Profile with Matt Flinner

Profile with Matt Flinner
Banjo Newsletter, March 2006.

Matt Flinner is known to most as one of the most innovative mandolinists in recent times, playing a extraordinary blend of new and fresh sounds, with a constant reference to the familiar. Reading the past few years of BNL, many of today’s young and rising stars of progressive bluegrass banjo cite Matt’s mandolin playing and compositions as a prominent influence in their playing. Many don’t know that Matt’s first instrument was banjo, and he went on to win the national contest in Winfield in 1990. This past summer Compass Records released the Drew Emmitt Band’s new record Crossing the Bridge that features the first recorded banjo by Matt (also featuring the great Ross Martin on guitar, Greg Garrison on bass, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, and a horde of other high profile guests). His banjo chops sound modern, innovative, and unique. What comes across in Matt’s sound is that he is playing what his ear is telling him. This is a powerful and wonderful place to be as a musician. By press time, Matt has moved back to playing mandolin full time with his Matt Flinner Quartet and the Modern Mandolin
Quartet, but I had the fortunate opportunity to sit down with him and discuss his background with the banjo and some of his musical process.

Tell me about Drew Emmitt’s new record

Crossing the Bridge. One of Drew’s real strengths is the spontaneity of the live show, and we tried to
capture that feel in the studio. We tried to not be sticklers about details and go for the feel. There are certainly imperfections in my playing, but I wouldn’t go back and change it because the way the band played together felt really relaxed. For Drew it is really his first real band CD under his name. This group had been touring for a while, and it felt as though we brought the strengths of the band out in the studio (with the addition Stuart Duncan). Your shows with Drew’s band are really different than a standard bluegrass show, or even jamgrass shows. You have a lot of open-ended solos, with attention to the
journey of the solo, and focus on subtle interaction with the soloist. It felt more like a jazz show in some ways, and very cool. Yeah, I get to play both of my licks over and over again (chuckles). As long as you don’t do that all the time, or every song it keeps it interesting. It forces me to play a solo that
lasts several minutes, and work to keep that interesting, and not fall back on the same thing over and over. That has been a challenge, and we have all gotten better at it.

How do approach these solos? Do you aim for as particular climax or place you want to
be?

I try to hear what I play before I play it, and I try to be really careful to not fall into old habits or licks that are so easy to fall back on. If I can’t think of anything, I’ll stop playing, and then come back. That is something that can be really compelling as a listener. Also I’ll start something simple like a 3-note melodic idea, and then try to take that 3-note idea and play it in a different way on a different
part of the neck. It is like jazz school of thought in building solos. I am trying to do that, without just noodling or falling back on my fingers and old habits; I try to use my head. Additionally I leave some room for the bass, guitar or mandolin to do something on their instrument in those little spaces. And
that helps me with an idea of how to respond, and then we are building something collectively. The beautiful thing is that you can crash and burn; you are completely on the edge improvising and having to com e up with something on the spot. When it works is really satisfying and beautiful experience. But that is partly as a result of the risk of a crash and burn. I think it is more human if not all the solos in a night work perfectly, people respond more

Can you talk about switching back and forth between banjo and mandolin?

I don’t like it. The right hand technique is so different; it is hard for me to go from playing banjo right into playing mandolin. I need a tune or two to get warmed and feel like I am in a flow with either instrument. Drew would say, “We have get you playing mandolin on a bunch of stuff.” We have done that some, but it is hard for me to do one tune on the mandolin, and not feel like I am getting anywhere. I like just being the banjo player in that band.

Do you have a preference, or one you feel more comfortable playing?

The banjo feels more natural. Since I played it as a kid and I really worked hard on it in my teenage years. It is easy for my right hand to come back together to having fairly good rhythm and having a natural feel. At first, with the banjo I wanted to play like Alan Munde so I copied all his stuff. Then I tried to copy Béla’s stuff. Eventually I didn’t feel like I had my own voice, whereas with mandolin I didn’t try to directly copy as many people. I feel like mandolin is easier for me to write music on, and primarily I prefer the mandolin for that reason. The mandolin is much more linear, and it is harder for me to think in a linear way on the banjo.

As far as I knew before the last couple of years you were a mandolin player. Did you practice much banjo before getting called by Leftover Salmon?

No, not really. I was in a band called Sugarbeat with Tony Furtado about 13 years ago, and from that point I had pretty much focused on mandolin. I maybe had a couple of banjo gigs in those 10 years. But 3 years ago Leftover Salmon called when Mark Vann was sick, and neither Tony Furtado nor Scott Vestal (who were filling in) could do the gigs, so Greg Garrison (bass) mentioned my name. So they tried me out for a few gigs, and then I started practicing for a couple of months to get my chops back together. It was a bit rough at first but I got back into it.

When did you win the Winfield Banjo contest?

It was 1990. I had been going for a few years before that and it was cool to win the contest, to win a new banjo. Yet the best thing about it was that I got to meet some other musicians. Because of being out there and meeting musicians like Tony Furtado, and by doing well in the contest, I hooked up with a lot of other people in the campground. It ended up being much more valuable making those connections. It was nice to put on a resume that I won, but the really valuable stuff for me was what came afterwards from those connections.

What have you learned working with David Grier and Todd Phillips?

Grier’s attitude is that he really thrives off of freshness, and that is the whole point for him. I have really learned from that. If you are challenging yourself all the time you never get self-satisfied. When it works it is improvisation at its best, and it is really rewarding. Even in the studio, he will play things totally different each time. When you are taking a solo, there is the risk when going back and fixing a section of it sounding stiff. If you go in and think, “I don’t know what is going to happen. I’ll play just whatever I feel at that moment,” you are guaranteed it is going to sound fresh. It may suck, but you are in that vibe of how you feel when you are playing the moment. You have a much better chance of it really working. That is the way Grier works, and it is the way I try to work too. The best things often happen unexpectedly, and I wouldn’t be able to recreate those even if I tried to. When we play as a trio, we try to respond to each other and really listen, and even try to make it different from one night to the next. If it
feels good, we will play well, it doesn’t feel good, well that is the way it goes sometimes. But we try to play according to how we feel.

What is your composition process?

I try to keep a notebook handy, or a tape recorder. Sometimes I’ll have periods where I try to write every day. It often doesn’t result in much, but at least I am getting in the effort. Maybe later in the day an idea will pop into my head, and I will write it down or record it, and then take that idea I try to finish it. What I have found is that much of the good stuff comes by accident, and then I put in the hard work to finish it. Sometimes it even takes several years. I don’t write much on the banjo. There is one tune on Drew’s CD called “Big Ice,” and I had a couple of tunes written on The View From Here record that I wrote on banjo. “DNA” was originally on the banjo, and the first part of “Black’s Fork” was a banjo tune, but most
come on mandolin.

Did you spend much time working scales on the banjo?

When I was working to play like Béla, I was working through single string scales, but not as much with melodic style. I mostly tried to learn tunes in the melodic style. Now I practice scales and work to get my single string sounding good. Often right now I am just trying to play catch up with my playing, so I haven’t really pursued things like 2-octave scales. I try to really get in a position and understand it. I usually practice the scale up to the 9th and then down, and that tends to stay within a more comfortable position on the banjo. Or starting on the 2nd, and up to the 10th and back down, usually in a 9-note
scale pattern.

How do you warm up?

With the banjo, I try to start out slow, and not get ahead of myself. I might play a tune like “Fireball Mail” really slow, and make sure my rhythm is feeling good. Then I might play a melodic tune like “Paddy on the Turnpike” and try to get back into that mindset of playing melodically. Then I play some through some single string scales. For example, trying G, and then going to C, then going to F, etcetera. I could take an hour to go through all the patterns, so I just try to do a few to get thinking about it. Beyond that, I try to maybe work on a tune of Drew’s that I need to improve Also I try to take a melodic idea in a tune and move that one step up the scale, but staying in the key. When you improvise, you never know where you are going to land, so I try to do things in patterns, melodic or single string. I might play a 5-note
pattern, and then try to do it in another position which helps me in becoming more familiar with other areas of the fingerboard. It also helps me to play things that might help me transition through chord changes. For example taking I, II, III, V, of the scale in G would be G, A, B, and D. Starting on the 5th
fret of the 4th string, and play that pattern single string style. Then starting at the 7th fret on A, working through how I might play that pattern from there, the same shape pattern would be II, III, IV, VI, then off the B which would be III, IV, V, VII. Then from the C would be IV, V, VI, VIII (or I). I think people respond to patterns when improvising, and they like things similar but different. With these patterns there is continuity for the listener, and you gain fluency in a certain keys.

Have you spent much time with other more altered scales?

A little bit. I have been working with the melodic minor scale (flat III, natural VI and natural VII). Playing with Ross Martin (guitar), he will do all this stuff way out there but seems to fit, and melodic minor is one
approach that he uses. If the band is playing D7, I will play an Eb Melodic Minor scale, and find a way to make that work. It has an F# and a C note (D, Eb, F#, G, Ab, Bb, and C; this is the D Altered or Super-Locrian scale), so there is enough commonality with D7 to build something. Then I transition that back
to G. I have been working on making that smooth. And then you can play 4-note patterns within that scale which can give all sorts of weird intervals, some you wouldn’t expect.

What is in your CD player right now?

I am listening to Alison Brown’s first CD Simple Pleasures, and Terry Riley, the father of minimalism. His son Gyan is in the mandocello player in the Modern Mandolin Quartet. I always fall back and listen to Miles Davis for inspiration and I have been listening to a lot Wayne Shorter right now. It is good
inspiration to get outside. There are many bluegrass players that offer plenty of inspiration, but getting outside of that you never know what kind of ideas you might get about how to arrange a tune, or how to
approach a solo.

Check out www.compassrecords.com/mattflinnner for
more info on Matt and his mandolin.