Sometimes you can fix something that went wrong with what you do next and make it better than it would have been if it hadn't gone wrong, as an improviser, and I do know how to do that.

I think the Flecktones are a mixture of acoustic and electronic music with a lot of roots in folk and bluegrass as well as funk and jazz.

And then Earl Scruggs comes along and transforms the banjo into a virtuosic modern instrument. For the first time, the Southern banjo style becomes the identity of the banjo, and everything from before is wiped off of people's consciousness by the power of that explosion.

There is a tendency to want to isolate a little bit, from people that might look at me from a fan position, because it's hard to be a real person around them, and I really want that when I'm not out on tour and in that sort of public eye.

I think I'm getting better at being verbal. I used to have a lot of problems with it. I had my own little demons that I was fighting, and I used the banjo as an escape.

I was a big fan of a writer named Jack Vance, a science fiction writer. He always wrote about these guys who were either going down a river in a strange world or would be in this one land where people acted really strange, and he'd have these interactions with them that were strange - he'd usually get run out of town or something. Then he'd end up in the next town over where the rules were totally different. And I love this stuff.

I learned that I'm so busy with what I'm doing, so focused on what I'm doing, that I miss a lot of opportunities for interacting with people.