a lot of background and physicality that I could apply to the banjo but it was that Yeah, the type A, the juice was getting turned on like that that really made a difference. So in those three years, were you working with anyone?

Or were you just, how, like, give me the crash course of those three years? Right. So the first thing you do when, if you're in New York City and, you know, in 1973, is you get the Pete Seeger book, which is like a very small banjo book, but it has a lot of basics. It has a little bit about Scrugg style. It has something about clawhammer, which is an old. style more based on the African way of playing and some calypso banjo and you know it's really interesting actually but very very brief and then from there you're going to get the earl scruggs book which is you know

the bible for a lot of people but i started taking lessons from a banjo player um who played in a group that pete seger had left called the weavers and um some reason i'm spaszing on his name but anyway this banjo player taught me for maybe about eight months and then he said oh you need to go on and take lessons from this guy in Brooklyn. I've taught you all I can. So, you know, in a matter of months, I was sent off to Brooklyn to take lessons from this guy who was an expert on all the bluegrass styles, basically, a guy named Mark Horowitz. And then he started playing me the music of a guy named Tony Trishka, who was like the most forward modernist banjo player of the time, and still is in a lot of ways, one of the really truly great innovators and still playing

great. And he became my teacher. And so now I was studying with like the top modernist artsy, artsy banjo player of the time. And I basically learned to play just like him. You know, by the time I was out of high school, to where I realized suddenly I had a crisis. I was like, hey, there already is a Tony Trishka and you're not him. You need to find your own path. And then I started really exploring a lot of things about jazz and classical music and just basic understanding of the instrument from a more technical aspect that freed me up to do a lot of different kinds of musical things with it. Yeah, I think a lot of people, as a listener, I started with the Flecktones, you know,

early on, and then you kind of would work your way back to some of the other stuff. Because once we all fell in love with you, it was like, okay, did this guy just start? It's a silly thing to ask at the time, but I was in high school, it's like, did this guy just go straight jazz? It's like, because when you think about the banja, you think, okay, it's the bluegrass lane, and then you're going to stay in this lane. So I was always really interested in the influences where clearly you can do both and you've done both throughout your entire career, but what it was that was kind of driving you a direction

that was so innovative, maybe the answer is part of what you've already talked about, but just the understanding of, okay, I know I could kind of stay here, but there's a higher calling almost. Like there's some direction that's taking me away from everything that's been done with this instrument. Yeah, I think part of it was growing up in New York City, you know, New York City and not having that tie to like the quote traditional style of playing. When I started, I liked Earl Scruggs. That's why I played. But Tony Trish could rock my world because he was playing with saxophones

and playing people playing in two different keys at the same time and playing in odd meters. And I was like, oh, that's now that's interesting. And then in high school, when I was playing banjo for in my third year, playing banjo, I got to see Chick Korea and return to forever play at the Beacon Theater. And that blew my mind because I'd never heard jazz like that that was so accessible and so rockin and so virtuosic and everything they were playing on their instruments. I was like, well, everything they're doing is on my banjo, but I don't know where any of it is. I got to go figure out where it is.

And ironically, I had to eventually school myself in traditional banjo playing. So the only places I could work were in bluegrass bands and I ended up being in the most modern ones because of the things that I did. But eventually I moved to Kentucky, and I really wanted to learn the things that made what we call. Again, when we call a traditional, a tradition is usually older than bluegrass is. I mean, bluegrass didn't even start until the 1940s. So, you know, we're not even at 100 years. I don't know if you could call that a tradition in any other country. But bluegrass is still relatively new.

So that's why I'm cautious about calling a tradition. But surely it is, and it's going to be the way Irish music is, the way Indian music is. It's going to be here for a long time. I'm just babbling, aren't I? I love it. I mean, look, this is this is something. I think I've been talking to your people for like three years and we were going back and forth. And so I'm just, I'm just in heaven right now, Baylor. So don't worry. I'll continue to babble. I, you know, working backwards through all these different styles that I liked and, you know, starting with Miles and then going forward with it and then realizing how much I loved it. And then, you know, certain offshoots of that, but I've always, and I've referenced this before some other musicians, just his evolution, right, his evolution. And then when you start like going through the band stuff of the In the Silent Way sessions and you go, okay, who's this John McLaughlin guy?

Like, who is, who is this? And then I pick up electric guitarist. And it, I mean, I still go back to that album. I mean, it blew my mind. And I know that you've referenced him because his evolution is a player. Talk about my own, John. Well, John, John, I think John, just because I've heard you talk about him. And I don't know if it's, you know, growing up in New York City gives you access to all of this different, you know, sound and all these different experiences.

But there was something that I don't know if you felt like a connection because of how explorative he was. There's just, I think when people, like a very minimal level of understanding you're playing, it's like, oh, he's an electric guitarist who happens to have a banjo. And it's like almost insulting. But at times, I think it does apply. And I just, sometimes in your playing, I feel like I'm hearing just fusion jazz guitarist, you know? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I love all kinds of guitar playing. I don't try to copy it directly, but Pat Martino was a huge. I'd say he was probably the biggest influence on me of the jazz guitar players. But I also love, I remember going to watch Joe Pass play solo guitar stuff, like in little cafes in New York City.

I could stand in the door, even though I wasn't allowed in because they served alcohol. And hearing Al Demiola play, you know, that was mind-boggling. I mean, I liked what Chick played better. I, like, musically, I thought there was a depth to Chick's thing. But I was stunned by Al's technique and fluidity and command of his instrument. And then McLaughlin was, like, on another planet because he had all of that technique, but he also had so much content. He played with so much content.

So it still does. But in other words, it's not just fast. Like when people talk about shredding, I always find that a little bit insulting. Like someone's, oh, you're a shredder on the band. I'm like, I don't want to be a shredder. I want to play some good music, you know, if it's fast and slow, whatever.

I want it to be, you know, have depth. And I've always found that to be a little bit demeaning. Well, you might say that about certain super fast electric guitar players. John McLaughlin was never a shredder to me. he was like everything he played was uh every note had meaning uh and if you slowed it down you'd discover just how much you know if you studied it there's a lot to learn from him what did you want the flecktones to be at that point of your career um well after seeing return to forever i mean i think that was the template for the flecktones and that was in the

70s um the idea of a of a group of people that were very you know um performance oriented and yet at the highest levels of jazz ability that could make the music work for all kinds of people, not just like, because at that time, remembered Miles had gone through a whole thing, Miles Davis had gone through a whole thing

where he wouldn't even face the audience. He would face away from the crowd, and a lot of jazz people were taking a very, it felt very elitist or something. You know, it was like, it was their private music and you got to watch it. And at a certain point, that was pushing people away from the music.

It was becoming much more, of a concert hall event and it was also starting to draw less people and then fusion came along and kind of made it the people's music again like it was you know back in the early days of jazz when they danced to it before it got so heady i love the heady stuff i mean but once it became charlie parker and dizzy gillespie people are sitting in a little you know in a little uh jazz club listening um before that people were dancing to jazz you know it was the music of the day so I feel like fusion kind of and Miles had played a big part in that too

I mean he plays roles on both sides of these things but he was he saw Slice Stone perform at the Newport Jazz Festival one year and said I wanted I want my music to do that you know and all of a sudden his music changed completely from what jazz had been before and he pointed the next direction for everybody when you're putting together

you know this this band where you're like okay clearly you wanted to a different sound, okay? All these influences that we're talking about, like, you don't just become the flex tones without some kind of direction, but how much was it working with the other members? And it's like, okay, this is what we have. Like the vision, the plan versus the outcome of the early sessions. Right. So I always wanted to have a jazz group of some kind where I got to play that way. If I felt incomplete, if I didn't have that as part of my life, along with the progressive bluegrass I was doing with Newgrass Revival in the 80s. And I'd made a couple of attempts with

with local folks in Nashville, really great musicians, but somehow, like, we had never, I'd listen back to it, and I'd go, this isn't, this isn't, it's not there, you know, and I kind of gave up on it after a while. I was like, this isn't, I don't think I'm going to be able to find the people that can make this really happen, you know, like, I don't know if you ever heard of a band called the David Grisman Quintet, but David Grisman was an incredible, is an incredible mandolin player,

and he put together a jazzy, kind of gypsy group with the great guitarist named Tony Rice. And when he got Tony and he had Darylanger on the fiddle and a great set of guys, they created this music that was so interesting that it went to the top of the jazz charts and they were playing Carnegie Hall with basically almost a bluegrass ensemble

but without a banjo. And so I was very inspired by those guys. I'd seen that happen. I remember Grisman would always say, people would ask him, how'd you think of to put this group together? And he says, I don't know, everybody just showed up one day.

And I just knew what to do with them. It's very much like this with me. I had already kind of given up on this whole jazz thing. I didn't think it was going to work because I hadn't been satisfied with what I'd been able to do so far. And then I get this call from Victor Wooten on the phone, a cold call from someone I've never met through a friend of his who I knew who was Fiddler, who had worked with him at Bush Gardens. The Wooten brothers were all working at Bush Gardens, you know, in the Oompa band and in the country band and whatever band needed them. That was their, you know, one of their main gigs. And so he said, hey, I've got this bass player here, and I'm going to get him to play over the phone for you.

And Victor started doing this stuff, this tapping stuff, this thumping stuff, this arpeggiated stuff. I'd never heard anything like it on the bass before. And I was just kind of stunned. But at the same time, I said, okay, well, what's that got to do with me? And Kurt said, I don't know. I thought I'd bring him over and you guys could play a little bit. I was like, well, okay. Because again, I had kind of given up on my jazz dream.

In comes Victor, and we start playing. And, you know, three hours later, we're like just having the time of our lives playing together. It was one of those amazing jams and moments in life that, you know, there's before and after. And now Victor was there. And like with Victor, I was like, wow, with the guy like this, there's something to build on here, you know. There's something to build on. And then I remembered Howard Levy, who was the harmonious. player, piano player who I'd met, who was like on the folk scene, like a jazz musician who was on

the folk scene, who was the most amazing harmonica player I'd ever heard and played chromatic harmonica music on a diatonic harp. He'd figured out how to overblow all the notes to any note he wanted and could play two different lines at the same time on a harmonica by blocking the notes in the middle with his tongue and do it all while playing the piano, had an incredible jazz sense. I was like, wow, you know, Victor and Howard, you know, that would actually be. something. And it was just a matter of somebody got in touch with me and asked me if I would like to do a gig. It was a television show and said, would you like to do this

a one-hour television special about modern banjo playing? You could do whatever you want. And then I thought, wow, I could put these guys together and we could try something. And that was where the fleck tones started. And then I needed a drummer. And Victor was in town and we were going around hearing different people play and clubs and I'd say, what do you think about that drummer over there? He's pretty good, right? And Victor would say, yeah, but you should hear my brother. And then the next night we'd be hearing somebody else how that guy's, he's got a good pocket, right? He's like, yeah, but you should

hear my brother. And this went on for a while and said, finally, I was like, all right, let's call him up. And so we called him up and we had this incredible conversation about odd meters and things that he understood. And I was like, well, this guy's wild. And so he came to town to do this television show and we threw it together. We did five songs very highly unrehearsed and it just blew the audience away. We were all sort of stunned. It was like

a huge explosion. And it was just wild. And that was one of those life turning points. That's when I knew I was going to be leaving Newgrass Revival that I'd been in for nine years and diving into the unknown

into this band with these guys. It was what everything I dreamed of, a bunch of equals people I could study from. I could learn from every single one of them. They could learn from me. They could make my music sound natural. When I tried to teach my music to bluegrass musicians, even the top musicians, they always had this thing they would say, too many brains, Bela, too many brains.

You need to write music with less brains. It's kind of like in Amadeus when the king said, too many notes. Too many notes, Mozart. When Victor was pitching his brother Roy, were you aware of Roy? Roy's style and the fact that it was it was very electronic. This is not somebody who's sitting down with a traditional drum kit. No, I mean, I knew, well, the thing is I knew he was working on this weird drum kit, and I was very suspicious that this was insanity.

But I also knew from this guy, the fiddle player who had introduced, Kurt Story had introduced me to Victor, and he said, every one of these brothers is as good as Victor. All five of them are stunners. And so I knew that if it didn't work, if he came to town, we started rehearsing and this weird drum guitar thing he was working on was a big, you know, bomb. We would just get a drum kit and he could play the gig. And it's five songs and it'd be over and we'd all go on with our lives, you know. But it was not a flaky, weird thing.

It was a great, brilliant, genius thing he'd come up with and he could play it. Because I've always wondered, I listen to live art all the time. I still love it. And there's moments where if I'm in the car and I'm listening to it, I forget it's a live album, you know, I'll forget because it's so you're, I think you know this, how clean you all are as performers. And there's also this level that you're all at where I wonder like, you know, in sports you could say, hey, this guy's really talented, this guy's the best guy, this guy's the best guy, but it doesn't necessarily always work. So I'm sure you could put together the most brilliant musicians who understand everything can read, can improvise, but if you're with these with these people is it is it your individual talent figuring out a way to work out or is it a chemistry thing where I'd say I think you're alluding to it a bit where it just immediately you feel okay this is what I've been looking for because everybody could rave about everyone's individual talent but I wonder if that's a chemistry that is instant or develops because whenever I listen to any of the live stuff I'm constantly shocked I'm like I can't believe how tight this still is even though it's a live performance. Right. That's kind of the magic about rhythm. I'm very activated by rhythm. And if rhythm isn't solid and tight, I suffer as a banjo player because I'm basically a percussionist. And every note I'm playing falls, you know, is very clear. And so with all the music I've done, I've always put a very high priority on articulation and clarity. And I think when music is very busy and complicated, it's even more important that it's extremely clear. And so that's

one of the things I always fight for in rehearsal, in planning, in writing music is how can I make this groove? How can I make this feel like something? How can I make it precise so that if you're going to do like subdivisions of, you know, five over four or 11 over whatever, you know, things that Future Man can only do that none of us know what he's doing. It only works if it's very clearly stated. So I think that's part one. The other part is everyone had like when I started playing with Futureman and Victor, we started rehearsing, it immediately clicked. There was a chemistry to the three of us rhythmically that was very much like when I played with, you know, some of the great bluegrass musicians, Sam Bush and Tony Rice. It was like a magic carpet ride. It was so easy. And all these things that I used to try to do with other people that sounded stupid on the banjo, they didn't sound stupid when I played them with these guys, the same guys. So there was some kind of chemical thing going on with us that we all had a very, uh, good sense of internal rhythm, not just the big beat, but all the little 16s. You could feel him even when you didn't play, and we could all feel them together,

even if no one was playing them, which meant we could lock up on any kind of beat almost perfectly because of that awareness. Howard was more of a jazz player. He has excellent time, but he, I wouldn't say he had that sort of mathematical way of playing that the other guys have. He had a lot of other things. still has a lot of other things, a lot of melody, a lot of genius, harmony, a lot of rhythmic subtlety and incredible intelligence and braininess. But I think that thing that Victor and Roy and I share is kind of the pulse of the band, Howard's the brains of the band somehow. The other thing is that I never, I don't say never, I avoided as long as possible telling anybody anything

about the tunes when I showed up to them. I would just start playing them. I wouldn't say, here's a chord chart, Victor, play these bass notes. I would say, what do you think the chords are? And together we would, I wouldn't say, oh, yeah, it starts in 5, 4, and then on the bridge it goes to, you know, there's three bars of three, and then it drops into, you know, six, and then whatever, I knew, I knew what I had written, but I didn't tell anybody any of that. I just played it for them.

And they would find their own way to play this music and find their own parts. And then if I, you know, if I heard what Victor was doing, I said, I'm sorry, Vic, I really need to C-sharp right here. But everything else, keep what you're doing. What we ended up with was something that where each musician owned their part, they weren't told what to do. They didn't have somebody explained to them what to do. They just found their own musical parts.

And when me and Future Man and Victor had figured out what we wanted to do, Howard actually come in with a pen and paper, and say, let me see what you're doing here. And he'd write it out and say, oh, if you're doing this and you're doing this, then I can do this kind of harmony here. The melodies can go this way, you know, now, that kind of thing. So again, he was a brain. He looked at it from a more cerebral point of view.

The three of us were just trying to find something that worked and felt good to all of us. But the upshot was that everybody owned what they're playing. I love this part of it just because, you know, I can just imagine the record executive talking to the person that's bringing you in. And they're like, what are we doing? But you have success in your genre. So did it, there was a level of success, and then obviously I think there was a more mainstream thing that I want to get into. But did it feel like as much of a fight as maybe it would be on the commercial side because you were trying something so different? Yeah. So I assumed that one,

well, here's the thing. The band I was in before this, have you ever heard about Newgrass Revival? Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I've gone back. Yeah. So Sam Bush had that band long before I joined it. and it was a very highly creative band. They did tunes in odd meters. They had the extended jams. They were some of the first kind of jam grassers. And so when I joined that band, I was really excited about the progressive elements of it.

And we were really good at all that stuff. The band was unbelievably good. I was such a thrill to be in that band. But we got signed to a country label. We had great vocalists, like really great vocalists in the band. John Callan was, you know, a stellar vocalist who, you know, should have had his own pop stardom. But so we were assigned to country Nashville and trying to do singles that would work on country radio.

And sort of, in my opinion, cheapening the music that they had created long before I joined the band by trying to make it fit this format for DJs and people that really didn't care about playing. You know, country music was all about the song and the singer. So I was pretty frustrated with that. So when I decided to do this and leave that group, I was leaving what I thought was a highly commercial situation, you know, for something very esoteric. The weird part is that my weird esoteric band started doing so well. I mean, we suddenly, we were getting all these gigs that Newgrass

was trying so hard to get, getting to play with Bruce Hornsby, getting to be on the Tonight Show, you know, opening up for Take Six and being on shows. at Carnegie Hall with Stevie Wonder. It, like, it was, we were so weird that people just wanted to put us on the show to get a laugh, you know. And my hope was that we had good enough music that once they got, had their little laugh about the, you know, about the banjo player and the, and the weird drum guy, they would realize that the music was kind of cool. Maybe they would find a place for it in their life. And that's kind of what happened.

You know, we had a good first band, you know, when you first saw it, you were going to remember it, you know. but um but you know there's lots of novelty stuff that you never remember after that the cool part was that people you know fell in love with the music and stuck with us and became fans and that that was really a incredible turn of events what did it mean for the band then because i i think it's you know whether it's jam band adjacent or kind of the the lumping in of all these groups that happened in the 90s but you know i wouldn't exactly think of dave matthews is a jam band but whatever like whatever label you want to put on this stuff but the entrance into that world, it's like, well, these guys are touring with Dave Matthews.

They're playing with Fish a couple different times. What did that do for the scope of the awareness of what the kind of work you guys were doing? Well, it didn't hurt, but I mean, we wanted to be jazzers. We didn't want to be Jam Band guys. I mean, Jam Band was a new term at that point. And I'd say if Newgrass had been around a little longer, I'd say we were kind of some of the fathers of the Jam Band movement, the New Grass Revival in the 80s. And when you talk to a lot of the bands, they were all listening to Newgrass, and it sort of showed them a pathway that they took in their own directions. But Newgrass didn't stay together long enough to appreciate the gains from creating a lot of that music, although like our final gig, we finally got

to play for Open for the Grateful Dead at the Oakland Coliseum, the last gig of Newgrass Revival. And Jerry Garcia came over and he said, hey, man, you guys are great, man, we should have you out all the time and we said sorry we're splitting up too late cherry you know but it was that close a miss it was it was so close but um i always felt like i wanted to be around the jazz musicians i didn't want to be a jam band person but what i gradually realized is that you build your audience from all these different places like if there's uh if three quarters of the bluegrass people were going to if three quarters of the bluegrass people were going to hate me for what i was doing to bluegrass or banjo well there was still a quarter there

that was going to come along. If the jazz audience was going to laugh at us because there was a banjo in the band and like 60% of them were going to look down on us and think it was not legit, there were still 40% who maybe would. Now you've got two audiences,

you know, a pretty good chunk of two audiences. Then we'd go play these city festivals for people that didn't care. You know, we'd open for Chicago for like 50 shows. Maybe, you know, maybe 90% of those people, you know,

didn't like us, but the other 10 loved us. And then eventually when we got on with a Dave Matthews band, and not only did we get to open, they brought us out on stage with them and, like, handed us the show. That was huge. So, you know, I think the thing is, like, just building an audience from, cobbling it together from all these different worlds, was, at a jazz festival, we were their bluegrass act. At a bluegrass festival, we were their jazz act. You know, on the street festival, we were just a weird novelty act, you know, but again, again, we would find

fans we'd find fans and then they'd stick with us this is a guess but i would imagine if it's like a younger band and you know a tray from fish reaches out and it goes really like what you're doing you know and there's probably this moment of awe that you would have in the hierarchy of like whose band is popular maybe even age part of it did you get the sense that some of these like the most famous musicians somebody like trey somebody like a dave matthews would be looking at you with almost this reverence because of how much of a master you are. Well, it's sweet and very, you know, makes you feel great when folks like that care about you. But you have to remember that like when I met fish, they weren't a big band.

They were little band. When I got to know Dave the first time, in fact, I don't even think I got to know them in the beginning. They'd be playing a little crappy, you know, bucket of blood club down the street. Well, we were playing a nice theater with the Flecktones. They weren't anybody yet. I mean, they were some of them. They were who they are.

obviously. But you know what I'm saying? And then one day, it was like, wait a second, Dave Matthews is playing Coliseums. We're still in these small theaters. What just happened? You know, and so for the longest time, they were like, hey, would you come out and do some shows with us? And we're like, I don't know if we have time, man. You know, the calendar's so busy. And finally, we found them in the time. It was like, it wasn't like they were these gods back then. They were these young guys that we were watching come up from below. And then they went up to the stratosphere. And then, you know, luckily they liked what we did and invited us for some of the ride, you know. And it was really, really fun to be part of and see. So there was one tour called The Horde Tour way, way back that the Blues Trappler put together, and we got to do four dates with them, an aquarium rescue unit. And Fish was on some shows. We weren't on those ones. And that felt like we were all on, you know, on some kind of parody.

All the bands were, you know, kind of starting to make it. nobody was that big yet but we were all together it was really really fun I want to end with this do you have to be obsessed to reach the level of mastering instrument the way that you have

the way you talked about it once you first got that banjo do you have to be at that level to get to the level you ended up at yeah I do not everybody else does I don't necessarily recommend it I'm probably a little on the spectrum somewhat. You know, I'm very happy to work on stuff for days by myself in a room.

And, you know, that doesn't give you the best humanity skills. You've got to work on those when you come out of the room. But I love working hard on music. I love working really hard. Honestly, I think some of it has to do with, you know, a rough childhood, like parents that split up in some low self-worth. and then I found this thing that made me feel really good like I had something meaningful to do

and I got addicted to it and made me feel good as long as I keep on playing and working at it, as long as I'm good to the banjo, it's good to me. So the biggest change for me has been having kids when all of a sudden, for the first time in my life, there's something more important than music and the banjo that what I need to be able to do for these guys is more critical. And so now I'm having that different experience here later in my life of trying to put things into a different perspective.

But music will never be anything but a passion for me. I mean, I want to be learning all the time. I want to be getting better. I don't want to get stuck, you know, doing what I've always been doing. And it's almost a really, it's my religion. Did we end up, because I was reading about this at the time, because, you know, your wife, who is a banjo player, like the, the, the, the, the, joke was always that you would have this banjo god so where are we on the timeline of one of the offspring yeah so number one his looks like he's going to be maybe the next tiger woods

possibly isn't it like what was that uh that show where the where the dad was a hippie so the kid became like a businessman family ties kind of like that so he's like yeah i'm going to be a golfer you stick to your banjo thing papa i'm going to be playing papa i'm going to be playing playing golf. So he's an amazing golfer, really. He's been good ever since he was two years old. And now he's playing the fiddle. Thank goodness. And he's playing Celtic music and bluegrass. And he's coming on strong. And I don't know, whatever he wants to do that makes him happy, I'm, I'm good with. But I love that we can share music now. We can sit around and play tunes. And he can go to jam sessions and find a way to play along. And he can lead some tunes. And he can sing. So it's pretty wonderful.

The little guy, we have a seven-year-old as well. He is actually kind of great on the drums and he sits around at the piano he puts a block on the he used to put a block on the whole pedal so the piano would ring and he would just go into sound skate mode and create this incredible music and and anytime you'd ask him to do it in front of anybody he wouldn't do it it was always just for him so he's not like performance or an where juno the older one he loves to practice something and go in front of people and get applause so i don't know we'll see they'd be a great pair in a band actually well the banjo world patiently awaits so obviously

I know I don't have banjo offspring but I do have a camp now where I have this year we had 120 students this is our sixth year and a lot of kids are coming to that so there is there is hope there is another there are future great young banjo players coming up fast and I'm really excited about the community we've been developing do you ever think about that how many young people you aspire to take on an instrument they never would have thought about you know I do occasionally in a Lansing way, but I don't feel like it helps me be a better musician to sit around and think about

my successes, you know, I, you know what I mean? It's like, I think what. Yeah, honestly, I think it would be a weird answer if you're like, yes, regularly once a week. I think about what I've done for the world. Yeah, I just feel like it's not, it, it'll only lead the complacency and less focus on what I have to do and what I'm trying to achieve, which is always, it's always a lot of work to get the music the way I want it to be, even in practice or in recording. So I love it when people care about what I do, I think is a real treat to me that anybody cares about something that I love so passionately myself, that anybody can join me in that and be infected by it is awesome. And it happened to me, you know, people like Chick-Correya and Amathini and John McLaughlin and Miles and Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs, they all lit me up. So I know that that's the natural outcome if you live to a certain age and get to a certain point with your music.

So I'm appreciative of it. I also see it as a very natural syndrome. And some of that should be happening, but I shouldn't be taking a whole lot of notice of it. I should be thinking about what I got in front of me. For those that are excited about the beat trio, you know, I was reading through some of the press release stuff. Like those of us that have loved everything that you've done, like what should we expect? Because I know you're kind of branching out a little bit. Yeah, be true. Be trio. It's hard to say. I'd say it 10 times fast.

is a very Latin-oriented simply because the guys Antonio Sanchez is from Mexico City. He's an incredible drummer. He played with Pat Mathini for many years. He did the Birdman soundtrack. It's all solo drums. That's him. Right now he's done the studio soundtrack for that new Seth Rogen show. He does

doing a lot of that kind of work. And then Edmar is a harp player from Columbia. And when you think about the harp, if you don't know about Latin harp, it's an incredibly rhythmic, exciting instrument and he's got all of these levers that change the pitches on all the notes so you're not stuck in one key he's got all kinds of harmonic possibility and he plays bass on the bottom of the harp so with the three of us it's one of those you know weird cool trios well doesn't doesn't seem like it ought to make sense banso harp and drums but it does it just sounds like

a big band and and we've written some music we've been out touring it at the jazz festivals and some jazz clubs and some nice theater dates and it's a nice fun thing to do but right now i'm back with the flecktones. And we're having a blast doing this show with Dave Matthews this week at the Gorge. But we're also getting back together to do a Christmas tour. And we're going to have Jeff Coffin, who used to play with us, who's with Dave Matthews now, joining us with our group and also a Toobin throat singer from Tuva, which is in Russia, doing Christmas music at the end of the year. So that's really exciting, too. That's fun because we made a Christmas record. I don't even know what year it was, but it was really out there, Christmas

record. And a lot of people have come to like it over the years. And we're going to go out and play that music and some nice big theaters. It's going to be a lot of fun. I hope to make it to the Flynn show in Burlington in December. And I get to see you guys in a lot. I always love Flynn. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know the community up there loves you. And those of us that have loved your music, this has been a lot of fun getting to know you. So thank you so much. It's Bela Fleck. Thanks for the conversation. They were going to name me Michael Jordan. My dad was like, I don't think he can live up to it. So they named me Michael Jared. Must be 21 and older and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C., Kentucky or Wyoming.

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