You’ll have done about five or six festivals with Medeski, Martin and Wood. What’s it been like jamming with them in the past?

Fleck: It’s really been great. One time we played with them, they all got on stage with us for the encore and we really took it out. I hope we’ll do that on this trip. That’s the fun thing about co-bills, not you do your show, they do their show and then everybody leaves. It’s to get together. So I’m hoping that will happen. You can’t make assumptions about what people will want to do, but we’re certainly open to it.

At the very least, I would think that Medeski would share the stage with you on ‘Hall of Mirrors’ and ‘Ovombo Summit.’

Fleck: He can do anything he wants. We’ll certainly make him aware that he’s welcome.

You’ve got the Waterloo Music Festival, the Berkfest, the Grassroots Music Festival all coming after you played the Telluride, which had you on a stage packed with people.

Fleck: Yeah, that was crazy. At Telluride, we’ll always try to do something different than we did the year before. One year will pretty much be the band and then the next year we’ll pretty much invite everybody and their mother on stage with us. We just want it to be different. We don’t want them to know that it’s going to the same thing, ‘OK, here they come again’ because we play there every year. We want to always be special, but this year, it was really wild because we had Bruce Hornsby, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, John Medeski, Mike Marshall and Darol Anger.

Do you think there might be a jam like that at any of these festivals with the Medeski, Martin and Wood co-bill?

Fleck: It’s definitely possible. A lot of times it’s whether we feel comfortable inviting them to play, whether they invite you to play, but usually, there’s some interaction. We always like that.

The co-bill with Medeski, Martin and Wood makes so much sense because you share a similar audience.

Fleck: It’s nice because they have a young audience, which is unusual for someone in the jazz world. And so do we. With both, it’s always a question whether we’re jazz or not. That’s irrelevant. The music is whatever it is. As long as the people like it. They may be even deeper into being like the Grateful Dead of jazz. They’re very committed to an improvised kind of music, and they’ll get out on stage and just start from scratch, which I think is very brave. We’re a much more structured band. We have built a lot of musical structures that we carry around with us. There’s an incredible amount of improvisation within them, but we definitely know what we’re going to do when we get on stage.

So I think there is a difference in our audience somewhat because of that, but a lot of the spirit is the same. I’m also looking forward to hearing a lot of the bands at these festivals that I haven’t heard and being on the bill with them.

One of the bands that will be playing a few of the same festivals is Jazz Mandolin Project, which, like the Flecktones, expands the boundaries of jazz and bluegrass. What do you think of them?

Fleck: I think Jamie (Masefield) is talented. He’s got a lot of desire and a willingness to do what it takes to survive as a group. He’s still doing it. It takes a lot of stick-tuitiveness to get an instrumental group off the ground. He’s shown that kind of passion for it and it makes you take him seriously. Whenever I hear him, he’s got a good band together. I respect that a lot.

Will your deal with Sony, particularly Sony Classical, enable you to collaborate more with your friends Edgar Meyer and Mark O’Connor?

Fleck: It’s always been easy to play with Edgar. Edgar and I are really kind of best friends. I haven’t seen a lot of Mark in the last eight years.

Really? Because they play together a lot too.

Fleck: Yeah, they play together. But we haven’t done anything together in a quite a while.

That would be neat if the Strength in Numbers guys (also Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas) could all get together again.

Fleck: Mark and I just haven’t gravitated to anything. It has to feel right. But it definitely feels natural with Edgar and Sam and Jerry Douglas. I interact with them pretty regularly. The cool thing about this record deal is that I’m being pushed to do classical records as well as straight-ahead jazz stuff, not just Flecktones, as solo projects. I’ll be collaborating with people in the classical world and the jazz world who I normally wouldn’t get to play with. That’s a real push. It’s going to force me to work hard musically, to learn classical music and to find a place for the banjo in the music of the classical world and the jazz world. In the Flecktones, everything’s fused and built around what I’m already playing with the kind of innovation that I’m comfortable with. But this is a different ball of wax because now it’s like, ‘OK, play the Bach cello piece or play Paganini’s ‘Perpetual Motion’ or Scarlotti’s sonata, play it on a banjo and play it exactly right.’ That’s very different.

Edgar and I are talking about doing some things that we’ll do together. And he’s helping me on the classical end.

Do you think you might do a third ‘Acoustic Planet’ solo album?

Fleck: Somehow I’m imagining since I may be the first banjo player signed to a classical label and a straight-ahead jazz label, I might try to make the banjo fit into their music more than to do the kinds of things I’ve already done. I’m trying to find different ways to make different kinds of records and not make the same record again.

What was the best part about your recent show with Phish in Lyons, France?

Fleck: Definitely the way we came on. They brought us out on trampolines. They brought us all out one a time. We had a great time. We just had the day off and showed up. We just played along.

You’ll tour with Dave Matthews Band in September. What are you most looking forward to about that?

Fleck: Well, that’s always a great time for us. We’ve done so many shows with them now that it just feels like one big band. I love playing with those guys. Everyone in the crew is friends. It feels like coming home pretty much.

I love the way you guys work off each other with the two saxophones going at times.

Fleck: Yeah, that’s really special.

I’m really looking forward to hearing ‘Earth Jam’ live. What is that like with the simultaneous banjo and synth banjo and Coffin playing the double sax?

Fleck: A lot of times we’ll start the show with that. No one will be expecting him to pick up a second horn and just jam. We’ve been doing that about six months. That’s one that took a while to come together. That’s a lot of fun.

When you build a structure like that, there’s something very impressive about it … that it all makes sense and it all goes somewhere. That’s the thing with that tune. There’s lots of little places that you can do things so it’s a challenge.

Are you still doing ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ theme?

Fleck: I’ll do it pretty regularly as the ending of a solo piece. If we’re doing two sets, we’ll each do solo pieces, but if we’re playing one long set, we won’t. So I will improvise a great part of the solo and then come back into the ending.

Every time I see ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ on Nick at Nite, I think of you and how Flatt & Scruggs’ inspired you.

Fleck: The banjo playing is so cool. That’s a good example of following your muse, something that turns you on.

Having opened for the Dead with New Grass Revival and for the Jerry Garcia Band with the Flecktones, comment on what you thought of Jerry as a banjo picker.

Fleck: I had several experiences with Jerry. The first time as with New Grass Revival on New Year’s Eve, 1989. He was very sweet. Backstage, he introduced himself to me as a banjo player. I had to figure he was the reason the New Grass Revival was on that show. And that was really cool. And then the following year, the Flecktones were on tour and he invited us to open for the Jerry Garcia Band. He invited me out to play with him. His comment to me was, ‘You think of things to do on the banjo that I never would have thought of.’ I thought that was a nice thing to say. Now in terms of influence, I did listen to Old and in the Way. I checked it out. It wasn’t a fundamental part of my growing up.

You were more into John Hartford and, of course, Flatt & Scruggs.

Fleck: I was into John Hartford, J.D. Crowe. But I have to say when I heard Old and in the Way, I was surprised by how good a banjo player Jerry Garcia was. I had never heard him before on banjo. And then there were certain albums where his guitar playing impressed me a lot and the writing. One was ‘Blues for Allah,’ where there was a lot of fusiony stuff going on. He was exploring a lot of different rhythms and so forth. So I think I was influenced by the Dead a lot of times not even knowing it, just growing up with them being a big influence. But he was very good to me and invited me to play.

Do you think he learned anything from you?

Fleck: He wasn’t really playing much banjo at the time. I encouraged him to, but he said no. The last time I saw him was with (David) Grisman and he was very shaky.

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Bob Makin is an entertainment writer for Gannett NJ.

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