Bela Fleck: `Pleasing, interesting sounds'

It's after eight. The lights went off about twenty minutes ago, and for the first time, banjoist Bela Fleck approaches the microphone set up at the front of the stage. He and his Flecktones--bassist Victor Lamonte Wooten and Synth Axe Drumitarist Roy Wooten (also known as Future Man)--have just ripped through an amazing rendition of "Vix-9," the first song on the Flecktone's new album, Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Fleck obviously likes playing in front of people more than he likes speaking in front of people. He waits for a second and leans down nervously.

"Hi," he says. "Glad you could come."

Seeing the Flecktones in concert is an exhilirating experience. The trio has been together for five years; for four of those years Howard Levy joined the band on assorted keyboards and harmonicas.

Onstage, as they proved in their Sanders Theatre show November 22, the Flecktones are an amazingly dynamic and electrifying group: each musician has intense, complete control and amazing technical mastery of his instrument.

Despite their different musical backgrounds (Bela was trained and played for years on the bluegrass circuit; Victor got his musical training from his eclectically talented family), Bela and Victor continually find new ways to complement each other. They weave patterns, they build harmonies, they layer melodies, they solo, they return and play together, they stop and start and pop and jump and reach and it all works. Future Man is a subtle and exciting SynthAxe player (the SynthAxe Drumitar is an instrument that Future Man invented: it looks like a guitar, is played with one's fingers, and sounds like drums), and lays down serious rhythms to round it all out.

At the Sanders show, Phish bassist Mike Gordon sat in the front row. Gordon is not so emotive. Still, after a scorching banjo solo by Bela that bled into a ten-minute solo by Victor (who was just named Bass Player Magazine's bassist of the year) involving, in turn, a four-string bass, a five-string bass, a six-string bass, and two four-string basses played simultaneously, Gordon was standing up grinning broadly and applauding with the rest of the audience.

After the show, the band stayed around and talked with the audience for over an hour. It seemed almost surreal, after such an intense experience, to see the three of them hanging out with the crowd. Fifteen Minutes, however, was lucky enough to get Bela by himself, one-on-one, for about an hour before his soundcheck.

Fifteen Minutes: Have you been conscious of trying to move away from a bluegrass audience?

Bela Fleck: Well, when this band started I tried really hard to stay away from the bluegrass thing because a lot of people didn't know what [The Flecktones] were and so they would say, "Oh it's bluegrass" and it's certainly not bluegrass. But as time has gone by I've felt a lot more comfortable integrating the bluegrass side of my music back in and so now we're doing more things that have that feel. There's a couple of hundred thousand people in the United States that know me from the bluegrass world. Then I come along with this record [Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest] and it's number one on the jazz charts and they still put it in the bluegrass bins....

I maintain my love for bluegrass and acoustic music in general. I hope the great things about bluegrass that I love and have internalized are coming out in this music too, as well as the energy. And the things I love about jazz are coming out. Bluegrass is very harmonically simple, and the progressions are very limited, but they're wonderful. There's a rootsiness in those progressions. So anyway, I like it all, and I respect all those forms very much.

FM: On your new album, there seems to be a lot more focus on electronic sound, and I guess that's partially because of the departure of Howard Levy...

BF: Well, part of our acoustic sound left the band, so instead of being 1/2 acoustic and 1/2 electric now we're 2/3 electric, but to me the thing about the band that has always been one of the coolest things is the mixing of the electronic and the electric and the acoustic together and making it feel like its supposed to be that way. It's a hard thing to do, a lot of people try it and it sounds wierd.

FM: Have you been experimenting more with triggering sounds from your banjo?

BF: Now I'm starting....we try to blend all that stuff together. Now I have an electric banjo with a synth attachment, so I'm able to trigger synth sounds, so that's been a lot of fun too. We try really hard to make it organic, to make pleasing sounds, they have to be interesting sounds, they have to justify themselves. I play around with that live, because it's a lot of fun. People really get off on seeing me play banjo and hearing vibes come out. They like that, and it's fun. There's nothing wrong with good clean fun, you know, so long as no-one's getting hurt, but musically, I love that acoustic thing. I also love playing with these guys, they have an incredible feel, and they're very inventive, so again it's a natural thing for us to play together, it's not like pushing some impossible thing. Our musical relationship has really grown deeper and deeper as we have played together longer, and the trio has really brought us together.

FM: Was it hard coming in playing with a pair of brothers who have played together for their whole lives?

BF: Well the thing about it is, I don't tend to like to play real hard so in the beginning there were times where I could be overpowered a little bit just by the sheer funk of their playing. You know here I am with an acoustic banjo and the amplifying system is less than perfect still, so I couldn't get up over them, but as time has gone on I've grown stronger and they've grown more sensitive, I think. Somehow we've learned how to make it work together, we know when to hit it hard and when to leave space, and I think that's something you can't buy. Only years can create a musical relationship where you can play that way together.

FM: How has the band changed since Howard's departure?

BF: There's much less competition. We'll play hard and strong but its together. I miss the lyric stuff; we have a tendency to do more stuff with faster notes, or it's harder to play a beautiful melody on a banjo or a bass than it is on a piano or a vocal-type instrument like a saxaphone or a harmonica or a voice or a violin, so the music does get faster and more rhythmic.

FM: What about playing live? How has that changed?

BF: If anything, it's even better: we read each other's minds. We know when we need to do something.

FM: Was there any sense of a mutual thing: he decided that he wanted to...

BF: Well he needed to go because he wasn't happy anymore and for that reason I thought he should go and I had to make a decision, so finally I said: "Look, you can't do your best, and we can't do our best if you're unhappy. If you go onstage unhappy then we're all miserable. So, I'm gonna tell you: you need to quit the band." People who know Howard real well said they weren't suprised Howard left the band, they were suprised that he was in the band. So I'm glad I got to play with him. He's one of those guys who's completely tapped in. He's one of those guys who can play something completely different every night. We do miss Howard, don't get me wrong, he was a part of our chemistry, but we've learned to make it work without him. Now we don't need to work the road just to develop a following, now we have a following. And we're doing really well turnout wise, I'd said better than we've ever done, moving into the theatres, out of the clubs, stuff like that. This year we're going to play about 120 [shows]. We're trying to get back into a balance, and that's what's going to let the new music come through.