Can Bluegrass be Prog?!
If you think "prog" means weird time signatures, long songs, epic instrumental solos, and virtuosity, then Béla Fleck's new bluegrass album might be the prog album of the year.
Video Transcript
Prog. What is it? I’m not sure anyone knows, but in my Failure to Fracture book, I defined it by saying “the more my wife doesn’t like it, the more prog it probably is.” But if the word “prog” conjures anything, it’s one or more of the following: long songs with uncountable time signatures, epic instrumental solos, old white dudes with crazy high levels of virtuosity, stringed instruments with extra strings, inspiration from Bartok, Stravinski, or some other 20th-century composer—and, of course, mellotrons.
Well “prog nerds,” have I got a surprise for you. By the indications I’ve just given, Béla Fleck’s new bluegrass album may be the most prog album of 2021. Yes, my friends, I think he’s out-progging anyone you’re likely to see at the next Cruise to the Edge. Fleck’s new album “My Bluegrass Heart” is nearly two hours long with several songs more than six minutes in length. There’s every kind of tuplet and several prime number time signatures. Some of the solos have the unmitigated audacity to absolutely melt your face off. The fiddle player, Michael Cleveland, plays a five-string fiddle. In fact, the only prog element missing is a mellotron.
Now, in case you’re not familiar with Béla Fleck, he’s been nominated for 33 Grammys and won 14 of them. He’s led a band called Béla Fleck and The Flecktones since 1988 and they’ve busted countless musical boundaries. Somehow, they’ve ended up being part of the “jam band” circuit despite defying any type of classification. In a single live concert, you can hear Béla play Bach, jazz, and bluegrass on the banjo in between appearances by Kongar-ool Ondar, a Tuvan throat singer.
So, enough background. Let’s get to the meat of this album.
There are quite a few straight-up bluegrass tracks on this album, which are great, but that’s not what I want to talk about. The first track, Vertigo, plays with our western ears’ sense of tonal center. As Chris Opperman commented to me, the intro motif is “fragments of different scales being pieced together to play with your sense of the root (giving you key vertigo).” It’s super cool.
The third track, Slippery Eel, is a shred festival with bits of Bartok string quartet inspiration. Tons of fun playing with rhythm and key signatures with literal cowboy chord G C D solo sequences in between. The fiddle solo on this one starting around 2:20 in this track is worth the price of admission. Good luck counting this one out.
The sixth track, Our Little Secret, starts out with a circulation of notes passed between three different instruments, a la California Guitar Trio or Robert Fripp’s League of Crafty Guitarists.
The ninth track, Charm School, is eight minutes of surprising modulations, whole tone soloing, and is oddly the most popular track on the album with nearly 143,000 listens on Spotify in its first week and a half.
Track twelve, Us Chickens, sounds like it’s straight off Bill Frisell’s classic Disfarmer.
Track seventeen—yes, I said seventeen—sounds like it came straight out of a Steve Reich album with two cyclic violin motifs playing off each other.
So yeah, at least half of the nineteen tracks on this album have some pretty weird, “prog” stuff going on. Even longtime fans of Fleck will be surprised by moments on this record. I’ve been listening to as much of Béla’s music as I can for about twenty years and there were times on this record where I had to stop what I was doing, crank it up, and just clap along.
I actually didn’t realize this album was nearly two hours long until I sat down to write this review. I’ve been putting it on lately while I work and it just fills me with the energy to produce work for my clients. It’s a very, very quick hour and forty-five minutes. The double CD sold out very quickly and the double LP is coming out in late October 2021. So, I’ve just been streaming it for now until I can get my hands on a physical copy.
If you’ve never given bluegrass or country music a try, I want to highly, highly encourage you to check out this record. And if you like it, try going deeper into the “prog” bluegrass hole by checking out some of the Flecktones’ albums or trying The Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile on the mandolin. In fact, just check out everything in Chris’s discography, especially his excellent album with jazz pianist Brad Mehldau. Another favorite of mine is Ricky Skaggs’ 2007 album with Bruce Hornsby. And if you want to check out some other great banjo players, check out Noam Pikelny from the Punch Brothers, Tony Trischka, and Béla’s wife Abigail Washburn. Béla and Abigail do a lot of great stuff together, including some very fun YouTube videos.
If you’re a “prog” fan and you check this album out, let us know your thoughts in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.
