Little Worlds May 24, 2010
Looking for something to do while the Flecktones are gearing up for a new CD with Howard Levy and another Dec tour with Alash and Jeff Coffin?
We picked a stock photo to use for our Little Worlds and 10 from Little Worlds CD's. We altered them a bit...
Of course -- right after the CD came out we began to see the same photo used everywhere we looked! We want you to send us what you can find in your neighborhood. Let's see how many different versions we can locate! Best of luck!
Check out Bela - On the Road to the Grammys Jan 26, 2010 The Music Voyager team is in a major push to attract fans, friends and followers to our Road to a GRAMMY posts, and to the GRAMMY broadcast as we approach the GRAMMYs a week from Sunday.
So check out the url that suits you!
Bela is up for 3 Grammys this year. Follow Music Voyager on the Road to the Grammys!
American Public Television is distributing Music Voyager’s tv series to PBS stations in North America. To that aim, they have featured Music Voyager webisodes, including 3 of Bela Fleck, on their itunes podcast channel.
Bela's European Diary Nov 30, 2009
Nov 1, 2009
We met at the Nashville airport today, to start our European tour.
It was the Flecktones first touring of 2009, and unusual for several reasons.
This would be our first touring with Howard Levy since late 1992, when he left the group.
Over the last 17 years the band has played with several great musicians in his stead.
They included Sam Bush, Paul McCandless, and most notably Jeff Coffin, who sat in with us for a tour in 1996, and never left. Until now that is. The untimely death of LeRoi Moore had left a hole in the Dave Mathews Band which they had filled with our pal Jeff Coffin. We were thrilled for him, but after 12 years with Jeff, we needed a replacement, especially if we intended to tour any time that Dave Mathews was touring.
And after the last two years of minimal touring, it seemed like time for us to do more. Although we would include Jeff in the December 'Holiday Tour' it was time to look for other alternatives, or we'd become a part time band.
Personally, I was kind of excited at the idea of reinventing the group again. As much as I love Jeff and his playing, after so many albums and tours it was feeling challenging to find things we hadn't done, and I was finding the music a little predictable.
When the idea of playing some shows with Howard came up, we all embraced the idea of seeing what we would sound like with him now, 17 years later. No long term commitment was made, but everyone in Flecktone World was feeling excited and optimistic.
We did a rehearsal in September for three days, in which we worked up most of the tunes we had been doing by the end of 1992.
It was very trippy playing that music again, and it all seemed to hold up rather well.
I could see that we had improved as musicians individually and it would be interesting to see how we would play the old music.
We left Nashville, to Chicago, catching the plane to Dublin, and soon a van to Limerick, where we'd start with Howard.
He was already in Europe touring, and would meet up with us tomorrow.
Nov 2
We arrived in Dublin 40 minutes early due to tail winds.
We were picked up by Martin, a guy who had driven for me before, when I came to the Banjo Festival in Longford a few years back.
Howard was to meet us in Limerick, a 3 hour drive from Dublin.
He had been playing in Germany for the Hohner Harmonica folks.
He missed his connection in Dublin for Shannon, but luckily we were able to wrangle a ride for him with a fellow who was driving a bass rig up for Victor.
We rehearsed at the school late in the afternoon, and it went well, despite being very tired from the travel. At this point I was going on 3 hours of sleep.
But that didn't stop us from going to a party after the rehearsal, where we met Bruce Molsky, the great old time fiddler and a good friend, and Donal Lunny and Andy Irvine, two legends of Irish music. After a lovely visit and some jamming, we came back to the hotel where I crashed for nearly 11 hours.
Nov 3
The first show was tonight in Limerick. Although it wasn't a packed crowd, they certainly seemed to love it.
The band kicked right into gear, and just got stronger all night.
Each musician was really going for it, and it was very exciting.
It felt to me like the early days of the band, when no-one in the audience knew what to expect, and they were surprised constantly throughout the night.
I hadn't played a show with Vic and Futch for many moons, and it was great to lock in with them. Howard was surprising and amazing all night.
We finished up with Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, I could not remember the audience participation section, but Victor helped me remember.
We got a couple of standing ovations. It was a great first night...
Tomorrow we'd leave at 10 AM for travel to Dublin.
Nov 4
We had a great time in Dublin. Our good pal Paul Brady came out to visit, and it was great to see him.
Everything really felt good, the music coming together...
Nov 5
Ouch, a very early flight today after a late night. Leaving Dublin at 6:40AM meant leaving the hotel at 4:30 AM. There would be a lot of this kind of travel on this trip.
Jeff Coffin should be patting himself on the back for taking the DMB gig about now!
To add insult to injury, we were hit by a huge excess baggage charge of 5,000 US dollars.
The gig was really fun, a lovely small concert hall in Barcelona. It had maybe 500 seats, and was sold out, a real listening crowd.
Nov 6
Semi ouch today, we left the hotel at 7 for a 9:50 flight.
When we arrived at Alicante, we drove an hour to Cartagena. This is lovely town on the water. One claim to fame is that the first submarine was built there and they have it proudly on display downtown. I have played this town many times now, with the Flecktones, with Chick Corea and I believe with Stanley Clarke and Jean Luc. Although it is a small out of the way place, I always really enjoy walking the town and performing. The downtown is particularly picturesque and the water is close by to walk to.
The theater is a few steps from the hotel, and believe me, that was a welcome situation for the traveling musician, especially the tired one. People can sleep nearly up till show time and not miss a ride, etc.
On this night we had an opening act, an R and B singer named James Hunter, and his band.
It is always more stressful for us and our crew to have an opener. Sometimes our gear has to be moved off stage for them to play, and then put back quickly right before the set. Little mistakes in resetting can cause major problems for the band, if anyone is not hearing properly, and is preoccupied with their equipment during the first few songs.
The opener actually benefits from doing their soundcheck 2nd, right before they play but the headliner can sometimes really suffer. That is what has led us to avoid opening acts whenever possible, so we can be sure we will do a good job.
In cases whether the show needs help with ticket sales, we prefer an actual co-bill, someone of similar stature, who will bring a significant crowd and artistically add to the enjoyment of the show. In these cases the issue of resetting the stage is offset by the larger audience, and the potential for jamming...
Anyway, James Hunter's band sounded great and though they seemed an odd choice artistically to play before us, the audience loved them and the set change went smooth.
Unfortunately their B3 player's organ broke, and he had to play the piano that we had brought in for Howard to play. The only problem with that is that by the time he was done banging on it for their set it was hopelessly out of tune.
Although this didn't seem to hurt their music, it would hurt ours.
There was nothing to be done about it, and Howard soldiered on.
The show actually didn't suffer, and the sold out crowd seemed to really love our band.
Nov 7
Another early leave, this time we were riding in a big bus to Zaragoza. It was an 8 hour drive, and this bus was not the 'touring bus' type that we have grown accustomed and fond of. No bunks... So the people who couldn't sleep sitting up were out of luck.
Along the way we stopped at a roadside spot where I bought a T shirt that showed a Bull made out of peace signs. Remember they still have bull fights in Spain!
Eventually we pulled into Zaragoza where we played a pretty big hall as part of the jazz festival. The opening act here was local jazz musicians and they had a lyrical and sweet sound.
Our show was a lot of fun, the largest crowd so far and everyone was very pleased.
The only minor adventure I had here involved espresso. Once again we were staying in a hotel walking distance from the venue and I stole the opportunity to crash for a couple of hours after soundcheck. I was so dead asleep when it was time to go play that I felt I needed and deserved some coffee. I found a hopping little bar on the way over to the gig, and the espresso machine I saw through the window, made it's siren call. I wandered into the bar and ordered a coffee, using my highly refined Spanish pointing skills. When the barman delivered the coffee, and I offered him my credit card, he refused it, saying it was too small an amount to be worth running thru the machine. He wouldn't give me the coffee! I started offering him the American money I had, first 2 dollars, then 5, then a 20, and eventually I waved a 50 at him. He was having nothing to do with it!
Finally a gentleman at the bar laid down the single euro needed to buy the coffee for me, and I was delivered from my dilemma! He also refused to take my American dollars, and I drank the coffee, and slunk out of the bar, heading for the venue.
I made it in plenty of time, and the gig went off well!
Nov 8
Another very early departure, 530 AM. We got on the bus and drove several hours to Barcelona to catch our flight to Prague.
More whopping excess baggage charges...
I was on time to the bus and was indulging in irrational irritation cause one of our party (who remains nameless) was late. Suddenly I realized I didn't have my cell phone blackberry. I ran off the bus, got my key back from the hotel and found my cell phone still sitting on the desk in the room.
I ended up being the last one on the bus, and I thank the person who delayed us enough for me to get my phone!
Future Man had lost his phone on the flight into Dublin, and unbelievably got it back when a very pleasant Aer Lingus employee hand carried it from lost in found to our gate just before we left for Spain.
Richard was a little less enamored with Aer Lingus after they had hit us for 5 k in excess baggage charges heading to Spain. This was a new high, and not the end of our troubles with skyrocketing charges. We have a certain amount of necessary gear that we carry on to each plane, and there is always some drama to see how it's gonna go.
Unfortunately Future Man and his phone had a short lived reunion, because he lost the phone again in Barcelona and it didn't come back this time.
At this point you must be thinking what airheads we all must be, losing stuff and being late, but please have some charity and consider how little sleep we'd been averaging!
Another constant travel drama is getting my banjo on the plane. I carry my 1937 pre-war Gibson Master-tone and although I understand that there are no guarantees, I have had good success getting it on in general. We sometimes buy a seat for it on the small planes.
We showed up in Prague, checked into our hotel, and the crew went to set up at the club we'd be playing that evening. As tough as the travel is for the musicians, we do usually have that 2 hour buffer to nap, shower or walk around. The crew has it much harder, as they often go straight from the airport to the theater or club to set up... Then after the show while we catch our breath, they are packing it up.
I have never had a bad gig in Prague, and this one was no exception. I think it was the best we had played so far, and the informal stand up club brought out a loose and highly improvised element from the band.
The audiences here are so enthusiastic and loving that you almost can't play poorly and sometimes hit some amazing heights. That was what happened for us that night.
Nov 9
Yikes, a 6 am flight meant leaving the hotel at 3:45.
Starting to feel the pain, are we having fun yet?
No big gig today though, a sold out show in an amazing theater in Athens, Greece playing before Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke and Lenny White. SHeesh!
This was our first time in Greece as the Flecktones and we loved it. Victor had been here before.
It ended up being an incredible night, our show went well, with Chick sitting in on Sunset Road, and all of us doing the encore with them at the end, on Spain.
Afterwards we hung out at a restaurant with some of the guys.
It felt really good to be with Chick, Stanley and Lenny and their crew. I knew Chick's guys quite well from our many months of duo touring, and they really feel like family. Vic has also toured a lot with Stanley over the last few years and they are buddies. And of course I did many shows with Stanley and Jean Luc Ponty a few years back so it was great to catch up.
Nov 10
This is the first recovery day we have had, and we didn't have to leave the hotel till 2 pm - an amazing luxury to all of us. All we had to do was travel to Amsterdam, where we had the one free night of the tour. Everyone did some sightseeing and exercising and we truly enjoyed the chance to breathe freely for a few hours.
Nov 11
Another easy day as our sound check wasn't till 6 pm. Everyone took advantage of the chance to wander around the city.
We played at the Melkwag (Milky Way), a standup bar that we had done several times before.
I found to my consternation that my amp seemed to have been blown, and all that came out of it was highly distorted. I made it through the gig, which went well - and asked Richard to look into finding another one for tomorrow. Howard floated the crazy idea that maybe the amp wasn't blown but that there was a power mismatch.
Nov 12
We stayed in the same hotel and left at about 1 pm for our gig in Zoetermeer, about an hour from Amsterdam.
The only shocker here was that they had a tiny upright piano for Howard to play, and a piano player of his level doesn't normally play a little instrument like that. He was a good sport though and he played well on this inferior instrument.
Richard had found me a Trace Acoustic amp to use and it was working. Just for the heck of it we plugged in my blown amp, and surprise, it was working fine. It continued to work thru the rest of the tour.
Actually this gig was a highlight for me, as it was so relaxed and we were hearing each other very well, the music soared and everyone was very happy with it.
There were some folks there who had seen me perform in Holland in 1980, with Spectrum, the bluegrass band I was in before I joined up with New Grass Revival.
There were a couple of 10 year old girls who had danced on stage with our bassist Mark Schatz, who is a great buck dancer. But now they were in their 40's and me over 50.
Time flies, don't it!
Nov 13 and 14
Onward to Italy, another early leave, but not so bad, 7 am.
We went to Milano, where we played the Blue Note jazz club, 2 shows per night for two nights.
This was our first time to this area, although we played once in Perugia. There were a lot of serious banjo fans and bassists in the crowd and they loved the show. It was fun to play for two days in one place. One of our crew guys was getting sick, the flu!
On the second day he was able to sleep thru the day, for 20 hours he said and by the time we needed to leave for London, he was feeling much better.
Nov 15th
I got to see a little of Milan this afternoon, il Duomo should not be missed if you ever go!
We left the Blue Note at 2 am, after the guys packed up all the gear.
At 5 am we were on the way to the airport for the last crazy day.
We appeared to have made it to the last day of our insane European tour!
But we were not out of the woods yet.
We had two big shows today with Chick and the gang at the Barbican, a beautiful 2500 seat hall.
And the first show was at 3 pm, with a 12:30 soundcheck.
We caught our flight, had an unusually low excess baggage charge, under 1,000.00, for once.
I got my banjo on board once again, no problem and we were landing in London before 9:30.
All the bags showed up, and we headed to the hotel and the venue.
Chick and I had been e-mailing back and forth about doing a better job of sound checking the 2 groups together for the encore, and whether he would sit in again.
Sound checking the 2 groups was actually quite a complex maneuver, because our stuff needed to be set up and checked before they could mix us into their stage set up.
Their gear was already pre set. Since we were playing first, we were to do the second soundcheck. They had decided not to do a soundcheck but their crew had set up their instruments, and there was no point moving them to put our stuff in place, till after we had checked together. Complicated!
To make a long story a little shorter, we all got up there and banged around a bit. Chick had come up with some arrangement ideas, basically breaking down to duets. This worked out great, with Stanley and Victor interacting, Lenny and Future Man interacting and Chick and I interacting and Howard and Tim Godwin (a great sax player who Chick had sitting in) interacting. It was a cool idea and it really worked.
Then we struck their stuff and got ours in place and it was time to open the doors for the audience to come in.
About an hour later we were on stage.
Chick joined us for Sunset Road.
Then their trio came on. I was able to sneak back into the hall and watch 40 minutes of the set before I had to get backstage to retune my banjo for Spain, the big encore with everyone.
Those guys sounded fantastic. I suddenly remembered that these are my favorite guys, and felt very thankful to be in this intimate situation with the three of them and our whole band and crew. It was particularly satisfying to hear Chick and Stanley playing together again, as the two of them have always seemed to me to be a perfect combination. I've always felt that Stanley's loose limbed and grooving way of playing offset Chick's meticulous, iconic style.
And Lenny is one of the great drummers, with so much taste and invention and a long history of incredible music making with Chick and Stanley.
I always feel like a kid around the masters around these guys, but they are very welcoming to all of us. Our friendship with them is a gift.
A side note- I had to retune my banjo because I learned Spain a half step too high back in the 70's, due to my record player running fast! At this point I didn't want to relearn it, as it uses a lot of open strings, so I dropped my banjo tuning down a half step to Gb. This makes the banjo a bit low and floppy and a bit hard to tune, but the alternative was relearning a tune that I knew well in this tuning - so I went for it.
Chick told me that some horn players actually learned the song a half step down from the original due to slow running phonographs! So people were playing this song both a half step high and a half step low, due to the technology of the times.
At any rate, the jam went great and we took a break for dinner while the audience cleared out and the stage was reset to do it all again.
The groups had a fun hang in the food room over dinner, and then it was time for us to go back on.
This is the point when I realized that I had only slept for 2 hours, and it was starting to hit me hard. Unfortunately I had no choice but to go out there and do my best. The set went well, although I definitely was feeling the waves of exhaustion, my legs were starting to shake and the shot of expresso I had had before the set was not treating me well.
But we made it and Vic and Futch and Howard were showing no signs of fatigue. When Chick came up for the last song, it reinvigorated the band and we finished strong.
I found the energy to sit out and watch the trio play another great set, and we did Spain again together for the encore, taking it up to another level.
Now we were done, and everybody was very happy. The bands had really bonded in the short time we were together, and we said our good-byes at the hotel.
6 hours later we were on our way back to the airport for the long trip home.
Excess baggage charges were light!
We'd be home in the evening and jump on the bus in 24 hours to continue the tour in the US...
bela fleck
nov 16, 2009
ORIGINAL FLECKTONES Oct 31, 2009
Hello to all - we are on tour in Europe right now. We are joined by the Tall Thin Flecktone Howard Levy - come see how we started!
The Graveyard Book Audio Oct 30, 2009
Sci/Fi Follower Béla Fleck Contributes “Danse Macabre” To Neil Gaiman’s Latest Audiobook, The Graveyard Book
Banjo renegade Béla Fleck has contributed a solo banjo version of Camille Saint-Saens’ “Danse Macabre” (“The Dance of Death”) to open the audiobook of Neil Gaiman’s latest, The Graveyard Book. “Neil Gaimen is the crown prince on the scene. He carries forward the mantle of the great Sci/Fi writers from the golden age,” adds Béla.
Some News 2 Aug 14, 2009
Quick message from Bela
Hi Folks,
Here's the latest news-
For the month of November, Howard Levy will be rejoining the group. For those who came in late, Howard is the original fourth member of the Flecktones, and played on the first 3 albums, and toured with us from 1990 thru 1992. We will be touring in Europe and the Northeast.
In December Jeff Coffin will be back with us as we return to our holiday repertoire. Look for other special guests on this run as well.
So we've made the service provider switch. We are on a new server with a new platform. We will be working out all the details from here on out. Let us know if you see things that need fixin' !
Thanks,
Bela
NY Times Article Mar 05, 2009
“Throw Down Your Heart: Tales From the Acoustic Planet Vol. 3, Africa Sessions” (Rounder)
Throw Down Your Heart in the LA Times Mar 05, 2009
This is a story of how Béla Fleck, America's most celebrated banjoist, went on a quest in search of his musical soul mate's African roots -- and wound up discovering himself.
