Episode 1374 - Béla Fleck / Michael Morris
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what the fucking ears what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast welcome to it i am not broadcasting from the regular place i am not broadcasting from the
Marc:my garage studio.
Marc:I'm not broadcasting from the bunker in Los Angeles.
Marc:I'm in New York city.
Marc:I flew out here.
Marc:It takes a tremendous amount of, uh, of overcoming anxiety these days to sort of get it together to travel, uh,
Marc:I've had worries about the cats.
Marc:Just when your life is tethered to pets, it becomes a little nuts.
Marc:I mean, I've been nuts with cats before, different points in my life, different cats.
Marc:But there was a period where I'm pretty sure I was on the verge of bankruptcy and I might need to move out of my old house.
Marc:But I couldn't see forward with it because I didn't want Boomer to not...
Marc:have a place to roam to not have a place to live boomer was an outdoor cat so i'm like i'm going to have to stay in this house no matter what for however long it takes boomer to die and boomer disappeared years later but nonetheless
Marc:tethered to pets panic i don't know how people do it with kids but anyway i made it i made it here i flew on the plane i was with uh i was flying with jeremy strong not together but he was on the plane and we've been talking lately i have an episode with him coming up
Marc:Very, very good guy.
Marc:Earnest guy.
Marc:Giving me a lot of information about restaurants I should go to when I'm in London next week for my shows.
Marc:I believe there's still tickets for the Bloomsbury Theater live podcast taping with David Baddiel.
Marc:Uh, you can go to WTF pod.com slash tour for information about that today, uh, in the city.
Marc:I, uh, just earlier, just before I, I said, I might be in a, in half a meat comb.
Marc:I went over to Katz's saw my buddy, Dave dopey, Dave from the dopey podcast set me up with the, uh, buffet of meats and
Marc:And pickled products.
Marc:And a bit of babka at the end at the Katz's.
Marc:I do that every year.
Marc:I'm going to do that until I get diabetes or a heart attack, I guess.
Marc:The yearly.
Marc:Probably take a little off my life, but not a ton.
Marc:But I'm just here, man.
Marc:I'm here tonight.
Marc:I'm going to be doing a music benefit with Jimmy Vivino.
Marc:Going to play a few songs with Vivino's band.
Marc:And play a song with Jimmy Vaughn, who's also going to be there.
Marc:Tremendous honor.
Marc:I'm totally nervous.
Marc:And that's why I'm in New York.
Marc:I don't even know if I'm going to do any comedy.
Marc:I'm going to do the music and then I'm going to go to the Whitney.
Marc:And I'm a member there for the couple of times a year I'm here.
Marc:I want to contribute to the arts, but I get membership privileges.
Marc:I'm going to go see the Edward Hopper New York exhibit.
Marc:Tomorrow, I'm going to go to Birdland on Saturday to see Ron Carter play in preparation to talk to him.
Marc:I'm probably going to eat at a couple of my favorite places.
Marc:I'm going to see my friend Sam Lipsight, go to Mogador, maybe go to Viselka, go to Kiklides, do the meats and stuff that I like to do.
Marc:I don't feel like I'm going to go to the cellar.
Marc:I've kind of...
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It doesn't sit in the same way it used to with me, that place, for many different reasons.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:I've been doing plenty of comedy.
Marc:Long sets.
Marc:Heading to England to do more long sets.
Marc:I don't need to go do 15-minute sets at a place that's hit or miss.
Marc:So I'm going to try to fill my time otherwise in this beautiful fall weather that is happening here in Manhattan.
Marc:So we got two guests today.
Marc:I should tell you this.
Marc:We've got Bela Fleck, the banjo player, songwriter and composer, and Michael Morris, director of the new movie I'm in, to Leslie.
Marc:Now, I went to a screening of this movie the other night, and it's the first time I saw it on a big screen.
Marc:I brought Kit, and there was supposed to be a Q&A with me and this guy, Michael Morris, the director, and
Marc:And I'd never seen it on a big screen before.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you, it looks amazing.
Marc:He shot it all on film, which was kind of intense shooting it because he only get two takes, three takes.
Marc:And we shot it and like I was only he shot in like less than three weeks.
Marc:But it looks great, and it's really kind of a sweet movie.
Marc:Andrea Riceboro is stellar, and it just came out great.
Marc:And it was funny.
Marc:We watch it, and then we're supposed to do a Q&A, and the person who was supposed to do the Q&A from NPR was a no-show.
Marc:So I said, well, I just so happen to be a pretty good interviewer.
Marc:Why don't I handle it?
Marc:So we basically did a version of what you're about to hear in a way.
Marc:Only this is me.
Marc:We're sort of discussing, you know, we're Michael Morris, the director.
Marc:He's done a lot of episodic television, including Better Call Saul.
Marc:To Leslie is his first feature.
Marc:And it's now playing in theaters and available to rent or purchase on digital on-demand platforms.
Marc:And this is me kind of talking about the experience of it with Michael and a little bit about his life.
Marc:And look, I'm proud of the movie.
Marc:He's proud of it.
Marc:And if you can go see it, see it.
Marc:It's heavy.
Marc:It's touching.
Marc:It's it's moving.
Marc:And it does.
Marc:It ends OK.
Marc:You'll feel uplifted, but it doesn't.
Marc:I guess I heard somebody say there's not a false note in the movie, really.
Marc:uh and i never i that's a new language to me the idea of a false note um i heard brendan gleason mention it about his new movie the banshees of inna sharon uh i saw him on seth myers last night and he brought it up about false notes but the same with uh two leslie and this is me talking to the director of uh two leslie michael morris
Marc:So, now, before you asked me to do this movie, I had no idea who you are.
Marc:Fair enough.
Guest:Like, you're clearly not from here.
Guest:No.
Guest:I was born in London, raised in London, and I was a theater director in London, actually.
Guest:For London?
Marc:how old are you i am how old am i i'm 48 i don't usually ask people that but you look very young they do yeah yeah like you know you're holding up pretty well 48 you know it's good yeah you get you're not wrinkled up not yet yeah it's coming yes so but like what do you mean in in uh you come from a big family in london no i come from a small family actually uh just myself and my sister oh yeah she's a she's an artist she's a painter and a sculptor
Marc:What kind?
Marc:Figurative?
Marc:Abstract?
Guest:It's a good question.
Guest:It's figurative, but colorist.
Guest:She's really free.
Guest:She's really talented.
Guest:She went to the school in Paris and won their prize there.
Guest:She's just full.
Guest:She's someone who is able to channel feelings into stuff.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:You will feel something when you see her stuff.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, and she's in London?
Guest:Yeah, she's in London.
Guest:And she makes a living as a painter?
Guest:Yeah, as sculptor and a painter.
Guest:Yeah, boy, she's doing great.
Guest:What's her name?
Guest:Annie Morris.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, check it out.
Guest:And her husband, too, actually, Idris Khan, phenomenal artist as well.
Guest:They're a great couple.
Guest:Anyway, that's my sister and me.
Guest:And your folks are artists?
Guest:No.
Guest:My mother was in the theater, actually,
Guest:When she was from New York and she was in part of the Cafe La Mama situation there in the 60s.
Marc:Oh yeah, I just talked to Harvey Fierstein.
Marc:He was part of that.
Guest:He was, yeah.
Guest:Big.
Guest:It was a real thing.
Guest:So was she a Warhol person?
Guest:She was not.
Guest:She would be like, I wish.
Guest:She wasn't cool enough.
Guest:But she was more of a stage manager.
Guest:She was like the stage manager for a playwright who's just passed away I think a year or two ago called Israel Horowitz.
Guest:Yeah, I know him.
Guest:Israel was a...
Guest:A really important playwright, especially early on in his career.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I did Indian Wants the Bronx.
Guest:You did not.
Marc:I did.
Marc:You did?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I did it when I was in college.
Marc:I did it as part of stage troupe.
Marc:I must have been Murph.
Guest:I love that play.
Marc:Yeah, it's a big play.
Marc:He's one of those guys that came into trouble for his behavior later in life.
Marc:But there's a few of those plays that, I mean, that's a great play.
Guest:Well, Line was a great play.
Guest:So I should say that I knew him his whole life and he knew me my whole life.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Because my mother was really dear friends with him early on.
Guest:And yes, you're right about what you said, but I don't think it overshadows the legacy that he had as a playwright.
Guest:He was one of the few American playwrights that wrote like a, I don't know, like a French playwright.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And his son's a beastie boy.
Guest:His son has always been a beastie boy, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but doesn't talk about his dad much.
Guest:No, but they're a great family, though, actually.
Guest:His daughter's a producer and his other son is a novelist.
Guest:They're a really cool family.
Guest:So you grew up with... A little of that.
Marc:Yeah, but an environment that was at least art positive.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:I've never thought of saying it that way.
Guest:I'm stealing it.
Guest:That's what it was.
Guest:They'd never made their living in the arts, but art was important.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So do you go to school for it?
Guest:No, I didn't.
Guest:I went to I studied because I wanted to be a writer and I wanted to be very early on a theater director.
Guest:So I did from 16.
Guest:So so I went to school for English.
Guest:I studied English.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Guest:Where?
Guest:Like any fancy school?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oxford.
Marc:You went to Oxford?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's fancy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I guess so.
Guest:Yeah, it is fancy.
Guest:I'm proud of it now.
Guest:Yeah, good.
Guest:And how about you?
Guest:Where were you?
Guest:Boston University.
Marc:Yeah, that's fancy.
Marc:No, it's not.
Marc:It's just a big private school.
Marc:It's expensive.
Marc:It's more expensive than Oxford.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, well, that doesn't mean it's good.
Marc:They've slowly taken over the entire city, I think.
Marc:But I studied English, and I did...
Marc:I did theater.
Marc:I directed some theater, and I did a minor in film studies, which was an art history major or minor.
Guest:Yeah, I did art history and English and history.
Guest:Those were my three.
Guest:I loved that.
Marc:Yeah, I don't think I really wrapped my brain thoroughly around my studies, but I showed up and I took it in.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and I did a lot of stuff.
Marc:you know edited the english journal wrote poetry yeah i did the same thing you did we had a similar track i didn't realize that yeah i was big into writing poetry yeah i i i i will do it sometimes as an exercise you know i don't necessarily show anybody but it is part of my process sometimes to to write things in the form of those type of thoughts yeah i think it gets harder unless you really commit to it it gets harder to keep
Guest:That part of your kind of creativity alive.
Marc:I think well, it's it's it's like it's ridiculous So like in the sense that like, you know, if you're going to be a poet, that's you kind of got to be What's got to be your life?
Marc:Yeah, because you've got to most times you've got to be an academic and
Marc:And you've got to live in that insulated world where poetry is important.
Marc:I'm not condescending it or trivializing it, but just because you can write a few lines, you can't just be, I'm a poet.
Guest:I mean, you can, but... Yeah, one poem doesn't make a poet.
Guest:You're right, it's a life.
Guest:I had that moment leaving school.
Guest:I thought that's what I was going to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I had that exact thought.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I thought, like, I can't make a living as a poet.
Guest:No one can.
Guest:You become like, you know, the poet in residence at the zoo or something.
Guest:And I was like, that's not for me.
Marc:That sounds like an interesting job.
Marc:Is that a job?
Marc:The poet in residence at the zoo?
Marc:I think it might be.
Marc:Is that a regular zoo job?
Marc:I kind of like that idea.
Marc:What are you?
Marc:I'm the poet in residence at the Los Angeles County Zoo.
Marc:Wow, I didn't know they had those.
Guest:Well, you know, to me, you know, so I beeline to theater directing, which isn't exactly a great living.
Guest:But, you know, it was more in the world.
Guest:It's a community.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, I know a couple of people that are poets.
Marc:One guy who I went to college with who, I don't know.
Marc:It's all...
Marc:It's just that world, it's very specific.
Marc:But theater directing, so you just jump in?
Marc:You do any acting?
Guest:No, I mean, I acted in school.
Guest:I actually acted in one of Israel's.
Guest:I did line.
Guest:But I was in it and directed it, because it was hard to wrangle the cast, and so I would just step in.
Guest:I did enough acting to know that I wasn't an actor.
Guest:But I have a real reverence for it.
Guest:I like the fact that I know that I'm not an actor, if you know what I mean.
Guest:Because it allows me just to sort of participate in a different way.
Marc:It's like the directing thing.
Marc:Like I noticed from watching to Leslie, our movie on a big screen last night that there is something about the gift of a director and Lynn Shelton had it as well is is letting things sort of play out.
Marc:knowing when uh to step in or when to stop it and into leslie you know there's a lot of long shots not not long uh i mean time wise that that are you know not talking and you know there's certain courage in that you've got to have a certain confidence to to uh to let that sit and not uh be like i don't know yeah yeah this is going on too long
Guest:This was never, I mean, I think you did a lot of plays.
Guest:My favorite playwright growing up was Harold Pinter, right?
Guest:And Harold Pinter's all about- Everyone auditions with that birthday party.
Guest:I love that birthday party speech.
Guest:But the caretaker as well, like these plays that have pauses and you realize early on, I think it was just being able to do plays that taught me this, was that silences are not silent.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Like most of what we say is not in the words that we're using.
Marc:No, and it's like something I learn all the time more and more, especially as an actor, a film actor, because there's a lot of tricks in film acting that I don't really know because I'm so in it and frenetic.
Marc:But in your movie, because of how I approached it, I was doing things that I'd never done before.
Marc:But I think that's correct in theater.
Marc:Annie Baker is a big pauser as well.
Marc:And she writes them in.
Marc:I think Pinter does too.
Marc:He does too.
Marc:But yeah, man, I mean, you know, it's powerful if people can hold it.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:I mean, I didn't want to change it.
Guest:So we made the movie a lot shorter, which was one of the hardest things.
Guest:We got the movie to a place we really loved, but it was two hours and 45 minutes.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was two hours and 45 minutes.
Guest:And we loved it.
Guest:We screened it for our producers.
Guest:And even though we all in the back of our minds knew it couldn't be two hours and 45.
Guest:That's crazy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's coming up on two hours now.
Marc:It's just under two hours.
Marc:I can't even imagine.
Marc:Where was all that meat?
Marc:It wasn't with me.
Marc:Everything I shot is in there except for one thing.
Guest:Almost, yeah.
Guest:By the time we got to your section, actually, when she gets to the motel,
Guest:I really love the way the story was developed.
Guest:It's an unusual script because most stories about this subject, about people struggling with addiction in any way, are usually either a straight downward spiral or there are kind of like unexpected sort of fireworks of everyone's happy at the end.
Guest:And what I love about the way this story is told is it's uncompromising.
Guest:But then when you meet Leslie, when Leslie meets your character, there is a slow turn.
Guest:There's a slow turn towards...
Guest:I don't know, some sort of humanity or someone actually seeing her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it just felt really the real way to tell the story of some degree of compassion.
Guest:I really liked it when we got there.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Where there's a combination of her truly or close to having had enough.
Marc:yeah yeah she was like she couldn't get over as well you know they're that process of like she can't really pull guys anymore she can't she can't hide her her uh her hustle yeah so why this this script just popped at you right away yeah it did for every reason i mean there's a lot of reasons i mean i think it's it's ryan's just a beautiful writer he underwrites things wait now has he written anything else
Guest:He has, but I hadn't read anything else.
Guest:I had only read this.
Guest:He's a really prolific writer, actually, but he had a movie made earlier by Netflix, but I think this was the one that came from his heart.
Marc:It was about his mom, kind of.
Guest:Yeah, and him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Riceboro, Andrea, you work with years ago as well.
Guest:Yeah, we did a show called Bloodline on Netflix together.
Marc:And you just knew she was the one to do this?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, my very first, I've still got the copy.
Guest:I wrote Andrea Riceboro right under the title.
Guest:She's not, on paper you'd go, oh,
Guest:She's from the north of England.
Guest:She's not Texan.
Guest:There's a sort of absolute true life, just honesty about her.
Guest:She can't do anything else.
Guest:And you're right.
Guest:A lot of actors have tricks.
Guest:People talk about it.
Guest:Laurence Olivier used to talk about that.
Guest:Do you know that thing?
Guest:Which one?
Guest:When someone said, how's it going?
Guest:He was the biggest star in Hollywood.
Guest:He said, it's awful.
Guest:It's awful.
Guest:They know all my tricks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Andrea doesn't seem to have tricks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Andrea is just like an instrument.
Guest:She'll tune herself to wherever it is that we think the character should be and what that journey is.
Guest:And then she just goes.
Guest:You saw her.
Guest:She just...
Guest:She goes.
Marc:Yeah, it was amazing to work with her.
Marc:And then, so the kid, too, how did you cast that kid?
Marc:You knew him when he was a kid?
Guest:Yeah, so Owen, who's, it's so great seeing how he's huge, he's getting huge now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he was cast as a photo double, just not photo double, as a photo extra on Bloodline because he looked a bit like a young Ben Mendelsohn.
Guest:We needed a young Ben Mendelsohn for a picture.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was a high school kid in Florida.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And he came in and then a season later, Glenn Kessler, who was writing the show, was like, we need to do some flashbacks with young Ben Mendelsohn.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we were like, oh, let's call that kid and hope he can act.
Guest:He was brilliant.
Guest:He was so brilliant.
Guest:I'll tell you this.
Guest:I've never seen this happen before for a realistic show like Bloodline.
Guest:He was so good that in the second season of that show, he didn't just play the young Ben Mendelsohn.
Guest:He also played Ben's son in the same season of the same show.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I've never seen that before.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's kind of interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's the real thing.
Marc:And casting me, I'm going to keep pressing you on this.
Marc:I was your choice?
Marc:You were my choice.
Guest:I went after you.
Guest:I know you went after me.
Guest:I was obsessed with this choice.
Marc:Oh, it's so funny because somewhere along the line, it got put in my head that John Hawks had turned it down.
Guest:No, he did.
Guest:There was an early conversation with the casting process is Mandarin.
Guest:I know.
Guest:You know, and a producer says, oh, you know, John's are great.
Guest:And I love John.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:For me, Winter's Bone is a big influence on me.
Guest:That movie, I don't know if you saw that movie earlier.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:And he was so, so striking in that film.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I think early on there was certainly a conversation of, oh, you know, John would be great.
Guest:John's that kind of actor.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:By the time we came to actually casting the film, I can't remember what happened.
Guest:I think John was out of the picture at that point by COVID anyway.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we hadn't cast the film.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was a combination of, it was 100% a combination of Marin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think I've mentioned to you before that it may be really beautiful.
Guest:genuinely memorable monologue that you gave in Sort of Trust, which was a heartbreaker.
Guest:I must have watched it eight times in a row.
Guest:And then randomly, a photo of you from a piece that the New York Times did on you.
Guest:It was a black and white photo sitting in a chair, sort of half looking up.
Guest:And I think I sent it round to my whole producers, you know, a lot of producers involved in a movie like this.
Guest:And I said, that's Sweeney.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, that is Sweeney.
Guest:And I already knew what I was seeing in your performance.
Guest:And it's funny because it wasn't from Glow, which is a great, and I just wasn't a Glow watcher, so I didn't know your performance from that.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:But from Marin.
Guest:It was really from Marin.
Guest:Sword of Trust.
Guest:And Sword of Trust, yeah.
Marc:Well, I appreciate that.
Marc:Cause like, you know, for the whole time I kept thinking like when they're giving me, they gave me the script and they're talking to me and I don't know who told me that John Hawks thing.
Marc:Cause I'm like, well, he's the, I'm not that guy.
Marc:No, you're not.
Marc:But of course not.
Marc:But then I'm judging myself and I was really like, I don't see this happening.
Marc:And then I was talking to my manager last night at the screening.
Marc:Cause I almost didn't do it just because it's COVID.
Marc:I don't, I'm grieving, whatever.
Marc:I'm not the right guy for this.
Marc:And then, yeah.
Marc:And then I got the text from Chelsea, from Chelsea Handler.
Marc:And I'm like, what is this?
Guest:The enforcer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And she's like, Michael Morris wants you to do his movie.
Marc:I think you should do it.
Marc:Call him.
Marc:And you don't, you just don't say no.
Guest:That was imperative right there.
Guest:There was no questions.
Guest:How do you know her?
Guest:She was like, she was...
Guest:has been one of my wife and my great friends.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:For years, yeah.
Guest:She and Mary were, as soon as they met, they met each other at some, I don't know, some stupid event.
Guest:And they just, it was just a click.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:They just have, they just made each other laugh.
Marc:Well, I had a great time doing it, and I thought it came out really nice.
Marc:But I'm curious now.
Marc:So, you know, the critical reaction is great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it's crazy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was like 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Marc:It was like 30-plus reviews.
Guest:Yeah, getting on for 40, and people really, really resonate.
Guest:Is it still up there?
Guest:Yeah, 97.
Guest:Still?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So, now, like, okay, so what happens with it from...
Marc:a business standpoint.
Marc:So now, like, it's not really a big release.
Marc:You can buy it.
Marc:It's getting great critical acclaim.
Marc:Now, obviously, Andrea is going to be, you know, in the game for awards of some kind.
Marc:At the very least, Indie Spirit, right?
Guest:SAG.
Guest:This is my first film.
Guest:I have no frame of reference for this.
Guest:And I came into it and it feels odd, always feels odd to talk about any of that stuff.
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:But as I get older and as I talk to more people, there is an intent.
Marc:at a certain point to sort of get the movie out there more and to get it recognition any way you can.
Marc:And part of that is award campaigning.
Marc:But obviously we're too early in the game, but someone must be thinking about it.
Guest:I hope so, because I think it's deserved.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:Awards are crazy for any- This is her movie, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because everyone talks about her as being the thing, the real thing.
Marc:And she real things the hell out of this.
Guest:She does.
Guest:She really does, actually.
Guest:And if they're about anything, you want awards to at least be- I don't care about who wins anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a nomination process, and that's really fun because you get to recognize a bunch of things.
Guest:And so you think, well, if it's the reasons of what might you have missed that's really, really, really powerful and challenging and a great performance, you know, I hope so.
Guest:Yeah, but more practically, how do we get it in more theaters?
Guest:You know, it's really difficult.
Guest:I've had a crash course in this since this movie has been released.
Guest:So there's this thing where we are released at home, what they call the video on demand, the streaming stuff.
Guest:You can get it on Apple, you can get it on Amazon.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And because of that, because that was released at the same day that it was released in the theaters, they call that a day and date release.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There seems to be a thing out there in the world that movie theater chains...
Guest:uh don't approve of that that model they they want what's called a window where you say okay we're going to be only in theaters for a week or two weeks or a month so if you come if you come at them saying we're also available at home a lot of movie chains are not interested in showing the film that's just a policy it's nothing they don't even think they've seen the film they just say we can't what about these smaller theaters
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, I think people have to go.
Guest:I think it would be great if people went.
Guest:And by the way, this is a movie shot on film, as we've said.
Guest:It's designed to be, it's shot in a widescreen.
Guest:It's 235, which means it's the same sort of epic ratio that you want to see in a movie theater.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:It looks great.
Guest:It really looks good on a widescreen.
Guest:So I encourage, even though I want people to see it, if home is the best way, that's the best way.
Marc:Yeah, but I just saw some people tweeting, like, the closest theater is in another state.
Marc:I know, I know.
Guest:I mean, I think that our film distributor fell in love with the film at South by Southwest.
Guest:And they bought it for absolutely the right reasons.
Guest:They didn't buy it because this was going to be Top Gun Maverick.
Guest:They bought it because they love it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I think there's a reality, it seems to me, about how you release something like this.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I hope there's a second life for more theaters.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I do.
Marc:Well, great job.
Marc:And I was honored to be part of it.
Marc:Well, it was an honor to have you.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Good talking to you.
Marc:Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Good guy.
Marc:Nice guy.
Marc:Talented guy.
Marc:Movie's great.
Marc:Two Leslie.
Marc:It's in theaters and on digital on demand now.
Marc:I'm pretty good in it.
Marc:As my friend Steve Brill, he mentioned to me that my friend Steve Brill was a friend of his and his wife's.
Marc:And he had seen it and I was like, why didn't he text me about it?
Marc:If you liked it, where's my buddy Steve Brill with the text?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Where's that?
Marc:And then, of course, he went and mentioned it to Steve.
Marc:And Steve wrote me, I just remembered.
Marc:I did mean to text you last week after I saw two last week.
Marc:Very moving movie.
Marc:Congrats on being...
Marc:In that thing and sharing screen with that incredible actress seemed like you got to be in a sort of Sam Shepard play or play the Sam Shepard role.
Marc:It's pretty cool.
Marc:Best Marin performance since night of January the 16th, which is a play I did with Steve in stage troupe in college.
Marc:He said, I'm impressed and jealous, which is weird because I'm not an actor, but I really want to do cool shit.
Marc:I said, I texted back.
Marc:Thanks about the movie.
Marc:I held my own.
Marc:I think it's a good flick.
Marc:And Steve said, I was so nervous watching her crush so hard and knowing you were coming up.
Marc:But you did hold your own, which is sort of like lasting in the ring with Tyson or something.
Marc:She was just incredible.
Marc:Fearless, fearsome.
Marc:So congrats.
Marc:I said, thanks.
Marc:It was very nice.
Marc:A nice exchange.
Marc:But that's why I guess it was like that.
Marc:I didn't go in nervous.
Marc:I just was like, I can only do the best I can do.
Marc:So Bela Fleck is a banjo player, is the banjo player, is one of the great banjo players, is taking the instrument to new places.
Marc:He's on tour right now to support his album, My Bluegrass Heart.
Marc:You can go to BelaFleck.com for tour dates and tickets.
Marc:He is a fan of this show.
Marc:And he sent me his records and he sent me a personal correspondence.
Marc:And I'm like, I got to get up to speed on Bela Fleck.
Marc:I mean, I know he was great, and I've heard his name forever, but I didn't know his stuff.
Marc:So I'm like, this guy wants to talk.
Marc:He's the real deal.
Marc:I should talk to him, but I'm going to have to listen to 900 records and figure out where he's coming from.
Marc:So I did that, and here I am talking to Bela Fleck.
Marc:I guess mostly in terms of what I listen to banjo-wise is probably Scruggs.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:And I like those records he made with his kids.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:With the Earl Scruggs Experience or whatever it was.
Marc:Review.
Marc:The Earl Scruggs Review.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then I got the kids' albums, too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because it felt like they were trying to make Dad sound groovy.
Guest:Yeah, it was a brave move for him, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Was that your guy?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, he's the guy who turned me on.
Guest:If you're going to be a banjo player and you hear Earl Scruggs, it's like you turn into a zombie looking for a banjo, trying to figure out how to do it.
Guest:And it has to be him.
Guest:It's not just anybody.
Guest:He had this magic something.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, it was him for me.
Guest:He turned the trigger for me sometime around four or five years old when I heard the Beverly Hillbillies, which makes no sense because I'm a New York City kid.
Guest:Well, that was on TV.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:What are you, my age or older?
Guest:Uh, depends on how old you are.
Guest:I'm 59.
Marc:I'm an old, I'm older.
Guest:I'm 64.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So you're, so you were catching the tail end of that show actually being on television or were you watching it on like channel 11 or something?
Guest:I think it was on channel 11 and it was in the morning.
Guest:I remember it was light out.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So there it was repeats.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But no, but that, that opening thing, I mean, I think that probably got everyone into banjo.
Marc:Anybody who's going to register banjo that doesn't grow up with a banjo or with music like that, that's where you were going to hear it.
Guest:Yeah, it's one of those things with banjo where you get all these amazing opportunities for the banjo, but they're couched in Southern culture and a certain kind of looking down on it a little bit, like dueling banjos, for instance.
Guest:That blew me away.
Guest:I had that record.
Guest:Right, but it's connected to a male rape scene.
Guest:And then you've got Beverly Hillbillies, which...
Guest:Which is all about, you know, how dumb... Well, they're actually the smart people in the barrel.
Guest:The country guys are the smart people.
Guest:And then there's Bonnie and Clyde, you know, Foggy Mountain Breakdown.
Guest:It's all connected to sort of these stereotypes.
Guest:Negative stereotypes?
Guest:That really locked this down.
Guest:And when people forget about it, it's actually an African instrument.
Marc:Well, it's weird to me, though.
Marc:Like, I think, like...
Marc:Like, I didn't register Deliverance.
Marc:I just rewatched it.
Marc:And I don't connect that music with that rape scene.
Marc:But I know the comedians did.
Marc:And it also was about- Squeal like a pig.
Marc:Yeah, and also morons.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I just remember being fascinated with the kid who was playing on the bridge and wondering whether or not he was-
Marc:you know, who that guy was.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Do you know who he was?
Guest:I know he wasn't a banjo player, and in fact, he was doing claw... The hand that you see is doing claw hammer style, and the banjo you hear is three-finger style.
Guest:But it was still the most compelling scene ever.
Guest:It was great.
Marc:It changed my life somehow, because now that we talk about it, I never forget it.
Marc:I guess the Beverly Hillbillies, I never really associated personally, but I know what you're saying is true culturally, but I don't know...
Marc:I associated it as I got older with complex music, with bluegrass music, with the music as a guitar player that I just can't wrap my brain around because I don't practice enough.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And I don't know how anybody gets that speed.
Marc:And I never understood how banjo works.
Guest:Well, it's a trick.
Guest:It's a trick.
Guest:It is a trick.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Because you're alternating your right-hand fingers, you only have to play one-third as fast and use open strings.
Guest:And all of these tricks of open strings that make you able to blaze.
Guest:But I do like to point out that banjo was like, before it was a white southern instrument, it was in Louis Armstrong's first bands.
Guest:It was in early jazz.
Guest:So the pigeonholing is a little irritating.
Guest:I'm very serious about banjo, Anne.
Guest:Maybe you can tell already.
Guest:But I love it so much, and I hate for it to get stuck in this one, although fabulous, part of banjo music.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:It seems to be your mission in life is to free the banjo or to move it through everything.
Guest:Well, I think so.
Guest:I was growing up in the 60s.
Guest:But where did you grow up?
Guest:What part of Queens?
Guest:I grew up in Manhattan.
Guest:In Manhattan?
Guest:My mom and my grandparents were in Queens and moved there when I was pretty young.
Guest:So 100th Street and West End Avenue.
Guest:Your folks weren't married?
Guest:My mom and my father split up when I was one or two, something like that.
Marc:Did you have a relationship with him?
Guest:No, I didn't meet him until I was in my 40s.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I had to go find him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:That's a trip.
Guest:That's a trip.
Marc:So, okay, so now where do your people come from?
Guest:What's the... Well, I think Belarus is some of it.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Maybe we're really... Well, I mean, Jewish?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, my mother's side.
Marc:On your mother's side.
Marc:Yeah, not on my father's side.
Marc:My father's side goes all the way back to Belarus.
Marc:I did that Finding Your Root show, so I know that for a fact.
Marc:So where?
Marc:Pale of Settlement, Belarus.
Marc:Oh, which part of Belarus?
Marc:Which town?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I'd have to look it up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think Minsk is like our scene.
Marc:Oh, that's it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I just know Pale of Settlement, Belarus.
Marc:I probably do have the towns because they did a pretty thorough undertaking.
Marc:So your dad wasn't Jewish?
Marc:No.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Decidedly not.
Guest:Decidedly not.
Guest:I finally met him, and he was a professor of dead languages and stuff in Maryland.
Guest:A professor of dead languages?
Guest:Yeah, an interesting guy, very smart guy, tried to make it as an opera singer, and he's the one who named me Bela after Bela Bartok and Leo Sianacek and all these great classical composers, but he was not around in any way.
Marc:So how does your mother account for that?
Marc:What the hell could go so wrong to where you can't even engage with the guy?
Guest:I think she tried.
Guest:Oh, it was just him.
Guest:Yeah, I think he felt like- Were they married?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I have an older brother too.
Guest:Oh, you do?
Marc:So he hung around a little while for that guy?
Guest:A year longer.
Guest:We're a year apart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he flew the coop for whatever their reasons were.
Guest:But at any rate, I made a few overtures and never got a reaction.
Guest:So eventually I just trapped him in his lair.
Guest:I went to this college and just stood at the end of the line.
Guest:Did he know you were the banjo master?
Guest:Well, that's what I found out after meeting him and getting to know him a little bit.
Guest:I found my records at his house.
Guest:It was bizarre.
Guest:It was very strange.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And where is it at now?
Guest:I'm pretty sure he passed.
Guest:Oh, you don't know.
Guest:I have every reason to think that he's passed at this point.
Guest:I did get to say goodbye to him at a certain point.
Marc:That professor of dead languages.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You did get to say goodbye to him?
Guest:Yeah, I was passing through and I wanted to maybe introduce his grandson to him that he didn't know maybe existed.
Guest:But then I found him in a hospital bed, you know, in what I believe were his last days because I haven't been able to find out whatever happened.
Guest:It's been several years.
Guest:You can't find out?
Guest:i can't find an obit yeah i don't know maybe he's fine oh but i don't think so so did he meet his grandkids no it didn't it was just a little too late oh i'm sorry man so you didn't get that but i think it's you know it's okay it life is better i think the way it all worked out probably it sounds like he might have been a difficult man yeah he was yeah and your mother was uh was she musical
Marc:No.
Guest:But she did marry a cellist.
Guest:So that was a good thing.
Guest:Joe Palladino got a good Italian aspect to things.
Guest:A cellist?
Guest:Yeah, Canarsie.
Guest:Canarsie.
Guest:Canarsie cellist.
Marc:But who did he play with?
Guest:Well, he went into the Seventh Army Symphony.
Guest:So he was in Germany for a long time.
Guest:Playing cello?
Guest:Playing cello, yeah.
Guest:How did that work?
Guest:I think that's the way to be in the army, be in the band.
Marc:Sure, but it's not a marching band.
Marc:You're not playing outdoors.
Guest:No, they have these great orchestras.
Guest:In fact, what's bizarre is it turned out that one of the conductors he worked with later moved to Nashville and became the main guy in the Nashville Symphony.
Guest:And conducted me many, many years later.
Marc:And he knew your stepdad?
Guest:We never.
Guest:I think I got to introduce them at that point, at one point, yeah.
Guest:I don't think he remembered.
Guest:There was a lot of people that went through the Seventh Army Symphony.
Guest:Apparently it was a crack orchestra.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Were they playing swing music?
Marc:What were they doing?
Guest:Oh, no, classical.
Guest:Really?
Guest:All classical?
Guest:Yeah, straight up classical, yeah.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Just what they needed in Germany, Americans playing German classical music.
Marc:So you grew up with classical in the house?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Not the kind of classical my father would have wanted me to hear, probably, because he liked the really wacky, harsh, you know, Hungarian and avant-garde type stuff, you know, more progressive stuff.
Guest:My stepfather liked Brahms and Handel, and his tastes were a little more general.
Guest:Did he teach you how to read music?
Guest:No, we didn't do music together, but I would listen to them play the music.
Guest:You have people come over and play string quartets on Sundays, and I'd just listen.
Guest:I'd fall asleep trying to read the score, but I'd just look at the notes going up and down.
Guest:I didn't think it had anything to do with me.
Guest:I wanted to go play the banjo, but I liked it.
Guest:So then years later when I did try, I met people who were great classical musicians, and I wanted to try to play with them.
Guest:At least I knew how it was supposed to sound somewhat.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Well, I mean, that's what's interesting about some of the footage from the Throwdown.
Marc:Is that what it's called?
Marc:Yeah, Throwdown Your Heart.
Marc:Throwdown Your Heart is that you have to, you studied the rhythms, and it's a much, in some ways, in terms of scales and whatnot, it's a simpler undertaking than what you used to, and it's more repetitive.
Marc:But that is the sort of hypnotic effect of the original musics.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, it's deceptive.
Guest:Because sometimes you think something is simpler because it has less harmony, but it isn't necessarily simpler.
Guest:It's just different.
Guest:It's complicated in a different way, and there's nuance.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, for sure.
Marc:I mean, well, I'll get that in a minute.
Guest:So you started playing banjo when?
Guest:15.
Guest:15.
Guest:So I was playing some guitar because I didn't have the nerve to ask for a banjo from anybody.
Guest:I never thought anybody could really play it.
Guest:It was just so impossible.
Guest:So I ended up with a guitar.
Guest:Were you in a band?
Guest:No, no, just played, you know.
Guest:beatles songs and yeah stuff of folk songs of the day you know but you weren't some kind of wizard huh oh not at all no i was one of those kids it's kind of like he likes the guitar right as opposed to when i got my band okay so i went to see my grandfather on my just before i started high school and uh he said hey i i know you like guitar i so i found this banjo your mom's dad yeah yeah great great dude and he said i got i found this at a garage sale here you want it and it's like
Guest:I couldn't believe it and just landed in my lap the day before high school started.
Guest:And that began an obsessive relationship with music where I wasn't obsessive with the guitar.
Guest:The switch wasn't flipped.
Guest:But once I had the banjo, it became everything to me.
Guest:And I don't know why.
Guest:Maybe it has something to do with the father stuff, too.
Guest:It was like a need to prove worth.
Guest:It became the thing that I poured myself into.
Guest:And by the time I was out of high school, I was pretty darn, I could play a lot like some of the really good players and went right into professional stuff.
Marc:So you just, well, there is something magical about a banjo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Especially if you're close.
Guest:Like if you hear a recording, you don't necessarily get all of the nuance, not just the nuance, but there's all these harmonics and the strings ring into each other and it's like sitting in your lap and the sound is coming up at you.
Guest:And I just still love just to play it.
Guest:So how'd you learn?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I started taking some lessons.
Guest:First, I got the Pete Seeger book.
Guest:That's the book?
Guest:That was the book back then.
Guest:And that was enough to get you started?
Guest:Well, then I started taking some lessons, and I just started going through teachers.
Guest:I was moving fast.
Guest:So do you feel like you were a prodigy, a banjo prodigy?
Guest:I was...
Guest:I was because my third teacher was like, and still one of the great banjo players of all time, this guy named Tony Trishka, who came from Syracuse, a modernist, like a crazy, free, awesome, primitive, wild, technically virtuosic player.
Guest:And I could play a whole lot like him by the end of high school.
Guest:Really?
Guest:People would say, oh, well, you guys were playing together.
Guest:I couldn't tell who was who when I closed my eyes.
Guest:And then I had to figure out, oh, my God, there already is one of him.
Guest:So now I got to find my own way and start sounding different.
Guest:But I went right into professional groups out of high school.
Marc:Out of high school.
Marc:So you're out of high school.
Marc:You didn't go to college?
Marc:No.
Marc:So you get out of high school and you're a banjo wizard.
Marc:What year is it?
Marc:I'm 75.
Guest:Six.
Guest:So what are you going to do?
Guest:Well, that was the question.
Guest:Like everybody would tell me, including my other teachers, you're not going to make a living playing the banjo.
Guest:It's not going to happen.
Guest:So you better learn a bunch of instruments and maybe you could get a job in a country band playing a fiddle, mandolin, banjo, pedal, steel.
Guest:I was like, I don't think I want to do that.
Marc:Be like one of the Mandrells or Marty Stewart or somebody just kind of jumping around in an outfit.
Guest:Yeah, it wasn't me.
Guest:So I joined a band.
Guest:I just got into bands and I follow a band through to its, you know,
Guest:a better band and but like so you're in Queens we're in Manhattan at this point okay you're in Manhattan you're a banjo player just out of high school and you're an inspired banjo player what kind of band bluegrass band but there's there's this progressive bluegrass thing has been going on for a long time so there there were bands where I could do like I have to point out
Guest:I got my mind blown when I heard Chick Corea at the Beacon Theater, which was a couple of blocks from where I lived at that point.
Guest:And I wanted to play that kind of music.
Marc:And you did do a record with him.
Guest:Yeah, several records.
Guest:We have one in the can, too, that's going to come out at some point.
Guest:Yeah, it was a big loss.
Guest:A true mentor and a genius cat to be around.
Guest:What was it about Chick Corea's sound?
Guest:What was it about what he did?
Guest:Well, you know, there's a lot of kinds of jazz.
Guest:And some of it is like on the back of the beat and kind of sleepy and loungy.
Guest:And some of it is like when I heard somebody play like with this forward lean, this Latin energy, I was like, oh, I could relate to that.
Guest:I could see somehow that working on the banjo.
Guest:And it just, again, it clicked for me.
Guest:And it had the same impact on me as hearing Earl Scruggs of like, I don't know what that is, but I want to know.
Guest:Charlie Parker had the same impact because he played with a lot of ferocity, forward lean, rhythm really.
Guest:And I think banjo is a percussion instrument and a melodic instrument.
Guest:So if you get turned on by rhythm, it's a good instrument.
Guest:Yeah, if you can get into that.
Marc:Well, yeah, I guess there's a banjo groove that I think everyone's sort of familiar with the bluegrass banjo groove.
Marc:But then you kind of move it around.
Marc:So you're in these bands.
Marc:So you're saying there was a kind of progressive bluegrass music in the late 70s?
Guest:As long as I've been around.
Guest:It was already firmly established.
Guest:All these great musicians.
Guest:Is that sort of alongside of that first alt country?
Guest:Well, there's a guy named John Hartford who wrote the song Gentle on My Mind, but he was actually a progressive bluegrass creator.
Guest:What does it mean to be a progressive bluegrass player?
Guest:It means that you don't just play the old cabin home on the hill.
Guest:You look for ways to, like you're influenced by the Beatles and you're influenced by Led Zeppelin and you're influenced by everything around you and you include it in your music and it makes for personal music.
Guest:It's not a museum thing or a carbon copy of another time.
Guest:It's you being you.
Guest:And that's been the key to bluegrass surviving, in my opinion, is people making it their own and making it new periodically.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's a fun thing to be part of, that side of it.
Marc:Would I be able to tell?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, I know- If you like Flatt and Scruggs, if you like Earl Scruggs, you know what that sounds like.
Guest:And that would be, yeah, in the 60s, they tried some Bob Dylan songs and they did some experimenting.
Marc:Sure, I can tell when-
Marc:when people are playing covers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But is there... But no, there's a vibe to Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers and Jimmy Martin and all these cats that, you know, it's like if you like old country music, you like, you know, you don't like the new slick stuff, but you like, you know, Patsy Cline or you like, you know... That's way back.
Guest:But I mean, but Bluegrass is sort of of its own in country, it seems.
Guest:It used to be the same thing back, you know, when you go back to the 40s and 50s, it was all on the same stations, but it got separated out and it became, you know...
Guest:More of a particular thing for the folks that like that sort of thing rather than a pop centrist thing, which it was before.
Marc:So it seems like a lot of bluegrass wasn't about songwriting.
Marc:It was about playing.
Guest:I wouldn't say that.
Guest:I think the great bluegrass book is full of great songs, but they're of a certain perspective, a certain time, and they tell the story of a person that grew up in this place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so they're, you know, they're very true.
Guest:They're very real.
Guest:But I think there's a lot of weak bluegrass songs out there.
Guest:There's a lot of weak bluegrass playing out there.
Guest:Is there?
Guest:It is.
Guest:How can he fake that shit?
Guest:That's the problem.
Guest:There's a pace to it.
Guest:You can't.
Guest:But people don't already, if you don't know what it's supposed to sound like, you don't know what it could sound like.
Guest:So you got a lot of folks that, you know, would like to play it.
Guest:And that's cool.
Guest:But they can't represent it at its highest level.
Marc:Have you played with Steve Martin?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:How's he?
Guest:He's good.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:He's really good.
Guest:He's very creative.
Guest:He's always looking for his own way to do it.
Guest:He's not trying to imitate anybody.
Guest:Does he ever ask you for advice?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm on his board.
Guest:He gives away money to...
Guest:Poor banjo players that are really, really great.
Guest:He feels like it takes as much work to play the banjo as to be a scientist.
Guest:Well, he loves it.
Guest:A doctor, and you don't get paid commensurately for it.
Guest:So he started the Steve Martin Prize and put together a team of folks like Tony Trishka, we were talking about, and me and others to help them figure out who to give it to.
Guest:It's pretty cool.
Marc:Tell me about that guy, though.
Marc:The guy who you said is kind of out there, the guy that you were playing with in high school.
Marc:Oh, you mean John Hartford?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, well, John Hartford.
Guest:Like, what do you mean?
Guest:I didn't play with him, but he was a hero.
Guest:I mean, he just started doing songs about people smoking dope, and he did songs about, you know, real life stuff, but he had it in a bluegrass framework.
Guest:And it was an album called Steam Powered Aeroplane.
Guest:It was just one of the great classic things that just turned bluegrass to this new place.
Guest:And then there was a band that came not too long after that called New Grass Revival.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As Sam Bush wrote.
Guest:ran and uh and i joined that band when i moved to tennessee um in uh 81 and is that before the fleck tones or after yeah fleck tones was after nine years of being in newgrass and newgrass was a very progressive like we did long jams and um different kinds of right unique kinds of but your first few records are pretty straightforward no
Guest:Yeah, more or less.
Guest:I was always pushing, like I recorded Chick Corea's song on my first solo album.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I didn't start out as a straight guy.
Guest:Like I moved to Kentucky and then I got into it.
Guest:I was like a progressive New York Yankee banjo player.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was trying to, I was like, I don't want to be a Yankee banjo player.
Guest:I want to be like Earl Scruggs.
Guest:I want to be like Jaden Crowe.
Guest:Okay, but Yankee banjo player, meaning that you were a mimic?
Guest:Like I didn't really know how it was supposed to go.
Guest:You know, there's gatekeepers in all these different kinds of music.
Marc:So you moved?
Yeah.
Guest:I moved.
Guest:Yeah, I moved to Kentucky.
Guest:After how long?
Guest:Like after your first record?
Guest:Or before your first record?
Guest:No, it was 79.
Guest:So it was three years after high school I moved down there.
Marc:To get the real groove.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that was your first grail.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you go down there with your proficiency.
Marc:That's pretty impressive.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So do you get into like sort of banjo wars?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had the folks that knew tell me I was not all that special.
Guest:And then I had a lot of things I needed to get together if I was going to be any good.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:Who were those people?
Guest:Well, they're like the gatekeepers.
Guest:They're like the people that know.
Marc:Who are the banjo gatekeepers?
Guest:We need to know.
Guest:If you were me, you would have found out.
Guest:But they'd come and they'd say, okay, you're micing your banjo wrong.
Guest:Your banjo sounds like shit.
Guest:You know, you don't have good tone.
Guest:And these are old banjos?
Guest:There are people that were in the banjo community.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got some really good advice from them.
Guest:They became some of my good friends.
Guest:Like Scruggs?
Guest:No, not players so much.
Guest:There was a guy named Harry Sparks and Harry Bickle in Louisville.
Guest:And they were guys that really knew and really were supportive of keeping, you know, the great things about bluegrass together, which...
Guest:And then the god musically down there was a guy named J.D.
Guest:Crowe.
Guest:And J.D.
Guest:just passed this last year.
Guest:He was a machine.
Guest:He was just a glorious banjo player in an old school style, like coming out of Scruggs.
Guest:And progressive in his way, but really the thing about him was his sense of time and tone.
Guest:And I couldn't hold a candle to it.
Guest:Nobody could.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:But he couldn't do what I did, but I don't know that he would want to.
Guest:He was authentically himself.
Marc:Yeah, he was awesome.
Marc:I guess that must be the sort of thing, is that you get these guys that are dug into themselves, but it's enough because nobody sounds like them.
Marc:You're supposed to be yourself, right?
Marc:You are, but I think that virtuosos, it's trickier to find yourself because of your proficiency.
Marc:I think sometimes you discover your authentic self through limitation.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:I couldn't agree more.
Marc:So when you go down there, like outside of micing your banjo, and when you have to adjust a banjo, it's all those screws around it?
Guest:Yeah, there's all kinds of ways you can change the sound.
Guest:And those guys set you straight on that stuff?
Guest:Well, I finally got an old banjo.
Guest:This banjo that I still have.
Guest:And these banjos that were made in the 30s are like the Holy Grail.
Guest:Earl played one.
Guest:He played a Granada.
Guest:But these were Gibson master tones from the 1930s.
Guest:And they made them right.
Guest:And they had a sound and a depth and a clarity.
Guest:And nobody's ever touched them.
Guest:So once I got down there, I realized I needed one of those.
Guest:And I got one.
Guest:And then these guys helped me set it up and get it.
Guest:So this is like the Stradivarius of banjos.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and they're like $100,000 items if you get one without the original neck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is okay because some of the old necks don't hold up that well.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So you can get... $100,000.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well... For a good one.
Guest:Guitars are a lot more than that now, you know.
Marc:The old ones.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, I'm not paying for a guitar that much money.
Marc:But I know what you mean, sure.
Marc:I mean, you can spend some money on guitar.
Marc:Jason Isbell spent some real money on that 59 Les Paul.
Marc:Yeah, I'm sure.
Guest:You friends with him?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a good guy.
Guest:Yeah, we did something.
Guest:I played on something for him recently for Georgia Voting Rights.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You play with his wife's a fiddle player.
Guest:I know her, yeah.
Guest:Abby and I hung out.
Guest:My wife is a banjo player, too, and we hung out with them at the Grammys one year when we all won and got stuck in the line together, and we've known each other.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Marc:Yeah, he's a good guy.
Marc:Solid songwriter.
Guest:Really cool dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I like that he's not afraid to speak out about his views about things.
Guest:I know.
Guest:He's very active on Twitter.
Guest:It's ballsy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, from that community, it's a beautiful thing.
Marc:It really is.
Marc:All right, so you figure out how to mic your banjo and make it sound different.
Marc:So what in your style at that time needed to be relaxed or tightened?
Guest:Everything needed to be tightened.
Yeah.
Guest:Everything was... Because in New York, it was all of these sort of bluegrassers that came out of the jazz time, you know, they were all about the ideas.
Guest:And there was a phenomenal bunch of musicians, people like Andy Statman and Tony Trishka and Kenny Kosek.
Marc:Let me ask you real quick before I lose it, because we're talking fast, is that is there... Is the...
Marc:Like, you know, I probably could have watched a Ken Burns talk about this, but was there, alongside of the country tradition of banjo playing, is there a banjo style that originated in jazz?
Guest:Well, yeah, the four string stuff.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You know, that's the stuff.
Guest:And it also evolved into this.
Guest:That was the Dixieland stuff?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think if you're from New Orleans, you don't like that term.
Guest:You would call it New Orleans music.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But yeah, but to evolve into what's maybe thought of more Cracker Jack banjo playing guys like Eddie P. Buddy, just you see them in the old movies, you know, and they're show offs with a flat pick.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:They have this incredible technique with a flat pick.
Guest:They're like Djangoing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Like almost like Django Weinhart kind of guitar playing.
Guest:Yeah, I guess so.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Those flurries of chords up the neck.
Guest:It was an amazing technique.
Guest:But then it kind of died out.
Guest:When the guitar came into jazz, banjo pretty much died in instant death because black folks were happy to see it go.
Guest:They connected it to slavery.
Guest:A lot of white folks put on blackface and sang songs about...
Guest:how great it was on the old plantation, you know, and all these connections and racist images for them, they wanted to get away from it.
Guest:So when the guitar showed up, it was like, let's do that.
Guest:Let's get rid of this banjo thing.
Guest:And then it sort of got excised from the black community.
Marc:But it's interesting because it's interesting how quickly...
Marc:I talked to Taj Mahal once, right?
Marc:So he- Banjo Man as well, as other things.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he picked up some old crappy K guitar he used to have in the garage.
Marc:We were talking about Skip James, and he was able to pick that guitar up and within really two seconds go all the way back to Africa with those notes.
Marc:And you could hear it immediately.
Marc:But oddly-
Marc:The most effective way to sound truly African is with a banjo in terms of those types of runs of notes.
Guest:Well, yeah, there's just a tone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's, you know, when you know what that sounds like, you know that the banjo sounds like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:If you don't know that, you think it sounds like a white Southern thing, which is, again, a great musical part.
Guest:When did you know that about the banjo?
Guest:I think I knew it kind of, you know, you know it in your head, but you don't know it in your body.
Guest:And I knew that even as before the end of high school, I knew it came from Africa, but it didn't seem to have that much to do with me at the time because I was trying to learn this bluegrass language.
Guest:Did you ever take it upon yourself to learn the four string riffs?
Guest:I wasn't interested.
Guest:Still?
Guest:Could you do it now?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, I would learn the four string things on the five string.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, I would do that.
Guest:You can do those chord runs?
Guest:Some of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I have sort of some workarounds.
Guest:I mean, it's not really what the five string does best, but there's some ways.
Guest:Because I'm using three finger picks all the time.
Guest:Oh, and that was a flat pick thing.
Guest:Yeah, it's a different technique.
Guest:It's almost like a mandolin thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Well, very similar.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So you go to Kentucky and you get this, you learn how to tighten up.
Guest:It's all about time, taste, you know, the T's, the taste, tone, time technique.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And these guys play like, you know, metronomic.
Guest:They're capable of playing much more metronomic than I was because, like I said, up north, it was about the idea.
Marc:That's the amazing thing about it, right?
Marc:Geez, that pace, man.
Marc:Well, it is.
Guest:pace but up north people were like what kind of crazy idea can you come up with and down south it was like can you play in time yeah two different points of view right and so i was trying to get get to a point where uh you know i could do both yeah that was my goal yeah and you got it
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I mean, more or less, there was a lot of people stopping using banjo in the bluegrass world to make their music.
Guest:Like Tony Rice was a great guitar player.
Guest:He wasn't using banjo.
Guest:David Grisman had this quintet playing kind of jazz.
Guest:With the mandolin?
Guest:Yeah, but he wasn't using banjo.
Guest:And I was like, I think if I could play with that kind of a time and still have this technique, maybe I could find my place in that community.
Marc:Well, why do you think they wanted to get rid of the banjo?
Marc:Because it overtook everything and it made the music what they were trying to sort of get out from under?
Guest:Partly, which is what I did when I went to the Flectones is drop all the other bluegrass instruments.
Guest:But it also was because there really wasn't anybody yet who could do that stuff on the banjo and fit into that kind of a group.
Guest:What, take down the banjoness?
Guest:Not just take down the banjo, but play the kind of intricate music that they were trying to play that was moving in a jazz direction.
Guest:It wasn't really... Modern jazz.
Marc:Well, I mean, but jazz, but not like they weren't trying to encapsulate a New Orleans sound, which is the original banjo jazz.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No, I mean, they're trying to move into something.
Guest:Grisman was really into I would say if you listen to it, you'd say it was more like a Django, you know, coming out of Django, a combination of jazz and Django's music.
Guest:And Tony Rice, too, was a little more modern.
Guest:He was he was maybe more into 60s jazz and, you know, or not Ornette, but.
Marc:uh mccoy tyner type stuff and he was into things like that and he was figuring out how to play that on a bluegrass with a bluegrass technique on the guitar because i was in the flectones records and there's some of them where it made me wonder if you'd ever played with zappa i wish because there were some runs like that because in the production and in the way that you guys were handling the instruments and and in the uh composition orchestration they were so tight and he liked to play shit that was fast oh yeah and and and organized yeah you know it almost seemed like i i don't know that
Marc:I don't know if it was that, but well enough, he must have played with a banjo player at some point.
Guest:We would have had to.
Guest:Because it just seems like something he would do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, even John McLaughlin did a banjo solo on a record somewhere back there in the past.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a guitar banjo, but it sounds awesome.
Marc:So when all these guys are kind of, you know, moving away from the banjo and you're trying to integrate it into what they're doing, that's when you put the flat tones together?
Marc:No, it was some years later.
Guest:At first I had to kind of dig my way in.
Guest:I wanted to get in with the cats, and those were the cats.
Guest:Was Grisman in those guys?
Guest:Grisman, yeah.
Guest:And Sam Bush still liked the banjo, but Tony Rice was like the holy grail.
Guest:We're using that word a lot.
Guest:That's all right.
Guest:We're using that a lot today, but it's true.
Guest:He was the cat you wanted to play with if you played anything in this music, those two guys.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I wanted to get in with those guys, and I managed to find my way.
Guest:Also, Jerry Douglas.
Guest:Were you just like, would you just annoy him?
Guest:Did you just hang around?
Guest:Well, a great thing to do is invite someone to play on your record.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Guest:If you've actually got someone who's going to pay to have you do a record, then they'll go, you know, it's a small investment of time.
Guest:We'll do this session, spend a couple of days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then so I would invite over my grade.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And say, is there any chance you would play on this record?
Guest:And then they'd say, okay, we'll play a couple of tracks.
Guest:And then pretty soon they'd say, yeah, this guy's okay.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Then it asks you to do something and then you're in.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:So when did you know that you'd arrived into that pocket that you wanted to be in?
Guest:Oh, and Tony Rice hired me to play on one of his albums and it was still one of the greatest experiences ever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which album?
Guest:Cold on the Shoulder.
Guest:yeah yeah why was it so great just because you worship the guy no because he like he played with crow the jd crow guy we're talking about and he um he knew how to make a make it effortless to play banjo he had an accompaniment he's a great soloist one of the greatest soloists in bluegrass guitar but um he knew how to accompany in such a way that it was like flying you just felt like you were flying and you could do things that you couldn't like a great jazz drummer or any kind of great drummer or any great rhythm player that knows how to
Guest:put his energy to making the other people sound good.
Guest:He had this uncanny gift, you know?
Marc:That's the thing I always envy about guys who can really play and sort of get on, like, because it feels like a lot of banjos like flying, that, you know, once you figure out how to do that, and you get on that roll, it just never stops.
Marc:It's addictive.
Marc:Yeah, I could imagine that.
Marc:But, like, with guitar, I'm, like, a kind of, you know, crunchy, you know, my rhythm is specific, and I don't pick well.
Marc:I do okay.
Marc:But...
Marc:But I'm not claiming to be any kind of musician, but I do envy whatever practice it takes to get to that place.
Marc:I just never did it, and I couldn't do it.
Guest:Yeah, but it's important to you.
Guest:It's like a part of who you are, right?
Guest:It is.
Guest:That's the thing.
Marc:But I've had to settle into whatever dirty kind of guitar playing I do as my limit to a degree, as opposed to compare myself to 12-year-olds on Instagram.
Guest:Yeah, well, fast fingers is not necessarily the only goal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's supposed to be an expression of you and who you are.
Guest:That's what music is.
Guest:I've accepted that.
Marc:And I believe that I am there to a degree.
Marc:But for some reason, there's still something about fast fingers that seems very important in my brain.
Guest:It's appealing, but whoever you are, there's somebody faster.
Guest:And I go through the same thing.
Guest:You do?
Guest:I wish I could play like McLaughlin.
Guest:I wish I could play like...
Guest:some of these cats that just on the banjo you mean yeah i mean i can't i'm my i've come to terms with there's a certain speed like in my 60s i don't think i'm going to get any faster at this point so and the true speed of um you know the great electric guitar players in particular or piano players you know saxophone it's like i don't even want to do that though i don't
Marc:Don't like, you know, because it's still about phrasing.
Guest:I mean, that's sort of my thing, you know, is do you really want to listen to that?
Guest:That's what I've also come.
Guest:Maybe it's a justification for my lacks, but I go, you know, I don't really want to hear people play at that speed all the time.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:And I'm, but I want to hear them playing some great notes that mean something.
Guest:And I want to hear some heart.
Guest:So I'm getting more comfortable about moving in that direction.
Marc:So, because it seems like the harmonica player on the flectones is like that on the first record, the first two records.
Guest:Howard Levy.
Guest:Holy shit, man.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:It's a blues harp.
Guest:That's the crazy thing.
Guest:And he's playing all the notes that don't appear to be on the harp.
Guest:He has a system called overblows where he blows the notes to different pitches.
Guest:And he can play in any key on any harp.
Guest:It's bizarre.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's amazing.
Marc:And that whole band, like, you know, I could feel that was sort of in terms of like, you know, tight kind of explorations of that jazz trip.
Marc:That's where it was happening, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, everybody had different strengths.
Guest:So like, how can we put something together here?
Guest:That's really.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:honest and all of us so you know victor and future man had this incredible funk part of their playing howard has all this bulgarian music all this classical music all this jazz i had my bluegrass to bring into it and if we could all be ourselves together in the room it was going to be something you know
Guest:And it worked.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I would write these complex pieces and they were the guys that could, like when I tried to teach these things to my bluegrass heroes, they'd be like, Tony Rice had this voice like Miles Ava, too many brains, man, too many brains, get rid of some of these parts, man.
Guest:I'd be like, ah.
Guest:And then, so I was simplifying to record with those guys.
Guest:Then I met these cats, Victor Wooten and Future Man and Howard, and they were like, what else you got?
Guest:you know you got any more yeah it was like oh and then i got to work on creating a lot of and doing a lot of writing yeah because they could do anything that i could imagine now at this point where you're playing with these guys you're are you building an audience yeah so when i left new grass revival after you know putting this thing together sort of as an idea i decided okay i'm ready to like try this thing and go out and fight the good fight and maybe you know
Guest:With the flexones?
Guest:With the flexones.
Guest:Maybe this is impossible.
Guest:This will never be a big thing.
Guest:But maybe 20 years from now, maybe if I commit to being a band leader, maybe I'll be able to survive.
Guest:And I won't be able to hold on to these guys, but I'll just be a band leader and I'll try to do this new banjo thing.
Guest:And then it just took off.
Guest:It just like within the first three years, we were on Johnny Carson, we were on Arsenio, all kinds of stuff happened.
Guest:We were at Carnegie Hall for the first time.
Guest:opening up for people, and it just kind of exploded, and it still makes almost no sense that it would have.
Guest:People love the banjo.
Guest:Well, I think they like to see the banjo with black and white guys playing together, funk, bass, and banjo, and harmonica, and not what they expected.
Guest:It kind of presented as a novelty trip.
Guest:That's why Johnny Carson would put it on, and
Guest:And then, but then the music was, there was enough music to make you maybe come back and listen again.
Guest:And if you listened a few times, maybe you might start leaving, you know, keeping it in your life.
Marc:And are you selling records?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For that time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think there was some, you know, a couple hundred thousand type things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when did you start winning Grammys?
Guest:It took a long time.
Guest:Oh, it did.
Guest:They called me the Susan Lucci of the Grammys for a while.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, because I think it was seven or eight that we were nominated.
Guest:But then all of a sudden it started happening and it was surprising.
Guest:So how many records did you do with the Flecktones?
Guest:Oh, we've done a lot.
Guest:You still work with them?
Guest:We haven't recorded lately, but we get together and play.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Same guys?
Guest:We're back to the original group.
Guest:What happened was Howard left after three years out of boredom.
Guest:He was bored with us at the time.
Guest:I apologize, Howard.
Guest:Where did he go?
Guest:He just went out into freelance stuff, doing a lot of different stuff, his own music.
Guest:He played with Kenny Loggins for a while, Paquito de Rivera, jazz stuff.
Guest:But then we got Jeff Coffin, and Jeff played saxophone with us, and it became more of a funk-driven, sax-involved thing.
Guest:And then when Leroy died and Dave Matthews' band, because we used to open up for Dave a lot, he took that slot.
Guest:So he's been with Dave Matthews ever since.
Guest:And we took a few years off, and then we asked Howard if he wanted to come back, and he was into it.
Huh.
Marc:I'm not sure.
Marc:I'm very weird about Dave Matthews, but I don't know if I can name one of his songs.
Marc:That's a weird thing.
Marc:There's something about me and my judgmental ass that I don't know what it is.
Guest:Well, we all do that.
Guest:But the truth is, the less you do that, the more stuff there is to enjoy.
Guest:But I'm very guilty of having very Catholic tastes.
Guest:Well, if it isn't this, I don't want to hear it.
Guest:Yeah, like what ones?
Guest:Well, I mean, it's oddly enough about bluegrass.
Guest:If we're talking about traditional bluegrass, I want it to be flat and scrugs.
Guest:I want it to be that.
Guest:If we're talking about jazz, I want kind of blue or I want Coltrane.
Guest:The classics.
Guest:We're talking about fusion.
Guest:I want it to be weather report or return to forever.
Guest:I don't want to hear the other.
Guest:But I've gradually, it's occurred to me.
Guest:How about that in a silent way, man?
Guest:Oh, come on, man.
Guest:Damn.
Guest:This stuff is, you know, you can't be beat.
Guest:But yeah, but I've just realized that if I lighten up, I can enjoy a lot more music and that'd be so... Yeah, I guess that's what I got to do.
Marc:I mean, I'm running out of time.
Marc:I should probably do... Like, I can take it in, man.
Marc:It's like, you know, I really can.
Marc:I can take it in.
Marc:Like, you know, even like, you know, re-engaging with your stuff.
Marc:Because, you know, you sent me that package of records and it took me a while.
Marc:And I'm like, you know, what do I got to know here?
Marc:Because I like...
Marc:Country, I like Scruggs, I like banjo to a degree, but am I gonna listen to banjo all day?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But oddly, in the process of listening to your stuff,
Marc:The stuff I could listen to over and over again where, you know, the Flectones was good.
Marc:I mean, I appreciate the music.
Marc:I know that it's great.
Marc:But the stuff you did with the Indian musicians.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Like that, like, and the classical stuff.
Marc:And I can listen to bluegrass and that's fine.
Marc:You know, but there's part of me that's sort of like, I get it.
Marc:You know, I know what this is.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it's enjoyable.
Marc:But the stuff you did with Chick Corea.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And the stuff you did with Josh Bell, you know, that interpretation of that kind of almost American classical stuff that I thought, you know, I could I could do that.
Marc:Like, I could find myself listening to that again.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the Indian stuff.
Marc:I love that shit.
Marc:Yeah, me too.
Marc:So after the flectones, you're moving through all these other things, but it still seems like you're a banjo missionary.
Marc:You're trying to validate this instrument in every way possible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In fact, I avoided bluegrass for a long, long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I only just came back to it this year.
Guest:With a new record, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What's it called?
Marc:My Bluegrass Heart?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if you know Chick Corea had a record called My Spanish Heart.
Guest:Was that his last record?
Guest:No, it was quite a ways back.
Guest:Because I had the last one.
Marc:I know he passed away before I could talk to him, really.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I always thought he was a Latin guy because all of Spain and all this Latin stuff that he would do.
Guest:But when I got to know him, I discovered he was an Italian guy from Chelsea, Massachusetts.
Guest:And I always thought it was interesting that we all think of Chick Corea.
Guest:And we even won a Latin Grammy together for our album.
Guest:Neither of us are Latin.
Guest:Does anyone know this?
Guest:No, we didn't mention it.
LAUGHTER
Guest:That wouldn't have been the night.
Guest:But I thought there was a parallel because I'm a banjo player from New York City that came into bluegrass.
Guest:The bluegrass is going to be part of what I do no matter whether I want it to be or not.
Guest:It's just in there.
Guest:Nature of the instrument.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I love it.
Guest:It's a really great thing.
Guest:I'm proud of it.
Marc:But when you make decisions around taking the instrument to a different place, which you seem to have done over and over again, like with the fleck tones, and then I don't know what came next, was it classical?
Guest:I think it was maybe,
Guest:It's all happening at the same time.
Guest:I had this pal, Edgar Meyer, who's a great classical musician as well as a lot of other things.
Guest:And he was the first musician, like truly bodacious classical musician that I knew.
Guest:That was kind of in my age group.
Guest:And he started showing me Bach stuff and like sitting down and giving me the time.
Marc:Did you know how to read music then?
Guest:No, I still don't read.
Guest:I use this banjo tablature.
Guest:It's very slow, but I've got to work around basically.
Guest:Never tried to read music?
Guest:I tried.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, the problem is that the banjo, the way it's tuned, there's a lot of different places to play the same note.
Guest:And the distance could be this far.
Guest:I've got them holding my hands three feet apart to find the same note.
Guest:And then you're going to play 16 notes in four or five seconds.
Guest:So how are you going to sight read that?
Guest:So you've got to know where the note is more than you have to know what the note is.
Guest:So if you see the patterns, you see the numbers, then I can just read it.
Guest:But I have to arrange the tablature.
Guest:Like that whole classical record was a big job because I had to arrange the tablature.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:The one with Josh?
Guest:Yeah, that one.
Guest:If you don't want to be bored and get sick and tired of your trip, you've got to go find new stuff and wake you up.
Marc:So that's also what drove you then.
Guest:I think it's a little bit of attention deficit disorder.
Guest:You know, you just if you're that makes sense to me, if you're a pure music guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:A lot of people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But but I mean, you're in a world of of of music where I don't know what the difference is, but it's not like, you know, no producers telling you, like, you know, we got to do that song over and over again.
Guest:I'm the one that says let's do it over and over again because I want to get it really good.
Marc:No, no, I mean like to sell records.
Marc:I mean like we want this to sound the same.
Marc:We want the new record to be like the one that sold a bunch of records.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Whereas like it seems like in the world of musicians you're in, it's like where can we take this thing?
Guest:Yeah, we would avoid all those.
Guest:Like for instance, we had sort of a hit like a VH1 hit of a tune called Sinister Minister.
Guest:It was instrumental, but it did really well.
Guest:And we wouldn't even play it.
Guest:That was the flat tones?
Guest:Yeah, we wouldn't even play it at gigs for a while.
Guest:We just got tired of it.
Guest:People would say when they came to see us the first time that it was just so new and special.
Guest:And then when we came back the next year, if we played the same stuff, it wouldn't be new and special again.
Guest:So when we came back, we'd make sure we had a whole different set list year after year.
Guest:So they would have a possibility of having that experience over and over again with the same band.
Guest:You wouldn't know what was coming, which is not the way you build a music career, really, I've discovered, that people want to hear the hits.
Guest:You never played in Sinister Minister.
Guest:I can't believe you never did that.
Guest:We came to see you.
Guest:We came all this way.
Guest:So now I've lightened up.
Guest:And Chick Corea, he didn't want to play Spain, and when he did, he would play a screwed-up version of it with all the wrong notes because he was so sick of it.
Guest:But then later in his life, he was like,
Guest:Yeah, let's play Spain.
Guest:We're going to play Spain.
Guest:We'll play it right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let's do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Give them what they want.
Guest:Well, you're just thrilled at a certain point in your life that something connected like that in a more of a mass way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And not ashamed of it, but proud of it.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So you're saying the African thing, the classical thing, and the Indian thing, that all happens simultaneously?
Guest:Doesn't look that good.
Guest:Just ongoing.
Guest:What's interesting?
Guest:You're trying to learn stuff.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Marc:But tell me a little bit about that Indian thing, because I'm kind of fascinated with Indian music.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:And there's something about meditative...
Guest:kind of repetitions that like i can listen to it all day long yeah and i like that record so yeah well how'd that come together uh edgar i was telling you about edgar meyer we had written a piece of a banjo concerto a duo concerto bass banjo concerto for the nashville symphony did you see was he one of those on the three banjo player records
Guest:No, he's a bass player.
Guest:Oh, what's that one with the three bands?
Guest:That's Tony Trishka, who I was telling you about, and Bill Keith.
Guest:Man, you really do your homework.
Guest:I thought there was going to be a guy over here with a list for you of everything.
Guest:I was listening.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, thank you for that.
Guest:So anyway, we had written a piece, and the Nashville Symphony built a new hall, and they wanted Nashville composers to write a piece for the new hall.
Guest:And so they asked us to do it, and we said, well, we just did something for you guys.
Guest:And they said, well...
Guest:What if it's a triple concerto?
Guest:And so we started looking at who we might want to do that with, who we could learn from.
Guest:And we had on the list was like Bobby McFerrin and Wynton Marsalis.
Guest:And our favorite pick was Zakir Hussain.
Guest:Zakir is like this guy we always wanted to have time with.
Marc:Is he the sitar guy?
Guest:No, he's the tabla god.
Guest:And he's the guy we were able to get.
Guest:He's the guy we most wanted to learn from because he had the most information that we didn't have.
Guest:And so we started writing with rhythms, but also the album was called The Melody of Rhythm.
Guest:There's a lot of melody too.
Marc:Oh, because it actually has notes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the tabla does, but Indian music.
Guest:I mean, he's not trapped on the tabla just because he plays the tabla.
Guest:He knows that music inside out.
Guest:So we started writing this classical work that used Edgar's harmonic knowledge to try and figure out how to use these Indian rhythms and classical harmony and created a whole thing.
Guest:And then we started touring with Zakir, and that led to knowing a lot of the other...
Guest:great Indian players and going over to India a good bit and just experiencing.
Guest:In fact, last night, Zakir and a bunch of world-class players came to see my bluegrass band in San Francisco, in Oakland.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:It was real sweet.
Guest:They live up there?
Guest:He lives there.
Guest:The tabla player?
Guest:The tabla player, yeah.
Marc:Who played sitar on that one, the one you put out?
Guest:Who played the sitar?
Guest:There was no sitar on that.
Guest:There was none?
Guest:V.M.
Guest:Bott, who played a slide guitar.
Guest:That sounds like a V.M.
Guest:Bott.
Guest:No sitar player.
Guest:No, that would sound like sitar, but it's not.
Marc:And he's playing it in an Indian style?
Guest:yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah because i obviously it fooled me i didn't realize it would uh because i was wondering about because i heard that i'm like hey they got a like a dobro player on this right no it's that's this guy uh he's an amazing musician yeah and so just starting to interact with those guys and realizing that banjo worked really well with those instruments it's a cousin and they liked it they were like well it sounds like one of our cousins of our and they might even claim it
Guest:and say, no, it comes from India first, not Africa.
Marc:Well, it seems like there is some form of banjo in China, and one in India, and then several in Africa.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Middle East, too.
Marc:Yeah, if you're going to go to primitive instruments, you're going to either have a gourd or a drum that you're going to put stuff on.
Marc:I don't know when they started emptying things and making holes, but it seems like a lot of that stuff is just strings over something that has a tone of its own.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It's the most natural thing in the world.
Guest:But it's neat.
Guest:That skin has a sound to it.
Guest:That vibrating membrane has a thing.
Marc:That's what makes it different.
Marc:But again, I think it's sort of amazing that it seems like your journey in life is to de-hillbillyize
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, while I have to point out to people regularly that I do love hillbilly music and bluegrass.
Guest:It's like I wouldn't play banjo if it wasn't for that.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:But I think I got tired of being laughed at as a teenager walking down the street and people saying squeal like a pig or yeehaw.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was like very serious about the banjo and I didn't like that.
Guest:So I think I carried that through.
Guest:Like I had something to prove between that and my parents' situation.
Guest:You know, I had something to prove.
Guest:So that's what I tried to do.
Marc:But yeah, but it's sort of like it.
Marc:But it makes perfect sense in that it's the instrument itself is is not only timeless, but a variant of many instruments around the world.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:So, you know, understanding like even in that in the documentary where you play some, you know, bluegrass riffs.
Marc:for all those Africans, they literally are laughing because it's so impressive and elating just to hear, because they're familiar enough with what that instrument can do or what it is, but to hear that pace and that energy, which is different.
Marc:I mean, the music in that doc, some of that African music, is very fast, and it's complex in rhythms.
Guest:But they're not bluegrass rhythms.
Guest:And a lot of times they're in sixes and threes, and there's not a lot of four-four, oddly enough.
Marc:Well, I mean, well, that's right.
Marc:I listen to Baba Mal, some of that old and monstrous sex, that record.
Marc:He's so great, yeah.
Marc:Like, those rhythms are, it's very interesting, because that's what I was talking to Taj about, is that you can hear that coming up through, like Skip James to me, for some reason, but a lot of those guys a bit.
Marc:But it kind of changed to a 4-4 pretty.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:But Baba Mal is such a badass.
Guest:We went to see him in Denver where the Flectones had a night off and he called and said, my band didn't show up.
Guest:Can you guys come?
Guest:Really?
Guest:And so we all played a whole night with Baba Mal in Denver at the Badanic Gardens.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Completely unrehearsed.
Guest:His band didn't show up?
Guest:Yeah, I think they got stuck on a flight or something or in Africa or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Can you help me?
Guest:It was awesome.
Guest:So much fun.
Guest:See, that's like, well, that's amazing.
Marc:You got to be a pretty top notch musician to pull that off.
Marc:Well, I mean, he'd start and we just get on there.
Marc:We just jump on board.
Marc:We had a great time.
Marc:Well, talk to me about that, about the African stuff, about like, you know, the, what's the word I want?
Marc:It's not as simple as it seems.
Guest:yeah try to do it you know I saw you trying to do it yeah I had to you know let the chips fall where they may because we were filming you know everyday new music with new people and sometimes I could figure it out and sometimes I couldn't and I had this satellite phone at the time I called Abby back then we were new to our relationship but I called her I said I don't know what to do I mean we're filming I don't know I can't do this she said just
Guest:play like a jazz musician just respond don't worry about it you know and it'll be like a jazz musician what does that mean instead of like feeling like like when you play bluegrass or even with the flectones i feel like i'm driving the the thing like i know every note i know what it's supposed to be i can hold it together uh but then you can play where you just leave a lot of space and play over the top and let things fall where they fall and if you have the right attitude it can be awesome and
Guest:I have a battle between being free and being set, like working out these very complex structures, like with the flectones or the classical stuff where it's all set, and then totally playing with Chick or whoever and being completely free.
Guest:And they're two different sides of...
Guest:Me, and most musicians, honestly.
Guest:So in this case, sometimes I could be the me that knew what was going on and could really deliver fundamental stuff, and sometimes I had to be the me that was just responding to stuff that I had no idea what time signature we were in.
Guest:And hearing it back, it was an honest attempt.
Marc:I watched some of it, and it was interesting when you got past the riffs,
Guest:that you know into the repetitions that they were playing well that's what's what happens if you you know if you can relax and let the unconscious take over um you'll just start you know yeah that jazz side of playing where you use your ear and you just respond and usually you don't know what you did when it's the best you're just like i don't know i'm just playing and he's doing that and i gotta do this and i don't know what it is but
Guest:And so there's this guy, this blind musician that played the thumb piano named Anania.
Guest:We had that experience just playing together where what he played just triggered a lot of stuff out of me that I didn't know how to do, but I just did it.
Guest:It was exciting to hear it back when I got home because I didn't know what had happened.
Guest:It was like six weeks of just one day after another being like an incredible...
Guest:challenge.
Guest:And then I was hoping it was going to be good.
Guest:And when I got home, some of it was, you know, a lot of it was.
Marc:So what's going to be the next thing now?
Marc:What are you going to do?
Guest:Well, I have this record with Zakir and Edgar and Rakesh Rasia, this Indian classical.
Marc:More Indian classical stuff?
Guest:Well, I'm saying Indian, but it's a combination of
Guest:It's just four guys playing their instruments.
Guest:It's really cool music.
Guest:Hybrid?
Guest:Hybrid music, yeah.
Guest:Acoustic music, and we're putting that, that's coming.
Guest:And my wife and I, Abigail, she's- How'd you meet her?
Guest:Playing banjo?
Guest:Yeah, kind of.
Guest:She's part of the community.
Marc:How long have you been together?
Guest:Oh, I think about 12 years, something like that.
Guest:Maybe longer.
Guest:Got a couple of kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Young, young kids for an old man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Are they playing music?
Guest:Starting to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A little, uh, little Theodore.
Guest:Um, he likes to play the drums.
Guest:He's four years old.
Guest:He plays like, like, uh, John Bonham.
Guest:I mean, he plays like.
Marc:What is it with these kids that are like, just sort of have this, you know, can do it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I watch it, I don't know if they're, I watch it on IG all the time, but there are these kids now that, is it something in the water?
Marc:Is it like, you know, it seems like the world is filled with prodigies all of a sudden.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I don't know that they're prodigies.
Guest:They're both just real musical kids who've just been around it their whole life, you know, whether they like it or not.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:Juno's a golfer.
Guest:Juno's nine, and he's like, he wins these golf tournaments.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:I say, hey, I want to learn a little bit of banjo anytime.
Guest:I'll be glad to tell you.
Guest:He says, no, Papa, you play banjo, I play golf.
Guest:That's hilarious.
Guest:And he's, you know, amazing.
Guest:But lately he's become interested in fiddle and he sings like a bird, like with perfect pitch.
Guest:So I think, you know, things could turn.
Guest:I'm hopeful, but they don't have to be musicians.
Marc:How'd you meet?
Marc:We're just on a festival or something.
Um,
Guest:I know she came to see me and she's a little bit younger and didn't like it.
Guest:She likes the real traditional stuff, the old time stuff.
Guest:So it wasn't her thing.
Marc:You guys record some old time stuff sometimes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But over the years we met through the community and then I always thought she was an example of the kind of person I was.
Guest:Wished I was with.
Guest:And then one day we were both weren't with other people and I stalked her and, uh, and that's how it went.
Guest:And it's been the best thing that ever happened.
Guest:Do you play a lot?
Guest:Well, we go out and tour together.
Guest:We take the kids and we go on a tour bus and play, you know, small venues.
Guest:And, uh, you know, like you and I play some of the same venues, like Tarrytown, music hall, things like that size.
Guest:And, um, and we go out and play, we get six or seven or maybe eight or nine banjos on stage and trade them around and
Guest:No shit.
Guest:And she's a really good performer.
Guest:Like, she's very good with the audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I kind of stand there and try and think of something to say and let the music do its thing.
Guest:She's got a communication skill that's really beautiful.
Guest:She's a great singer, too.
Guest:So it's nice.
Guest:It's nice.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Let's take the banjo out.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Are you sure?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:If that mic's going to work good with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Let's give it a shot.
Guest:You want to play?
Guest:You want me to demonstrate things?
Guest:What do you want to do?
Marc:Sure.
Guest:I'd like... Oh, yes.
Guest:These things sound good, even way up the neck.
Guest:Some body to it, yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Well, that's where you were playing on that African stuff.
Marc:Once you got up there, it becomes almost more of a percussion instrument when you're way up there.
Guest:Yeah, it's like a lot louder way up here than down here.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, there's a power to it up there.
Marc:So when you think of Indian music, what riff do you start with?
Guest:Maybe a...
Guest:Something like, you know, that's Hans A20, it's called.
Guest:It's like the easiest starter.
Guest:But they have some good scales.
Guest:I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is one I love.
Okay.
Guest:It's just not what you expect.
Guest:Do you ever try to do those bends, though?
Guest:Well, the problem with the banjo is if you bend, the bridge moves and things get out of tune.
Guest:So you can do a little bending, but if you get... I mean, I would love to have had more of a bending career, but it's just that everything just goes out of tune.
Marc:Didn't you ever think about...
Marc:Getting a banjo made so you can bend?
Guest:Well, an electric one.
Guest:You lose all the sound if you have a solid bridge.
Marc:I can't believe that you, Bela Fleck, cannot have a guy make you a banjo you can bend on.
Guest:Well, we do have these.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's what they're doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's like a bender.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You lock it down.
Guest:They're called Scruggs tuners.
Guest:Are they?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He used to do it by ear, where he would bend the string in the song by ear and bring it back up perfectly back in the old days.
Guest:But then they created these cam tuners that were mechanical.
Guest:And now they make these ones.
Guest:Bill Keith was involved in making these ones that have stops inside the keys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Inside the tuners.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:Well, I'm wary to play whole pieces of other people's music because I don't want to get charged for it.
Marc:But you got an original one?
Guest:I could play just a... I just like to start playing and see what happens.
Guest:I could just play a little bit and see if anything good happens.
Guest:If it's not good, please don't play it for anybody.
Guest:Well, I won't.
Guest:I won't.
Guest:I like to just fool around.
Guest:Kind of find my way out of things and start just throwing my hands around and see what happens.
Guest:Well, that's what I do.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I'm very limited.
Guest:That's what we all do.
Marc:I think for tomorrow's show or whenever on Thursday, I just recorded some guitar before you came over.
Marc:It was just pretty much E and C. Yeah.
Marc:And then I just went from A to G back to E. But it was good.
Marc:Those are good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You ready to go?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You want to do something?
Marc:Let's jam, man.
Guest:I'll just do it.
That's right.
Marc:Wanna go to an A?
Oh
Marc:That's cool.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:It happened.
Marc:It's great talking to you.
Marc:It's great playing with you.
Marc:Thanks for coming.
Guest:Hey, thanks for having me.
Guest:It was a real fun conversation.
Guest:And I'm a big fan of the show.
Guest:I appreciate it.
Guest:I go running to it all the time.
Marc:You do?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you knew what you were getting into.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you did good.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right, there you go.
Marc:A little banjo, a little guitar.
Marc:Yeah, the whole ride.
Marc:His most recent album is My Bluegrass Heart, and you can go to bailiffleck.com to find out where he's touring for dates and tickets.
Marc:So, okay, that's that.
Marc:Hang out a second.
Marc:Look, folks, for full Marin subscribers, there's a new Ask Mark Anything episode posted with answers to your questions about lots of stuff.
Marc:Here's a bit of my answer to a question about why we haven't had Bob Dylan on the show.
Marc:And then, you know, I was told to just call Jeff Rosen.
Marc:So I called Jeff Rosen and I was like, look, man, we met a long time ago.
Marc:And look, he knows that people know the show.
Marc:And I called Jeff and I said, look, and he's like, of course, I remember you and I know the show and whatever.
Marc:I said, well, what are the chances, man?
Marc:I want Dylan to do this 1,000th episode.
Marc:It would be important to me.
Marc:What are the chances of that happening?
Marc:And Jeff Rosen said, zero.
Marc:Zero chances.
Marc:And I'm like, why?
Marc:He's like, because, you know, he doesn't he's got no axe to grind, doesn't feel like doing interviews.
Marc:He's not great at interviews.
Marc:The last interview he did was for the AARP.
Marc:It's just like he just doesn't do them.
Marc:You know, it just there's no reason.
Marc:And I'm like, what about you?
Marc:Do you want to do an interview?
Marc:And he's like, why do you think I've had this job for as long as I've had it?
Marc:I don't talk.
Marc:OK, that's posted now for full Marin subscribers to sign up.
Marc:Go to the link in the episode description or go to WTF pod dot com and click on WTF plus.
Marc:Next week, we have Ralph Macchio on Monday and Dr. Henry Louis Gates on Thursday.
Marc:For those of you who don't know, I'm in London.
Marc:We have a live WTF at the Bloomsbury Theater on Wednesday, October 19th with comedian and writer David Baddiel.
Marc:Tickets for that are on sale now.
Marc:My stand-up shows at the Bloomsbury are on Saturday and Sunday, October 22nd and 23rd.
Marc:Dublin, Ireland, I'm at Vicar Street on Wednesday, October 26th.
Marc:Oklahoma City, I'm at the Tower Theater on Wednesday, November 2nd.
Marc:I'm in Dallas, Texas at the Majestic Theater on Thursday, November 3rd.
Marc:San Antonio at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts for two shows on Friday, November 4th.
Marc:And Houston at the Cullen Theater at Wortham Center on Saturday, November 5th.
Marc:I'm in Long Beach, California at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center on Saturday, November 12th.
Marc:Eugene, Oregon at the Holt Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, November 18th.
Marc:And Bend, Oregon at the Tower Theater on Saturday, November 19th.
Marc:In December, I'm in Asheville, North Carolina at the Orange Peel for two shows on Friday, December 2nd.
Marc:And then Nashville, Tennessee, I'm at the James K. Polk Center on Saturday, December 3rd.
Marc:And my HBO special taping is at Town Hall in New York City on Thursday, December 8th.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info.
Marc:Here's a little more of me and Bayla.
Thank you.
All right.
Marc:Oh, is it too loud?
Am I overriding?
I fixed it.
I fixed it.
I like that though.
do do
Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:Yeah.