UCSB Arts & Lectures will present banjo royalty Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn at 8 p.m. Sun., Oct. 8 (note new date), at UCSB Campbell Hall.
Fleck & Washburn, “the king and queen of the banjo,” according to Paste Magazine, have a unique musical partnership.
Fleck is a 15-time Grammy Award winner who has taken the instrument across multiple genres with his jazz-to-classical ingenuity and bluegrass roots.
Washburn has the earthy sophistication of a postmodern, old-time singer-songwriter, and has revolutionized the clawhammer banjo by combining it with Far East culture and sounds.
“Their marriage … officially harmonized two of the instrument’s finest players,” the Chicago Tribune reports, and the pair took home a 2016 Grammy Award for their self-titled debut. Their follow-up album, Echo in the Valley, is due out Oct. 20.
With one eye on using the banjo to showcase America’s heritage and the other on pulling the instrument from its most familiar arena into new and unique realms, Fleck & Washburn’s second album Echo in the Valley is simultaneously familiar and innovative.
“Some of the most interesting things in the world come together in strange and unique ways and show our diversity,” said Fleck, considered by some to be the world’s premier banjo player.
“The banjo is just one of those things,” Fleck said. “It’s a great example of how the world can combine things and create surprising hybrids,” a reference to the ancestral African roots of the banjo combining with Scotch-Irish music in Appalachia.
With the new album, their mission was to take their double banjo combination of three-finger and clawhammer styles “to the next level and find things to do together that we had not done before,” Fleck said.
“We’re expressing different emotions through past techniques and going to deeper places,” Fleck said.
The results are fascinating, considering their strict rules for recording: all sounds must be created by the two of them, the only instruments used are banjos (they have seven between them, from a ukulele to an upright bass banjo), and they must be able to perform every recorded song live.
Fleck and Washburn met at a square dance and began playing music together 12 years ago, beginning with the Sparrow Quartet. They married shortly thereafter and became parents. They’ve been touring the globe as a duo for years, as well as individually with other musical iterations:
Fleck with the likes of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Chick Corea and Chris Thile; and Washburn with Wu Fei (master of ancient 21-string Chinese zither), The Wu-Force and Uncle Earl.
With the exception of a few restyled traditional tunes, all tracks on Echo in the Valley are originals and largely co-written – a different creative approach from their first album, on which songs were mostly his or hers.
“This time, we really wanted to truly write together,” Fleck said. “We spent a lot of our time on the lyrics, deciding what we want the songs to communicate, both literally and under the surface.”
Echo in the Valley reflects relevant issues while simultaneously connecting listeners to the past through wild re-imaginings of traditional pieces.
New original tunes range from “Over the Divide,” a song inspired by Hans Breuer, who worked to ferry Syrian refugees to safety, to “Blooming Rose,” inspired by Native American voices and lamenting a continual distancing from nature.
As the story goes, Fleck was struck by the sound of Earl Scruggs’ banjo when hearing the Beverly Hillbillies theme song.
He got hold of a banjo, took his musical namesakes (Béla for Bartok, Anton for Weburn, Leos for Janáček) to heart and has since continuously broken new musical ground with his instrument.
Washburn was similarly jolted into life as a banjoist, but for her it was hearing Doc Watson perform “Shady Grove.”
“I was proud to discover that I came from a country where you can hear that ancient sound — from Africa, from Scotland, from Ireland — all mixed up in this beautiful new sound, with those ancient tones in it,” she said.
“The ancient sounds of our culture remind us who we are, and in them, we see a constellation of who we are becoming.”
Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures. Event sponsors: Marilyn and Dick Mazess. Media sponsors: KCBX 89.5 FM Santa Barbara and KTYD 99.9 FM.
Tickets are $35-$50 for the general public or $15 for UCSB students (valid student ID required).
For more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures, 893-3535 or visit www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu.
— Caitlin O’Hara for UCSB Arts & Lectures.