Béla Fleck
Béla Anton Leoš Fleck (born July 10, 1958) is an American banjo player. Widely acknowledged as one of the world's most innovative and technically proficient banjo players, he is best known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.
Early life and career details
Béla Fleck was born in New York City, and is named after Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, Austrian composer Anton Webern and Czech composer Leoš Janáček. He was raised by his mother, a former school teacher, and claims he did not meet his father until he was in his 40s. He was drawn to the banjo when he first heard Earl Scruggs play the theme song for the television show Beverly Hillbillies. He received his first banjo at age fifteen from his grandfather in 1973. Later, Fleck enrolled in New York City's High School of Music and Art where he studied the French horn. He was a banjo student under Tony Trischka.
Shortly after high school, Fleck traveled to Boston to play with Jack Tottle, Pat Enright, and Mark Schatz in the group Tasty Licks. During this period, Fleck released his first solo album in 1979, Crossing the Tracks, and made his first foray into progressive bluegrass composition.
Podcasts:
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by Vaughan Penn
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by Lucie Silvas
Sliding Down
by: Vaughan PennPink raspberry wine and jasmine tea
Smoke is swirling from a smokeless indigo glass
Feeling kinda' fine and almost free
Burning September grass and reading Brautigan's poetry
Watermelon sugar ecstasy
A hemisphere of clouds fall all around me
[Chorus:]
I'm sliding down through a multicolored spiral
I'm spinning round while the world is lying on its side
But I'm winding down to a peaceful revolution
I don't have to shout
I don't need to find an answer
Cause I found a solution
Yeah, Yeah I found a solution
Yeah, Yeah Love is washing out the air I breathe
Making wishes out of dandelion weeds
Hope is floating in a soapstone jar
Peace is showing in all the places there used to be war
Chocolate candy wrapped in cellophane
It's there for you to use to dull the pain
If you need some
[Chorus]
Bridge: With the warm sunrays it could break a moving
storm
Touched by purpled haze you'll swear you've been reborn
When your trip is done
Keep on moving down the road
Cause the trail keeps going on and on and on and on and
[Chorus]
I found, I found, I found a solution
I found, I found, I found a solution
Hope is floating in a soapstone jar