....But to earn the big bucks, at least for the Flecktones, means living an unusual lifestyle that requires sleeping on a 45-foot Prevost tour bus with no full bathroom, shower facilities or privacy.

Living on the bus, Fleck concedes, ''isn't for everybody. It's tight in there, and it's a real party all the time. You have to be OK with that.''

The entourage includes the band members: sax player Jeff Coffin, bassist Victor Lemonte Wooten and his brother Roy, who plays electronic drums in the shape of a guitar and calls himself Futureman. There's also the tour manager, lighting director, sound mixer and bus driver.

Wooten has no complaints. ''On a plane, you have to get up very early after staying up very late and sit in an uncomfortable chair for a long time. On a bus, you sit around and watch TV or lay down in your own bunk.''

When Coffin joined the group in 1997, the Flecktones were touring the country in a van, and sleeping in motels. ''When a band gets to the point where you can live on a bus, that's luxury.''

....Fleck manager David Bendett says the band switched to Sony because the label offered a big advance — he won't reveal the number — and a unique arrangement: three albums on Sony's Columbia jazz label and two on Sony Classical.

Fleck's Grammy-award-winning recording of banjo classical music, Perpetual Motion, sold 94,000 copies, unheard of for a classical album, where many symphonic recordings sell 40,000 to 60,000 copies.

''If you can sell 100,000 records for an art project, then you're doing really well,'' says Fleck, who was named after classical composer Béla Bartók. He credits the sales to the exposure from the touring.

Perpetual Motion is profitable, because of the economics of his Sony deal. It was the first record on his classical contract.

The latest, Music for Two, a classical project with bassist Edgar Meyer released in the spring, has sold 17,000 copies, and moves ''around 1,000 copies a week,'' says Sony Classical President Peter Gelb. ''The touring really helps.''

....Hardy Jones says he's seen the Flecktones more than 130 times — three times this year. ''Their music just speaks to me,'' says the Kansas City, Mo., kitchen remodeler.

''No one plays stuff like they do,'' says Brady Gambels, 19, of Salt Lake City, seeing his second Flecktones show, in Deer Valley. He was part of the crowd standing by the stage to have a CD cover signed by Fleck; the band always mingles with fans after the encores.

But Flecktones fans will have to find other concerts to attend in 2005. The group plans to take a hiatus from the road next year, their first in 15 years. [USA Today] Everyone needs a break from that kind of perpetual motion lifestyle, and what do you want to bet that Phish will get back together at some point also? With this model, you don't play, you don't get paid.