Bela Fleck has been supporting his debut album with singer, banjoist (and his wife) Abigail Washburn with a tour. He admits that there’s an adjustment necessary to this duo approach but clearly the acclaimed banjoist loves a challenge.
It’s why he decided to compose and perform an original composition that features his world-renowned abilities on the banjo with an 80-piece symphony. It followed two classical pieces written with bassist Edgar Meyer and another with Meyer and Zakir Hussain (tabla). Commissioned by the Nashville Symphony to make that idea a reality, Fleck debuted, “The Imposter,” to an enthusiastic response on Sept. 22, 2011.
He chronicled its yearlong transformation from writing sessions, interviewing principal members of the symphony and his musical peers Meyer, Chris Thile and Noam Pikelny to rehearsing and playing it during a triumphant performance in the engrossing documentary he co-directed, Bela Fleck: How to Write a Banjo Concerto.
Originally, the film was going to be a collaboration with his half-brother/filmmaker Sascha Paladino but Fleck edited ended up deeply involved – budget, filming, directing and editing.
Because of that as well as ongoing performances of “The Imposter” he’s enthused to discuss the project despite its release last year. It’s screened at 2015 festivals including Bonnaroo and Sewanee.
“Truthfully, it’s been tough to get much attention for it and this is a great moment for that and I appreciate a lot,” he said early in our conversation that dealt with the concerto, writing process and the film.
JPG: You’ve been promoting the film for quite some but, also, the whole project for multiple years.
BF: Oh yeah. It’s been a big one, long term.
JPG: Overall, how long have you been involved with it? Can you even consider doing a second concerto?
BF: I’m working on one. I’m having trouble getting much work done on it because life is so busy but, yes, it’s premiering in March. Time is marching on towards March. That’ll be the number two. There’s opportunities to do more. So, I have to see when I do number two, after that whole experience and after recovering from it, whether just relax into it and enjoy it without being so stressed out…which really doesn’t help anything anyway.
JPG: I understand that all too well.
BF: Yeah, you know it, but you still do it.
JPG: Yes. More and more I hear my wife’s voice in my ear, “Be in the present, John. Be in the moment. Breathe.”
BF: You probably recognized yourself in the film.
JPG: Oh, yeah. I didn’t know if there were uglier portions of the creative process that you were able to talk Sasha into not putting in…
BF: (laughs) Well, there were boring parts of the creative process that we didn’t put in, that’s for sure. For instance, I ended up doing the editing with an editor myself because Sascha [Paladino] got caught up in his own television show that he got the opportunity to do with Disney; a children’s show that is out now called Miles from Tomorrowland. So, he was super super busy and had to be super hands off during the whole edit process because he was moving back from Ireland with his twin kids and his wife.
I definitely chose what I thought was the most interesting…but sometimes, you’re actually looking for tension and stress. It makes a better film to include that stuff. I don’t know if there was anything that ugly that I hid. I just tried to keep it moving and try to have a flow to the story. This is definitely an artist-generated project, a narcissist’s dream; all the controls you could possibly want of an out of control situation.
We were going to collaborate on it, hoping that he would take the reins but he couldn’t so I ended up stuck with it. It was like, “Now, we’re this deep in, what do we do?” I kept on getting people to come film and afterwards, I managed to get an editor in New York and go on up and work with him. Pulling and tugging and pushing and eventually it all came together.
JPG: It’s one thing to be a musician and listen to yourself play and have an opinion, “That’s a good take,” but to watch yourself…
BF: I went through that on the Throw Down Your Heart tour film. For one thing people seem to accept me as an on screen presence, so I try not to worry about that. Things in that film where I thought that maybe I didn’t do well or didn’t look good, people seemed to like that better than when I thought I was perfect.
When you’re in the studio, and you’re trying so hard to do the best that you can musically, a lot of times you’ll have a quest for perfection that’ll even kill the music but with film it was a little bit impossible because we didn’t have that kind of coverage. We had what we had. You had to let things go and go with it. Accept that you didn’t look good in this scene or that you wished you’d said it differently. Do all you can to try and tell the story.
I do feel confident that in the process of making the film, I was able to show what it felt like to me what was going on with the whole process.
JPG: You used a lot of different styles and techniques that, as you said, moved the story along and gave some insight to the creative process as well.
BF: The whole movie, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and, really, it’s the same way I approach everything. It’s the way I approach composition. It’s the way I approach making music or writing music, just try stuff until you find things you like and build on them, and not from the point of view of knowing but waiting for things to resonate. And when they do, you go with that and you continue to work with things that seem to do that. Eventually, if you keep at it, something will happen. You get something together.
I produce. I don’t quite engineer. In other words, I don’t plug in the mikes. Aside from that, I’m very hands on the whole recording process, so a lot of those skills of editing, mixing, comping, performing, they all come into play when you’re doing a film. A lot of those skills traveled from field to field.
JPG: You like to tackle new horizons that are daunting. Here’s a quote of yours, “The trick for me is to stay engaged and always have something off in the distance to be excited about. If I am always doing something special, and thinking about something special for the future, it is an awesome life.” So, is the thrill the challenge? Have you met those challenges or have there been times that you haven’t and you may go back to them?
BF: Well, I think that there’s a point in this film when I’m talking to Edgar Meyer after the performance or I’m talking to Abby and I said, “Well, I got some of it right.” And the fact that you can come offstage with an audience going absolutely berserk for it, everybody thinking it was just great, yet you know you got some of it and you didn’t get some other of it.
That’s just the reality of being a musician. Being on the creative edge is that you’re not even sure yourself if you got it right afterwards. It takes some hindsight to decide what you think about that. You might feel differently about it the day of the show. You might feel differently a month from the show. Five years later you might look back and go, “Wow, that was the greatest moment of my life.” But you can’t always tell when you’re in the middle of it and know what’s going on. Your worst work and you might think it’s amazing and you might be doing your best work and think it sucks.
JPG: That reminds me of Jerry Garcia, he got so mad at some shows that they played and then later when he listened to it he was like, “Oh, that wasn’t as bad as I thought.” When I acted in plays, I used to call it Yearbook Syndrome because your friends and family would come backstage and tell you how great it was but in my head I felt I was awful.BF: Right. A lot of that is because you’re so self-conscious that you’re seeing everything through a microscope or lens and everything seems so huge, every move of your lip, every breath you took, the way you said, “Thee” just drives you fuckin’ crazy but the truth is nobody else is hearing it at that level. They’re just getting an overflow of it and, besides, it’s not as important to anybody as it is to you. So, they can just enjoy it. They can even enjoy you fucking up and love you during the process.
JPG: True. Now, on to the banjo concerto itself, which is called “The Imposter.” Since it was first performed in Nashville, have you tweaked it a bit or changed the cadenza section when you’ve performed it with other symphonies?
BF: The cadenza is pretty much set now, although, occasionally, I leave a few sections in it where I can improvise. I usually don’t improvise for more than a few bars or something like that. I like to leave a little bit in there, just almost like a test.
In terms of the piece changing, nothing has changed structurally. I’m constantly looking for ways to make rehearsal go smoother and simplify the way it’s written. Occasionally, someone will say if you write this blah, blah, blah, we could sight read it because if it’s written like this, it takes five minutes to practice it. And so we’ll change that. I tweak the charts, and I’ve even changed who plays certain notes in a couple of spots but I haven’t changed any of the notes.
JPG: When you were writing it, having the experience of working on the previous concertos with Edgar Meyer, did you — at least in your head before you sat down to write the first notes — did you think, “I’ve experienced this. I know what I’m doing, and I have Sibelius here to help me out. I can do this.”?
BF: I felt very excited about the idea of finally doing it. I’ve been waiting so long. I didn’t know how good it would be. I’ve seen a number of people do it and went to see it and had mixed feelings about their pieces and thought, “Anybody could be the armchair quarterback, sitting on the side going, ‘Oh, why did he do that?’” So, I knew it was the kind of thing where you could work your ass off and still have a lot of people not perceive it as being a success. In some ways, I felt like there was no way to win and in another way I thought there was nothing I could do wrong, if that makes any sense.
A lot of times when you’re an artist or musician and you hear other people do something and you don’t like it, it’s because it’s not what you would have wanted to do, not because it’s not good. So, I was really curious about what I was going to do. I was really excited to get into it, and then it was fun to watch it unfold but there was a lot of doubt as I was going along because I didn’t know how Sibelius was going to represent the orchestra. How similar would it sound to what I had in my computer? Then, I discovered in reality, there were things that were very similar and there were things that were completely not similar at all. That’s the kind of thing you can only learn from doing it.
I’m hoping that I learned that when doing this next one that I’ll have learned some of the kinds of things that I should and shouldn’t write for the different instruments, although it’s a success in that it’s been played now by probably 30 different orchestras. They all play it great. It sounds good on their instruments, the audience loves it. So I would say, it’s a success, but that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t do things better. I don’t want to write the same one again. I want to write something different, as different as possible.
JPG: That reminds me, the ending of the concerto; I thought it was funny that every person in the film didn’t like it except for Futureman. Some people would go by the majority opinion. Was there anything in particular that he said or just something about him or something within yourself that stuck with it and didn’t change the ending?
BF: It’s funny. When you’re creative and you have a creative impulse and you follow it through and you like it, it’s really hard when people, it doesn’t matter how many people tell you they don’t think it’s a good idea, you still think it’s a good idea. And when you’re in a band, a lot of times some of the best ideas get tossed out. Somebody, one of the four or six people, however many people it is, is gonna not like the idea.
I just felt like this was a place where I’ve got to try my bold ideas. If it hadn’t worked out, I probably would have rewritten it for the future. But the truth is we were also recording it for the Deutsche Grammophon [Records] album during the performance. So, in a way it was a little…I really liked it is the honest truth but I never say it anywhere [in the film]. I really liked it. I thought it was a neat way to bring it to a close. I still like it. So, there you go.
JPG: Each time I heard it, I liked it a little more. It’s such a different ending from how a normal piece ends.
BF: Right, felt like a nice letting of steam out. Edgar also felt it wasn’t the best ending because it allowed the audience to jump to their feet the way that something was strictly rhythmic stays solidly in time would have but I wasn’t thinking about that.
JPG: Then, there’s what you referred to as the ShantiOm section. At the same time, there’s a scene of you running and I don’t know if you meditate but do you find such things as useful tools in life as well as creativity to clear your mind and write?
BF: I love running but I had to stop because my hip hurts. I haven’t been able to do it, and it was the place where I would listen to music and I don’t have a place to listen to music in my life anymore. So, that’s sad. Yeah, there’s been periods where I meditated and it seemed like it was a helpful thing. It’s not a big part of my life right now just because there’s no time with a two year old. I have a two year old. Everything is just how do you get everything done? I’m a little more frantic these days. I probably could use it more, but I need to spend that time getting stuff done.
JPG: I understand. You spent time writing in two very different places. You were among ocean waves at Cannon Beach and then a desert climate in Mexico. Did those influence the concerto?
BF: Definitely. I would say much more so at the beach because the second movement is a lot about water. I was actively trying to imitate the sound of the way the waves come in on Cannon Beach where Abby’s parents have that place. They come in at all different speeds. There’s fast ones going, “Whoooow” and the slow ones going “Whoooooaaa.” I can’t say I did it perfectly but I can say it was an inspiration for the notes, and I like what I ended up with musically. Sometimes, I tell the orchestra what their parts are, that they need to think of themselves as waves coming up slowly and fast. It doesn’t really make them play it any better but it’s kind of fun that that’s where it came from.
JPG: Speaking of Abigail, when collaborating with her, how does that work versus your other musical situations?
BF: It is very different. For one thing neither of us is in control. Neither of us is the boss. So, it’s very much about finding consensus. There’s a million ways it can go, even with a simple fiddle tune or an old traditional song. So, we’ve got to find something we both really feel good about. I’d say 90% of it happens naturally and the other 10% we go back and forth about quite a bit.
JPG: Going back to when we were talking about the ending and the feedback from it, early on in the creation of the concerto you didn’t want any opinions coming in but then there was that whole portion of the film where you’re playing the completed piece to a number of people. Were you trying to get feedback or was it just, “Here’s what I’ve been talking about all these months”?
BF: I was I ready for some feedback and Edgar points out that I pretty much knew what the piece was at that point and I think that’s true. When you listen to other people’s opinions, you compare your own with them and if there’s something where somebody says, “I don’t agree. I wish you hadn’t done that.” And then you go, “But, I really like that.” Well then, I know that I really like it or if somebody says, “I don’t know if that part is working that good” and I go, “You know what? I think he’s right. That part’s been bothering me the whole time, too. I don’t know why I didn’t notice that before.” So, it really can help.
The important thing is not to do it too early in the process. You need to complete it. It’s kind of like editing. You don’t start editing until you’ve done all your creative stuff. You don’t start comping the solo until you’ve played a bunch of solos if you’re in the studio. Do you know what I mean? If you’re composing, you don’t start critiquing everything or it pretty much kills the creative impulse. For me having some outside voices to kick in didn’t mean I had to listen to what they said. It means that now I could settle those thoughts in with mine and I could check them for resonance.
And the ones that really resonated, in particular Edgar’s, I actually acted on. And it changed what I wrote. It brought some new elements into the piece that made it a lot better, especially in the third movement. Then there were things he said that I didn’t agree with at all. He felt like the first and second movements were too similar. To me they were so completely different I had no idea what he meant. Now, I’m sure he was right, and he was talking about the amount of activity, the tempo, things like that, but the musical information was so different and the way it was treated was so different that I didn’t consider it to be a problem. Where he said the third movement is not landing correctly, now that was different. That, I thought he had something there and I was trying to get something out of his critique. I did get something though ironically he didn’t think that I had gotten it but I think I did because when he heard it the last time he thought everything was working really good. He didn’t realize I had made some changes based on his critiques. In a way I wasn’t really being fair to him when I said I thought you hated that part at the end. The truth is I changed a lot of things to make that part better by working on the structure up to it based on his comments. So, the truth is I actually succeeded at what he asked me to do.
The edit of the film, it seemed to make more sense to poke fun at him a little bit, act like he was irrational but the truth is he isn’t irrational. He’s a very smart guy. He’s a good friend, too, so he puts up with it.
JPG: You catch that that in the film during your interaction. There was a discussion about going to G.
BF: He did not like it going to G. He suggested that I try to come up with ways to make the piece try to go to G and not succeed so that when it finally did go to G you’re excited. Like teasing. That is what he thought I should do. I actually did do that but when I played it for him he didn’t like the devices I used but the result at the end he thought worked. So, he may not have realized what I did, actually, because for whatever reason now, he thought the ending worked. I did change things to do what he talked about.
JPG: I guess it’s one of those things when listening to something sometimes it’s the day that you listen to it that works for you whereas the previous day it didn’t.BF: I don’t know. You could say that or you could say that I actually did quite a bit of work since his first comments and then when he heard it he didn’t have a problem anymore. I choose to think that he actually gave me some great advice that I took but he didn’t actually understand how it worked but that it actually did work. That’s my current theory.
JPG: I didn’t mean to discount your work. I meant that when he listened a second time, maybe, he caught what you did or didn’t realize you changed it but it worked for him. Going back to how your surroundings were an influence, you spoke in the film of classical composer Bela Bartok and how you avoided his music in the past but discovering it was, not to get too psychobabble about it, a way of reconciling with your father?
BF: Absolutely. He named me after all these composers. He named me after Bela Bartok. I had reconciled with him anyway. I met him in my 40’s and have known him. We’re not close but we know each other now. So, I thought, “Maybe this is the time to take this on.” But honestly, musically, it was turning me on and I was missing the fact that I didn’t know his music better. I was lamenting the fact that I hadn’t taken the time to get to know his music. This seemed like a great time to do it because I do get inspired. When I hear music that I haven’t heard before that’s great, I want to go write. Getting inside some of his pieces and really listening a lot gave me a lot of excitement and gave me a lot of courage to be free in the composing because it seemed like his writing is so unique and, again, being bold is underrated in music.
JPG: What was one or several most challenging moments doing the concerto versus say what you go through writing with the Flecktones or some other project?
BF: It was actually playing the banjo parts with the symphony and not understanding how to try to be rhythmic when there was very little rhythm to work with. When you have so many people playing together there’s sort of a wash and it’s hard. Let’s just say it’s a lot easier with four or five people or six people — any kind of small group — everyone can really focus in very easily on what each other are doing and so you can find a rhythmic pocket. I couldn’t depend on rhythm the way I was used to just as Edgar predicted early in the film. That was hard. If they’re dragging do I stay in time or do I drag with them or do I push forward and let us come apart and then let them catch up?
Now, after 30-some performances of the piece, I have a much better intuitive feeling of how I should handle it. But back then, the first run through, that was part of what was so uncomfortable about it. First of all, I really didn’t know my parts yet and for another thing I didn’t know how to accommodate the orchestra’s rhythm.
JPG: Are you focused on the conductor as well or are just reading along the music and knowing when your part comes in?
BF: For one thing, I was memorized. I wasn’t reading the music. Yeah, I didn’t actually understand how to follow the conductor. Sometimes, I don’t know how to watch the baton and tell what the beat is but I close my eyes and play along and I can play along to the rhythm that he’s conducting by listening to the musicians he’s conducting. So, that’s the one step removed. And now that I’ve done it a lot more, I got a lot more comfortable with the fact that every conductor conducts differently. When the stick hits the bottom that’s the downbeat. Some of them have more of an overall physical gesture to everything. Some people conduct ahead of the beat to try and get everybody to not drag, and I can’t follow that because I’m not going to drag. I’m going to be on the front end. In which case, I have to use my ears and my eyes and he’s supposed to follow me as well.
I’m supposed to actually be the leader and he’s supposed to follow me. I have learned how to demand that from conductors when it’s not happening and say, “Hey, look. This is what’s going on and if you can’t hear my banjo, here’s my foot. I’m gonna tap it for you. Watch my foot.” That’s really helped because the banjo also turns into a wash of notes. Even five, six feet away from it, over a whole symphony orchestra playing, all you’re hearing is (makes the sound of a chaotic drone of notes) how is he supposed to be in time with me? I finally figured out that tapping my foot was the key. If I’d known that back then, a lot of things would have gone easier. Now, I do. So, it’s all a learning experience.
JPG: Going back to the film, the idea of chronicling the creation of “The Imposter,” was it something that you considered or Sascha brought up to you?
BF: I thought of it because I thought that doing the film in Africa, “Throw Down Your Heart,” was one of the best experiences of my life and also very challenging because of the danger and concern of being in Africa with six people I was responsible for, getting everywhere, not losing the film on the way home, nobody getting sick, all that kind of stuff. Then I thought, “Wow. This is just as big an adventure that I’m having right now in my own hometown and it would be so much easier to film it. I should get a little camera and start filming when I start writing.”
I bought a camera and started carrying it around with me and shooting little interviews with my friends, like in the beginning when I’m talking to Chris Thile and Noam Pikelny and Edgar, and then set up the camera when I started writing to see if I could capture the moment of inspiration, which actually proved to be pretty hard to find. It actually was pretty boring to watch me sitting in front of a computer with my banjo trying to figure stuff out. I thought I would do that, and then if I liked what was going on maybe I could get somebody to film the first rehearsal. So, it started out like that. I talked to Sascha about it and he thought it was a great idea and he was helpful in the beginning when he could be but as time went on he had to take a lesser role, more of an overview role. Then, he would look at cuts and make suggestions but not be involved in the creative ongoing day-to-day, which was actually a great help, too because he was nice and far from it. In other words it was my idea.
As it got time to actually film the first rehearsal, once I had some money in the game, I’d invested in all of this, it seemed like I should complete it. It wouldn’t be that hard to complete it. Then, I was able to pull off this multi-camera shoot of the performance. And when I found out that was going to happen, after working with the symphony and talking with them about it and coming up with a way to do that, well, we got everything, we got the money shot. I just needed to capture everything I can along the way, which amounted to certain shoots I had to bring in a crew for, and the rest of it I could just shoot myself.
JPG: Just a lot of extra planning among the stress of writing a concerto.
BF: Yeah. There’s a lot. I won’t do it like that again. [Laughs]
JPG: That’s why I love that section where you wrote on the screen a number of things that were stressful.
BF: Yeah, the Top 10 list.
JPG: I thought it was pretty funny.
BF: Well, good. I’m glad it was funny because I was hoping it would be.
