{"id":3590,"date":"2011-08-22T00:40:29","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T07:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3590"},"modified":"2011-08-22T00:41:34","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T07:41:34","slug":"bela-fleck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/bela-fleck\/","title":{"rendered":"B\u00c9LA FLECK"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

B\u00c9LA FLECK<\/h1>\n

The banjo virtuoso breaks boundaries again with his original Flecktones<\/strong><\/h2>\n

By Steven Rosen<\/strong><\/p>\n

B\u00e9la Fleck made the banjo dangerous. Before he picked it up, the instrument was mostly consigned to the province of old-fashioned country and bluegrass tunes. But all that changed in 1979 when the native New Yorker recorded his first solo album, Crossing the Tracks<\/em>. \u201cI was really intent on being good on the banjo,\u201d Fleck says. \u201cSo I learned Bach Partitas and jazz solos because that seemed like the highest quality music I could find that would directly impact my banjo playing.\u201d Improbably, Fleck brought those elements together with traditional and world music to create an amped-up hybrid dubbed \u201cprogressive bluegrass\u201d\u2014a melting-pot style all his own. He has been breaking boundaries ever since.<\/p>\n

Fleck\u2019s banjo odyssey found him pushing five-string limits with the New Grass Revival during most of the 1980s and ultimately breaking down the walls completely with his group B\u00e9la Fleck and the Flecktones, formed in 1988. \u201cWhen I met the Flecktones and showed them the more complicated stuff I had, these guys sucked that up and asked for more,\u201d Fleck recalls. He has also enjoyed solo excursions into African, Indian and classical music, as\u00a0well as collaborations with Chick Corea and many others.<\/p>\n

On his new album, Rocket Science<\/em>, Fleck reconvenes the original Flecktones\u2014keyboardist Howard Levy, bass player Victor Wooten and percussionist Roy \u201cFutureman\u201d Wooten\u2014for the first time in 18 years. With Fleck at the production helm as usual, the group burned through 12 new songs over a pair of two-week sessions. \u201cThere\u2019s something about us together that\u2019s very special,\u201d observes Fleck, 52. \u201cIt\u2019s not just run-of-the-mill.<\/p>\n

I could get Chick Corea, Dennis Chambers, Toots Thielemans and Stanley Clarke and it wouldn\u2019t sound like the Flecktones.\u201d\u00a0We spoke with the banjo wizard from Nashville, where he has\u00a0lived since the early \u201980s.<\/p>\n

What drew you to the banjo?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I first heard the banjo it was profound. I heard Earl Scruggs playing the Beverly Hillbillies<\/em> theme [\u201cThe Ballad of Jed Clampett\u201d], but I wasn\u2019t that interested in country or folk. At that time it was just the sound of the banjo that jumped out at me. I\u2019ve talked to a lot of people who Earl Scruggs had that impact on\u2014the first time they heard him play just shook them up.<\/p>\n

What other music did you like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was a kid in the \u201960s, so the Beatles were huge. In the early \u201970s, when I started playing banjo, Led Zeppelin was huge. Yes was also big. You couldn\u2019t help but be aware of different kinds of music growing up in New York City\u2014including folk, which I liked but didn\u2019t have a huge attraction to. I enjoyed music where people played fancier. I liked hearing lead guitarists and jazz musicians, and I hadn\u2019t really heard that in folk. In bluegrass I did.<\/p>\n

Were you good right away?<\/strong><\/p>\n

People said it came easily, though I felt I was struggling. Not to brag, but by the time I was graduating high school, I was spending a lot of time around Tony Trischka, who was the leading modernist banjo player. We\u2019d be jamming at parties, and people would say they couldn\u2019t tell who was who when they closed their eyes. Here I was playing with the top guy and people couldn\u2019t tell if it was him or me\u2014so I guess that was fast.<\/p>\n

When your career started, was something missing from traditional bluegrass banjo?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t so much that something was missing, but there was an opportunity there to open things up. I had a simple curiosity about different kinds of music\u2014and maybe the egotism to think, \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have to learn the saxophone to learn this Charlie Parker solo. I should be able to do it on the banjo.\u201d I had moved to the South and was playing in bluegrass bands but was still curious about more modern music. I\u2019d finish a bluegrass tour, go home and try to hang out with jazz musicians or try to transcribe things off Charlie Parker or Chick Corea records. I\u2019d also take things from great guitar players like Pat Martino or Pat Metheny. Nobody had really explored the banjo neck the way I was trying to do. There were a couple of guys\u2014Don Reno and Eddie Adcock\u2014who had done stuff with scales, but it wasn\u2019t a complete concept. I learned all the modes in all the keys from the bottom of the banjo neck to the top, and every\u00a0single jazz chord inversion.<\/p>\n

How did the Flecktones form?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was looking to push the edge and do something different, to step completely out of the bluegrass world. Victor Wooten, Futureman and Howard Levy were the first guys I\u2019d met that could take my music and raise it to the level it needed to be on in order to be viable. The music needed to be edgy and have new ideas in it, because they wouldn\u2019t want to play with me if I wasn\u2019t delivering stuff that was intriguing to them.<\/p>\n

What were the early sessions like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We always played live, but that didn\u2019t mean you couldn\u2019t go back and fix something if you didn\u2019t get it. I always produced the records. The only outside producer we ever approached was Daniel Lanois, and he passed.<\/p>\n

Do you have your own studio?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, in my house. That started around the time of Live Art <\/em>[1996]. We were doing really well on Warner Bros. around that time, and they actually gave me my first Pro Tools rig. We were about to compile the live album from a couple hundred hours of recordings of shows that we had taped over the years. So I got one of the early Pro Tools systems and started editing the live album.<\/p>\n

Did you adopt digital quickly?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I preferred analog\u2014it sounded great and I loved it. But digital has gotten so good that it doesn\u2019t stop a record from being great. It\u2019s a nice touch when you can do it analog, but I haven\u2019t gotten to do that in a long time. I\u2019ve mixed to analog half-inch or one-inch machines to give it a little more\u00a0of that character.<\/p>\n

How did the Flecktones reunite?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The real change was going back to playing with Howard Levy. The band has been together the whole time, but with different personnel\u2014really just one person, Jeff Coffin, who had been our horn player for the last<\/p>\n

14 years. Dave Matthews Band asked Jeff to fill in after LeRoi Moore, their saxophone player, died [in 2008]. They eventually offered him that job.<\/p>\n

How did you approach Howard? <\/strong><\/p>\n

About a year after Jeff left, Victor, Futureman and I touched base. I asked them, \u201cWell, what do you guys want to do?\u201d They said, \u201cWhat about seeing if Howard is interested in doing some shows?\u201d We did a couple weeks in Europe and five shows in the States, just playing old music and reestablishing that we could have a great time together. Then we made plans to\u00a0record Rocket Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n

How was that process? <\/strong><\/p>\n

We worked pretty fast. I went off to Chicago to write with Howard, and got together with Victor and Futureman to write and see what they had. Then we got together and started recording. In the past we used to perform the stuff live a good bit, knock the arrangement together on tour, then go and record it.\u00a0Now, since we weren\u2019t on tour, we had to do much more planning.<\/p>\n

What do you hope people take away from your shows?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The concerts are really about uplifting people. At the end of the shows, people just feel awesome. It\u2019s great to play that role, to make a room full of people happy. I think there\u2019s something inspiring about our band\u2014they walk away from it going, \u201cWow, the impossible is possible.\u201d I hear from people that they walk away inspired to go after their dreams. This group is certainly an example of a crazy dream that somehow has worked out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

B\u00c9LA FLECK The banjo virtuoso breaks boundaries again with his original Flecktones By Steven Rosen B\u00e9la Fleck made the banjo dangerous. Before he picked it up, the instrument was mostly consigned to the province of old-fashioned country and bluegrass tunes. But all that changed in 1979 when the native New Yorker recorded his first solo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[2477,1636,2314,970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3590"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3594,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590\/revisions\/3594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}