Bela Fleck is a pioneer in the field of "newgrass," a subgenre of jazz that combines traditional bluegrass music with contemporary free-form jazz and technological advances. This interview took place in June 1993 for the radio station KCOU 88.1 fm in Columbia, Missouri.

I want to go through some stuff here. I was reading this and I found it hard to believe, so I just wanted to get it confirmed by you. You were inspired to play the banjo by the movie Deliverance?

Well, that and The Beverly Hillbillies. It's embarrassing, really.

I should say, most people watch Deliverance and walk away thinking, "Crazy guys, crazy South," not "Wow, the banjo!" you know?

That's a pretty amazing scene, that one scene in the movie, the music scene. It's really amazing. And at the time I didn't even realize that the guy was frailing. He was strumming the banjo in the movie but when you listen to it, he's picking bluegrass style, so it's one of those things where I was young and there was a lot of magic in that music. I had heard The Beverly Hillbillies theme and thought it was incredible-sounding banjo playing. I didn't even know it was a banjo back then.

It was sort of a light that clicked over your head?

Yeah, it really was. It was really strange.

You started playing the banjo around fourteen. What were some of your influences both before and after you began playing?

We were really into the Beatles. When I say 'we,' I mean my older brother, about a year older than me. We grew up on the Beatles. When we were kids they were the hottest thing going and we got sort of swept up in that. And then later on I got into Joni Mitchell, and my brother started going into the harder rock stuff and I went into some of the folk stuff--Simon and Garfunkel, you know. [Laughs] I'm still embarrassed. Then when I got to high school I got my first banjo from my grandfather. He just bought it for the heck of it and gave it to me because he knew I liked guitar. I just got soaked up into it. And a little later I started getting some cooler influences and other influences like Charlie Parker and Chick Corea and this great banjo player named Tony Trishka who was trying wacky stuff even back then. He was probably my biggest influence.

Was it hard to learn the banjo once you picked it up?

I always thought it was hard work but I always loved it, and I seemed to move really fast on that instrument. When I was playing guitar before, I never really had the fire. It never really did it for me.

Do you think that's something natural, or do you think it's because you were so...?

Strumming on the banjo was a whole different thing. I just never got psyched about the guitar. The banjo I sure did. Again, I don't know why.

You moved from New York City, where you grew up, to Tennessee, after high school graduation. Is that right?

Well, I played in a few bands before I moved down. In fact, I graduated and moved to Boston from New York which was a nice place to move to because I never really liked New York. Even after eighteen years of living there I always kind of hated it. Moved to Boston and it was a great scene, a real school scene, lots of kids. But I moved to join a band, so there I was and most of my friends were in college. The people I got to know and who became my friends were all in school and I was out there playing gigs. It was a good time. And then about three years later I moved to Kentucky first for a couple of years to play in a band there. I just wanted to get closer to the music because I was having a real Northern orientation to the banjo which is different [from the South]. Northern banjo players play with a different feel and they're a lot more complicated. Or at least this was true back then. To really get into the heart of what bluegrass and other traditional music was all about, you had to go listen to the Southern guys. Earl Shrugg, J.D. Crow, Sonny Osbourne and all these guys who had a different depth and timing to their playing. And I wanted that.

You had never been down there before? It was just a case of you listening to the records and saying, "I must go down there"?

Yeah, kind of. And then the right set of opportunities presented itself, first with a band called Spectrum and then The Newgrass Revival, which is when I moved to Tennessee. It was nice. Nashville was a place where things were happening. Ricky Skaggs was just hitting, and back then he was kind of cool. It was a new sound for country music--back to a rootsy sound. Although now he's into really slick country, back then he was really cutting-edge and he was doing some wonderful stuff.

Did you have a lot of problems down there when you first got into town, getting used to a new lifestyle? Did people pick on you for being the city boy?

A little bit. Not nearly as much as I got picked on when I was a city boy, by the kids in Harlem. [Laughs] I got beat up regularly as a kid in New York, which was one of the reasons I was glad to get away. But I never had that kind of problem in bluegrass. I was always in this cutting-edge attitude with The Newgrass Revival. We were kind of a cool new band and people kind of treated us special.

Let's talk about the new tour. You were telling me before that you just played your second date of the tour.

Yeah, second date of the tour. We've been on the road for about a month.

Are you guys going to be playing a lot of college towns?

I hope so. [Laughs]

Is that your choice? Do you guys have any kind of say about what towns you play?

Well, all the dates get run by me. [Jason laughs] My booking agent puts together a list of towns and gigs and try to run them by me and my manager, and we try to decide whether it's time to come back to a town, whether we've been there too recently, whether we enjoyed it. If a place is a bad place to be, we don't want to go back.

Any examples you'd like to get on the air of that?

Uh...probably not [laughs], although it wouldn't hurt anything. You know, sometimes we'd play a club that was just a nasty club, and other times we'll play a club that's really fun. You know, some clubs are just...the wrong kind of nasty. For us, anyway. There's lots of people in our audience that like to go to clubs and hang and then there's other people in our audience who would be more comfortable at a concert. Usually our audience listens more than they scream. Sometimes you play a room and they just talk through the whole thing and then people come up after the show and say, "I really came to hear you guys play, not to listen to everyone talk," and we think, "Maybe we shouldn't play this room [again]." It's the room that suggests how to be. If we can't get their attention, we're in the wrong room.

Have you played at this club before? [The Blue Note, the site of that night's concert]

Yeah, we had a good time the last time we played here. It should be fun tonight. And then we're on our way to Colorado to play the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, which is the highlight of the year for me. This is my twelfth year straight.

Wow!

Yeah. [Laughs]

So that's a really good scene out there?

It's a great scene out there. People will be out there like Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Mark Cohn, Lurina McKennett. All the guys from The Newgrass Revival will be out there, we'll be playing together, and Strength In Numbers. And they have the singer-songwriters, the Shawn Colfins and people like that. Occasionally they'll have something edgier but I'm not sure about that this year. But they've had people like The Horseflies, Colonel Bruce Hampton. There's a lot of good music all mixing together, from bluegrass to rock to pop and everything.

Now, I always told myself that if I ever interviewed someone who had been on the Tonight Show, I was going to ask them all about it. So here you are so I'm going to ask you all about it. What were the experiences like?

Well, I'm in the position where I can tell you the difference between the old Tonight Show and the new Tonight Show, because I've been on both.

Well, let's hear it.

The old Tonight Show, Johnny's trip was very distant. He did not hang out. He's not there to be friendly. In fact, if you run into him in the hall and try to talk to him, he gets very...unhappy about it. Almost on the edge of being unfriendly. Which is odd, because now after being on the show...I think we were on two or three times with Johnny...he would always wave at us after our performance, like, "Wow, I really like you guys!" [Jason laughs] And then we'd try to say hi in the hall and it's like, cold shoulder. He was just worn-out. He had had it. He didn't want to talk to anyone anymore! He'd been talking to people for however many years. But the band was great. The guys in the Tonight Show band treated us real good and they'd all watch us play and they were real nice.

Did you ever play with them?

No, we didn't. I wish we had. I've thought about that, about what a great thing that would've been, having the entire Tonight Show band playing with us and playing one of our songs. But then when we went back after Branford and, um...you know, um...

Jay.

Jay! [Laughs] The new regime. It's a slightly different vibe. For one thing, when you get there, Jay is in rehearsal and shakes everyone's hands and welcomes them to the show. Another thing--Jay will not have a performer on without bringing them over to the couch. With Johnny Carson, many times a performer would come on and play and never get invited over to the couch.

Same with the comedians.

He just doesn't want to talk to them! [Laughs] But Jay feels like, hey, if you come on the show, he should at least talk to you for a little bit. Then we got Branford to come out and play with us, which was a lot of fun. I know people are probably getting a little sick and tired of hearing him play with everyone [laughs], but we really like playing with Branford. In fact, he played on the new album.

Yeah, you mentioned that, along with Bruce Hornsby.

Bruce Hornsby, yeah. We have just a sitting-in relationship.

It seems to me that I remember seeing you and Branford playing on PBS, long before the Tonight Show and everything.

Yeah, we did a TV show together where he was like the "fifth Flecktone" of the night. It was a TV show called The Lonesome Pine Specials.

As a matter of fact, that was the very first time I ever heard you, and I was sitting there thinking, "What is this?" It was really cool.

Sometimes we can't figure out what it is. [Laughs]

A final question about the Tonight Show. Is that set really as purple as it looks on television, or is that a camera trick?

No. They can light it different ways so the set is pretty much white. Whatever lights they put on it, that's what it takes on. I was amazed when I got there to see how small the area is where the musicians play. It's not much wider than [the room where this interview is taking place]. We're all in there tight. And by the time they've lit it and moved the cameras around, they know how to make it look big.

It looks huge on television.

It's not. I don't know how some bands get in there. I got to do Letterman's thing, sitting in with the band one night, and that was even smaller than this room. Drums were here, I was here, and that was it! The perspective's real different when you're there than when you see it on TV.

Especially when you're looking out towards the cameras, I suppose.

Yeah.

So how was it on Letterman?

Oh, it was great! [Laughter] It was so much fun. And it was one of those nights when there was a whole lot of bleeping when you finally saw the show. They had this old woman on and I can't actually repeat what she said, but it was really funny. And the band was really nice. Paul Schaffer's a real pro, made me feel really comfortable. The whole band's nice guys.

Do you think you'll do it again?

I hope so with the new album. The new album's going to be in the stores end of August, beginning of September, around then, and I'm sure we'll be doing a lot more [television appearances]. I know we'll be going back to the Tonight Show.

Okay, here's a question for you. Are there certain times, especially in the middle of interviews, when you wish you'd picked a more traditional instrument to play? It's banjo for you, and for people who don't know about it, your drummer plays a "drumitar," which is a combination of guitar and drum machine.

Yeah, it's a wild instrument. It's funny--I did an interview today with this woman on the telephone for this traditional jazz festival we're doing in Sarasota Springs, and her whole take on the interview was, "Aren't you guys really just gimmicky?" [Laughs] It was like, "How do you guys get into a festival like this? Aren't you guys..." And I was like, the thing about something like the drumitar is that it would be a gimmick if he couldn't play it. But the fact that he plays music on it...I don't mind if it's a gimmick if, after you've been "gimmicked" enough to come check it out, you dig what the guy's doing with it. If you don't dig what he's doing then it's just a gimmick and nothing more than a gimmick. I don't mind having a gimmick if it gets people to come check us out and they end up liking the music. If they don't like the music, I'd rather they don't come. [Laughter] Whatever the gimmick is--like we had Howard Levy playing harmonica in a way that no one else did. If you don't like how the banjo's being played on this type of music, then it doesn't really matter. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I know what you mean.

I'm just trying to play some good music with these instruments and these people. Anything gimmicky about it just brings new people in to check it out.

And then at that point they have to decide for themselves whether they like the music or not.

If they like the music, they'll come back. And people have a tendency to come back, so I feel pretty good about it.

Do you ever get tired of having to go through that justification and explain it?

Frankly, I'm amazed that I'm in a position where anybody wants to talk to me at all. [Long laughter from everyone] I feel really lucky that I've put a band together that's gotten this much attention. It could've easily been a much tougher road.

Do you consider yourself more bluegrass or jazz? Is it surprising to you that you get charted in the jazz charts?

I've always wanted to be in jazz. Originally I was thinking that when I finally put my own band together it would be a jazz band with me playing banjo. Standards or new jazz or whatever, but it was going to be a jazz band. The odd thing that happened when the band finally came together was that we realized it would be a lot more interesting to make a whole new type of music than for me to just try to play jazz banjo. It would be interesting to develop a new sound. So I was thinking small. What we've done is create an individual sound. Whether you like it or not, no one else sounds like it.

Definitely! [Laughs]

That's what I'm proud of, that we've really come up with something on our own, that's really us.

And now that you've established your sound, have you ever thought about going and putting out an album of standards?

Jazz standards or bluegrass standards? [Laughs] Actually, both. I definitely will make a straight-ahead jazz album and I will make a straight-ahead bluegrass album. And I'll be doing some classical stuff with banjo and string quartet, and I'll be trying stuff. But this Flecktone thing is so strong that I'm sort of putting off a lot of this other stuff I want to try in order to ride this thing out, see where it goes.

And you're still pretty young.

I'm 34 right now, so I've got plenty of time to try stuff. This band has turned out to be such a great thing. I'm really surprised.

You sound really happy with it.

I am really happy with it.

That's good. Now, how hard was it to get a record contract? You're with Warner Brothers now. Have you been with Warner Brothers all three albums?

Yeah. They were the only ones interested. It's funny--we went to a lot of other labels. Usually in the press release it will say something like, "Bela recorded his first album on his own and took it and pitched it to Warner Brothers and then boom." But the fact is that I didn't really want to be on Warner Brothers because it was in Nashville, and I was trying to get a deal out of Los Angeles or New York. I was probably wrong. I think what happened was what was actually the best thing that could've happened to me, which was that I did get signed out of Nashville but the deal was that it would not say that it was recorded in Nashville. It would just say "A Warner Brothers Release."

You were afraid that it would just hold regional appeal.

I was really afraid that everyone would say, "Oh great, a banjo player from Nashville trying to play jazz." [Laughs] I really wanted to be clear that I wanted no preconceptions. It was hard enough just getting the albums out of the bluegrass bins in the stores. It's just not bluegrass.

Does that have to do with why you pick the cover art that you do?

No, the cover art tends to match the music. [Jason laughs] We tried really hard to get the albums into the jazz bins, because that seemed to be the best place for it. Now I'm not so sure. There's an alternative music crowd that likes us a lot. The people who listen to Blues Traveler and the Spin Doctors and Aquarium Rescue Unit and guys like that. Those people like us. The Grateful Dead audience likes us. And then there's that jazz audience who likes us, and the traditional bluegrass audience that likes us. I shouldn't say traditional. The nontraditional bluegrass audience likes us. Open-minded. I don't mean any harm to bluegrass. I really like bluegrass. It's just there's a lot of people who play traditional bluegrass, and I think if I can do something different I should.

With that kind of mix of audience, I imagine your shows turn out to be a...you know.

I really dig it, you know? I love looking out and seeing all these different types of people all having a good time. As long as they're having a good time. And they do.

Any moshing accidents at any of your shows?

We haven't had that. I don't know why, because we've played some places where that happens. But none of us got moshed. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Well, that's good! Okay, let's see, a couple of questions left. Do you think your compositional style has changed since the first album? Are you more in control of where you're going with the music? Or are you still pretty much doing it the way you have been?

Sometimes stuff gets written by the band together, or I'll get an idea and the band will start playing and I'll know what to do with it. In the past I would always write everything almost in a vaccuum, because I didn't know who was going to play this crazy stuff I was writing. Now I know that I've got guys who can learn it, even if it's really difficult to play. It pushes me to not be afraid to write things that are complex. I have to really make an effort to write things that are simple. Often when we play things that are simple, it's really nice. But it's nice to know that if I do come up with something tough, they'll be able to handle it.

What should we be expecting at the show tonight?

Tonight we'll be playing a whole new repertoire, a whole new set. We're a trio now, because Howard Levy left at the beginning of the year. Instead of playing the old songs without the harmonica and keyboard, we just wrote up a whole new...a whole new band.

A lot of stuff from the upcoming album tonight?

Yeah. What we did was rehearse for a month, then went out on the road, then recorded the new album. So all this stuff tonight is on the new record. Or at least recorded. We couldn't get it all on the new album. We ended up with about thirty new songs.

Wow!

But now when we play it usually gets cut to twelve or fifteen songs for the show. That's a couple of hours right there. It's cool. We're excited about it. So anyone that comes out for the show tonight is going to hear some new tunes, some new ideas. I might even play the banjo-synth. We have the first banjo-synth that I know of. It's electric, but it tracks pretty well. I can play some new stuff. I can play synthesizers from it now. And Futureman [the drummer] has expanded his rig. Just a lot of new things. And Victor's playing the bass just about as good as it can be played. And doing a lot of new things as well. So that's good.

Can you give us the title of the new album, or is that hush-hush?

The working title is "Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Do you like it?

[Laughs] Yeah, it's great.

Cool.

I have one question left for you. I was sitting around banging my head over this, trying to come up with a good final, sort of put-it-all-together question for you. But I didn't want it to be one of those "What advice would you give" kind of questions, so here it is: What is the last thing you've put in your mouth?

A pretzel.

Well, okay. We've got your album "UFO Tofu" potted up in the studio. Which song would you like to head out on?

How about "Life Without Elvis?"

Sure. We got that? Okay. Bela Fleck, tonight at the Blue Note. Bela, thanks for coming down.

It was a pleasure to be here.

Copyright 1993, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved.