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Fleck the halls: Banjo great comes to Rutland's Paramount

Monday's holiday show at Rutland's Paramount will fill the theater with a different type of festive jingle — the pluck and pickin' of the banjo string.

Legendary boss of the banjo Bela Fleck and his band The Flecktones will sprinkle a little bit of early Christmas magic in Vermont, a musical highlight of the year and inarguably one of the top acts to grace the Paramount stage.

The experimental quartet's recently released holiday album, "Jingle All the Way," is the band's first holiday offering and makes a beeline toward ingenious.

The Flecktones have gone against the sleigh-bell sounds, anticipated time changes and typical instrumentation to create their own jazzy bluegrass-hued Christmas world in which familiar melodies become fast finger-flipping works of art; bass, sax, clarinet and flute weave thoughtfully, and listeners are compelled to knee-slap the holidays away.

"It's a zany Christmas record," Fleck said, on the line from Nashville where he calls home, just before he was set to leave for South America.

Fleck said when the Flecktones first got together they performed a Christmas medley.

"Every year we would pull out this Christmas tune and put it in the show, and people would always flip out for it," he said. "All of a sudden everyone said, 'You guys have got to do a Christmas album.' But it's one of those things you never get around to."

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones — 10 years as a foursome and nearly 20 as a band — is comprised of respected musicians Victor Wooten, considered one of the greatest electric bass players of all time; his percussionist brother Roy Wooten, better known as "Future Man" and creator of the "synth-axe drumitar," a hybrid guitar/synthesizer/drum machine; and saxophone virtuoso (and flutist on the album) Jeff Coffin, who has been known to play two horns at once.

Fleck said normally when the band is on the road they are working on new music for their next tour.

"In this day and age you really have to support your music by touring. When we're on tour we have to keep working on new music; the band needs new music to get excited," said Fleck, who at 50 years old has been twanging his banjo for 35 years now.

"Good things happen when we work on music."

Fleck said the timing of the holiday album was perfect.

"With a Christmas album, you can't take the whole year (touring)," he said. "We were planning to take a year off, and we said, 'Hey, let's do that Christmas record.'"

Fleck fans can jingle all the way into a different tonal world, a banjo-ruled world also inhabited by funky electric bass, sax, clarinet, flute, mandolin and violin, and topped with the album's splash-out — the exotic, worldly sounds of Tuvan throat singing.

"We wanted to bring in guests (for the album) but we wanted to choose ones that were unexpected," he said.

Fleck recruited the Alash Ensemble from Tuva, a part of the former Soviet Union situated on the southern edge of Siberia with Mongolia to its south. Throat singing is a traditional technique for singing multiple pitches at the same time. The technique is likened to a human bagpipe, with frog-like chanting croaks, sounding much like a human version of the tall Australian wind instrument, the didgeridoo.

Always the experimentalist, Fleck has been long credited with having introduced the banjo into jazz, pop, classical and world music.

The New York City native, who has 20 Grammy nominations and eight statues crowding his now-garland-covered mantelpiece, has been nominated in more categories than anyone in Grammy history, spanning the categories of bluegrass, jazz, pop, country, spoken word, Christian, composition and world music.

Fleck was named after the great 20th century Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. He was taken by the banjo when he first heard bluegrass banjo pioneers Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs playing the 1960s TV theme song for "The Beverly Hillbillies."

Fleck's grandfather gave him his first banjo at age 15, and he also studied the French horn at New York City's High School of Music and Art. His musical exploration began right away, as he experimented with bebop jazz on his banjo in high school.

"I got a sudden start when I was 15. I became an obsessive compulsive; the banjo brought that side of me out," Fleck laughed. "It became my whole life. I don't ever remember a conscious decision, (saying) 'this is what I want to do,' it just happened."

Limits and boundaries did not enter Fleck's musical thought. His music took on artful, complex compositions, and exploratory jamming made off into far-reaching musical heights. Forming various bands after high school, he joined Sam Bush's New Grass Revival in 1981 for nine years. Bela Fleck and the Flecktones took shape in 1989 with the Wootens; Coffin joined in 1997.

"I think the Flecktones is hard to beat as a top thing in my life. It's something else to keep something going and growing for 20 years," said Fleck, who spoke with genuine wonderment.

Fleck's body of work includes 10 solo albums, featuring a slew of guest musicians, and more than 30 records as part of a group. He has collaborated with such artists as Dave Matthews, Chick Corea, Vassar Clements and Earl Scruggs. Factor in nearly 10 one-off collaborative albums and spots as guest musician on close to 15 albums — by Phish, Gov't Mule and Keller Williams, to name a few — Fleck, a humble and modest tone always present in his words, says he does not take his success for granted.

"I'm really proud of my place in the modern bluegrass movement, playing with the great musicians of that world," he said. "I'm working my tail off and still genuinely excited for the music, because that's what I want to do. I try to live a life of inspiration."

On "Jingle All The Way," which is in the top five holiday albums in Oprah Winfrey's O magazine, Fleck takes his no-holds-barred approach to composition and tackles 16 songs including "Jingle Bells," "Silent Night," "Sleigh Ride," and a tune or two you might recognize from the "Peanuts" comic strip.

Also nestled in the album is "River" by Joni Mitchell. In "Twelve Days of Christmas," the song builds up to 12 different keys and 12 different time signatures, and "Medley," takes on the challenge of meshing several Christmas songs into one.

"I'm still very ambitious and I'm hoping that my best work is ahead of me," said Fleck, "but hoping isn't good enough, you have to go do it and put in the time.

"I just turned 50 this year, I feel I have another decade of ambition."

Fleck includes a serene rendition of "The Hanukkah Waltz" featuring clarinetist Andy Statman, in a nod toward Fleck's mother.

"Although it's a Christmas record, it's not a religious record, it's just supposed to be music of the season," Fleck said. "So we even did a Hanukkah waltz. It's very special — my mom's Jewish so I guess technically I am, so I had to do (the song) for her. If I'm doing a Christmas record it would be right to round it out."

Fleck said he is excited to play the Paramount especially because Statman will be joining the band for four shows.

"I knew him back when he was a psychotic bluegrass musician. (Monday) night is going to be particularly special because it's the first night Andy is playing. Plus we love Vermont. Vermont is totally our kind of the place."

Fleck, ever-curious, innovative and constantly expanding his musical know-how, this year went to Africa and spent a month touring seven different countries. A documentary was made there called "Throw Down Your Heart," in which Fleck brings his banjo to Africa, where the instrument was born, and plays with African musicians. The film, directed by Fleck's brother Sascha Paladino, was shown at festivals this year.

Fleck described his latest adventure as part of his continued ability to keep pushing himself.

"I have to learn all this African music … rise to that occasion. I like the idea that I'm still trying to do the hardest things I can. That's always a good feeling.

"I'm pushing myself and the situations I'm in to make the best music I can make and grow as much as I can. This is the time to be pushing it, while I still can," Fleck said.

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