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Tony Trischka: Where No Banjo Has Gone Before

by Robert Makin

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You think about somebody like Miles Davis or John Coltrane, people who learned everything about jazz and then digested it and it came out a new way. I think Tony's very similar. He's that kind of figure in the banjo world. Tony was ahead of his time. My springboard was Tony Trischka, and without Tony, none of what's happened with my music would have happened. -- Bela Fleck

When I first saw Tony play many years ago, I was instantly mesmerized -- not because of his technical prowess or innovative style, but because of his willingness to journey into scary, unpredictable territory. -- Mike Gordon of Phish

Progressive bluegrass pioneer Tony Trischka taught banjo to Bela Fleck, the closest thing to a household name in progressive bluegrass. As a thank you, Fleck has turned his audience onto his former teacher, much like Dave Matthews Band has turned his audience onto Fleck.

As a result, more people than ever before are aware of just how awesome Trischka’s fusion of bluegrass, funk, jazz, rock, chamber music and, at times, even heavy metal, is. Trischka, who took the late Jerry Garcia’s place in the 1997 reunion of the early ’70s bluegrass band Old and In the Way, is hoping that the young jam scene that digs Fleck, Matthews, as well as Phish and Medeski, Martin and Wood, checks out his new Rounder disc, “Bend.” The record marks the studio debut of Tony Trischka Band: funk bassist Marco Accattatis, jazz saxophonist Michael Amendola, Southern rock guitarist-vocalist Glenn Sherman and jazz drummer Grisha Alexiev. Recording for Rounder since 1974 as a solo artist and since 1971 with the band Country Cooking (also for several other labels with such bluegrass groups as Skyline, Psychograss, Grass Is Greener and Big Dogs), Trischka was determined to assemble an eclectic band so that he could stretch the boundaries of banjo music even further than he has since his "Bluegrass Light" debut. Imagine a cross between the Grand Ole Opry and the Fillmore East, John McLauglin and Earl Scruggs, and you've got an idea of what Trischka’s music sounds like. I spoke with the New Jersey resident/New York native about his musical (r)evolution, his new band, his in-roads to the jam scene and his relationship with Fleck. Buckle your seatbelt, Scotty, because we're going where no banjo has gone before.

But before we go, I just wanted to let you know that you can get a taste of Trischka live when he performs later this month at Berkfest ’99, the details of which are elsewhere at JamBands.com

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BM: How long have you lived in Fair Lawn, N.J., and what brought you there, having been raised in Syracuse?

TT: Since 1989. I lived in New York City for 17 years and had had enough. I was like, 'Get me out of here.' So my wife and I moved out here. I love New York, but...

BM: Before Bela Fleck and Gordon Stone, you took the banjo and bluegrass where it hadn't gone before by mixing in jazz, rock and chamber music. Having gravitated to the traditional sounds of Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe, what made you want to, as the Indianapolis News says, 'take the banjo where no banjo has gone before'?

TT: It was really a natural compulsion. In 1965, I entered a banjo contest and played a traditional tune 'Nine Pound Hammer.' I threw in these pseudo-Middle Eastern modes. Since one of the judges was (traditional banjoist) Ralph Stanley, I didn't have a chance of winning anyway. Now I had no exposure to Middle Eastern music, except maybe on TV, but these notes came popping out. In Syracuse, my father played the piano and before he’d go to sleep, out would come the Fats Waller. I was taking classical piano and flute lessons. Then I got into folk music and the banjo. So there were a lot of influences in my ears already. I wasn’t growing up in Kentucky, so I didn’t have any restrictions.

BM: How much of an influence did the music that your father played for fun and the late '60s rock on which you were raised influence your musical direction? And comment on why you think so highly of The Beatles' 'Strawberry Fields Forever'?

TT: My father was a physics professor at Syracuse University. Teaching has always been a part of my life individually and through workshops, instruction books and videos. For a long time, I didn't think I followed in father's footsteps, because I didn't pursue an interest in science. But I enjoy teaching, so I have that aspect of my personality from him. If there’s such things as genes for that, I have them.

He also loved folk music: The Weavers and Pete Seeger. The first guitar I had was actually my Dad's. I bloodied my fingers on it when I was 12 years old. I was into protest music, like Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs. Both my parents were very liberal. They're liberalness got in there. 'Strawberry Fields Forever' is a really deep song for me. I wouldn't say that's the greatest song ever written. I certainly wouldn’t get in an argument with Gershwin about it. But for me, it's an important song, because it represented the radical step forward for pop music. It was the first tune recorded for the 'Sgt. Pepper' sessions, but it didn’t go on. It was a declaration line even though The Beatles had done some radical stuff on 'Revolver' right before it. But when I heard it on the radio, my jaw hung down.

BM: What qualifications did the musicians have to have join your new band?

TT: Even though none of them have an orientation to bluegrass, they had to relate to it, adapt to that feel on their instrument, which isn't to say our guitar player is a bluegrass player, because he isn't. But what he plays compliments a tune that has a bluegrass feel. There’s only one song on the new album, 'Georgia Pig,' that really has bluegrass feel, that's fairly bluegrass. They all have a lot different influences. I love when the sax comes in and Michael plays like Coltrane or some R&B or Glenn does this screaming thing like Hendrix on the guitar. I get a real charge out of that.

BM: How has The Tony Trischka Band enabled you to break even more new ground?

TT: It's given me a wider palette. Whatever tune I might write could work for the band. I don’t think there's anything I've come up with lately that the band couldn't do, because they’re so versatile whether it's Latin, rock, jazz, whatever.

BM: Other than the fact it features performances and writing by permanent band members, how else is 'Bend' different from anything else you've done?

TT: I don't know. I've tried a lot of things over the years. 'The Early Years,' which is my first two records (compiled on a 1997 Rounder CD), basically set up the format, the template for this band. A couple of tunes have more of an electric feel with rock 'n' roll guitar, but everybody else is very much into a jazz thing, so that format was established back then and reflected my interest in fusion, John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, Chick Corea’s Return To Forever and Weather Report really influenced me a lot. I had a similar attitude that I don't have to play what's expected of me. They were like, 'I can be like Charlie Parker and play what I want.' So they fused rock with jazz and there were no limits. That's why fusion excited me. It was all just music. As Duke Ellington said, there's only two kinds of music, good and bad.

BM: Is the first album on which you’ve had vocals or as many tracks with vocals?

TT: I have one album out the a group called Big Dogs that was mostly traditional bluegrass. It was in the early '90s and there were more vocals than this album. The Christmas album (1995's Glory Shone Around) also has vocals. I love having vocals. I hope to have more on the next one. But I don’t think of these as vocal songs. The new songs on the new record are mostly instrumental and in a section, like in the middle, we'll have a vocal thing. But I do have an anti-war song that I'd written before the recent situation in Yugoslavia that is a vocal song. I'm not sure what I’m going to do with it.

BM: Comment on the influence that Bill Keith, who put progressive bluegrass music on the map in the 1960s, has had on you?

TT: Bill Keith is a huge. He developed such a melodic style for fiddle tunes. He’s one of the heroes of the '60s who still sounds great. There's an incalculable debt that I owe him. He opened it up for everybody.

BM: When you recorded Fiddle Tunes for Banjo with Bill and Bela in 1981 before Bela had joined New Grass Revival. Then the rest, as they say, is history. Did you have a banjo teacher who had as much impact on you as you had on Bela Fleck?

TT: In a sense. His name was Hal Galtzer from New York City. I was going to school in Syracuse, and I was this 14-year-old twirp who saw 'Hootenanny' on television. I said, "Hey, I have to do this." So in the space of one lesson, he opened the doors. I studied with him for six months. I leapfrogged off him. He showed me the traditional styles of Bill Keith and Earl Scruggs as Bela leapfrogged from my progressive stuff and took it from there.

BM: How did you become Bela Fleck's banjo teacher? How has that relationship evolved as far as teaching each other new things?

TT: I lived in New York City in 1973, and he gave me a call when he was 16 years old. I took him to see banjo people like Eric Darling who used to be in The Weavers. We'd play fiddle tunes. He was interested in learning the tunes off my first records. I spent six months showing him whatever I could. Every little bit that I could come up with, I’d impart to him. He gobbled it up fast till I said, "You've got it. Go on." We'd get together and jam after that. We go back a long way.

I've learned more from him than he learned from me in more recent years. He has new techniques that are great that I’ve been able to steal and make my own. The shoe's on the other foot now. When we play together, we tend to move toward each other musically speaking. He’s been so influenced by me and in more recent years, I've been so influenced by him, that we blend together to make a unified sound even though we’re both soloing. He'll get off on a single line of music which he has great command of, and I don't solo that way. So our solos are different. I play harder than he does. I have to tone down so I don’t overpower him. We move to the middle.

BM: Did the chemistry of the Bela's band, the Flecktones, inspire the formation of Tony Trischka Band?

TT: Not specifically, although I'd make a case for that on some levels. Bela finally had his own band and was really putting his music out there. He'd never done that at that level. I suppose on some level it inspired me. All these records, making music, I've never put band together. I've had a lot of other great musical experiences, but it's exciting to have a band now. I just write something I think they can play. Maybe we'll play for the big bucks. Yeah (laughs).

BM: How do you feel about Fleck getting more mainstream attention than you for being an architect of progressive banjo music?

TT: I'd be less than honest I said I didn’t have some feelings about that over years, but at this point, it's fine. Years ago had those feelings gee I do that 1973. Wasn't jealousy toward him because he so generous over years. He's really great in interviews about mentioning my name. Time magazine called when he told them about, so that's really good. And we've toured over the years. Once a year, it's great for me, because it exposes me to his audience. We just played down at the Merle Watson Festival down in North Carolina. There was a workshop/concert with 400 people, most of them his audience. He went out of his way to tell people how he learn ed from me. That's beyond gracious. That's very generous, sharing the wealth and helping to make my name more well known.

He has a great business sense and a great band, so he's deserved everything he's gotten. And he's got his head screwed on straight. He's not a big star when he gets up there. He talks to his audience all the time, so that keeps him straight and keeps him human. At the end of the night, he hangs on the edge of stage until the last person is gone. He doesn't just retreat to the dressing room.

BM: Fleck has gotten a lot of attention from performing with Dave Matthews. Does he have a proportional effect on enlarging your audience?

TT: I hope. I'd love to have a mainstream audience. I've been doing this a bunch of years. It would be nice just to get above the level I've been on. It's not just the bluegrass constituency anymore in my audience. A number of different people come to the show. The bluegrass scene is somewhat static and heard to break through. It helps that Bela is nomadic. He has that Dead audience. Those who got into New Grass Revival when they opened for Dead. For their last concert they opened for the Dead and he played with Jerry on stage. That association brings out a younger audience that is looking beyond what they’re being fed on MTV. Their ears are more wide open.

The last time we toured with Bela, there was this 19-year-old guy there who asked me what our my 10 favorite banjo records that he should check out. Now I told him more obscure things that he's not going to get out of Rolling Stone or off MTV. I realized that these kids are hungry for other kinds of music. It's great. I’m finding at my own shows, I’m getting some of the older folks, like myself, and then the younger crowd too.

BM: Tell me what you think of the following acts and the impact they have on the kind of improvisational, rootsy music that you have been performing for more than 25 years: Dave Matthews Band.

TT: I like them. The first time I heard Dave Matthews Band was when Bela was playing in Hackensack in Jersey. The next day, he asked me if I wanted to go into the city. He was going to Electric Ladyland Studios. So I go in there to hear the latest cuts on this record he just did, and it's Dave Matthews. It sounds wonderful. Then I saw him at Madison Square Garden. I like it a lot. It’s not as compelling to me, as say The Beatles, because older, and it's hard for any band to grab me at this age. I've got kids now, and he’s writing about the concerns of young people. I'm a little more settled in my life now. But I think it's a really good band.

BM: Phish?

TT: I like their stuff to. I respect what they do and appreciate it. I think if I was 17 or 18, I'd be gonzo over them. But I'm at a different point in my life. But I really respect what they do and I think they're really good.

BM: On 'Bend,' I especially like the Allman Brothers-Lynyrd Skynyrd-flavored 'Feed the Horse' written by your southern rock-weened guitarist Glenn Sherman and the New Orleans groove of 'Moonlight Trail.' I think that those tunes will really go over well among fans of the jam scene, because there’s so much common ground there. How do you feel about the jam band scene embracing you and the kind of music that you perform?

TT: That's one of the places I'd like to go with my music. Rounder took out an ad Relix magazine and Bluegrass Unlimited, where my long-term audience is. I'm doing more festivals this summer, more jam-band kind of stuff, like the Berkshire Festival up in Massachusetts. We're going to be getting into that market more with the CD. I’m attracting that kind of audience anyway. I'd love to see things become more mainstream. I feel like we can do that.

BM: If Bela was the next Tony Trischka, who is the next Bela Fleck?

TT: Tony Furtado. Although he sort of focusing more on slide guitar. He started out as a hot-lick banjo player, but he's getting away from that. But technically, he's the next generation. He has a lot of technical powers on the instrument. We have the same agent. He's attracting that jam band audience too.