This is the transcription of the first interview I did with Béla Fleck, in September 2000. This interview would become the basis for my preview of the Flecktones' Myrtle Beach show at the House of Blues, and later, for my "bluegrass now" April 2001 cover story.

C: You've been called a banjo wizard… the banjo Einstein… are you intimidated by such titles?
B: I'm complimented. I think there's a certain truth to it [laughs], because all I do is sit around and play the banjo, in more scientific ways. When I saw that, I thought, "Well, that's kind of a fun way to look at it."
C: Yeah, I thought the banjo Einstein was pretty good.
B: Now, there were some people that I would have thought fit that more than myself. There's a guy named Bill Keith, and we used to always think of him – he was the banjo Einstein. I'm not trying to take his Einsteinism, or anything like that. On some level, when you sit around and play all the time and try to figure out the best way to do something… I think that's a really nice way to put it… that's a very ego-warming thing to say. The thing about Einstein that's cool is that he had a lot of heart. He wasn't just theory, he was also an interesting guy, to read about him.

C: Speaking of labels, your music has been described as jazz fusion, as Blu-Bop, as jam band music. I think House of Blues has you on its calendar as an Alternative Rock act, which I thought was interesting. How do YOU describe the stuff that comes out of your banjo?
B: I just think it's contemporary music – music that you play and write as a reaction to everything you've grown up with, as opposed to music you play where you learn an old style and continue it, like traditional bluegrass and classical music. So I think I just play banjo based on growing up in this time period, listening to all the music that's been going on since I became aware of music in the sixties. It feels really natural to me, and you see this kind of music happening on every other instrument. I think the only thing that makes people pay attention to me in a special way is that it's on the banjo. That's sort of the unusual thing about it. And I don't have a good answer for THAT, because I grew up in New York City, and there's no real good reason why I should be playing banjo.
C: I've seen in different interviews that the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies and the theme from Deliverance were your influences. I suppose it had to have been something, and it might as well have been THAT.
B: Yeah, that was just a spark, you know? But as I got deeper, there was so much incredible music happening in the bluegrass banjo world that you could really fall into it.

C: You've mentioned Sting and Chick Corea as your biggest musical influences. Why is that?
B: Chick Corea?
C: And Sting, which I thought was great.
B: Yeah. Well, there's a couple of good reasons for that. Yeah. [pause] Hello? [to interviewer] Yeah, hang on one second.
C: Sure.
B: [to someone in background] Hi! I'm finishing up an interview. [to interviewer] Okay, Chick Corea, because when I was in jazz appreciation class in high school, they played a song called Spain – have you ever heard it?
C: Of course!
B: And it sort of shattered my idea of what you could do with music, because I had really been listening to folk and bluegrass a lot at that time. And I immediately thought that this was something that could be played on the banjo. It caused me to start working on developing the tools to play this piece, which I didn't have. I didn't know how to play these scales, and chords, and runs. So even just that one piece changed my world. And then I got to see him play a couple years after I started playing banjo, with Return To Forever, which was an incredible four-piece rock-jazz band, oh - an everything kind of band, an incredible group. And it just blew my mind to see them play that music live. So I think everything that I'm doing now still comes out of that, out of some of the experiences I had hearing him. And then with Sting, I was very inspired by a movie he did called Bring On The Night, where he first started playing with jazz musicians. And rather than trying to do jazz, he did his own music, but with, you know, incorporating these musicians, and he came up with something very unusual. That was a big inspiration to me, watching that movie, because I was thinking about doing a jazz banjo album, and learning to play straight-ahead jazz on the banjo being the ultimate thing that I could learn how to do. But after I saw that, I realized that I could take a lot more of my own influences. I had already been playing for quite a while, at this point. And I realized that I could take a lot of things in bluegrass, and in the music that I had learned, and mix it with jazz. It was just kind of a point, to turn around and say, "Hey, be true to yourself! You don't have to just take on a whole other thing to reach the next level! You need to hang on to who YOU are, too. So when we started the Flecktones, I felt a lot more comfortable about – not starting from scratch, but keeping a lot of the things that I had learned already, and combining it, rather than doing conventional jazz, the kind of jazz that included a lot of that.

C: Let's talk about bluegrass musicians a little bit. You've worked with Sam and Tony and Jimmy and Jerry and so on. Are there any musicians you'd still like to work with? For instance, young tigers like Chris Thile?
B: Yeah! [laughs] I like working with everybody I've gotten to play with in bluegrass, and there are still some people I haven't gotten to work with. But just recently I got to perform with Doyle Lawson, and Dan Tyminski, and I had never played with either of them before. Chris Thile just sat in with the Flecktones, and Chris is such a monster on the mandolin it's crazy.
C: When they film the Monroe biography, I think he should play Monroe.
B: You think so?
C: Absolutely!
B: [genuinely curious] Why?
C: I think he could pull it off. He plays the traditional stuff real well, and I think he could pull it off.
B: Huh. Well, my perception is that he's most at home with more modern stuff, and that he's not really a Bill Monroe style player. But he's just so excellent that he could probably do anything he wanted to. We were playing a concert together – his band was playing, it was a festival – and we were there with the Flecktones and I asked him up to play. We were trying to figure out what to play, and he just started reeling off Flecktone tunes that he knew. And these tunes are hard! A lot of ones WE didn't even remember. And he said, "Oh, what about Mars Needs Women Part 2?" And he just launched into it. I was like, MAN. I had no idea that the guy had learned all this stuff. So it was impressive. He came out and played with us and pretty much stole the show. It was really fun.
C: He does that, whatever show he's in.
B: Yeah, he's a little star. He's gonna be fun to watch.

C: Now, speaking of Bill Monroe, did you have a chance to meet him before he died?
B: I did. I got to play with him maybe twice. I wouldn't be totally sure he remembered who I was, but I sure knew who HE was. I had a good experience playing with him. This might be noteworthy. He was filming some kind of a thing – the Japanese were doing a high-definition television taping. And I had been asked to do it with Victor, and he was doing it with his group. Different people were coming in all day to film their little songs. And I was called and they said, Hey, Bill Monroe's banjo player can't make it. They've asked if you'll play, since you're already there. So I said, Great, I'd love that! So I showed up, and obviously nobody had talked to HIM about it. And I came out, and I wasn't dressed in a suit or anything. I said, "So I guess I'm gonna play with you today, Bill." And he just looked at me. I said, "What are you gonna play?" He said, [Fleck puts on his best Monroe voice] "Blue Moon of Kentucky". He said, There's no banjo on that song. [laughs heartily] And I said, Yeah right, yeah right. So I just didn't go anywhere. When they started the song, I played it. And after he heard that I actually could play, he started having fun with me.
C: What a great story!
B: And then the second song we did was "Old Ebenezer", and I actually knew the melody on the banjo. So I think he really enjoyed it.

C: How large is your touring band at the moment, and who will be with you in Myrtle Beach?
B: The touring band is Jeff Coffen on saxophone, Victor Wooten, and Future Man. It's the band that it's been for about four years.
C: I read with jealousy of the show you did in Illinois recently, where you had a nine-piece band, and Howard came and joined you?
B: Yeah!
C: Boy, wish you could do that here!
B: Yeah, well, we're gonna… well, we're not doing it there. [laughing] But we may do some more shows with the big band. That was a great, great night.

C: Let's talk about women for a second.
B: Women?
C: Yeah, women. Women musicians, specifically. Alison Brown comes to mind. Have you ever played with her?
B: Yeah, as a matter of fact I played on her new record.
C: And how was that?
B: Great! I think she's really one of the best of the new banjo players.
C: Who are some of your other favorites?
B: Of the girl banjo players?
C: Of the new banjo players.
B: Well, Lynn Morris, by the way, I thought was a great banjo player, but she doesn't even play banjo in her own band. I find that disappointing. Tony Furtado's a good player… There's a guy named Rex McGee, who I think is exceptional… there's a guy named Greg Liszt who I think is amazing… and there's some other – oh, and Ilya? This guy from Russia? These are some of the guys I think are like Chris Thile of the banjo-type guys. They're taking what I'm doing, and Tony Trishka and all these people, and running with it, and making their own music with it. Or just doing their own things. It's nice to see.

C: This past Saturday, I see that you performed at the Tantra Music Fest in Charlotte with Run DMC and Sir Mix-A-Lot?
B: Yeah.
C: How did the audience react to that odd juxtaposition of fusion banjo, hip-hop, and techno?
B: Well, they really didn't seem to relate to each other, to me. It was just a bunch of bands playing. To tell you the truth, it wasn't all that well-attended. So I don't know. Maybe it didn't connect. But each band performed, and the audience that was there liked each band, so… And I think they were planning for the concert to go all night, so we played early – five in the afternoon – and left when Fishbone was playing, and they were doing just fine, so…

C: What are you listening to these days?
B: I'm listening to a lot of classical music, because my next record is a classical recording for Sony Classical. So I'm practicing and studying. And I'm also listening to a lot of Indian music.
C: My father is a classical musician and he loves the cover of Copeland that you did [on Outbound].
B: Oh, good, good!
C: Yeah, he really dug that, and he wants to know when you're going to do some Bartok.
B: Well, I looked for some Bartok to record for this project, but I didn't find anything that fit with the other music I was doing. So that's gonna have to wait. But I will. I certainly will. I'm doing some more inside stuff for this first classical record; I'm doing a lot of Bach, a couple of Beethoven, a Paganini, some Chopin.

C: What album could you absolutely not live without, if you had to pick one?
B: That I couldn't live without?
C: Mmmhmm.
B: Ummm… Joni Mitchell, Blue. Beatles, Sergeant Pepper. Andy Statman, Flatbush Waltz. I could go on.
C: [laughing] You can stop there.
B: Okay.

C: There are over 13,000 Web pages with references to Bela Fleck, musician. I don't know if you knew that; I thought that was something.
B: Hmm… that's a lot.
C: A lot of your fans, of course, would like to know a little something about Bela Fleck, the man. Tell me a little something about yourself.
B: Bela Fleck, as a man?
C: [nervously] Yes.
B: I'm just a – a banjo-playing automatron. [pauses] No, I don't know what to – that's a – I don't know what to tell you about that.

C: Well, what do you like to do when you're not picking?
B: I like some quiet, you know, I like getting outside. I've done some scuba diving, and reading, going to movies, drinking a good bottle of wine… you know, things like that.
C: Where have you gone diving? I used to live in Hawaii, so…
B: I dove in Hawaii, and have dove in the Caribbean and Mexico.

C: Your new deal with Columbia, and of course with Sony Classical – that's very exciting! What are you working on?
B: Well, the first record was Outbound; the one we just put out; that was the Flecktones with a bunch of people… and the next one is gonna be a solo album, classical music, which I guess I told you a little bit about, and then there's three more albums, um, one will be classical, one will be jazz, and one will be another Flecktones album, which – whatever you wanna call that. So, it's cool because I'm being pushed by the label to be more aggressive musically. Usually the artist pushes the label to let them do something. In this case they have signed me and said, 'We want you to really do a classical record. We want you to really do a jazz record.
C: Oh, cool!
B: So to me that's a lot of fun, because I'm being forced to grow musically, just to fulfill the contract. So that's the kind of challenge I like.

C: In the research I did, I looked at some of the things you said about your second Acoustic Planet album. How did Warner Brothers pull through for you with promoting that album? Did you have any difficulty, was it okay?
B: It's gone okay. I mean, it doesn't sell like a Flecktones record did, but it sells better than most bluegrass records that I've heard of. I think it's at 60,000 already. And it's still selling very well. Honestly, I never really expected some huge promotion on a bluegrass record. It was something I wanted to do that initially they weren't that interested in. And I felt that it was something I needed to do, just for personal reasons at that time. And they agreed to do it. And they did a lot of good things to get it out there and get it reviewed and stuff. But what are you gonna do to promote a bluegrass record, really? So all that we could do to really promote it was to go out and tour the group, which we did, and we played – oh, I don't know, thirty-something shows, forty shows, all over the country. Every time we go out and play that music, it promotes that record. So the record has life in it. It's developing a reputation. So that's all fine. My expectations weren't so high, you know, as to where sometimes with the Flecktones, I know that there's a lot of opportunity out there because of the band's visibility. When I'm doing a side project, mostly I'm just glad I got to do it.
C: You do a LOT of side projects. I'm just astonished. I pick up liner notes and there you are!
B: Well, just doing a session is one thing. Someone calls and says, 'Hey, can you come over to the studio and play on three songs?' You do that in an afternoon. But when you're actually doing a whole record of a whole different kind of music, THAT is a project that will take months to get together, months, if you're lucky. It could take a year. So I always differentiate in my mind between doing a session for somebody, and REALLY taking on a project. And I try not to do so many sessions, unless I think it's going to be something good, or something special. I don't just like to be a banjo player for hire. First of all, nobody would call me anyway, because banjo doesn't get used very much. Second of all, I just think I want to use my time as much as I can on creating new special music. A lot of times in the studio can be an unsatisfactory experience. You know, you're trying – there's all kinds of limitations in time – you've only got a few minutes to get something, and sometimes you just never know what you're going to walk into when you walk into a studio situation.

C: Let's talk about the crossing over, for a minute. So many music-lovers are fire-breathing xenophobes when it comes to crossing over, to crossing those musical borders, if you will. Bluegrass people are – some of them – particularly concerned about that sort of thing. How do you feel about the purists?
B: I'm glad somebody holds the line, in bluegrass and in jazz and in classical music – all these different areas, you know – Indian classical music. There's always people who are very hard-core about the way it's been done. And there's some good things about that. I guess the way I look at it now is there are people who are really into really holding that traditional line, and there are people who are just more open about it, or maybe, you know, see it differently. I just think it's great that they're both there, because if the music – if people weren't trying stuff, we wouldn't have bluegrass in the first place. Or jazz – any kind of jazz. So you need people to be pushing the edges. But you also need people to protect good forms when they do turn up, keep them from dissolving before they have a chance to mature. So I think everybody plays their part.
C: An interesting and very diplomatic perspective. I like it.
B: Well, I really feel that way. I'm so happy when I get to a bluegrass festival and I actually hear somebody playing traditional stuff really, really well. I'm like, 'Thank goodness someone's doing that!' And when I go and hear somebody play early jazz, I feel the same way.
C: That's what I love about MerleFest.
B: Yeah! It's all there.
C: It's all there, there's something for everybody, and there's room for it all, too.
B: I think so. In fact, I think it's better for the music; it helps people to see who they are, when they see themselves in the perspective of all the different kinds of things that are going on. Sometimes their identities become even stronger.

C: Is the journey back to bluegrass always a short and easy one for you, or does it require some adjustment?
B: It comes back pretty quick. I always worry about whether I'll have it when I come back, but usually it seems to be there. I remember Sam Bush always saying that it comes right back, and so far that's been true.

C: Tom Gray once told me that he enjoyed the creative freedom he found when playing with his jazz band. Do you feel the same way about playing jazz, as opposed to playing bluegrass?
B: Well, it just depends on who you're playing with, and what you're trying to do. I really have loved the opportunities I've had to play traditional bluegrass, which are actually pretty rare. For instance, playing with Bill Monroe. That was really fun – getting to really play the way banjo is supposed to play in that music. But then when I play with Tony Rice and Sam Bush, I don't feel any constraints at all that I have to play like J.D. Crowe, or like Earl, because Sam and Tony aren't playing like Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt. They're opening it up. So it would be silly for me to feel like I had to play like Earl. You just have to play appropriately to the context you're in.

C: Left of Cool was your first adventure as a lyric writer, and you continue that on Outbound. How many non-instrumental tunes have you actually written, and do you sing?
B: Do I sing? You wouldn't want to hear it!
C: But you were in chorus, though! I saw were you had to stop playing in the orchestra, because they wouldn't allow banjo?
B: Well, I had to stop because I couldn't play the English horn. Or the French horn was what they tried to get me to learn, and I couldn't do anything with it. What was the question again? Oh, vocals! I started writing songs about four years ago, and I was very surprised that I was doing it. I didn't see what I would do with them, or why I was doing it, but they just started coming out, almost as if I had no choice. And that's pretty much stopped now. But maybe there's a dozen tunes. And maybe one or two of the ones that haven't been recorded yet are probably worth recording, with some work. But I don't see it – you never know, maybe that'll happen again, or maybe it won't. But I just had one song on the new record that I felt was good enough, as good as the instrumentals that we were recording. I'm glad we did that one. And then we wrote one all together in the studio. So between those two, that was enough. If they hadn't felt good to us, we wouldn't have completed them either. But they felt right to us.

C: Let's talk about your Grammy activity. I know you won for "Sinister Minister". How many times have you been nominated, and how many times have you won?
B I think I've won… well, twice with the band. And then a couple of other projects have won that I've been involved with – an Asleep At The Wheel record, and an album with a lot of other artists on it… So I guess four actual Grammies in the house somewhere. And then nominations-wise, I think… about 15. I'm guessing.
C: Was winning that first Grammy an all-time career high for you?
B: It really was. It was very special. There were a lot of reasons why it was special. It was in New York that year, and my mother was there. We had never won, and we had been nominated lots and lots of times. On VH1, they said I was the Susan Lucci of the Grammies. [chuckles] Which is sweet, to get any mention on VH1 at all when you're a banjo player is pretty cool. In a way, it was kind of more fun when we always lost, because at least it was like a position, you know. But now I know that – we could win, or – we've lost several times since we've won, so you just never know what's gonna happen. I'm about to where I should go. You have one more question?

C: [thinking frantically] Let's see… Outbound. We should talk about Outbound, since it's your new one. How is it different from your past albums?
B: Well, it felt like a journey… We wanted to do things differently on this record, and find a way to not make the same record again that we've made before, especially since we allow people to record our live shows. We want the record to be very different from the live show, not just the same thing without an audience. So the way we chose to do that this time was to invite a lot of different people to be part of it. And also we wanted to kind of move away from synthesizers. We used to use a lot more samples and synths and things to flesh out the sound; that was something we could do to make it sound bigger. And instead this time we decided to use small horn sections and small string sections. So that was one way that the album is different. And another way, you know, is that we had lots of musicians playing bit parts all through it, whether it's steel drums or bassoon or Tuvan throat singing or tabla, Indian vocals. Musicians that we just really, really liked – just finding ways to include them.
C: It's a great album, I really like it.
B: Thank you! I'm glad to hear that, glad to hear that. We worked hard on it; it's probably the hardest we've ever worked.
C: And putting Jon Anderson on it – what an inspiration.
B: Yeah, it was really neat that he agreed to do it!
C: Well, I'm going to pick up the phone now… I had a vision of you when I was in the shower this morning, chasing bumblebees with a stethoscope and pressing your ear against the heart of an oak tree for your next album… [tape stops].