The Flecktones hit the road with music from a new album. The group is gearing up for performances at the State Theatre in New Brunswick March 6 and McCarter Theatre in Princeton March 10.
By: Daniel Shearer
There can be little doubt that banjo master Béla Fleck is at the top of his game. In a recent concert with bassist, pianist and composer Edgar Meyer a performer whose long list of genre-hopping collaborations includes work with Yo-Yo Ma and a job as the regular bassist for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Mr. Fleck showed his chops have never been better.
!["Béla]("/local/Z/ZWIRE1091/zwire/images/021502belafleck-cov.jpg") |
| Béla Fleck
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Playing to a diverse crowd at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Pa., a mix of suit-and-tie
chamber music enthusiasts and dreadlocked hippies, the duo delivered a sampling of classical music from Mr.
Fleck’s CD, Perpetual Motion, along with a spirited arrangement of the Miles Davis classic "Solar,"
a number of original tunes with clear influences from Appalachian folk and a few gems from his regular quartet,
the Flecktones.
Back on the road after a five-month hiatus, the Flecktones are gearing up for performances
at the State Theatre in New Brunswick March 6 and McCarter Theatre in Princeton March 10. Over the span of
seven albums, the group has covered virtually every conceivable genre, from pop and bluegrass to spoken word
and jazz.
Founding Flecktones member Royel, known on stage as "Future Man," performs with the band
on an instrument of his own design, the synth-ax drumitar. Held together with duct tape, the odd-looking instrument
uses pressure-sensitive triggers, which are piped through a MIDI rack, allowing Future Man to duplicate almost
any percussion instrument with his hands and fingers. Virtuoso Victor Lemonte Wooten plays bass, with Jeff
Coffin on tenor, alto and soprano saxophones, and occasionally flute and clarinet.
TimeOFF I hear the Flecktones are working on a new album. How are things going?
Béla Fleck It’s going great, the only problem is we’ve recorded too much music for one record.
TO Is that a problem?
BF (Laughs) We’ll have to see. I’d love to do a double album, but we’re talking about whether that’s
going to really make sense or not. The truth is all the classical music that I’ve done has made me go for some
different things in the writing. There’s a combination of a looser, more easy going feel and some classical
elements coming into it as well. It’s funkier and slicker at the same time.
TO It’s interesting to hear you use the words "easy going," because the Flecktones last album, Outbound,
to my ears, reflected a more sophisticated studio effort, with guest artists, string arrangements and steel
drums.
BF Right, that was kind of like a kitchen-sink record. That’s what I mean when I say this one is easier
going in that, for one thing, it’s all about the band. It’s about the four of us. It’s not about a bunch of
guests. Now the guest record was really fun to do because we hadn’t ever really done a record like that, where
we got to do a sophisticated production. We felt like it was time to pare back down to who the band is now:
What are we, what do we want to be this next several years. How do we reinvent ourselves again and not repeat
ourselves? We’ve been maybe even a little bit more esoteric in certain ways, allowing ourselves to take a little
bit more time with things. That’s why we have too much material. Some of these pieces are really stretching
out.
For me, what’s fun about having a band together is the limitation. It’s the same people over
and over again, so how are you gonna make it sound different. How are you going to push it forward. And it
always comes back to the writing and the conception. You have to imagine a way for the group to sound good
together, like a different combination musically. And I do think we found some on this record, I really do.
TO I’ve always thought that was the cool thing about the Flecktones. You guys have all got these busy
side projects where you can really shine, then the Flecktones come together with a different feel.
BF Maybe that’s why everybody needs to do aggressive side projects, because the group really does have
an identity, and we tend to play the parts that we’ve created for ourselves in the band. I don’t even mean
musically, I mean the role. Victor (Wooten) might enjoy going out and being a soloist all night, putting himself
into a completely different role on tour. For me, that’s kind of what happens when I go out and play with Edgar
(Meyer). I’m a different kind of a banjo player for that tour.
What’s exciting is going back and forth. I really love the characters we’ve created for each
other, whatever the Flecktones are. It’s really special, and I wouldn’t ever want it to go away, but it’s nice
to play other parts as well.
TO In the past the Flecktones have polished songs on the road and then you take them in the studio.
Will the audience in Princeton get a sampling of stuff from the new album?
BF I’m certain of that. Although, there is a lot of stuff that we learned in the studio.
!["Image]("/local/Z/ZWIRE1091/zwire/images/021502belafleck-cd.jpg") |
| Image from Bèla Fleck’s Perpetual Motion CD, released last year on Sony Classical.
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TO Is there any new material you’ll do for certain?
BF Set lists change from night to night, but we have a tendency to get bored, so what’s gonna happen
as soon as we get on the road, it’ll be the first touring we’ve done in five months. We’re gonna want to play
some new stuff and we’re gonna have a whole album of it to choose from. So every day, we’ll say ‘Hey, let’s
try and learn that tune from the record that we’ve recorded.’ Playing it live is going to be a different story.
TO When are you planning to release the new record?
BF It’ll be this summer. Also, there’s a DVD coming out in February. It’s an extension of the Outbound
CD, except live, with four of the guest musicians from the record. That is also going to be an album. We filmed
that and mixed it, and it ended up being such a good show we decided to put it out as an audio show as well.
A single-album set.
Outbound was a studio thing. We did a lot of things in the studio that we had never
done before. We had some great musicians. Our audience might not have known them that well. So people like
Andy Narell or Paul Hanson, greatest crazy bassoon player you ever heard but people don’t know who he is. It
was really cool to let that band grow into something live that wasn’t figuring out what overdub to do in the
studio. So I’m glad that we allowed that to have an organic life of its own, and that’s what’s on this record.
TO I gotta ask. Where did you find Ondar the Tuvan throat singer? (One of the guest performers on Outbound.)
BF He found us, actually. He just turned up one day in Nashville. People said, "Hey, there’s this guy
in town. You need to come over and record with him." And so we did, and he ended up signed on Warner Brothers
with us, and a very natural thing happened there.
TO Where does he hail from?
BF Tuva.
TO Where is that, Nepal?
BF North from there. Over from Mongolia, which is north of China.
TO My geography wasn’t that bad.
BF You’re in the right quadrant, you just have to think north.
TO Will he be touring with you?
BF He has toured with us quite a bit in the past. And he is a person who is a welcome guest whenever
he wants to be, but we don’t have any plans right now. That record reflected kind of what we were doing last
year, which was traveling with a lot of these guests. Now, we’re going back to the quartet.
TO Did you ever ask for a pointer on some polyphonic singing?
BF I didn’t. The other guys all can do it, Victor, Future Man and Jeff. They all can throat sing and
had learned to do it before. The Flecktones went to Mongolia, where they do a very similar kind of singing.
And that was the coolest thing. And yeah, Victor and Future Man learned how to do it, and Jeff was learning
how to do it too when we met him.
TO I love your arrangement of Aaron Copeland’s "Hoedown," especially the sort of Middle Eastern sound
you get from the sliding string section on the record.
BF We’ve been ending shows with it. I’m not sure whether we’ll do it on the next tour, just because
we’ve done it so much. We probably will. It’s the most natural ending song we’ve probably ever had. It’s kind
of hard to avoid playing it at this point.
TO I would say that maybe we’ve discovered a new Flecktones anthem.
BF It seemed like it turned into that, which is cool, and it’s still fun to play, so I imagine that
we’ll be closing with it this tour, too. Ever since we started closing with it, I don’t think we ever have
not. We just have to decide who we’re gonna be in this tour, and that’ll happen as we get into it.
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones will perform at State Theatre, 15 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick,
March 6, 8 p.m. Tickets cost $20-$32. On the Web: www.statetheatrenj.org.
For information, call (732) 246-7469; and at McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, March
10, 3 p.m. Limited ticket availability. For information, call (609) 258-2787. On the Web: www.mccarter.org.
The Flecktones on the Web: www.flecktones.com