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Thrown Into<br />
DEEP<br />
WATER<br />
From his new Africa projects to his work with the<br />
Sparrow Quartet, Béla Fleck follows his heart down<br />
challenging new musical paths beyond the Flecktones.<br />
By Geoffrey Himes // Photo by Jimmy Katz<br />
Backstage at the Birchmere<br />
nightclub in Alexandria, Va.,<br />
Béla Fleck was exhausted.<br />
The banjo virtuoso, wearing an<br />
unbuttoned red shirt over a black T-<br />
shirt, had just finished two long sets<br />
with the Flecktones. He seemed<br />
drained, but a question about the<br />
show coaxed a smile.<br />
This was last December. The quartet<br />
was touring behind its first-ever<br />
Christmas album, Jingle All The Way<br />
(Rounder), and those tunes had dominated<br />
the show. The restrained lyricism of<br />
the solos by Fleck and bassist Victor<br />
Wooten on “Silent Night” had segued<br />
into a fast, fusion rampage through<br />
“Sleigh Ride.” A medley of familiar carols<br />
had become a freewheeling jam until<br />
Fleck was playing one song while saxophonist<br />
Jeff Coffin played another—and<br />
making the two fit nicely.<br />
The highlight had been a version of<br />
“The Twelve Days Of Christmas” that<br />
sequentially tackled each of the song’s 12<br />
days in a different key and in a different<br />
time signature—1/2, 2/2, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4,<br />
6/8, 7/8 and so on. It’s the kind of bizarre<br />
musical challenge that the band thrives<br />
on, and yet the results had been so tuneful<br />
and accessible that the audience had willingly<br />
chimed in on the line, “Fi-i-ive goo-olden<br />
rings.”
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