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The
News & Views From Around The Music World
Inside
14 I Riffs
14 I AFO Records
15 I Vinyl Freak
15 I Night In Harlem
16 I Caught
18 I Players
Béla Fleck’s
Unfinished
Business
Original Flecktones Lineup
Reunites for 2011 Release
When the four original Flecktones stepped into Béla Fleck’s
Nashville, Tenn., home studio to test-drive songs for 2011’s
Rocket Science (eOne Music), Fleck said it was the most natural
thing in the world. The reunion of the Flecktones marks the first
time in almost 20 years that the quartet has released an album.
“Things are very different now than they used to be,” said
pianist/harmonica player Howard Levy, who departed from the
group in 1992.
Levy had joined the remaining Flecktones for a three-week
stint in 2009. It was what percussionist Roy “Futureman” Wooten
called the group’s “aha!” moment. “The opportunity came to talk
about revisiting back to the beginning, going full-circle,” he said.
With former Flecktone saxophonist Jeff Coffin enlisted with
the Dave Matthews Band since 2008, the reconvention was a
“right place, right time” situation that also stemmed from Fleck’s
desire to tackle some two-decades-old “unfinished business.”
“I really wanted [the music] to fit my vision of what the group should
be,” Fleck said. “I don’t think that was the key thing, but it was definitely
an undercurrent. It stayed with me as something that I wished I’d handled
better. There was just some kind of mismatch going on at the time.”
After visiting Levy at his home in Evanston, Ill., in early 2010 to
hash out song ideas, Fleck noted a “warmer, sunnier vibe.”
“Everybody has grown,” said bassist Victor Wooten. “Béla’s been
doing his Africa project with [Zakir] Hussain and Edgar [Meyer]. I’ve
been playing a lot with my own band, as well as playing with Chick
Corea and Mike Stern. And my brother, Futureman, has been writing
a bunch of orchestral [material] and working on his new instrument,
things like that. We’ve all been off in our own world. Coming back
together, it’s like we had a whole lot to offer, as well as just being excited
to put something together. The ingredients are there. They’ve just
matured a lot.”
Rocket Science is an undefinable hybrid that Wooten calls a freeflowing
“continuation of what could have been” and Fleck describes
From left: Victor
Wooten, Béla Fleck,
Howard Levy and Roy
“Futureman” Wooten
as “simple, yet complex.” It’s garnered mass onstage appeal from
Bonnaroo crowds of 80,000-plus, but reflects little of the Coffin era that
many listeners are already familiar with.
According to Levy, the record’s lack of road testing made it far more
improvisational and impulsive—a “true collaboration” reflective of a
more group-oriented writing style.
“There were some things that we had on the table that we always
wanted to do,” Fleck said. The album explores odd time meters, Indian
scales, Bulgarian rhythms and African beats driven by the Max Roach
and Elvin Jones-inspired acoustics of Futureman’s SynthAxe Drumitar,
a guitar-shaped, electronic percussion-sampling device.
“The dynamics, the cymbal sounds, they were all there,” Futureman
said. “The influences from all the drummers you know, the toms that we
sampled, the snares, they were all inspired by a history of drumming.”
The band will take the album on the road throughout October and
November, where Wooten said the 20-year absence raises big questions.
“Our personalities haven’t been together for a long time,” he said. “Are
we going to be able to live together”
—Hilary Brown
Jeremy Cowart
SEPTEMBER 2011 DOWNBEAT 13