Christmas albums are a staple of the holiday season and oftentimes they can be trite and obvious in their execution. It’s a pitfall Béla Fleck and the Flecktones were well aware of when they released 2008’s Grammy Award-winning Jingle All the Way.
The winner of Best Pop Instrumental Album is enjoying a second life thanks to a recent discovery in the vaults of the previously unreleased reading of “The First Noel/Joy to the World.” When you ask Béla Fleck where the original idea for this Christmas album came from, he admits it was the result of that bane of traveling musicians — having to kill time in an airport lounge.
“We started talking about it as a thought experiment and realized the possibilities,” he recalled. “I remember being on a summer tour — somewhere in Rotterdam or Amsterdam at an airport there with the guys. We were sitting around, throwing around ideas while waiting for a plane and I came up with doing the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ in 12 time signatures. Somebody else said we should do it in 12 keys. I said we should do it all.
“Once we had that idea, we couldn’t not do it. It’s like something is hanging in the air waiting to be plucked. It was such a great idea because the math was so perfect. Then it was a real job to figure out how to make that into good music.”
The end result is a treasure trove of holiday nuggets ranging from “O Come All Ye Faithful” and Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy” and “Christmas Time is Here” to “The Hannukah Waltz” (“My mother was like, ‘You’ve got to do a klezmer song or a Hanukkah’ song’), “Silent Night” and “The Christmas Song.” It was bandmate Victor Wooten’s performance on the latter that inspired Béla Fleck to go in and cut “The First Noel/Joy to the World.”
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“I think it was because Victor played this amazing solo on the album, which is ‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire’ (sic),” Béla Fleck explained. “It was a solo bass thing that was quite significant. Then people said if Victor has a solo, then I should have a solo too. It was a rebalancing thing. I really got into it. I love playing solo.”
As someone who admits to pulling his banjo out and playing songs while waiting for flights in the airport when traveling during the season (“I find a quiet corner. And then two or three people are sitting around and smiling. It makes me happy. It’s music that’s part of our DNA in this country and we all know it inside out”), the New York City native is quite eager to share this music in a live setting. This tour also represents a reunion of sorts for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, which is all the more special given how the outfit will be commemorating four decades together in 2028.
“What we’re doing during this string of dates is a much bigger version of the band,” he said. “This has never been where we had both Jeff Coffin and Howard Levy on the bandstand together. They’ve both been the fourth member of the band — Howard for the first three years and Howard for the next 14 years and Howard most recently back again. It’s really a very special thing to get the whole family together. And then these guys — the Tuvan throat singers on the record — is just the icing on the cake. That blows everybody’s minds when these guys start opening their mouths. It’s going to be quite a thing.”
He added, “We’re going to hit some classic Flecktones stuff. It won’t be a new music tour, but we’re going to hit a lot of the Christmas music. Probably half of the show will be that. Every night then we’ll probably have different pieces from the nearly 40 years that we’ve been a band.”
Growing up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Béla Fleck’s upcoming show at the Staller Center in Stony Brook represents a homecoming, as he’d walk over to see jazz greats like Chick Corea at the Beacon Theatre. His love affair with the banjo began when he was 5 years old and heard Earl Scruggs plucking out the theme for The Beverly Hillbillies. But it wouldn’t be until a decade later, when his grandfather gifted him with a banjo, that his obsession with the instrument began and continues to this day.
“It’s like The Sword and the Stone — it’s Earl Scruggs’ banjo and it’s the one that turns people into banjo players when they hear that sound,” he said. “But it’s the instrument that makes a difference. You have to find the right instrument because it resonates with who you are. I’ve seen it case after case after case. It’s got to be the right instrument for the right person and not just any instrument.”
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones will be appearing on Dec. 13 at Staller Center for the Arts, 100 Nicolls Rd., Stony Brook University. For more information, visit stallercenter.com or call 631-632-2787.
