Bluegrass Paradise: Béla Fleck & band regale packed Grand Rapids hall with heartfelt jams

The award-winning banjoist & his all-star bandmates impressed a sold-out St. Cecilia Music Center audience on Thursday, touring behind a live “My Bluegrass Heart” album. The review and photos at Local Spins.

 

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Much-lauded banjoist Béla Fleck and his all-star lineup of bluegrass musicians wasted no time on Thursday night in Grand Rapids unleashing instrumental tracks packed with cascading melodies, sudden tempo changes and precise picking.

Despite loud outbursts of applause from the sold-out crowd at St. Cecilia Music Center’s Royce Auditorium after impressive solos, each musician on the stage remained laser-focused on their instruments and on the intricacies of each moving part at play.

Joined by Michael Cleveland on fiddle, Dominic Leslie on mandolin, Jake Stargel on guitar, Mark Schatz on bass and Jeff Partin on dobro, Fleck has set out this fall to bring the “My Bluegrass Heart” album to life and recreate some of the magic from the live show Fleck played at The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville alongside a massive cast of bluegrass superstars back in 2022.

The historic Royce Auditorium was the perfect venue for fans to sit back and watch the magic unfold Thursday night as Fleck and his band unfurled some of the tracks from Fleck’s latest release, “Live Heart: My Bluegrass Heart at the Ryman,” which was just released last month, as well as some deeper cuts that Fleck admitted he doesn’t get to play very often.

A couple of these deep cuts included “Up and Running” and “The Landing,” both from Fleck’s 1995 album, “Tales From The Acoustic Planet.” Fleck also included a cover of New Grass Revival’s “Bigfoot.”

Fiddler Michael Cleveland took a moment to acknowledge Fleck’s ability to incorporate the banjo into many different genres outside of bluegrass and old-time, prefacing a cover of Flatt and Scruggs’ “Polka On a Banjo.” This track exemplifies an early instance of blending bluegrass and polka, which Cleveland fittingly dubbed “polk-ass.”

“Béla has taken the banjo to any style you can think of. . . have you ever heard of mixing bluegrass and polka?” Cleveland inquird.

Fleck countered the question with, “I think that’s breaking the rules,” to which Cleveland replied, “Well that should be enough for you to want to go after it then.”

Of course, the people of West Michigan perked up at the very mention of polka and the sound of toes tapping on the wood floors reverberated around the room.

In fact, the audience members weren’t the only ones who brought some toe-tapping into the mix. Toward the end of the night, bassist Mark Schatz quietly laid his bass down and stepped over to the tap board near the side of the stage and contributed to the rhythm section via tap shoes for part of a song.

‘THEY BARELY EVER STOPPED PLAYING’

Later in the set, Fleck dedicated a rendition of “Who’s That Knocking At My Door,” to the late Pat Enright of The Dreadful Snakes, a project Fleck and Enright were involved in together in the 1980s.

“Pretty crazy how six string instruments can can produce a sound that fills this space so deeply,” one diehard bluegrass fan remarked later. “It’s also wild that Béla just jams for hours and hours with no vocals. So-o-o good. They barely ever stopped playing.”

While the set list did lean heavily on instrumental compositions, when vocal mics eventually were brought to the forefront, fans found yet another aspect of the six-piece band’s musical talents to be awed by. Fleck and his bandmates’ voices blended effortlessly into tight vocal harmonies on the few tracks that did include vocals.

This, of course, included the showstopping version of “Tennessee,” Fleck’s collaboration with West Michigan’s own Billy Strings, which the band returned to the stage to play as an encore after a standing ovation and deafening applause.

“We’re from a red state, maybe just about the only state that didn’t flip this week, but we’re still gonna play this one,” Fleck quipped, referring to the results of this week’s midterm elections.

Although Fleck quickly turned the conversation away from politics and focused his message on pride for his home state regardless of how he feels about its current political affairs.

After a small, but impactful lyric change to honor the late, great Dolly Parton whose home state was also Tennessee, the band took their final bows as the crowd erupted into cheers and applause.

PHOTO GALLERY: Béla Fleck at St. Cecilia Music Center
Photos by Jeffrey Wilkinson

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