Your first effort as an acoustic duo with Abigail Washburn won a Grammy in the folk category. What has the process of returning to the jam/jazz world as you prepare for The Flecktones’ upcoming run been like?
BF: I wasn’t absent because I didn’t love it, other paths drew me into different territories and I felt like I was a person that could do those. I always enjoyed going out there and fighting a good fight for the banjo, trying my best to prove the banjo is a legitimate instrument outside of the bluegrass context. It’s not that I don’t love bluegrass, it’s just that it’s been unfairly quarantined. I wouldn’t play the banjo at all if it weren’t for hearing Earl Scruggs play and falling in love with that music. That hasn’t gone away, in fact, it’s probably the music I’m most comfortable in. It’s why I know exactly what to do. Starting on tour with our duo again, I’m in uncharted waters trying to make a banjo fit in there, it’s exhilarating. I’m not starting from scratch, the music that we’ve already been doing is stuff that the banjo does work in. It’s my second home, being back in bluegrass is really fun.
Have you considered using the material you wrote for some of your other projects and reworking it for the Flecktones?
BF: Occasionally we pull things in, “Big Country” was the tune I recorded with Edgar Meyer and Mike Marshall on the record Uncommon Ritual, and it ended up becoming a Flecktones standard. When I go play with The Flecktones, I don’t want to play the same music, I want to play something different. When you consider all the albums with Jeff and Howard combined, we have such a rich body of work in the Flecktones, there are eight, maybe twelve albums. We can start pulling tunes you haven’t heard or we’re interested in again and put together a great setlist. If something new pops up that feels really fun to everybody, I’m game for that too, of course we won’t have a lot of time to rehearse it. If we’re together again for a longer period, anything can happen.
Phish reissued Hoist on vinyl for the first time this spring as a Record Store Day special. Béla, could you talk about how you got involved with that record and if you have any memories with the sessions since they’re reissuing it on vinyl for the first time?
BF: The Flecktones opened for Phish at Saltair, out in Utah near Salt Lake City, which is an incredible venue that smells really bad, but it’s really fun. They invited me to sit in with them, it was really sweet. I didn’t really know them and I didn’t know their music that well, but they wanted to play bluegrass tunes. We stayed in touch, and occasionally I’d get a call, “Hey we’re coming to Nashville. Do you want to play with us?” I’d listen to them filling up these arenas with sound— this kaleidoscope music they were playing that I found to be very inspiring. They had all of these slowly unfolding rhythmic ideas that would change over the course of 10 minutes until, “How did we get from here to here?” They also have a lot of balls like, “Hey we’re going to do an opera next for this gig. We’re going to learn all of the White Album. Let’s be in front of the stage and be a bluegrass band.” They’re just really neat guys, I just became a real fan of the group and eventually they asked me to play on that record.
It’s amazing, especially when you guys first started, just the fact that you guys had a harmonica and a keyboard and you were jumping between them—let alone the banjo and what Futureman was doing was so different than so many bands out there. Now some of those instruments are a little bit more commonplace, but back then it just seemed worlds away.
HL: No one had really ever played banjo like Béla and no one played harmonica like me. Of course, not to mention, Victor, especially at the time, nobody had ever heard anyone play bass like Victor. Now there’s like 20,000 people trying to play like Victor. There are a few thousand people topping me too now. The techniques that I pioneered on the instrument are now more in the mainstream of harmonica playing that when I started. I don’t have any secrets. Victor is the same way, Béla too. That was what was so unusual about the band, we had four people who were each pioneers in different ways on their instruments and also extremely open to any kind of musical style. Between the four of us, I don’t think there is any kind of music that one of us doesn’t like. There’s no such thing as bad music, just bad musicians. People ask me what kind of music I play, I say good music.
Victor, before you joined The Flecktones, you came from an R&B background. What was your gateway into what became known as the jamband scene? Was it just playing with The Flecktones and getting these opportunities to open for The Dead or was that something that was in your orbit growing up and learning about music?
VW: In my mind there was no such thing as what we called the jamband scene although there were bands we were allowed to jam, even songs on the radio would have long intros and long instrumental sections and solos. My introduction into it was definitely through The Dead and through post Dead, meaning after Jerry died, the scene kept going. The scene emerged and the fans were looking for other bands to follow, in my awareness that is when the jamband scene really started. All of a sudden we’re allowed to jam again and the fans love it, they’re dancing to it, they’re dancing to the solos, it was nice. That was when The Flecktones were birthed pretty much, it was a nice era for The Flecktones to emerge. The jamband scene and the jamband bands allowed The Flecktones to work. H.O.R.D.E. was another big one for us, to get to do that early on, maybe even the first H.O.R.D.E. festival or tour, being around in that early scene with John Popper, Colonel Bruce Hampton, Spin Doctors, it was very, very cool to be a part of all that.
Speaking of being a mixture of sounds, you guys were one of the first bands in the modern jamband scene that really break through to a national audience. You had the opportunity to open for the Grateful Dead.
HL: We opened for the Dead on New Year’s Eve the last year they did it. It was before the Live/Dead album and that was when they were just starting to play like that I think. I used to love listening to that album when I was in my college dorm in 1969, I was listening to “Dark Star” for God sake. I was a really big fan of all that stuff. That was what’s so funny about it. When we opened for the Jerry Garcia Band— we opened for them at the Berkeley Amphitheater. The Dead was only that one New Year’s show. Jerry, maybe we opened for him twice. It was kind of a thrill for me to do it because I always loved his playing— very special. He had something kind of like Louis Armstrong in a weird way. It was just very vocal and expressive and it really spoke to people, that came out directly through his guitar. Then when he was singing, it came through his voice too. I got a kick out of meeting him and doing that album with him at the studio.
Are you planning to introduce any new material into The Flecktones’ setlist for this June run or even write new material for the reunion shows? Howard, I know you were recently in Costa Rica working on some new songs shortly before this round of June dates.
HL: The material I was working on in Costa Rica probably won’t be for The Flecktones. This run is so short that I don’t think we are doing to have any new songs, but we’re not doing all the same stuff as we did last time either. We did a ton of stuff on the Rocket Science tour, and Béla wants to do more tunes from the period of time from when I wasn’t in the band. He has a list of tunes, I picked out the ones I like the most and I’m going to have to learn them as well as relearn everything else. Some of the stuff is really complicated. Even the tunes that seem simpler have a lot of little details and twists and turns in the arrangements.
I’m also working on composing another harmonica concerto. I’m planning on doing a duo album with guitarist Chris Siebold. We’ve played together for years, he’s really great. We have a great duo as well as my band, Acoustic Express, that he’s in. Also, maybe a new CD from the Latin jazz band I’m in called Chévere de Chicago, I’ve been in that band for 37 years. We’re not that old yet, but it’s an absolute killer Latin jazz band with a lot more than Latin and jazz in it. The last album that I did put out, which came out two years ago, it’s an album of free jazz improvisations with my son on drums and an amazing bass player named Larry Grey, it’s called First Takes. It’s on my label which is Balkan Samba Records. I got a lot of projects I want to put out an album—I have four tunes arranged for big bands and harmonica and also some piano as well. It just books up. What makes The Flecktones so interesting is we have these four creative people coming together. It’s more than four very independent thinkers who like working together. That’s one of the reasons the band has a very unique sound and chemistry. The fact that we really get along well with one another, it can go in so many different directions based on who we all are as individuals.
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