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You would think that it might get old after a while, getting nominated for and taking home all of those Grammy Award trophies.

After all, Béla Fleck, bandleader of the experimental and groundbreaking fusion band Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, has been nominated a total of 27 times, the only musician to be nominated in eight different categories — jazz, bluegrass, pop, country, spoken word, Christian, composition and world music. Of those nominations, he’s taken home the win nine times, most recently earlier this year for Best Contemporary Jazz Album, given to the most recent Flecktones album, “The Hidden Land.”

Despite having more statues than a Maryville High School trophy case and enough nominations to wallpaper his kitchen, however, Fleck never takes the process for granted, he told The Daily Times this week.

“The thing is, no matter how many times you win, there’s nothing really to take its place,” he said. “It’s still a thrill to win a Grammy when it’s your 10th one as opposed to first. It’s just a really good feeling, and for some records that aren’t selling that well, it means that people are listening, and it makes you feel stronger about the music.

“It can be discouraging given what happens out in the marketplace, especially these days. So to get a Grammy is sort of a consolation. ‘The Hidden Land’ came out when the label and the music industry were falling apart, so it felt really good. It was a really great thing to win the Grammy this year.”

Besides, he pointed out, there’s never any certainty, despite the fact that his name seems almost a sure-fire way for the Flecktones — or any musician who collaborates with him, for that matter — to obtain a nomination.

“The last album (“Little Worlds,” released in 2003) was our most ambitious project ever, and it wasn’t even nominated,” he said. “I know that shouldn’t seem odd, but if the album we put the most hard work into in our lives didn’t get nominated, so that let us know it’s never a given.”

A little background, for those unfamiliar with one of the best banjo pickers alive today: Born in New York and named after composer Béla Bartok, he picked up the banjo when he was 15 after being overwhelmed by “The Beverly Hillbillies Theme,” played by two originators of bluegrass, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. From the outset, he stretched the instrument’s limitations — he experimented with bebop on the banjo in high school, and in 1982, he joined the progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival, where he turned heads in the country and bluegrass worlds.

He released his first solo album, “Drive,” in 1988, and a year later, the Flecktones formed — Victor Wooten on bass, his brother Lamonte “Future Man” Wooten on percussion and — joining in 1997 — Jeff Coffin on saxophone. The band made a name for itself with its self-titled debut, released in 1990, which featured a mixture of jazz and bluegrass. Through whirlwind touring — the group routinely plays roughly 200 dates a year — and endless recording sessions, the band quickly gathered a legion of loyal fans.

The Flecktones also caught the attention of their peers in the music industry, and artists from Amy Grant to Dave Matthews made guest appearances on the Flecktones’ six albums released in the 1990s. The Flecktones also garnered much critical acclaim, winning their first Grammy in 1998.

As an individual musician, Fleck seems almost superhuman on the banjo — his playing is so accomplished, frenetic and clean that you’d swear he has four arms and 20 fingers. Together with Victor Wooten, who’s repeatedly been named as the best bass player in the world by a number of publications; with Future Man, who plays percussion on an invention he designed himself called the “drumitar”; and with Coffin, who often plays two saxophones at the same time — well, it’s safe to say there’s always something to see and hear.

No two sets are alike. The band is constantly seeking out new ways to improvise and do something different, and Fleck keeps meticulous records of previous concerts the band has played at venues like The Bijou Theatre, where the Flecktones perform on Sunday and Monday.

“I have setlists from every show we’ve done over the past 15 years, and every time we go to a city we’ve been to before, I’ll check the last two or three times we’ve played in that town,” Fleck said. “I’ll see how much of a turnover there’s been in material, how much we’ve repeated ourselves. For example, the last two times we played in Knoxville, we performed ‘Big Country,’ so we probably won’t do that one.

“I would hate to have somebody say, ‘I saw that band four times in four years, and every time they ended with the same song or played the same setlist. I don’t know if I need to see them again.’ A lot of people might want to hear us play certain songs that were big for us and seem to work as hits, but we don’t feel any compunction to play those unless we want to, and one of the excuses I have for thinking that’s a good thing is the reaction from people who have never seen the band before.

“They feel like they’re getting something they’ve never seen before, and if we don’t repeat ourselves, they can conceivably have the same experience when they come back,” he added. “Those are the people who say, ‘Wow, I saw you guys before, but then I saw you again and it was completely different.’”

It might seem surprising that a musician puts so much meticulous thought into performing. Fleck, however, likes to keep his fingers on the pulse of everything Flecktones-related. He’s a businessman as much as he is a musician, and in this day and age, especially given that the Flecktones operate outside of the mainstream, that’s almost a necessity, he said.

“I always have done that, because I’ve never felt there’s anybody you can hand your life to and say, ‘Go do a good job,’” he said. “There are people you can work well with and form partnerships with, and we have a great system going because there are three people looking at most situations — me, our road manager and our business manager. That’s a great system, because you have to be good at a lot of things.

“You can’t just hire somebody and hope it works out. To be good as an instrumental band, you have to be smart and make good decisions as much as possible. We’re not a commercial entity in theory, so we want to show up and kick ass every time we play. We want to super-achieve as much as possible.”

It would be easy for the Flecktones to cash in and go the more commercial route. As it is, there are few vocals on any of the band’s albums. Here and there, the group will invite a vocalist to lend something different to the songs, but by and large, Fleck, Coffin and the Wootens prefer the creative freedom that comes from being unrestricted in composition and instrumental arrangement.

“Every once in a while, we’ll have a great idea had invite somebody to sing with us, like we did with Dave Matthews, but we do that because it’s really cool and fun, and we choose songs that are more artistic choices than they are commercial attempts,” Fleck said. “For that, he felt good about it, and we felt good about it; it was an outgrowth of an actual friendship. We don’t really avoid commerciality, but we don’t really want to court it, either.

“If anything, I think we’re getting less commercial. We’re doing more and more of what we want to do, and less and less of what some imaginary marketplace wants. We’re doing pieces that are more and more difficult, songs that challenge us more. It’s sort of hard to describe — it’s not like we’re avoiding things that are musical and beautiful at all. Those things are really important parts of the music.

“It’s just about keeping it something we all can love,” he added. “It’s not just technical exercises we’re doing; it’s about doing things that we like, things that we want to listen to and hear ourselves do.”

To that end, what the Flecktones do never gets old, he said. With 10 years under their belt as a solid foursome and going-on-20 as a band, there’s still plenty of stones unturned in Fleck’s quest for musical adventure. And while he enjoys his solo outings and his collaborations with other artists, nothing can take the place of the awe that still washes over him every time he takes the stage with Coffin and the Wootens.

“It floors me over and over again — pretty much on every tour, I go through a period of being shocked by how cool the band is,” he said. “Like right now, we’re doing some recording, and it’s kind of a pain in the ass to get set up and going, but then we start playing, and it hits me — wow, the groove we have together is really special.”