Two all-star tours recently utilized a good chunk of these players. Having released "The Bluegrass Sessions: Tales From The Acoustic Planet, Volume 2" earlier this year, Fleck enlisted some of the album's players to perform live. Bush and Douglas, along with award-winning bassist Mark Schatz and guitarist Brian Sutton, who replaced an injured Rice, joined Fleck on stage.

Hartford; Clements; Nashville fiddler extraordinaire Stuart Duncan; mandolin great Ricky Skaggs, another former member of the New South; and banjo legend Earl Scruggs, perhaps the most influential bluegrass musician next to the genre's founder, Bill Monroe, were among those who joined Fleck in the studio for "The Bluegrass Sessions."

Meanwhile, Meyer toured with Bush, Marshall and classical violinist Joshua Bell in support of their collaboration, "Short Trip Home." The disc, Meyer's third teaming of bluegrass and classical musicians, follows 1998's "Appalachia Waltz," which featured O'Connor and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and 1997's "Uncommon Ritual," with Fleck and Marshall taking stabs at Bach.

In 1985, Meyer enlisted Fleck, Bush, Douglas and O'Connor for his "Unfolding" debut. Four years later, they banded together again in the supergroup Strength in Numbers, which released "The Telluride Sessions."

I spoke with Fleck, Meyer, Bush and Marshall about the wonderfully incestuous and eclectic progressive bluegrass scene. All commented on how that scene is getting stronger, more diverse and more appreciative of traditional bluegrass. Before we begin, I'd just like to take a second to thank Lydia Carole DeFretos, my first boss at The Aquarian Weekly, for turning me onto Strength in Numbers and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" in 1989. With these fellas leading the way, the circle will never be broken, but it sure as shoot is gonna stretch.

Bela Fleck

BM: You are a part of, perhaps the center of, one of my favorite music scenes, the progressive bluegrass scene. Comment on how you've had many friendships for 20 years that have produced so much good music in so many configurations.

BF: They're people I started playing with as soon as I could convince them. I was a big fan of a lot of these people. As time went on, I got to play with them. On my first record, I called Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas, and they agreed to do it, which amazed me. They were big guys already. New Grass had been going for a while. And Jerry Douglas already had been in the New South with J.D. Crowe, Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice. They were already the frontline guys to me. I was just 19 years old, making my first record. The fact that they thought enough of me to do that was really great. They were doing a lot of sessions back then, as they still are. It wasn't like they turned a lot of people down, but still, it built into a really great friendship and musical alliance.

Comment on how the music has broken down the walls between classical, jazz, country and in many cases rock.

Every time you meet somebody new, they bring new things to it. Edgar Meyer's a real good example of that. He's a fellow we met back in the early '80s. He's just a stunning musician. He's coming from classical music, but he's really interested in bluegrass. As we became friends and he got deeper into bluegrass, we also became exposed to classical. He's the classical element of this whole thing, but he's brought us all into it to some extent. He and I have recorded Bach together. he brought in Sam Bush to record with the great classical violinist Joshua Bell. And he brought Yo-Yo Ma and Mark O'Connor together.

My contribution might be situations were I've been able to bring Branford Marsalis and Chick Corea into bluegrass or Bruce Hornsby. I got Chick Corea all together with Edgar, Sam, Jerry and the Flecktones. We played together at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. You see all these neat cross-pollinations, and it's very exciting.

How much of an influence has "Old & In The Way" been on the scene?

I don't think "Old & In The Way" had as big an impact on the bluegrass community as it did on the rest of the world. It wasn't the record that everybody I knew was sitting around listening to, but it was one of the biggest-selling bluegrass records ever. Largely, it was selling to people who didn't know what much about traditional bluegrass. It opened up bluegrass to a lot of people, because they knew who Jerry Garcia was, and he was surrounded by musicians that were so incredibly loved in bluegrass. Vassar Clements, David Grisman and Peter Rowan all had incredible bluegrass cache.

The new music they were doing was also very cutting-edge. It did lead people to doing more songs from outside the bluegrass mainstream. But there was a whole movement. It wasn't just that. New Grass Revival was already doing Allmans-type things or Leon Russell songs, different kinds of modern ideas. Even as you go further back in bluegrass, so was The Osborne Brothers and The Country Gentlemen. Everybody was reaching outside to find ways to make bluegrass work in a bigger way. This was the new generation of trailblazers.

Who gets credit for being the first to go outside traditional bluegrass to present in a new way?

I think it'd have to be (Lester) Flatt and (Earl) Scruggs. Bill Monroe's attitude was like, "This is my music, nothing will change it." That's part of why Flatt and Scruggs left, because they were more flexible guys. So when they went out and did their thing, they did the bluegrass thing really strong and straight for a long, long time, but later in their careers, in the '50s and '60s, they often would record with drums and different instruments, and they would record songs outside the bluegrass idiom. In the end, you've got to love both of them. You have to love that Bill Monroe kept that thing alive for so long, and you also have to love the goofy quality of Flatt & Scruggs that made them so much fun.

Earl Scruggs is why you picked up the banjo?

Yeah. It's probably why everybody did.

It's great to see Scruggs on "The Bluegrass Sessions" and Vassar Clements, who, like you said, was on "Old & In The Way."

Yeah, but I knew Vassar's playing from two other albums. One was "Aero-Plain" by John Hartford. It definitely came before "Old & In The Way" and in a lot of ways is just as heavy and powerful. It's one of my favorite records. Also, a record called "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" that The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band did. He was the star on both of those records and he was definitely the star on "Old & In The Way" in the same way. It was like, "What on earth is that fiddle player doing?" It was so interesting. And he still plays all that way, very unusual.

How about on "The Bluegrass Sessions?"

Yeah, he was terrific. You listen to him and you're like, "What is he thinking?" It's just wild. During the process, I wasn't as sure of what he was playing. It was raw and different, but it was Vassar, so I went with it. Then listening to it afterwards, I realize it is one of my favorite things on the record, because it has this very natural quality to it that's really fun to listen to.

And, then, of course, there's Scruggs.

He played great and lent a special thing to the record. We just did a couple of banjo duets. And John Hartford came over and sang and played as well.

Comment on the influence Hartford has had on you.

When "Aero-Plain" came out, he was playing on "The Smothers Brothers Show" around that time. He had written (the Glen Campbell hit) "Gentle on My Mind" and was moving into more of a rootsy phase. He's just great. He's a different duck.

What inspired "The Bluegrass Sessions?"

Bluegrass Unlimited reviewed this young banjo player's record and they said since Bela Fleck is not playing much anymore, this is as close as we're going to get. I was like, "I'm not playing anymore? What are you talking about?" It's one of the things that made me realize I really need to do something in the bluegrass community again. Because I hadn't been in there, they thought I had gone away. I had the best years in terms of my career in the music business and yet the bluegrass community thinks, "He's just gone. We don't know what happened to him."

They're not listening to the Flecktones?

I wouldn't think so. Some percentage of them are.

I know you guys are jazzy and funky, but there's still a lot of bluegrass in there.

Yeah, but people who don't listen to saxophones and drums and electric bass unless they have to, they may give it a chance and it may be OK with them to hear it once and a while, but it's not what they fell in love with. They love bluegrass. And that's OK. I love that. I fell in love with bluegrass too, so occasionally I want to do that. It works out good for everybody. Everybody has the right to love what they love. I think a lot of them have given me a good chance and some of them haven't. Luckily, there's such a larger audience not from the bluegrass community that has taken to my music that I'm free from resentment or dissatisfaction. A lot of people who are pushing the envelope aren't making a living. Because my situation has worked out very well, I have a very live-and-let-live attitude. I realize that it's unusual to have the situation that I have, to play all kinds of music and still be connected to the bluegrass world.

I'm probably more of a general audience member, so, to me, the Flecktones have a lot of progressive bluegrass in them, where you mix it with jazz and funk and everything else. But there's only one instrument from that world.

Your banjo. We run into this thing where whenever we play a jazz festival, they hear the bluegrass music. And whenever we play a bluegrass festival, they hear the jazz in our music.

That's how you came up with the title of the last Flecktones album, "Left of Cool."

Right. When the Flecktones are at a bluegrass festival, we're the jazz group of that festival. And when we're at a jazz festival, we're the bluegrass group of that festival even though there's only one guy up there with a bluegrass background. And that's me. But that's OK, because it softens the resistance to different sounds. Maybe they wouldn't go buy "A Love Supreme" by Coltrane, but after hearing the Flecktones, the bluegrass audience might be more open to going to a jazz concert. Or vice versa. Maybe a jazz audience wouldn't buy Bill Monroe, but after they heard the Flecktones at a festival, they'll check out a New Grass Revival or an Allison Krauss record. So I think it's a positive thing.

You're breaking down music barriers. And then Edgar comes in with his classical, and they're an even snootier audience.

Actually, they were surprisingly unsnooty. We were all expecting more snoot than we got. It was low on the snoot side of things.

Is it frustrating to work with so many great musicians and not have everyone know about the progressive bluegrass scene?

The people that know it, love it. The real problem is the same problem that everybody has, which is how do you get the music out there? You may have something that is really, really great, but you can't figure out how to let the greater American public know about it. It's very hard to do. But don't you love it when you find a record that nobody knows about? It's something special and private to you. It doesn't matter if the big world knows about it or not, you know it's something special.

Imagine if you were in a club and you were hearing Charlie Parker play live. What a special experience that might be for you even though a lot of people never found out about it. I think this kind of stuff has a power of its own because it's not mainstream. The people that love it, love it on such a deep level.

It is frustrating sometimes that more people who you know would love it will not get that opportunity. It's not presented on a level like MTV and VH-1. If somebody was putting the same kind of attention into bluegrass that they put into a rock video, if there were the kind of outlets for it ... Most places in the country you can't hear bluegrass on the radio, you can't see it on TV. There might be the odd exception. There's very little bluegrass in country.

And PBS doesn't have a large enough audience for like a "Sessions at West 54th."

Right. They did feature some bluegrass. They had Steve Earle with the Del McCoury group. That was interesting. And they had the Flecktones play and that went really well. They're trying to cover a whole bunch of stuff. That's a cool show for that reason. You might not love everything on it, but you'll hear something you might not have heard before. But there's not that many outlets like that. There should be 10 great places to hear alternative music. But again, it makes it all the more special for the people who do love it. If you're making a living, as I am, I really can't complain.

How about the other guys like Sam and Jerry Douglas and Edgar?

They all do very, very well. They're in demand not only for their own music, but Jerry and Sam are session players. But I think they're moving into less session work and more of their own music, touring and making their own records. They're realizing that they're strong enough to do that.

I love to play the game of six degrees of separation with the progressive bluegrass scene. One of the courses I like to take is how The Grateful Dead, especially Jerry Garcia, and other jam bands have connections to the progressive bluegrass scene. New Grass Revival was very close with the Dead. You played your last show opening for them in 1989. And with the Flecktones, you were one of the charter acts on the HORDE. You've also toured with Dave Matthews Band. Then, of course, there's Old & In The Way. Comment on how jam band fans have gravitated to the progressive bluegrass scene.

They have. That's a very open audience. All of the work that I've done with Dave Matthews and Phish has brought a lot of awareness to the Flecktones. Some college may not be able to afford Dave Matthews anymore or Phish like they used to be able to do when they were small, but they could book the Flecktones. And then pretty soon, we're playing for a very young audience that walks in wanting to hearing something unusual and hears it and is knocked out and becomes long-term fans.

So there's a healthy amount of it. I sometimes worry that people overemphasize that area when they're talking about us. There aren't that many groups with a bluegrass background that do appeal to that audience on the level that we do.

Medeski, Martin and Wood is in the same situation as a jazz band.

Exactly, but with us, it's less of a factor, because there's this huge audience that is not Deadheads or Dave Matthews fans. They might be 20 percent. Our audience has been growing and thriving without that. And we've been winning awards, like Playboy's Jazz Artist of the Year the last two years in a row. That's not the Deadhead audience.

And, of course, 15 Grammy nominations in jazz, bluegrass, country, gospel, pop, spoken word, folk and world music categories and a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental for the 1996 album "Live Art."

Yeah, Pop Instrumental and a Best Instrumental Composition against people like Wynton Marsalis. That was for "Almost 12" on the last album (the 1998 Flecktones disc, "Left of Cool"). We we were going against Wynton and some very heavy jazz guys. So it's really kind of cool. It's an amazing thing to be spoken of with those other names and to actually win.

The thing about the Grammys is that it's a bit of a popularity contest. Whoever's being seen a lot and perceived to be out there a lot is the one that wins. It's not an achievement contest about how good you got on your instrument. It's about where you've been able to exist in the marketplace and in people's opinions of you. A lot of times, that's about being around. So as long as you know what that is, you don't take it to mean that you're Beethoven.

Garth Brooks also has given a big push to New Grass Revival by reuniting you for covers of "Callin' Baton Rouge" and "Do What You Gotta Do." And with "The Bluegrass Sessions," you have Vince Gill and Ricky Skaggs, so it's obvious that mainstream country musicians are very much into the progressive bluegrass scene.

They are. We've discovered in country music that there's an incredible support for the Flecktones among the musicians. They all know us and treat us with a lot of respect.

How about their fans?

I would say much less, because country music is more about the song and the star. There really isn't a format for country instrumentalists. They say that there is, but there really isn't. But the musicians know what's going on. They know Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas are the cats. So that's cool.

How is The Bluegrass Sessions different live than on the record?

It's more traditional live. We're doing about half of the album's stuff and some of the more progressive stuff, some of the straighter stuff. But we're rounding the show out with just great, fun bluegrass tunes that we all love to play. We're also doing songs from everybody's repertoire. So we might do a Sam Bush tune, a Jerry tune, then a couple of tunes from the album, then a Flatt & Scruggs tune. Every night, it's something different.

What happened to Tony Rice?

He tore the cartilage in his right hand. He's healing and he's going to be OK. We'll do it again with him at some later date, but right now we're going on with Brian Sutton, who's an incredible player.

What's he done?

He was in Skaggs' Kentucky Thunder Band. He's an incredibly hot, young guitar player, who a lot of people think will be the next star of bluegrass guitar. Well, he already is the young star of bluegrass guitar. People who know about bluegrass have found out about Brian. We've already done about 12 shows and Brian has done them all since Tony Rice couldn't. And he's just phenomenal. It's been a real pleasure.

Comment on the musical impact Tony Trischka has had on you.

Tony Trischka has had a huge impact on me. He was my teacher in New York City. He was my third teacher but the most influential, because he was the most modern banjo teacher. So I was playing and studying everything he did. I had to work not to sound like him. I had so incorporated his style, because it was such a great thing. Tony's always pushing the music to find new ways to play the banjo, but he also loves traditional bluegrass. I don't think there's anything he can't play. And he's a beautiful guy. He treats people really well, so he's been an incredible role model to me in a whole bunch of ways. And he's a New Jersey resident to boot.

After the Bluegrass Sessions tour, what's next for you with the Flecktones?

We're going to be on tour at the end of October. Then we'll record new music for a new label. Warner Bros. will release a "Best of the Flecktones" at the end of the year. There'll be a couple of new cuts on that. Then I'd like to do "The Bluegrass Sessions" again. I hope to see it turn into a regular thing, where everybody gets together for a few weeks once a year, so it won't be 10 years gone by and I haven't played with people like this. We've been able to play some nice places and make some good money, so I hope that everybody will want to do it.

Edgar Meyer

BM: I just got off the phone with Bela Fleck, and he was commenting on how there were a lot of progressive bluegrass players who broke down the walls with jazz and funk and even, with Tony Trischka, chamber music. But you were the one in the '80s who came along and really mixed things up with a really strong classical music element. Comment on what made you want to do that and what still keeps you interested in that dichotomy today.

EM: There's no conscious desire to bridge anything. My interest in bluegrass music was late in life when I was 17. I really grew up with jazz and classical music in the house in Oak Ridge, Tenn. It was very close by Nashville. But Oak Ridge is much more of scientific and international community. I wouldn't say you here a lot of traditional music in Oak Ridge.

So it's more in tune with jazz and classical.

Well, my father was and that's what he played. He was a bass player.

What was his name?

Same as mine. I'm a junior. So it was a very open thing. My best friend growing up, his father was from India and his mother was from Japan. So I'd hear some music over there, and that'd be a lot of fun. But at the end of high school, I got different types of traditional music. Old-time fiddle really got into my head. I couldn't get rid of it.

There was a pragmatic element too. I really liked the way that the bass fit in with it, blended with those instruments. The role of the bass in jazz historically and how it fits in with the other instruments sonically is pretty well-defined. If you pluck a bass next to a drumkit or a piano, the thing the bass is supposed to do is be a tom-tom or a kick drum. It's not like a saxophone. The way the bass interacted in (bluegrass), there were several things that attracted me. I love the way the bass fit in as a support instrument and also in terms of being able to get in there with some dialogue with the other instruments. Also with all the great fiddle players, I had a lot of strong role models in terms of bowing. That's some of the reasons why I became interested in bluegrass and traditional music.

By the mid-'80s, I'd been interested in it for seven years and brought with it an reasonable jazz background, not the most disciplined as such, but still a big competent of things. Having grown up in classical music, I just simply did what I knew, which happened to be a blend of all these things.

It's had a such wonderful impact on bluegrass audiences and musicians. To hear somebody like Sam Bush at Lincoln Center ... I mean too bad politicians can't come together like that.

Everybody should have a chance to hear Sam.

Was your father a jazz or classical musician?

He grew up as a jazz player. But he went back to school when he was 25 to learn how to read music and use a bow. So it was very important to him that I start off knowing how to do that.

Where did you go to school for music?

I started off in math at Georgia Tech, then continued in math at Indiana and eventually ended up in music at Indiana University in Bloomington. I always knew that music would be the center of my life, but I really was interested in studying some other things. Toward the end, I was just doing music every second of the day. I knew that what I was going to be was not going to be that well defined, but I was studying classical string playing more than anything. I had friends who were composers and wonderful jazz players and spent equal time socially with a lot of jazz players in the evenings. But I didn't study (jazz) very much.

When did you first start to incorporate bluegrass sounds?

From the get go. I thought I was pretty far along. I actually wasn't, but I was quite confident (laughs). While I was at IU, I'd bring in performers from other disciplines. I also started writing my own music. That became more the case when I started working professionally.

Two significant professional beginnings for me were the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival and MCA Records in 1985 when I was 25. At that point, I was very much immersed in all those things. I hopefully have gotten a lot better at it since then, but it felt like who I was.

The first year I was at Sante Fe, they gave me a program of my own to do what I wanted. I did some classical solo playing, but I also wrote a piece for it that I still perform sometimes. I called "Amalgamations for Solo Bass." It's about a 12-minute piece with three movements. That seemed to go well. Then the next year, I brought Mark O'Connor out to the festival with me. Then in a period of six years, I wrote five pieces for the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival. So that was the beginning for me.

You also were on MCA Records. Was that deal what led to Strength in Numbers' "The Telluride Sessions?"

Yes, Strength in Numbers was a band that played together for the first time on my first MCA release, "Unfolding." It's a bunch of people who had played with each other, but what was different was me calling the shots. First of all, I preferred an ensemble without guitar to leave more room for the bass sonically. So that immediately made it different from other things. And, as you know, it's an interesting group of five people who all have a very strong voice.

Wow, that's a heck of a band for a debut. How'd you know all those guys?

Well, I knew Bela and Sam earlier. They were the first ones that I met. I met Sam in 1981. I was playing in a string band in Bloomington, in addition to other things, while I was in college. We fronted New Grass Revival. So after being the opening act, I sat down and heard New Grass Revival for the first time, which is pretty much life-changing. I stayed up a long time talking to Sam and the guys afterwards.

Bela wasn't in New Grass Revival yet?

No, he was not. Then soon after that, I was out in Aspen doing a classical music festival. I was playing every night in the mall with a friend of mine named Les Johnson. We'd play a range of stuff for just guitar and bass. New Grass passed through town, and Sam told Bela he ought to go down and introduce himself. So we met at that point.

Bela became the person I've known the very best of all these people in some ways. He helped me a bit asking Jerry and Mark to be involved in my demo sessions before I had a record deal, and he co-produced "Unfolding" with me. I remember I paid each of them 50 bucks for that demo session. That was big money back then.

You're three latest albums, "Uncommon Ritual," "Appalachian Waltz" and "Short Trip Home," feature all of the members of Strength in Numbers except Jerry. Comment on how the relationships you made with "Unfolding" and Strength in Numbers have impacted those subsequent recordings and your career.

Profoundly. I felt like those four guys when I left Indiana, spending the time that I spent with each of them was really like going to college again. So I felt like my whole learning process was barely beginning at that point. Each of the four of them in totally different ways are people I look to as mentors. They really showed me the ropes and taught a lot of what I know about music ... period.

That amazes me, because out of all of them, with the exception of Mark O'Connor, you're the most classically trained.

Training is one thing, but there's a lot of stuff to learn and you can't learn it all in school. These guys knew a lot of stuff I didn't and still do. The only way I could learn was by being around them and playing with them. I learned what I could.

These are lifetime associations. I see it also in classical music. The nicest part of the whole musical deal, actually, is feeling like members of these two extended families. Both the classical music community, and in my case, that's a little more chamber music-oriented and string player-oriented, which is slightly more based in New York than anywhere else and this other community of bluegrass-related instrumentalists have been the nicest part of the whole business.

He's on the road now with Bela, but do you think might eventually record again with Jerry Douglas?

Oh sure. I've tried to get Jerry to be part of a couple of projects, and he hasn't been able to with his schedule the way that it is. But I certainly welcome the chance. That's very likely.

It's really neat to see on "Short Trip Home," Mike Marshall and Sam Bush record extensively together for the first time.

That was an unexpected delight. It turns out that they're just a wonderful rhythm section in a way that I couldn't have anticipated completely. They'd done some duos on mandolin, but they'd never worked together as a rhythm section with Mike on guitar. And they'd never played in a band before or recorded more than one song. That was just a sound that I loved. Mike has a beautiful guitar tone. He plays a guitar a bit like a mandolin player. It's a lighter and brighter and slightly more agile than the average guitar player, especially on strumming and right-hand quickness. He and Sam share a large common ground. The way they're able to play together is one of the nicest things I know.

Mike was on "Uncommon Ritual" and had played classical-oriented music before that, but how'd it feel to stretch Sam Bush with such complicated music?

He'd never been up there as one of three or four guys on stage with music in front of him. So that was an extremely different deal for Sam. The fun of it for Mike is probably getting to be part of that rhythm section with Sam.

How did it feel to stretch Bela, by having him play Bach, and then turning classical guys like Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell onto country sounds?

In Bela's case, our function with each other has always been to push each other a bit. We're probably more openly critical towards each other's things than most people would even be comfortable with, but we both enjoy that. Pushing each other is what we do. Over the years, Bela has given me a lot of good advice and really helped me focus on things that were some of my weakest points. And they still may be my weakest points, but they're better than they were, and he's been very helpful. Typically, when you work with somebody and they've got something that they don't do so well, you just kind of avoid it. There's a politeness and you just concentrate on people's strengths.

But it's nice to be able to focus on the whole picture, because the biggest improvement really is getting the worst thing better. And Bela's been super helpful with some of the rhythmic issues, being direct about it and helping me become, overall, over a period of years, much better at some of the aspects of playing bluegrass and traditional music and at least understanding what's up.

And we've both commented liberally on the other's writing. We show each other a lot of pieces, and you know, "This part's good, that part's bad," and "all your songs sound like this. Why don't you do something like that?" In that sense, working with Bela was much more a continuation of a longstanding relationship. It just happened to be that the first time that we'd done it in public like that. I'd always played him a lot of Bach pieces on the basement piano. And he occasionally learned some of them that we'll do as duos. Even that was extension of stuff that we'd been doing over the last 10 or 15 years.

Whereas Yo-Yo, I knew him for 10 years before we did that recording, but I didn't know him well. We just flirted with working together. That was a whole different thing with Yo-Yo. He really just has a keen interest in music.

He's such a renowned classical player, yet he didn't seem to have any reservations about playing the bluegrass-oriented stuff.

Hopefully, we made him feel comfortable. Hopefully, we put him in a situation where the standards might be good. The goal is not to make Yo-Yo into Stuart Duncan. The goal is to work with what it is and expand the horizons a little bit. But then to play together, there's a lot more common ground than one supposes. People still need to be themselves, and Yo-Yo very much is.

It's the same with Josh. That's a voice that I know very well, and we just tried to bring that on in. Josh enjoyed that rhythm section. That was something that he had never experienced before, having Sam's rhythmic power to support him and make certain type of things work. But it's also got a certain twist to it that I think is significant. When I first got to IU, and I was 19 and Josh was 12, Josh and a fellow named Gary Hoffman were the first two really great string players that I played and spent time with.

That's where you met Josh, in Bloomington?

Yes. That's also where I met Sam and Mike.

Is that where Josh is from?

Yes, he was born there. For me, the same way I've learned a lot about learning how to play from Mark and Jerry and Sam and Bela, I also learned a lot about how to play classical music on the bass from Gary Hoffman and Joshua Bell. Those are the two voices that I imitated the most when I was in my late teens and early '20s.

Wow, and he was so young.

I know, but he had a very well-formed voice at 13 years old. He was who he is now. It's not a stretch to hear a lot of the things that are similar about it. He doesn't sound completely different now. I would recognize him as the same player, Josh at 31 and Josh at 12.

So you've known him 19 years. Through that time, have you turned him onto blue grass sounds or is this the first time with "Short Trip Home?"

Nearly the first time. Josh had played some different pieces I had written that incorporated a little bit of stuff. He and I had done that two or three times in the last 20 years in addition to playing some other concerts that were entirely classical.

You must really enjoy performing live with this group.

It's musicians I'm very personally fond of and admire very much. So it's very, very nice for me.

What is the concert like?

It's primarily original. Sam and Michael do a couple of traditional bluegrass duets on mandolins. By the time we get to Princeton, we'll be inserting a bit more original music by the other guys. It'll be a little less heavy on my tunes. What we try do on the tour is make it a four-way deal. I might even like the record to have been like that, but it wasn't really an option at Sony.

Josh is on Sony too, so from the label's standpoint, it's a record by the two of you with a support credit going to Mike and Sam. Comment on why the progressive bluegrass scene often works in groups much like jazz.

Well, it's very group-oriented music. You can't make the stuff happen without it.

Comment on how your records not only have combined classical with bluegrass and jazz but also have brought those fairly different audiences together.

I'm not really in touch with all that stuff. To me, it's all must music. I'm under the assumption that anybody can like anything if it's done beautifully.

Sam Bush and Mike Marshall, speaking on a car phone en route to an airport.

BM: Sam, you are the link between "The Bluegrass Sessions" and "Short Trip Home." As far as the live shows go, how does it feel to be in both those projects in such a short span of time?

SB: Actually, it's a lot of fun, because they're keeping me in shape as a player. They're certainly different so that keeps me on my toes too. Playing with Short Trip Home is just a different set of challenges. With The Bluegrass Sessions, we probably tend to really whack it out a little bit harder, whereas Short Trip Home, one of the keys to the success on stage is how dynamic it tends to get.

Both Bela and Edgar said that they were psyched to be touring with you because you bring so much excitement to the stage. Comment on how you fire things up.

Well, in both situations, I'm allowed to more or less be the drummer or at least the backbeat of what a drum would be doing. Edgar's always been generous in that way. He gets the downbeat, I get the up. Especially in the Short Trip Home band, there's only four of us and it's not based around having a pulse or rhythm, so when I get to do that, that's fun for me. But also, in the case of the music that Edgar's writing, there's all kinds of counterpoints and different little parts that keep it interesting.

In The Bluegrass Sessions, I guess my job in that band is a little more of a backbeat. I love just being part of the group. More than playing solos in an ensemble, my job is to make sure everybody else plays better.

Comment on how and why the progressive bluegrass scene is made up of many musicians who have played together in a variety of configurations over the years.

It is interesting. Over the years, I've been thinking about how I was fortunate to go to one of the first bluegrass festivals in Roanoke, Va., in 1965. At that festival, I met David Grisman, Tony Trischka, Andy Statman, Butch Robins and lots of interesting people. I was a little younger than Tony and David and Andy, but it is interesting to me how we've always crossed paths. It's almost directly relatable to back to certain periods where we all congregated in the '60s and got to know each other. And Peter Rowan. He was there.

We just got a great education getting to see some of the originators of bluegrass back then. They let us know that we love that kind of music, but we also wanted to make our own as well.

Do you feel that by making your own kind of music, branching off from traditional bluegrass, that you've helped to break down the barriers to different kinds of music and their audiences?

Yes, I do. I think we've helped widen the bluegrass audience, while not diluting it. And I think it's proven over the years, just because we want to play progressive bluegrass, new grass or dawg music, whatever, there is an audience for that, especially in the '90s. Bluegrass has proven that it's going to retain its audience that enjoys the traditional bluegrass kind of sound. In the '70s, old-timers were afraid that all us crazy guys would change the music and that there wouldn't be any bluegrass anymore, when in fact, now, there's many offshoots.

What inspired you to form New Grass Revival and to pursue all the different directions that it took musically?

We were all in a band called The Bluegrass Alliance. We fired the fiddle player, but he told us that he owned the name and we couldn't use that name. So the four of us quit. We started New Grass Revival in 1971.

We did want to make a conscious attempt to play differently than we had been playing. At the time, all we were doing, besides revamping old bluegrass songs ... we would take rock 'n' roll songs of the day and convert some of them to bluegrass. That was our big claim to being progressive. And then years later, we got a little better at writing our own tunes and trying to come up with original music. But when we started out, playing "Great Balls of Fire" with bluegrass instruments was our claim to fame.

Or The Allman Brothers.

Yeah, we tried that too.

While not as extensive as the connection that Old & In The Way had with The Grateful Dead through Jerry Garcia, New Grass Revival did have a relationship with The Grateful Dead. Comment on the audience you shared with them.

We didn't do any of their songs, but when we first started the Revival, people would call us The Grateful Dead of bluegrass. Then it got where people were printing that on posters, and we just felt that it was not accurate thing. Even though we could cash in on their audience, we didn't feel it was very representative of either of us. So at one point, we had to say, "Do not refer to us as The Grateful Dead of bluegrass," because we were having a lot of Deadheads coming to our shows expecting Grateful Dead songs. But the audiences, especially when we were first getting going, there were a lot of Deadhead-style audiences then and I think a lot of them still come to hear us.

What was the connection?

By the time I was out playing music for a living in the early '70s, The Grateful Dead had put out "Workingman's Dead." That audience was exposed to acoustic kind of music that they'd probably never heard before. For a lot of that audience, probably the first mandolin they ever heard was David Grisman playing on a Grateful Dead record.

When you formed New Grass Revival, did you expect it to have the kind of impact it ended up having on people like Bela and Edgar?

No, not really. It was funny. We never set out to change any kind of music. That's just the way we played. We found that we liked to do these long jams and stretch out. That wasn't unique. It'd been done. But with bluegrass instruments and a bluegrass approach, to stretch out and jam, that was new in that form of music. But we'd heard that done by jazz people for years and by this point, The Allman Brothers were doing good long jams. So what we were doing wasn't unique, but in the world of bluegrass, it was.

What was it about Bela's playing that made you want to record on his Rounder debut when he was just 19 years old?

Well, it was just obvious that here was a new voice coming in on that instrument. You knew he was going to make some waves. I first met him through playing on an album by my friend Butch Robins. Butch is a banjo player, but there was one tune he wanted to play mandolin on. Butch called me and said, "I got this kid playing banjo on this record, and I think he's the best banjo player I've ever heard. For Butch, who's also an incredible banjo player, to say that, I figured I'd better pay attention, because something's going on that I don't know about. Then once I got to know Bela, I realized he wasn't just a great banjo player, he's a great musician with a way to make a new kind of music.

That was in '78?

Yup. And then he joined New Grass in the fall of 1981.

Do you stay as in close musical contact with the other guys in New Grass Revival as you do with Bela?

I see them from time to time, but Bela's the one I stay in the most musical contact with. I've probably gotten closer with Bela over the last 10 years, because we both got out and we're doing exactly what we wanted. Let's face it, it was time for Bela to get out and make his own music. He writes so many tunes, the Revival couldn't possibly accommodate him. He's very prolific. Since we broke up, Bela's been very generous to include me in a lot of his projects. I enjoy the camaraderie.

Tell me about the possible of a Sam and Dave project with Grisman.

We've talked about it for 20 years. We better do it before we get too old. I'm hoping. It's up to us to get it going. But we really would like to do that, and it would be a joyful thing.

What else will you be up to once The Bluegrass Sessions and Short Trip Home tours end?

There'll be a little bit of TV work to do. Dolly Parton is putting out a bluegrass record. She kicks ass. She's going to do a few TV shows to support that record. It is cool. It's a great sounding record. I'm going through a bunch of live tapes of from the '90s of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. I'm hoping to get a live album out of that.

Well, all right. Is Mike Marshall there with you? May I speak with him?

Sure. Here's Mr. Mikey. And remember anything I can play, he can play in harmony. OK, see ya'.

Mike Marshall: Hi there, Bob.

BM: Hey Mike, thanks for chatting with me in transit. After all these years of running in the same circles, how does it feel to play extensively with Sam, especially on classically inspired music?

MM: Oh man, it's like a dream. Are you kiddin'? He was my hero since I was 15 years old. To finally end up in a situation like this playing every day, it's great. Of all the guys that try to imitate Sam Bush, he's definitely the best (laughs). I'm basically of a whole generation of mandolin players that copped his thing, learned a lot of those solos off the record. I went up to see him in Bowling Green when I was 15 with the New Grass Revival. It was a real moving experience for me to hear their whole concept. The New Grass Revival was just really important, what they were doing as a band.

How do "Short Trip Home" and "Uncommon Ritual" compare to each other?

The biggest link is Edgar compositionally. It's mostly his compositions, so there's tons of overlap in that way. Of course, the instrumentation is different, so you have the guitar and violin more present than the Bela thing.

You played with Grisman from 1980-85. You've also played in several different bands with Darol Anger. You've both played in Psychograss with Trischka. Comment on how and why the progressive bluegrass scene has led to so many great bands with many of the same players over the years.

Well, I think that's pretty much the case with just about every style of music. If you go back to the swing era or the be-bop cats, any of those wonderful forms of music, bluegrass, there's a core of players that represent the center of the musical development. And they lead a whole generation of players after them down a path.

That would be a jazz and bluegrass tradition. But in the times we're in right now, to see you guys together in so many different ways, it's the antithesis of corporate rock.

That's true. It's certainly a more open feeling. The focus in all these other styles of music is primarily getting good on your instrument and learning and growing and continuing to improve. The way you do that is influence from other people and being around other great players. I think that's the biggest part of all of this, just getting into a situation where you're continuing to grow.

When was the last time Psychograss played?

Merlefest this past April. We're going to play Wintergrass in February. We're relegated to the half dozen really nice festivals a year at this point, which is nice, because then every time we get together, sparks just fly and it's really special. I wish we could do it more, but schedules being what they are, we just take it when we can and enjoy it. It's like this thing. It's real bittersweet to be bringing it to a close. All we can really talk about is, "Gee, when are we going to do this again?" Then everybody looks at their schedules: "Holy shit, maybe I'll see you in 2001."

Plus you and your wife just had a little girl, right?

That's right. Lucy. Oh man, she's really fun. I can't wait to see her.

Were you introduced to Trischka by Bela or the other way around?

The other way around. I knew about Tony way before I met him. For me, he represented the future of string music in America in 1975. I was buying his records on Rounder and just flipping out over that whole Northeast scene. There's the East Coast scene and the West Coast scene and the Nashville scene. Tony being as prolific as he was as a composer, he was just pushing the boundaries way before a lot of people did. Really, before Grisman, in a way, even though Grisman's a little older. His quintet record, which often is seen as a big turning point, came after a couple of Tony Trischka records. He already was experimenting with all the same elements: extended harmony, a jazz influence. God, where do you begin? Everything we all heard and loved.

I went over to Tony's house once. Darol and I were playing as a duo in New York. And Tony said, "Man, you gotta come up. I'm teaching this guy a lesson. He's my best student. He's really killing it. He's playing Charlie Parker on the banjo." That was Bela Fleck. He was 16 at the time. We went over Tony's house and we were jamming, two banjos, mandolin and fiddle with his hot, young student.

How long had you known Tony at that point?

About four or five years. The style that Bela plays was actually spearheaded by Don Reno. There's the evolution of the Scruggs style and then the melodic style of banjo playing, which is what Bill Keith does. To a large extent, Tony Trischka plays that way. But what Bela did was to take what Don Reno was doing, which was on the improvisation side, abandoning the roll for a single string approach. What he did was refine that whole approach and turn it into what a jazz guitar does and smooth the whole thing out and clean it up. So it was kind of a new deal for banjo playing. And here's this young kid exploring this new way of playing.

Of course, he could do all the Scruggs stuff and he could do all the melodic stuff, but there are limitations to improvising and being completely free melodically using the melodic or Scruggs style. Bela freed it up. He opened it up by getting away from the roll. Now he incorporates all of it, but in those early days, it was like, "Geez, he can play what a horn player plays by single string style." It was really something new.

That's a big part of all of this, and it's always been a big part in the development of any new musical style. Part of it is the development of a technique on your instrument that nobody's ever done before. That's what Scruggs did. He took what the old banjo players were doing with half strumming and half picking and then here comes this young kid with three picks, one on each finger, and he gets this continuous roll going. And it basically just blew everybody's head open.

The Darol Anger-Mike Marshall Band is as much jazz as it is bluegrass. Just for a frame of reference, because I haven't gotten to hear it, how does it sound compared to the Flecktones?

Darol and I have the same musical background as Bela. We certainly are what we eat. We all have devoured the same musical traditions. We love jazz, classical, all kinds of Latin rhythms. So it compares quite a bit. There's a lot more improvisation in the Anger-Marshall band in terms of group ensemble improvisation. And the rhythms are coming more from a deeper Cuban and Brazilian style of music than the Flecktones.

How many recordings does Anger-Marshall Band have and what are your plans?

We just put out the first Anger-Marshall Band record. It's called "Jam." In the past 20 years, we've done duos together and formed the Montreaux band and the Psychograss thing. But it's taken us this long to use our names in a band.