There are a lot of chapters to the banjo's history. Part of it are the roots in Africa, where it's a more primitive instrument. Then it comes to the United States where it morphs into the slave music that they created here, which was very African in origin.

I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It came from Africa and even for the first years that white people played banjo they would put on blackface.

There are a lot of chapters to the banjo's history. Part of it are the roots in Africa, where it's a more primitive instrument. Then it comes to the United States where it morphs into the slave music that they created here, which was very African in origin.

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.

My most powerful memory was hearing Earl Scruggs on 'The Beverly Hillbillies' as a 5 or 6 year old. That sound just blew me away, shook my head up.

It doesn't have to be happy music to be inspiring.

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.