JUNE 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM JUNE 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MUSICIAN What drew you to the banjo? to transcribe things off Charlie Parker or TOOLS OF THE TRADE When I fi rst heard the banjo it was profound. Chick Corea records. I’d also take things I heard Earl Scruggs playing the Beverly from great guitar players like Pat Martino or Hillbillies theme [“The Ballad of Jed Pat Metheny. Nobody had really explored the Fleck’s primary instrument since 1981 Clampett”], but I wasn’t that interested banjo neck the way I was trying to do. There has been a 1938 Gibson TB-75 Flathead, in country or folk. At that time it was just were a couple of guys—Don Reno and Eddie which cost $75 when it was manufactured the sound of the banjo that jumped out at Adcock—who had done stuff with scales, but but is now worth $100,000. Its depth and me. I’ve talked to a lot of people who Earl it wasn’t a complete concept. I learned all warmth of sound are generated from the Scruggs had that impact on—the fi rst time the modes in all the keys from the bottom expanded tone ring, which allows for more they heard him play just shook them up. of the banjo neck to the top, and every skin surface to resonate. The Gibson has single jazz chord inversion. been fi tted with a taller and thicker bridge What other music did you like? to enhance the deeper tones. Fleck says he I was a kid in the ’60s, so the Beatles were How did the Flecktones form? creates a darker sound by “keeping things huge. In the early ’70s, when I started playing I was looking to push the edge and do fairly loose and open” regarding the tightness banjo, Led Zeppelin was huge. Yes was something different, to step completely of the head and the height of the tailpiece also big. You couldn’t help but be aware of out of the bluegrass world. Victor Wooten, off the rim. “I like the high register to be very different kinds of music growing up in New Futureman and Howard Levy were the fi rst sweet and loud and not too bright,” he says. York City—including folk, which I liked but guys I’d met that could take my music and “I play the whole neck and don’t just stay in didn’t have a huge attraction to. I enjoyed raise it to the level it needed to be on in open position like a lot of bluegrass music music where people played fancier. I liked order to be viable. The music needed to does. I have a whole different sound I’m going hearing lead guitarists and jazz musicians, be edgy and have new ideas in it, because for.” Other banjos heard on Rocket Science and I hadn’t really heard that in folk. In they wouldn’t want to play with me if I wasn’t include a second pre-War Flathead, a Gibson bluegrass I did. delivering stuff that was intriguing to them. Grenada, a prototype Gold Tone 10-string and an electric Deering Crossfi re. What were the early sessions like? A Neumann U 89 and KM 84—big- We always played live, but that didn’t mean capsule and small-capsule microphones, ‘The concerts are you couldn’t go back and fi x something respectively—were used to record the if you didn’t get it. I always produced the about uplifting records. The only outside producer we ever approached was Daniel Lanois, and he passed. Jeremy Cowart people. It’s great Do you have your own studio? Yes, in my house. That started around the to play that role.’ time of Live Art [1996]. We were doing really well on Warner Bros. around that time, and BÉLA FLECK Were you good right away? they actually gave me my fi rst Pro Tools rig. People said it came easily, though I felt I was We were about to compile the live album The banjo virtuoso breaks boundaries again with his original Flecktones struggling. Not to brag, but by the time I was from a couple hundred hours of recordings graduating high school, I was spending a lot of shows that we had taped over the years. By Steven Rosen of time around Tony Trischka, who was the So I got one of the early Pro Tools systems leading modernist banjo player. We’d be and started editing the live album. BÉLA FLECK MADE THE BANJO DANGEROUS. BEFORE HE and showed them the more complicated stuff I had, these guys jamming at parties, and people would say picked it up, the instrument was mostly consigned to the province sucked that up and asked for more,” Fleck recalls. He has also they couldn’t tell who was who when they Did you adopt digital quickly? of old-fashioned country and bluegrass tunes. But all that changed enjoyed solo excursions into African, Indian and classical music, as closed their eyes. Here I was playing with I preferred analog—it sounded great and in 1979 when the native New Yorker recorded his fi rst solo album, well as collaborations with Chick Corea and many others. the top guy and people couldn’t tell if it was I loved it. But digital has gotten so good Crossing the Tracks. “I was really intent on being good on the banjo,” On his new album, Rocket Science, Fleck reconvenes him or me—so I guess that was fast. that it doesn’t stop a record from being Fleck says. “So I learned Bach Partitas and jazz solos because that the original Flecktones—keyboardist Howard Levy, bass player great. It’s a nice touch when you can do it seemed like the highest quality music I could fi nd that would directly Victor Wooten and percussionist Roy “Futureman” Wooten—for When your career started, was analog, but I haven’t gotten to do that in a impact my banjo playing.” Improbably, Fleck brought those elements the fi rst time in 18 years. With Fleck at the production helm as something missing from traditional long time. I’ve mixed to analog half-inch or together with traditional and world music to create an amped-up usual, the group burned through 12 new songs over a pair of bluegrass banjo? one-inch machines to give it a little more Jeremy Cowart hybrid dubbed “progressive bluegrass”—a melting-pot style all his two-week sessions. “There’s something about us together that’s It wasn’t so much that something was of that character. own. He has been breaking boundaries ever since. very special,” observes Fleck, 52. “It’s not just run-of-the-mill. missing, but there was an opportunity there instrument. Warm and bright elements were Fleck’s banjo odyssey found him pushing fi ve-string limits with I could get Chick Corea, Dennis Chambers, Toots Thielemans to open things up. I had a simple curiosity How did the Flecktones reunite? mixed together and panned according to the New Grass Revival during most of the 1980s and ultimately and Stanley Clarke and it wouldn’t sound like the Flecktones.” about different kinds of music—and maybe The real change was going back to playing Fleck’s production specs. “My sound comes breaking down the walls completely with his group Béla Fleck We spoke with the banjo wizard from Nashville, where he has the egotism to think, “I shouldn’t have to with Howard Levy. The band has been right off the banjo head,” he explains. “I like and the Flecktones, formed in 1988. “When I met the Flecktones lived since the early ’80s. learn the saxophone to learn this Charlie together the whole time, but with different to record close, because there’s a proximity Parker solo. I should be able to do it on personnel—really just one person, Jeff Coffi n, warmth if you stay fairly close to the banjo.” the banjo.” I had moved to the South and who had been our horn player for the last Fleck’s fi ngers are fi tted with diffi cult-to-fi nd ‘There’s something about us together that’s very was playing in bluegrass bands but was 14 years. Dave Matthews Band asked Jeff pre-War National fi ngerpicks—“They’re the still curious about more modern music. to fi ll in after LeRoi Moore, their saxophone sound that Earl Scruggs had”—and he plays special. It’s not run-of-the-mill.’ I’d fi nish a bluegrass tour, go home and player, died [in 2008]. They eventually GHS strings, which he’s been using since try to hang out with jazz musicians or try offered him that job. the 1970s. 484848 49 M mag 12.indd 48 7/7/11 9:38:34 PM M mag 12.indd 49 7/7/11 9:38:20 PM JUNE 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM JUNE 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MUSICIAN Courtesy of Rounder Records At the Rounder Records 40th Anniversary Concert, Nashville, October 2009 ‘I was looking to push the edge CHICK’S CHALLENGE and step completely out of the For Béla Fleck, some of the most momentous—and nerve-wracking—sessions of his life were for 2007’s The Enchantment, bluegrass world.’ an album of duets with keyboard great Chick Corea. “That was one of the most How did you approach Howard? stuff live a good bit, knock the arrangement mind-boggling things that had happened to About a year after Jeff left, Victor, Futureman together on tour, then go and record it.