Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey y'all, today we're featuring a conversation with the
Speaker 1: world's preeminent banjo player, Baila Fleck. Over the course of
Speaker 1: his four decade career, Bila's won numerous Grammys in a
Speaker 1: variety of surprising genres, including jazz, Latin, pop, and classical.
Speaker 1: Just last year, his latest release, My Bluegrass Heart, scored
Speaker 1: the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. In addition to Beila's
Speaker 1: innovative style and expert technique, he is also an advocate
Speaker 1: for keeping the banjo's rich historical tradition alive. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, Baila made a pilgrimage to Africa to
Speaker 1: trace the origins of the banjo in the brilliant documentary
Speaker 1: Throw Down Your Heart. On today's episode, Bruce Helen talks
Speaker 1: to Beila about growing up in New York City, where
Speaker 1: he first fell in love with the banjo while watching,
Speaker 1: of all things, the Beverly Hillbillies. Baila also talks about
Speaker 1: how jazz giants like Chick Korea and Charlie Parker influenced
Speaker 1: his highly technical style, and Baila explains why he believes
Speaker 1: the banjo is far superior to the guitar. This is
Speaker 1: broken record line of notes for the Digital Age. I'm
Speaker 1: justin Michman. Here's Bruce Headlam with Baila Fleck. Now you've
Speaker 1: won I think fifteen Grammys something like. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of Grammys. Yeah. I was gonna say, you've been nominated
Speaker 1: in more Grammy categories than anybody else in the world,
Speaker 1: which is kind of incredible. You've done pops, yeah, and
Speaker 1: apparently Latin. I didn't know you've done that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: with Chick Korea. We got we wanted Latin Grammy. So
Speaker 1: I asked him about how you know, de count count
Speaker 1: the grant Latin Grammy as one of your Grammys and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a Grammy, right. Yeah. So whenever people ask me
Speaker 1: how many I have, I don't you know. They said, well,
Speaker 1: we checked and he said you only have fifteen. I said, well,
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter. I mean, but Chicks said it was
Speaker 1: the Latin one counted, so I say, sixteen, Kuria said it,
Speaker 1: But I don't It's fine. One would have been fine,
Speaker 1: none would have been fine. You've got a lot, but
Speaker 1: in more categories, classical, all these other things. That's the
Speaker 1: fun thing. World music and classical and things like that
Speaker 1: in places that the band isn't typically heard. That's those
Speaker 1: are the ones that I get excited about usually, although
Speaker 1: just now winning the one for the bluegrass album, I've
Speaker 1: never won one from bluegrass albums after all of this time,
Speaker 1: So there was something really sweet about returning to the
Speaker 1: music and putting together like a very community album that
Speaker 1: brought together a lot of different age groups of excellent players,
Speaker 1: and doing my own music and winning a Grammate with
Speaker 1: it was sweet. I'd like to say I'm too cool
Speaker 1: to care, but it meant a lot to me. It
Speaker 1: was when you put the bluegrass in the title, it's
Speaker 1: my bluegrass heart. Yeah, a lot of great players. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a shred fest for our guitarists out there.
Speaker 1: There's some there's some ferocious playing, and there's some ferocious playing.
Speaker 1: I don't like the term shred because to me, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: all you're doing is playing fast. When you think of shredding,
Speaker 1: it doesn't usually mean it's necessarily musical. So if it's
Speaker 1: musical shredding, I don't mind. But yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: wanted to be music. Now. If it's fast, you know,
Speaker 1: it's still got to be really good. There's a lot
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of variety, and the songs on
Speaker 1: this new album, something like hug Point sounds very irish.
Speaker 1: The other song that jumped out at me was the
Speaker 1: Psalm one thirty six. Yeah, can you tell me about that? Yeah? Okay.
Speaker 1: So I was I was planning to go to Africa
Speaker 1: to do this documentary called Throat on Your Heart, which
Speaker 1: I did get to do, and I was researching before
Speaker 1: I went over, like what kind of you know, where
Speaker 1: am I going and what music is going on there?
Speaker 1: And I was going to Uganda as part of the trip.
Speaker 1: Even though Banter doesn't come from Uganda. I had an
Speaker 1: inn to get you into Uganda and Tanzania, so I
Speaker 1: decided to go there as well. And I found this
Speaker 1: recording called Jewish Uganda, and there was this the song
Speaker 1: started with these boys. I think it's all boys singing
Speaker 1: this psalm, this beautiful song, probably in a church or
Speaker 1: a little chapel somewhere in Uganda. And one of the
Speaker 1: guys from the church was in the States and I
Speaker 1: got in touch with them and I asked him if
Speaker 1: I could come to Uganda and record with these boys.
Speaker 1: He said, absolutely not. We don't want to have anything
Speaker 1: to do with anything commercial, so I couldn't go. But
Speaker 1: the tune stuck with me, and so I made it
Speaker 1: into a solo piece that I would play once in
Speaker 1: a while, but I never quite got it happening. And
Speaker 1: then when Chris Thealy was coming to town to record
Speaker 1: these a couple of songs with billy strings, I think, well,
Speaker 1: I've got him here. I want to get more than
Speaker 1: two songs out of the day, and so I asked
Speaker 1: him if he would do this due at with me.
Speaker 1: I send him the music. He said, great, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think we started recording it at midnight or something,
Speaker 1: and we worked on it till three in the morning.
Speaker 1: And at the other end of it, we had this
Speaker 1: bottle of them are salt that we were going to
Speaker 1: open and drink, and that's what that's what we did.
Speaker 1: But we sat and we just worked it through. We
Speaker 1: worked up this very complex duet arrangement of it and
Speaker 1: just had a blast. And then we had this great
Speaker 1: bottle of wine. When you conceive of this project, I
Speaker 1: know you said, when you sit down and play with people,
Speaker 1: you'll know if it's going to work or not. Or
Speaker 1: these all people you'd played with before. Some were and
Speaker 1: some weren't. I've made a couple of records back in
Speaker 1: the old days. I guess eighty eight I made a
Speaker 1: record called Drive and it had kind of the who's
Speaker 1: who of that time. Who was Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas,
Speaker 1: Tony Rice on guitar, Mark O'Connor, Stuart Duncan, Mark Chats
Speaker 1: on bass. Those were the fiddle players, Stewart, Duncan and
Speaker 1: Mark And it was like a position statement of like
Speaker 1: pushing the music forward for that time. I guess I
Speaker 1: can say that at this point. And then I went
Speaker 1: off and did my own thing for a long time
Speaker 1: with the Flectones and tried to get out of the
Speaker 1: bluegrass world completely. And then around the end of the
Speaker 1: nineties I made another record called Bluegrass Sessions that was
Speaker 1: with the same guys, but I was able to include
Speaker 1: Earl Scruggs and John Hartford and Vassar Clements who were
Speaker 1: you know on the elder side. And then I hadn't
Speaker 1: done anything since then, and it's been like twenty something
Speaker 1: years since I'd done bluegrass, and I was playing with
Speaker 1: Chick Korea very happily explore or I'm playing with Sakier
Speaker 1: Hussein and trying to write orchestra music and trying to
Speaker 1: break out, you know, break out of the shackles of
Speaker 1: what people think banjo should be. And just because I'm curious.
Speaker 1: I like music, I want to know it, but I
Speaker 1: want to know it through the banjo. People used to
Speaker 1: say when I was in high school, why didn't you
Speaker 1: learn to play the saxophone or the piano? Was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I like the banjo. Why do I have to play
Speaker 1: the saxophone? If I like jazz, why do I have
Speaker 1: to do that? So it's always through the banjo that
Speaker 1: I learned about music. So did you do you think
Speaker 1: people were pigeonholing you or pigeon holing bluegrass music? Everything?
Speaker 1: I mean, banjo was a laughing stock when I started
Speaker 1: playing it, and I always thought it was serious business,
Speaker 1: you know. I was never never thought it was a
Speaker 1: funny a bit. I thought it was serious, deadly serious.
Speaker 1: But people would laugh at you. And it was because
Speaker 1: at that time the banjo was the Heehaw show, right,
Speaker 1: you know, which had Roy Clark playing on it. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many people have come up to me,
Speaker 1: great jazz musicians. Oh, I like the banjo. I used
Speaker 1: to like Roy Clark you know, and like, well, Roy
Speaker 1: Clark is not really the top tier of banjo players. Honestly,
Speaker 1: he was just a great showman. He was good. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, there was a Heehaw which was was
Speaker 1: Roy Clark. And then there was Deliverance, which you know,
Speaker 1: involved everything we know about the movie Deliverance, but it
Speaker 1: had this incredible banjo scene which you know, also stamped
Speaker 1: the nail in the coffin of you know, what people
Speaker 1: thought about who played the banjo and who shouldn't and
Speaker 1: you know now it was, you know, clearly a white
Speaker 1: Southern instrument rather than a black you know, an instrument
Speaker 1: that the slaves brought over. And between that and even
Speaker 1: the Beverly Hillbillies, you know, which was very although the
Speaker 1: Hillbillies were the smarty were the smarty pants in that show,
Speaker 1: sure that it was still it locked in that feeling
Speaker 1: that that's what the banto was. But at least it
Speaker 1: was Earl Scruggs, you know, at least it was great music. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was something. There was also Cat Blue if
Speaker 1: you remember that. Yeah, yeah, and I can't remember who played.
Speaker 1: I think the banjo was for string banjo in that
Speaker 1: because there's the whole jazz banto age. Of course, you know,
Speaker 1: band was part of jazz even before bluegrass. Banjo was
Speaker 1: the what later the guitar took over its position in jazz,
Speaker 1: but we forget about that. Occasionally you run into somebody
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, banjo, we a banjo jazz. Sure,
Speaker 1: banto was in jazz from the beginning. What's the problem
Speaker 1: with that, you know, was that before they had amplification,
Speaker 1: because the banjo just you could do it, You could
Speaker 1: do a rhythm. Well, I'll tell you one thing. When
Speaker 1: you strum a banjo, it's loud, and you can walk
Speaker 1: down the street in New Orleans and strum a banjo
Speaker 1: next to a trumpet and be heard just fine, where
Speaker 1: if you strummed a guitar you might not hear it
Speaker 1: so well. But I think it had more to do
Speaker 1: with that sense that banjo was a symbol of slavery,
Speaker 1: you know, for a lot of black people, you know,
Speaker 1: and people made fun of the banjo and its role,
Speaker 1: and people put on black face and imitated slaves, did songs.
Speaker 1: This was like the thing to do in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. Put on black white folks, put on black face,
Speaker 1: get banjos and sing songs about how great it was
Speaker 1: on the old plantation. So by the time the music
Speaker 1: started to move along and yeah, banjo was around, and
Speaker 1: so it was in the music. But as soon as
Speaker 1: the guitar showed up and it was a possibility, they
Speaker 1: dropped it like a hot potato, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it was like excise from the black world. It
Speaker 1: was like, we don't want to have anything to do
Speaker 1: with that. And in fact, there was a banjo player
Speaker 1: named Danny Barker, and Danny Barker I met him. He
Speaker 1: was playing with Wynton Marsalis and he was one of
Speaker 1: the guys who was playing banjo and had to switch
Speaker 1: to guitar when banjo went out of fashion. He was
Speaker 1: playing with Cab Callaway and he told me that he told, hey, Cab,
Speaker 1: the Deering Banjo Company will give me a free top
Speaker 1: of the line banjo if you let me play it
Speaker 1: in one song on the Cab Calloway Show. And Cab
Speaker 1: said absolutely not. Which had been trying to get away
Speaker 1: from that whole thing for a long long time. He
Speaker 1: wanted nothing to do with the banjo in that period,
Speaker 1: and so all the banjo players were out of work.
Speaker 1: They all had to learn to play guitar if they
Speaker 1: wanted to have a career playing string instrument in jazz.
Speaker 1: And then you got Charlie Christian then yeah, And it
Speaker 1: wasn't based on the electrification as much as it was
Speaker 1: one particular recording, a first recording of where guitar was
Speaker 1: played instead of banjo that had this huge impact. And
Speaker 1: apparently it was like a year later banto was dead
Speaker 1: in that world. But then meanwhile Earl Scruggs was trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to get that third finger, and
Speaker 1: you know, out in the mountains in North Carolina, along
Speaker 1: with another you know, other people in his region. We're
Speaker 1: trying to figure that out, and they were stepping up.
Speaker 1: And then as the years have gone by, Earl Scruggs,
Speaker 1: you know, he spawned all these other banjo players who
Speaker 1: had to do something different from him. And eventually people
Speaker 1: like We're started bringing jazz into bluegrass, playing in a
Speaker 1: hole differ with a whole different technique. So you had
Speaker 1: you know, Don Reno playing jazz licks, and Eddie Adcock
Speaker 1: and then Bill Keith doing all this jazz stuff with
Speaker 1: a whole different style on the banjo, and Tony Trishka
Speaker 1: here in New York, and these New York guys brought
Speaker 1: a lot of ideas to the banjo, and so it
Speaker 1: started to approach your jazz kind of knowledge in a
Speaker 1: jazz sort of language, but from a whole other direction,
Speaker 1: on a whole different banjo than what they played in jazz,
Speaker 1: a five string banjo which is tuned to an open
Speaker 1: chord rather than tuned in fourths, you know, so it's
Speaker 1: a very different voicing. I've never seen this described, but
Speaker 1: anytime I hear banjo's in other contexts, they seem to
Speaker 1: add a lot of pace to a song. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: last verse of of taking by the Eagles, Like, I
Speaker 1: think there's something that music has been trying to do
Speaker 1: for a long time, and you hear it in pop music.
Speaker 1: You certainly hear it in things like Steve Reich and
Speaker 1: a lot of that music, which is this kind of
Speaker 1: perpetual motion. Yeah, it's because the banjo doesn't have sustained
Speaker 1: So the way that we create the illusion of sustain
Speaker 1: is to do continuous arpeggios and you know, licks, and
Speaker 1: we we don't stop till the end of the song,
Speaker 1: and it's hard for banjo players to stop. It's one
Speaker 1: of the hardest things to do is to start playing
Speaker 1: out or nothing in time from from a dead stop.
Speaker 1: So we'd keep playing, and we have these different techniques
Speaker 1: we do to keep our hands moving during songs. But
Speaker 1: one of the hardest again, it's it's rare to find
Speaker 1: a banjo player who will stop and lay out for
Speaker 1: part of this song and come back in. But that's
Speaker 1: one of the most effective things you can do, is
Speaker 1: like and take it easy. The effectiveness is it came
Speaker 1: in out of nowhere in double time, and so it
Speaker 1: provides all this drive, but it also provides a sonic
Speaker 1: change which you don't get if you're playing constantly. But
Speaker 1: guitar players do Travis picking for example, right, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't have the same effect. Why is that so strong
Speaker 1: a on a banjo's because banjos are better than guitars,
Speaker 1: so anything that they do is going to be better.
Speaker 1: So there's that. But I can't think of another instrument
Speaker 1: that really All the other instruments you're very conscious of
Speaker 1: the attack. You know, some fiddling, for example, they try
Speaker 1: and get a certain kind of rhythm going like if
Speaker 1: you get but it doesn't have I think it's a
Speaker 1: percussion instrument. Banjo is half percussion instrument and a half
Speaker 1: melodic instrument. So it's um you could play that way
Speaker 1: on a piano. If you came in playing the same
Speaker 1: thing you did on a on a banjo in the
Speaker 1: same register and played it extremely with a lot of clarity,
Speaker 1: it could have a similar effect. There are other instruments
Speaker 1: that could do that, but banjo just does that naturally.
Speaker 1: It's what it does. You know it comes in and
Speaker 1: so your sense of time is incredibly critical as a
Speaker 1: banjo player because you really can feel it when it's
Speaker 1: out of the pocket. It's so clear. So if you're
Speaker 1: not solid when you come in into a track or
Speaker 1: into a spot, you know it can it can mess
Speaker 1: it up. But if it comes in good and solid,
Speaker 1: it's like wow, like the light's coming on. Do you
Speaker 1: want to play a bit? I'm sure it's the best.
Speaker 1: If you're playing all the time, that's when you play good.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes when you don't practice every day, sometimes
Speaker 1: I let it go because I've got kids. I've got
Speaker 1: a four year old and a nine year old, So
Speaker 1: when I come off the road like I just did,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's like time to do my share. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, So then the banjo stays in the in
Speaker 1: the case till a few days before the tour, and
Speaker 1: then I and then I cram okay and my but
Speaker 1: I'm not high on my mind. That's Baila Fleck playing
Speaker 1: hug Point from his new album My blue Grass Heart.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a short break with more
Speaker 1: from Baila Fleck and Bruce Headlam. We're back with more
Speaker 1: from Baila Fleck and Bruce Headlam. Did you grew up
Speaker 1: in a musical family. Well, music was a big part
Speaker 1: of our family, but there weren't any musicians when I
Speaker 1: was young. My father was. It's a complicated story. My
Speaker 1: father was musical, but he wasn't around. He and my
Speaker 1: mother split up when I was about one or two,
Speaker 1: and he was completely absent, not even in contact. I
Speaker 1: didn't meet him till I was in my forties. But
Speaker 1: he was a big fan of, you know, classical music,
Speaker 1: which is why he named me Baila Anton Leosh Fleck,
Speaker 1: and he named me after these composers. But there was
Speaker 1: no influence from him. But then my mother married a
Speaker 1: wonderful guy who was a cellist named Joe Palladino, who
Speaker 1: was a guy from Brooklyn who played the cello in
Speaker 1: the Army and then went into the school systems, the
Speaker 1: Guidance Council, guidance systems at Brooklyn, and so he was
Speaker 1: playing a classical stuff around the house when I got
Speaker 1: into my you know, from maybe ten years or so on.
Speaker 1: But again I didn't I didn't relate to it. It
Speaker 1: wasn't my thing, but I liked it. It was cool,
Speaker 1: but it seeped in. So by the time I've got
Speaker 1: my first banjo, which was pretty late when I was fifteen,
Speaker 1: you know, I had a pretty broad musical interest and
Speaker 1: I heard the banjo when I was maybe four or five,
Speaker 1: but I never thought I could ever play it, so
Speaker 1: I never tried to get one, but I was a
Speaker 1: fan from then on. What was your first banjo? It
Speaker 1: was a K just a black no name on it,
Speaker 1: but it looked a lot like a K fifty dollars banjo.
Speaker 1: My grandfather got me the day before I started high school.
Speaker 1: Did Sears cell came probably, I think so. Yeah. Sears
Speaker 1: also sold Gibson as They had knockoff banjos called cal
Speaker 1: Croydon's that were like just like this whole banjo of mine.
Speaker 1: It was pre war flathead from the thirties, but they
Speaker 1: put them under different names and sold with different ways.
Speaker 1: The great banjos really came in the thirties. That's when
Speaker 1: the great banjos came. Why was that it had something
Speaker 1: to do with the metal and had something to do
Speaker 1: with the war effort trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: make it cheaper, and they started making certain parts with
Speaker 1: pot metal instead of expensive brass and making them with
Speaker 1: less parts, and something about it sounded better. And so
Speaker 1: when Earl Scrugg was trying to figure out what he
Speaker 1: wanted to play, he picked the best banjo he could find,
Speaker 1: you know, around, which was a Gibson Mastertone at the time,
Speaker 1: and honestly, banjo was music was starting to go down
Speaker 1: at that point, but a lot of these instruments were
Speaker 1: around and uh, you know, again easy to find at
Speaker 1: that time, relatively cheap, but they had this great sound
Speaker 1: that has not really been equalled. So there's no modern
Speaker 1: banjo you would play that you would you know, there
Speaker 1: are some pretty good ones, but they and I'm even
Speaker 1: involved with a model, the Gold Tone is making that
Speaker 1: sort of modeled after this and they've you know, they've
Speaker 1: done the best they can and everyone's doing the best
Speaker 1: they can, but nobody has cracked the code of what
Speaker 1: makes a pre war banjo what it is. I would
Speaker 1: never claim that these new banjos are in the class
Speaker 1: of the Gibsons from the thirties, and that's the one
Speaker 1: I play every day still. How many of those do
Speaker 1: you have? I probably have a dozen something around of those,
Speaker 1: but I have, you know, more than a hundred banjos
Speaker 1: around the house. They sort of collect they and I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not good at getting rid of them. I have
Speaker 1: an infestation. You could say. Yeah, I like having them, though,
Speaker 1: and people say invest in something, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: And so over the years, like I bought them, I
Speaker 1: started buying them, and like when I first got this one,
Speaker 1: they were very hard to find. They were just not
Speaker 1: not around. But over the years, sometimes suddenly they're available.
Speaker 1: Maybe some you know, older folks are passing and they
Speaker 1: get back on the market or something. And so I
Speaker 1: started buying them, and they kept going up and up.
Speaker 1: So everything that I bought early on was worth way
Speaker 1: more than I cost, you know, than I'd paid. And
Speaker 1: then as the years went on, I started paying more
Speaker 1: for them, and then they weren't worth as much, you know,
Speaker 1: as In other words, the investment wasn't as good, but
Speaker 1: they still you know, appreciated. I'm still ahead of the
Speaker 1: game if if money matters, which a still a good question,
Speaker 1: that he's buying gold and crypto, Now, yeah, they're I
Speaker 1: would have thought that this investment would have been you know,
Speaker 1: gold for life, and that I could pass it on.
Speaker 1: But I think that at a certain point, people that
Speaker 1: really know about these instruments are passing, so they don't actually,
Speaker 1: you know, unless younger players can afford to get them.
Speaker 1: And you know, and this one, you know, to get
Speaker 1: an instrument like this, we're talking about one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars or eighty thousand dollars something in that that mode,
Speaker 1: and if it's all original from the thirties, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe one hundred and fifty thousand dollars was the price
Speaker 1: a few years back, but now it's dropping a bit.
Speaker 1: Do you tour with this one as well? Yeah, so's
Speaker 1: kind of one of those guys that saves it for
Speaker 1: the studio. No, No, I mean in the studio, what
Speaker 1: I get to do is I get to like go
Speaker 1: through my closet and go, I wonder which ancient instrument
Speaker 1: would sound good? On this song, you know, and I
Speaker 1: get to do that. But the truth is they don't
Speaker 1: all handle to travel that well. But this one I've
Speaker 1: traveled with since nineteen eighty one and I always keep
Speaker 1: it set up, you know, to play and flying with it.
Speaker 1: They're very heavy to carry around and if it goes
Speaker 1: under the plane, you're sunk, you know, So I often
Speaker 1: buy tickets for it or find you know, I have
Speaker 1: to have strategies when I'm traveling for how I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get the banjo on. Wow. Yeah, it's a pain in
Speaker 1: the ass, very serious. It's a pain, but it's worth
Speaker 1: it when I get there and I'm playing this instrument.
Speaker 1: They call them flatheads because they're banjos that have raised
Speaker 1: heads where the top raises up and there's a smaller
Speaker 1: resonating surface of the skin. But a flathead has a
Speaker 1: larger resonating surface and that creates a deeper tone in
Speaker 1: earl scrugs. Even though you might have it in your
Speaker 1: head that banjos are bright, he had a pretty rich sound,
Speaker 1: especially in certain periods of his life. Why are all
Speaker 1: banjo players obsessed with earl scrugs. Earl scruggs is the
Speaker 1: trigger that turns banjo players on. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're a dormant banjo player that could be a
Speaker 1: banjo player, you have to hear Earl Scruggs to suddenly
Speaker 1: become a banjo seeking zombie. And that was that was
Speaker 1: for me. I grew up here in New York City
Speaker 1: and one hundredth Street, West End, and then I heard
Speaker 1: the banjo on the Beverly Hillbillies and it flipped a
Speaker 1: trigger and me and I, you know, and no interest
Speaker 1: in country music, folk music, anything like that. I was
Speaker 1: a Beatles kid, you know, a New York City Beatles kid,
Speaker 1: Upper West Side. But I heard the banjo and it
Speaker 1: just I was like, what is that? I gotta know
Speaker 1: what that is? And it's interesting that from most of
Speaker 1: the people that become bluegrass banjo like professionals or just
Speaker 1: you know, people that love that instrument get good at it,
Speaker 1: it's always Earl Scruggs itself. Almost never anybody else that
Speaker 1: flips the switch. Did he do new things with the
Speaker 1: banjo or did he just perfect what it was already there?
Speaker 1: Did he started this whole He didn't start it, but
Speaker 1: he perfected this way of playing. There are other people
Speaker 1: that did it around this time. This would have been
Speaker 1: you know, nineteen maybe twenties when he was coming up
Speaker 1: with it on the farm in Flint Hill, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: There were other people experimenting with adding a third finger,
Speaker 1: because nobody played with three fingers plucking much before that
Speaker 1: time period, and so there were other people who were,
Speaker 1: you know, also working at it, and you could find
Speaker 1: people that did it even before in earlier banjo ages,
Speaker 1: before the whole period of the banjo. So anyway, this
Speaker 1: three finger style that Earl Scruggs came up with was
Speaker 1: adding a finger to a two finger style, and it
Speaker 1: created the opportunity for all this rippling. You know, you
Speaker 1: get three fingers on five strings playing in four to four.
Speaker 1: You've got all these threes and twos opening over the beat,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you get syncopation like crazy
Speaker 1: and this drive that he played with, And it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have mattered except he was so good. You know, anyone
Speaker 1: could have taken the claim that of you know, inventing
Speaker 1: three finger playing around that time, but he was the best.
Speaker 1: You know, he was so good if he had this
Speaker 1: galvanizing sound and it made you stop in your tracks
Speaker 1: and you had to hear it and talking about the Beatles.
Speaker 1: He joined Bill Monroe's band, and Bill Monroe was kind
Speaker 1: of a big deal on the Grand Old Opry, and
Speaker 1: so he got to come on the Grand Old Opry
Speaker 1: and play with Bill Monroe. And that was like the
Speaker 1: first time people heard bluegrass. That was the moment bluegrass
Speaker 1: happened to the world, as when they heard Earl Scruggs
Speaker 1: playing with Bill Monroe. For Lester Flatt was also in
Speaker 1: the band, people talk about it being a Beatles reaction.
Speaker 1: The room erupted. No one had ever heard anything like
Speaker 1: this style of banjo playing before. It was nothing there,
Speaker 1: Nothing had ever been done like that, and it made
Speaker 1: them into superstars in the South and anywhere where you
Speaker 1: could hear that show. And then it just spread. So
Speaker 1: not only was he the most well known because of
Speaker 1: his you know, his time with Bill Monroe and then
Speaker 1: starting Flatt and Scrugs, he was the best. Everybody still
Speaker 1: stops in their tracks if you're a banjo player to
Speaker 1: hear hear him play things. We've heard him play our
Speaker 1: whole lives. You know, it's just got that magic. If
Speaker 1: you still hear that magic in his play, I do
Speaker 1: I do, I can listen to the Beverly Hillbill. He's
Speaker 1: the first thing I heard and just go wow. And
Speaker 1: I you know, I know it's a joke, and I
Speaker 1: know it's part of the stereotypes that gets you know
Speaker 1: that I hate. I always seem to be fighting against.
Speaker 1: But I just it's the magic. He had the magic.
Speaker 1: And I got to know him in his late years.
Speaker 1: He lived about two miles from where I lived in Nashville,
Speaker 1: and we got to be pretty close in his late
Speaker 1: later time, you know, And he's just sitting on the couch.
Speaker 1: He's very funny too, isn't he? Guy? Could he still play? Yeah?
Speaker 1: He played. He'd get out of his banjo, we'd sit
Speaker 1: and play. He always take my banjo and play it
Speaker 1: because I have a weird setup, like I have an
Speaker 1: arched fingerboard like a violin, you know, or something. And
Speaker 1: he really liked it. And I also keep my bandjo
Speaker 1: real fat and his was kind of bright, and so
Speaker 1: he would take it from me. He wouldn't give it
Speaker 1: back to me and play and he would sound amazing
Speaker 1: and play. You know. He rushed. He was always always ahead,
Speaker 1: and that was part of the bluegrass drive. But he
Speaker 1: is rushing, got a little out of control later on,
Speaker 1: but it was still he played things. He's surprised you
Speaker 1: all the time with things he played. I've never heard
Speaker 1: that about bluegrass. You're always you're always pushing the beat
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah. The thing about bluegrass time we
Speaker 1: call it, which is also this big deal to us
Speaker 1: bluegrass musicians, is the way it feels and it's like
Speaker 1: a magic carpet ride where everyone's pushing the rhythm but
Speaker 1: hopefully you're not actually speeding up, but you're playing on
Speaker 1: the front end of the of the beat. And you know,
Speaker 1: we talk about that with drummers all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: he's a back of the beat kind of guy, or
Speaker 1: he's in front of the beat kind of guy. In
Speaker 1: a perfect world, you wouldn't pick up, but you'd still
Speaker 1: have that feeling that it was, you know, moving forward.
Speaker 1: And we call that drive and blue grass music and
Speaker 1: as applied to everything I do. You know, if I'm playing,
Speaker 1: when I was playing with Chick Korea or Zaki Hussein,
Speaker 1: I always try to play with that forward lean, but
Speaker 1: again without speeding up. A little speeding up's okay, but
Speaker 1: if it goes past a certain amount, it's not okay.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember, and I didn't really understand at
Speaker 1: the time, but the Stacks beat, the Stacks record label.
Speaker 1: I think how Jackson was the drummer, he was always
Speaker 1: a little particularly the I guess the fourth beat was
Speaker 1: always a little behind. So blue gust is always always
Speaker 1: pushing a little bit. Blue grass is always pushing, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the soloist leads the charge. In that way, it's
Speaker 1: similar to jazz and that the soloist dictates how that
Speaker 1: the other players play. So the way the way that
Speaker 1: you would play as a banjo player behind the fiddle
Speaker 1: is one way, and the way you'd play behind the
Speaker 1: mental end player is a different way, and the way
Speaker 1: you play behind the vocalist is another way. And whoever's
Speaker 1: closest to the microphone has the power, you know, because
Speaker 1: it was a music that was like a one mic music,
Speaker 1: you would he was for performance. It was live. It
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, roots music and people played around the house.
Speaker 1: It was performance music was built up before performed on
Speaker 1: radio in theaters on one microphone. So the person who's
Speaker 1: up front is louder, so automatically everyone follows the lead.
Speaker 1: If the banjo's up front, you're gonna play to his groove,
Speaker 1: and maybe he's got a little more straight eights, maybe
Speaker 1: he's got a little more bounced since swinging is playing.
Speaker 1: Fiddle player comes up, he's got a whole different groove.
Speaker 1: The band changes. A good bluegrass band knows how to
Speaker 1: do this dance, every verse, every chorus, every instrumental has
Speaker 1: a different feel, and they know how to make each
Speaker 1: thing happen. And it's like, I don't know, I think
Speaker 1: it's like a great sports team, you know, a great
Speaker 1: basketball team, passing to each other and following the lead
Speaker 1: of the person who's got the ball. Yeah. But the
Speaker 1: thing about it is the bango is facing away from you,
Speaker 1: So if you're standing up playing the banjo, you can't
Speaker 1: hear yourself, but you're bludgeoning everyone around you, and the
Speaker 1: fiddle player who's got the fiddle right by his ear.
Speaker 1: If you're standing next to a fiddle player, you can't
Speaker 1: hear yourself at all. All you can hear as a
Speaker 1: fiddle because your ears are near the fiddle. Yeah, so's
Speaker 1: it's an odd thing. Banjo players, you know, playing too
Speaker 1: loud is partly because they can't hear themselves even though
Speaker 1: they've got the loudest instrument in the room. So you
Speaker 1: you didn't study at college. You went straight to playing,
Speaker 1: didn't you. Just yeah, I think if Berkeley at that
Speaker 1: point had been taking, you know, banjo majors like they
Speaker 1: are now, I would have gone somewhere like that, or
Speaker 1: East Appalachian State, or there's one in Texas where you
Speaker 1: could major own banjo in the last decades, but not back.
Speaker 1: And so I just went and joined a band out
Speaker 1: of high school. And I got lucky because my mom
Speaker 1: and my stepdad had an unexpected child when I was
Speaker 1: a senior in high school. And keep remembering my mother's
Speaker 1: a teacher as well, and my stepfather he was actually
Speaker 1: the head of guidance for the Brooklyn school systems. And
Speaker 1: I got through high school and they never noticed that
Speaker 1: I didn't apply to college because they were just so
Speaker 1: dazed by having a child, a baby in the house,
Speaker 1: and I got so at the end. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: they realized, wait, where are you going? And I was like,
Speaker 1: it's too late, sorry, you know, and you knew you
Speaker 1: wanted to be a musician. I didn't want to go
Speaker 1: to college and spend my time. I wanted to go play,
Speaker 1: you know. I wanted to play the banjo. We have
Speaker 1: to take one last break, and then we're back with
Speaker 1: more from Baila Fleck. We're back with the remainder of
Speaker 1: Bruce Hedlam's conversation with Baila Flack. I mean, I knew
Speaker 1: you heard the banjo when you were four or five,
Speaker 1: you loved it, you got when when you were Yeah,
Speaker 1: at what point did you say, well, the banjo is
Speaker 1: going to be my life? Was there moment? It wasn't
Speaker 1: a voluntary thing. It was an involuntary thing. It was like,
Speaker 1: from the moment the banjo was in my hands, I
Speaker 1: didn't care about anything else. I would go to school
Speaker 1: and I'd be in a cold sweat waiting to get
Speaker 1: home to my banjo. I think it did a lot
Speaker 1: of things for me. I guess psychologically it gave me
Speaker 1: something to focus on, something to care about, an escape.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, not like my life was
Speaker 1: all that terrible. It wasn't. It was a perfectly good,
Speaker 1: middle class life on the Upper West Side. But something
Speaker 1: about it was just so compelling, and I couldn't put
Speaker 1: it down. You know, after school there'd be a hang
Speaker 1: with kids, and I could go for a few minutes
Speaker 1: before I just had to leave I just had to
Speaker 1: go home and play, and I started taking the banjo
Speaker 1: to school, playing between classes, cutting classes and hanging out
Speaker 1: in city college. I went to Music and Art High
Speaker 1: School when it was up in Harlem, so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of music surrounded by music, you know, and the
Speaker 1: folks that I went to high school with, you know,
Speaker 1: like Omarha Kim was there with me, and Kenny Washington
Speaker 1: and Marcus Miller, we were all there together, and Don
Speaker 1: Byer and all these guys that have had these great
Speaker 1: careers playing jazz and rock and so forth. Were you
Speaker 1: starting to play jazz then on the band? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was trying. I had my teacher, my last teacher, Tony Trishka,
Speaker 1: was doing a lot of exploring with the banjo. He
Speaker 1: was really the guy who said, hey, you can do anything.
Speaker 1: You don't have to do that. I noticed when I
Speaker 1: went to high school, if I could play led Zeppelin lick,
Speaker 1: everybody thought that was cool, much cooler than if I'd
Speaker 1: played them a flatt and scrugs tune. Right. So I
Speaker 1: noticed that that got me more attention, and so that
Speaker 1: was interesting or a grateful dad riff or something that
Speaker 1: was more cool. But I was just interested in the
Speaker 1: musical ideas that were in all these different musics and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to learn them on the
Speaker 1: banjo was fun. And then I mean, you've started doing
Speaker 1: your own albums pretty early. Yeah. I moved to Boston
Speaker 1: right out of high school seventy six, and I think
Speaker 1: seventy nine I made my first albums. I think I
Speaker 1: was still twenty when I made the first record, maybe
Speaker 1: twenty one. Wow, I mean, you must have had great
Speaker 1: chops at that point. It was kind of weird, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so Tony who was arguably the greatest banjo player of
Speaker 1: the period. I only say arguably because he was such
Speaker 1: a progressive. So some people might debate me, but I
Speaker 1: don't really think you can debate me on the talent
Speaker 1: and the quality of his music. But he was my teacher,
Speaker 1: And after a couple of years of playing, people said
Speaker 1: they couldn't tell the difference between him and me, like
Speaker 1: if we were somewhere and we were both playing. That
Speaker 1: was their compliment. They said, Hey, I was listening to
Speaker 1: you guys play at close my eyes, I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: who was who. I was such a I copied him
Speaker 1: so intently that I could do most I mean not
Speaker 1: the years of life and humanity and practice and creativity
Speaker 1: that he had, but I could. I learned quite a
Speaker 1: lot of what he could do, and so that made
Speaker 1: me an unusual banjo player, because nobody could really do
Speaker 1: that back then but him. So now I had all
Speaker 1: of his toolkit to draw from. I'm not saying I
Speaker 1: was Tony, but I was darned I'd really learned a
Speaker 1: lot of it, you know. So then the thing was
Speaker 1: I suddenly realized, though there already is a Tony Trishka,
Speaker 1: I got to find my thing. And then I started
Speaker 1: very consciously exploring things that he didn't do and looking
Speaker 1: for the things that I could do that would be
Speaker 1: my unique stamp on it. And then I immediately went
Speaker 1: into bands and started touring. And I'm anunit ever since.
Speaker 1: What was it you found in your playing? What distinguishes
Speaker 1: you're playing from other banjo? Well, Tony and I'm jealous
Speaker 1: of these qualities in his playing. He's a primitive, like
Speaker 1: he can draw on some theoretical knowledge, but he figures
Speaker 1: out things in a very primitive kind of way, and
Speaker 1: it's like a high tech primitive thing that he does.
Speaker 1: I am more of the kind of guy who wants
Speaker 1: to know every scale like I have to. If I
Speaker 1: learned a scale, I have to learn it in every key,
Speaker 1: major and minor, all the way up and down the banjo,
Speaker 1: from the bottom open string to the last thread of
Speaker 1: a high string. I wanted to do all that. He
Speaker 1: hadn't done that. So when I started to do that
Speaker 1: and started learning luck legit jazz repertoire and language and
Speaker 1: classical things, suddenly I had some knowledge on the banjo
Speaker 1: that was different, you know, that was new to the
Speaker 1: instrument Somewhere. I don't know. I don't know how to
Speaker 1: say what's new, because I mean, you know, in the
Speaker 1: twenties there are people playing jazz stuff on the banjo
Speaker 1: that still hasn't been equaled. But it was a different banjo.
Speaker 1: It was a different tuning. As we were talking about before,
Speaker 1: who were the jazz players you were listening to at
Speaker 1: that point that informed jo playing? Well? When I started playing,
Speaker 1: I mean I certainly I listened to Joe Pass and
Speaker 1: Oscar Peterson and people like that. I was a real
Speaker 1: big fan of Charlie Parker. I loved Charlie Parker's playing,
Speaker 1: and for me, Charlie Parker had the same rhythmic intensity
Speaker 1: of earl scrugs. And then one day at jazz appreciation
Speaker 1: class in high school, the teacher his names Justin d. Chocho.
Speaker 1: He's a great jazz teacher. He played Chick Corea's recording
Speaker 1: of Spain and that blew my mind because like the
Speaker 1: sound of that electric piano, there was something about it,
Speaker 1: all the short stabby notes. I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: think I could play like stan Gets, but I might
Speaker 1: be able to play like that on the banjo, you know,
Speaker 1: And I don't think he was lost stacato so staccato, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was all about time. And also he you know,
Speaker 1: they're a pianists who, you know, run up and down
Speaker 1: the piano, you know, constantly, and you know you can't
Speaker 1: do that on the banjo. I don't have the range.
Speaker 1: But if you go act we you know, like he
Speaker 1: would do these back and forth things with his two hands,
Speaker 1: that I could do short phrases that were very rhythmic,
Speaker 1: like a lot of Monk influence, and that he was
Speaker 1: very rhythmically focused on playing these unique rhythmic ideas with
Speaker 1: a lot of intensity. I could see how that might work.
Speaker 1: And then you did it on your first album. I
Speaker 1: did record that song that I want to see him
Speaker 1: when I was in high school, like at the Beacon
Speaker 1: Theater with Return to Forever, and that blew my mind.
Speaker 1: You know. Hearing him play with Stanley Clark and Lenny
Speaker 1: White and Aldamola was like to imagine, you know, like
Speaker 1: some people say, oh, that's not the greatest music or whatever,
Speaker 1: but like imagine being a seventeen year old never hearing
Speaker 1: anything like that and walking and sitting down at the
Speaker 1: Beacon Theater and hearing that. I mean, it was unbelievable,
Speaker 1: and I never it's the same. It had that impact
Speaker 1: that Earl Scruggs had, like the three people from Me
Speaker 1: or Earl Scruggs, Charlie Parker and Ship Korea. And then
Speaker 1: there were guys like Pat Martino playing around the city
Speaker 1: two around that time, and I got to see him
Speaker 1: in person a few times. And he also played these
Speaker 1: long lines, long, very rhythmic, you know, rhythmically solid lines.
Speaker 1: Also reminded me of banjo playing. I was like, I
Speaker 1: think I could play like that too, not that I
Speaker 1: had the ability, but that that would be possible on
Speaker 1: the banjo, long that long lines that jazz players play
Speaker 1: the jazz guitar players play in particular because they don't
Speaker 1: have to take a breath, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: take a breath on the banjo. So again you're going
Speaker 1: back to the perpetual motion idea that you were bringing
Speaker 1: up before. That's what the banjo does really well, and
Speaker 1: you do hear that a lot in jazz and classical music.
Speaker 1: Music with a lot of space because you're not used
Speaker 1: to hearing the banjo have that kind of space, and
Speaker 1: it can be very plaintive and beautiful when you figure
Speaker 1: out how to leave that space. So when you did
Speaker 1: your classical record, that was an example you did. You
Speaker 1: did the chopin, you did is Cello Sweet I did. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, but you don't have sustain and you
Speaker 1: don't have that great a dynamic range. Is that Is
Speaker 1: that fair to say? That's very true, very disappointing, but
Speaker 1: very true. So the thing about that record is, you know,
Speaker 1: down in Nashville you have this thing called songwriter demos,
Speaker 1: Like if you're making a vocal record, you get a
Speaker 1: pile of tapes from different songwriters and you pop them
Speaker 1: in your cassette till you hear one you like, and
Speaker 1: then you write down, oh I like that one. And
Speaker 1: so I kind of did that. When I was doing
Speaker 1: Perpetual Motion. I got all of these recordings of classical
Speaker 1: music and I would put pop them on in my
Speaker 1: car CDs and flip through until I heard something. And
Speaker 1: every time I heard something I liked, i'd write it down.
Speaker 1: I had a little pad in my car, and almost
Speaker 1: inevitably I was drawn to these moto perpetuos, long lines,
Speaker 1: long cascading things that went on and on and on,
Speaker 1: and that kept unfolding and unfolding and unfolding, like back
Speaker 1: you know, or Paganini or you know, a showpen things.
Speaker 1: And so that's part of why we named the album
Speaker 1: a Moto perpetual because to me, most of the pieces
Speaker 1: on there are moto perpeturos of one kind or another,
Speaker 1: whether it's you, you know, Children's Corner by Dead buc
Speaker 1: or you know, or boch things, they just keep on unfolding.
Speaker 1: The story's not over and then it stops. I don't
Speaker 1: like life. Yeah, yeah, well I can't get a banjo
Speaker 1: player to stop. Maybe that's maybe it's maybe it's your
Speaker 1: ticket to immortality till the end. They never when they stop,
Speaker 1: when they die, so tell me going back again. You
Speaker 1: played with Tony Rice on the s the Shoulder, which
Speaker 1: is this album People in All Kinds of World Love.
Speaker 1: But it's a great I guess would you call it
Speaker 1: blue grass? He was a well, I think it's pretty.
Speaker 1: It's definitely extended blue grass, you know. And so he
Speaker 1: was a hero to me because he also had that
Speaker 1: incredible rhythm of rhythmic ability on the guitar, and he
Speaker 1: was had an interest in jazz and all these different
Speaker 1: things and he would bring them into his blue grass.
Speaker 1: But he also had a very musical vocal kind of quality.
Speaker 1: He like, he was a great singer, but he chose
Speaker 1: songs that were kind of deep sometimes and had harmony
Speaker 1: to them, you know, which was very unusual for blue grass,
Speaker 1: which tends to be very harmonically. He liked things that
Speaker 1: were more explorative. And so when I got to play
Speaker 1: on that record, it was a dream come true. It
Speaker 1: was like I was finally playing with the A team.
Speaker 1: Sam Bush was playing, Vassar Clements was there, Jerry Douglas
Speaker 1: was there, Tony Rice was there, and we all just
Speaker 1: cut it in a circle and he sang and played
Speaker 1: everything live. We all played live and it was unbelievable
Speaker 1: how good that music felt. I played. Guy played on
Speaker 1: four tracks that day, either three or four, and every
Speaker 1: one of them had this dance like it was so
Speaker 1: easy to play banjo with him because of the way
Speaker 1: he played rhythm. His rhythm guitar playing was like a
Speaker 1: magic carpet ride that you get on and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you could do things that you couldn't do
Speaker 1: anywhere else. So after that session, I was like, if
Speaker 1: I could do a record with this guy and Sam Bush,
Speaker 1: because he Sam has this way of chopping the rhythm
Speaker 1: on the mantelin and Tony is so free floating with
Speaker 1: his rhythm playing. The combination of those two guys playing together,
Speaker 1: you have all of the freedom and the imagination of
Speaker 1: Tony Rice, but it's it's put into a rhythmic context
Speaker 1: by Sam Bush's chop. So once those guys start playing together,
Speaker 1: it's magic. And feathering the banzo into that is like
Speaker 1: the easiest thing in the world. So when I made
Speaker 1: that first record, we're talking about Drive. That's the band
Speaker 1: that I wanted and was lucky enough to get, and
Speaker 1: I had those two guys playing together, and Jerry Douglas,
Speaker 1: the greatest ogro player and these great fiddle players. You
Speaker 1: described it a little bit, but you know, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite albums of yours is the album you did
Speaker 1: with Check Korea, The Enchantment. Yeah, how did you make
Speaker 1: that work? It's a very unusual sounding album. It's a
Speaker 1: puzzle what happened there, because you know, as you know,
Speaker 1: he's a formative influence. Like even more so than you
Speaker 1: know Scrugs or Tony Trishka or Charlie Parker who weren't
Speaker 1: part of my life. He was a guy that I revered,
Speaker 1: as you know, so good. I would never you know,
Speaker 1: could never imagine playing with him, but you know, an
Speaker 1: inspiration for life. I was five, followed everything he did
Speaker 1: and I always wished I could play like him, you know,
Speaker 1: learn from him and stuff. So at a certain point
Speaker 1: the flectones got going, you know, some decades later, after
Speaker 1: falling in love with his music, and got a Grammy nomination, right,
Speaker 1: and got to go to the Grammys where Chick Korea
Speaker 1: one of the reigning Grammy count kings it was, and
Speaker 1: got to meet him and talk to him and said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw you guys. I saw your video, sinister minister,
Speaker 1: I like I like that, you know. So I got
Speaker 1: the nerve to ask him if he would play on
Speaker 1: a track for me, and he did, to my surprise,
Speaker 1: agree and I got to do something with him, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, okay, now my life has made you know.
Speaker 1: That's I'll never bother you again, was what I thought.
Speaker 1: You know. It was an album called Tales from the
Speaker 1: Acoustic Planet, the first one I made, and Branford Marsalis
Speaker 1: also played on that, and I got them together. They
Speaker 1: never played together on the track. It's a neat thing, yeah,
Speaker 1: And they just sat around him did old jazz in
Speaker 1: the corner till it was time to close the studio down.
Speaker 1: They were having so much fun. So some years later
Speaker 1: I was playing at Newport Jazz Festival with Stanley Clark
Speaker 1: and John Luke Ponni. We had this trio for a
Speaker 1: little while and Ted Curlin came over to me. He's
Speaker 1: the agent that booked all these guys, you know, And
Speaker 1: he came over to me and he said, um, baila, chick,
Speaker 1: Korea is thinking about doing some duet projects next year,
Speaker 1: and you're on the list of people. Would you have
Speaker 1: any interest in something like that? It's like, would you
Speaker 1: have any interest? And I was like, yes, sign me up. Enough.
Speaker 1: So I was the first person who said yes, you know,
Speaker 1: and so he said, okay, well let's do something. So
Speaker 1: we booked this session. I'm going to come out there,
Speaker 1: and he's sending meeting this music which I'm trying to
Speaker 1: decipher from mini files and trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to play. And we have a week to do it.
Speaker 1: You know, we're going to do it, and I think,
Speaker 1: well five days. I was used to making records with
Speaker 1: the flect Tones, where we had months, you know, we
Speaker 1: could just take our time, and just when we were done,
Speaker 1: we're done. And then I get there and what about rehearsing. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll meet up the night before. So we meet up
Speaker 1: in a hotel room and we play for an hour
Speaker 1: and he says, I think that's good. I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, how are we going to do this? And
Speaker 1: then as he's leaving, he says, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: I think we can record and mix this record in
Speaker 1: those four or five days. And now it's getting down
Speaker 1: to four, you know, four or five days. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: but somehow we did it. You know. We just went
Speaker 1: in and just tune after tune, got the arrangements together,
Speaker 1: just did them and one after another they turned out
Speaker 1: really good, and we did the whole thing we I mean,
Speaker 1: Drive was made in three days, but that was with
Speaker 1: a bunch of guys, like a bunch of music. I
Speaker 1: knew how to do, you know, so I'm always surprised.
Speaker 1: I want to hear it back because I have that
Speaker 1: feeling of fear every time it comes up. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: listen to and be really disappointed. But it's it's the moment,
Speaker 1: you know. That's what happens. When you do something fast,
Speaker 1: you get a different benefit out of it, and if
Speaker 1: you do something slower you can get another benefit out
Speaker 1: of you know, there's different things. He was a guy
Speaker 1: who was always trying new things. Yeah, and you were
Speaker 1: a guy that's always trying new things. I think I've
Speaker 1: seen interviews where you've said I just want to get
Speaker 1: onto the next thing, and my record label's always saying,
Speaker 1: how about a bluegrass album? Where does that drive come from?
Speaker 1: With me? Yes? Well, I have to say one of
Speaker 1: the things that was very inspiring on that Chick session
Speaker 1: is the minute we finished the last song of the
Speaker 1: last track, which was a tune called Mountain. It was
Speaker 1: the last thing we cut. I put the band too
Speaker 1: in the case. Chick went into the other room, pulled
Speaker 1: out the music for his next project and started practicing. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a little scary, and I went, wow, yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to be like that. You know, this is my
Speaker 1: I guess early thirties, and you're like, I had a
Speaker 1: bottle of wine. I thought, yeah, this was before the wine.
Speaker 1: This is the wine was a few decades later. But no, um.
Speaker 1: I always always thought you were supposed to do that,
Speaker 1: and you know, talking about the Beatles, you know, they
Speaker 1: just kept changing every record, was like almost like a
Speaker 1: new band. I thought, that's what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to like create something and keep doing it.
Speaker 1: Like that's what Bill Monroe did. He created bluegrass, you know,
Speaker 1: and on the seventh day he rested. But then he
Speaker 1: kept playing it the same way. He would always trying
Speaker 1: to find guys who would play it like the original
Speaker 1: band more or less, although there was some variation, of course,
Speaker 1: but his idea was I've created it, and now we
Speaker 1: will do it. And then there's other people, other artists
Speaker 1: that continue to change their whole lives, you know. And
Speaker 1: I like that idea because that's what the Coolcats were doing.
Speaker 1: That's what Chick Korea was doing, That's what the Beatles
Speaker 1: were doing, That's what led Zeppelin was doing. The people
Speaker 1: that we're around that I saw were growing and changing
Speaker 1: from the Carnegie Hills of Manhattan. Thank you. So that
Speaker 1: was wonderful, great talking to you. It was fun, great,
Speaker 1: it was great talk, just great. Thanks to Baila Fleck
Speaker 1: for explaining his lifelong love for the banjo and sharing
Speaker 1: a song off his new album My Bluegrasshart. Do you
Speaker 1: hear the album along with our favorite Beila Flex songs.
Speaker 1: Check out the playlist at broken Record podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find
Speaker 1: all of our new episodes. You can follow us on
Speaker 1: Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help
Speaker 1: from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Gent Taladay, Eric Sandler, and
Speaker 1: Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive
Speaker 1: producer is Mia Lobell. Broken Record is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others from Pushkin,
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Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
Speaker 1: podcast app. For the music by Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond,