In an interview at the RockyGrass Festival, Michael Cleveland discusses his musical influences and upcoming projects. He mentions a potential live album, collaborations with Béla Fleck, and his admiration for Colorado’s bluegrass scene (Interview date: 7/29/2024)
Michael Cleveland: I can usually get about three or four weeks out of a set of strings. It just depends on where you’re playing and the weather and all kinds of stuff.
Fergus Stone: Of course, but I think it even has something to do with the intensity that you show to the instrument, if you will. You’re working really hard to get everything out of there. I’m sure you heard Scotty Stoneman growing up, but there must have been a lot of other players who influenced you growing up. You were a child prodigy, and so you’ve been playing fiddle since probably about the time you could walk.
Michael Cleveland: I started when I was four years old.
Fergus Stone: Four years old, wow, okay.
Michael Cleveland: Scotty was one of the first people that I listened to because there weren’t a lot of record stores or something like that where you could find full albums of fiddle players. But you could always find these compilation albums – like 30 fiddlers greatest hits. Usually the first song would be Scotty Stoneman playing “Orange Blossom Special”, and you would hear everybody on those. Tommy Jackson, Benny Martin, Dale Potter, Chubby Wise. It was a really good way to intro all these fiddlers. You could hear the different styles. So I guess those are the first cassette tapes I ever had. A bunch of compilation albums like that. And yeah, Scotty was one of my favorites. Still is. I’d have to say, Benny Martin, Kenny Baker, all the guys I just named. Vassar. Love Vassar. I’ve pretty much stolen a little bit from all of them. I’m glad it’s not copyrighted, these licks we play. I’d be in big trouble.
Fergus Stone: You stole them cleanly, though. You’re doing a good job with the stuff you took from them.
Michael Cleveland: It’s very interesting. You go back and listen to that stuff, and you think you know it. It seems like any time I go back and listen, I always hear something new that I hadn’t heard before. Man, I didn’t realize he played it that way. For music to stand the test of time like that, it’s pretty incredible when you can listen to something and still learn from it after hearing it over and over again.
Fergus Stone: I know just what you mean. I go back to the days of slowing down the Earl records to 16 and trying to figure out what he was doing and learning something new again each time. How old were you when you decided to become a professional musician?
Michael Cleveland: I think I always hoped I could be a professional musician, even when I was a little kid. As soon as I found out that people can make a living playing music and then seeing people who are visually impaired, like Doc Watson, especially. Ronnie Milsap, Ray Charles, and all these people.
That’s when I realized I’d like to do that too someday, if I can. I’ve been very fortunate because the teachers at my school always said, look, you need to have something else. You need to have something else to fall back on. Cause this music thing, it’s just such a long shot type of thing. There are good musicians, like some of the best musicians on the planet, that are playing in bars for tips and still waiting to be heard. So I really was fortunate that I was able to play. Right out of high school, I got a job with Dale Ann Bradley, a terrific singer from Kentucky. And it was off from there. I played with Rhonda Vincent after that for about a year and a half, and then went back with Dale Ann for about four or five years before I started this band.
Fergus Stone: They’re gonna rename The Best Instrumental Band, the Flamekeeper Award if you guys keep winning like you’ve been doing. Same with you. It’s going to be the Michael Cleveland Fiddler Award if you don’t slow down a little bit and give these other guys a chance. How do you feel when people come around and praise you like you’re the second coming? Does that make you shy?
Michael Cleveland: It’s hard to think about because when I’m playing, I don’t think in those terms. It’s like, I hear me play every day and I know everything that I do well and everything that I don’t always do well. But it’s very flattering. What’s also really cool is to hear people trying to play your stuff, to hear fiddle players. If there’s anything of mine that I’ve done that somebody thinks enough of to learn, that’s the highest compliment to me.
But the thing about those awards, for everybody who wins those awards, there are tons of other great players that sometimes don’t even get nominated, but they’re just as good. I do feel like some people get overlooked a lot of times. But, I’m always honored to be nominated and I’m very appreciative any time that people vote for me to win or whatever.
I love to play. That’s the bottom line. I just like to play music. Somebody said one time, “You do what you love and the rest will come.”
Fergus Stone: It seems that there isn’t enough money in this business to do it if you hate it.
Michael Cleveland: Oh yeah, that’s the truth, man. My buddy Bill Wolf used to say, “We don’t have any fun at all, but we make a lot of money.”
Fergus Stone: I saw an interview once with the Morris Brothers from the Morris Brothers garage, and of course they had the big hit with “On Top of Old Smokey” and so on. Zeke Morris said, “We fell back long ago.” You talked about something to fall back on. Is there anything that if you weren’t playing music you would enjoy doing?
Michael Cleveland: Oh man, music is pretty much my life. I like to take a break from it every once in a while, but if it’s a weekend and I’m home, I’m usually looking for something to get into. I record a lot at home. I like to read and I like to do stuff like that. But my main thing is playing music. That’s what I love.
Fergus Stone: And I think righteously. You are so good at it. Of course the new album is Grammy nominated. It’s gotten a lot of play on my shows at KGNU and I hope the other folks at our station feel the same way about it. What’s next for Michael and the Flamekeepers?
Michael Cleveland: I’ll tell you what, we’re talking about maybe trying to do a live album. I really want to get working on that. I’ve been recording some stuff with Béla Fleck. We’re working on some fiddle banjo stuff with him. I’m really excited about that. Right now, we’re just having a blast playing.
Fergus Stone: You doing something with Béla Fleck puts me in mind of Scotty Stoneman doing something with Clarence White over a few years there. That was a special thing. You’re both so imaginative as well as great technicians. You have so many ideas. When you’ve talked with Béla, have you gone into detail or is it just, oh we ought to work together sometime?
Michael Cleveland: Yeah, I worked with him in a band called My Bluegrass Heart. He did an album a few years ago. There were a bunch of people on the album and a few different bands or combinations of people went out on the road with that. I was fortunate enough to do that for the last two or three years. I had met Béla and played with him a couple times, but that was really the first time we had played together. That material that he wrote on that album has pushed me like nothing else in quite a while. To get to learn all that and play it was quite an experience.
Fergus Stone: I’m a great admirer of Béla too, and of yours, and I can hardly wait to hear every word of that. Thank you so much for coming to RockyGrass again, and can’t wait to get you back here, or in Colorado, somewhere.
Michael Cleveland: Anytime. We love playing here. We did a run out here last year. We played Cervantes, and we played Loveland, and then we played Palisade. It just blew my mind when we were out here. We started hearing about, oh yeah, Yonder’s out here, they’re playing another thing, and then it’s six or seven other bands playing all these shows. This state, I would say, is just more about the music. If we’d have bands playing around Louisville or Lexington or whatever, like six or seven different bands, there would be no people. It’s just such a great music community here. I was just blown away by how much was going on the same weekend, and just tons of people showing up to all of it. It’s pretty incredible.
Fergus Stone: Coloradans have really shown an appreciation for bluegrass. I think it, maybe always, but going back to the start of Hot Rize, I think they kicked Colorado’s bluegrass appreciation into high gear. Because they were so good at it. And they got around. They let everybody see them. Interestingly, they started the same year KGNU did. 1978. So we walked hand in hand out of the starting gate. As soon as they got their first album done, we were playing it and they were playing benefits for us. Just as bluegrass started by being friendly with radio way back in the WCYB days in Bristol and so on. I think it continues to this day. And we have them to thank. But now, we have people like Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper to thank for keeping the excitement level so high.
Michael Cleveland: Thank you all for broadcasting RockyGrass and Telluride. Even when I’m not here, I tune in. That is the best thing ever to be able to hear.
Fergus Stone: That is great to hear you say that. We get people from all around the world, but to hear you say you listen to us, that is extra special.
Michael Cleveland: Every time, man. If we’re not here, I’m listening to it.
Fergus Stone: I’m so glad to hear you say that. Best of luck to you. We’ve got to close up here. Best of luck to you in all your future endeavors. I want to hear a lot more music from you. And this Béla talk is getting me extra excited.
Michael Cleveland: Oh man, it’ll be fun.
Fergus Stone: Hope to see you real soon again.
Michael Cleveland: All right. Thank you so much.
Fergus Stone: Thank you. We’ve been sitting with Michael Cleveland, band leader of Flamekeeper and hope to see him some more.
