Béla Fleck & The Flecktones have announced multi-instrumentalist Howard Levy will be unable to join the band on its upcoming Jingle All the Way tour “due to an unforeseen health issue.” Bluegrass virtuoso Sierra Hull will fill in on select dates.
“While we are all most disappointed,” the band said in a statement posted to social media, “it is of the utmost importance that we prioritize his health and rest to ensure a full recovery.”
Set to kick off this week with two nights at Nashville’s famous Ryman Auditorium, the Jingle All the Way tour will see the Flecktones—Béla Fleck, Victor Wooten, and Roy “Future Man” Wooten—perform songs from across their catalog, including reinvented holiday classics from their 2008 album of the same name, played for the first time in 15 years. The quartet will be joined by saxophonist and former Flecktone Jeff Coffin (Dave Matthews Band) and renowned Tuvan throat singing ensemble Alash, who both appeared on the original recording.
Hull will join the band for opening night at the Ryman on Wednesday, November 26th. The band will return to the Mother Church of Country Music without Hull on Friday the 28th, before snaking its way through the Midwest with stops in Cincinnati, OH (11/29), Ann Arbor, MI (11/30), and Champaign, IL (12/1).
Hull will rejoin the tour in Grand Rapids, MI on December 2nd and stay on for dates in Chicago, IL (12/3), Ithaca, NY (12/5), Boston, MA (12/6), Portland, ME (12/7), Burlington, VT (12/9), New York, NY—where the group will play its biggest NYC show to date at the legendary Beacon Theater on December 10th—Rochester, NY (12/11), Philadelphia, Pa (12/12), and Stony Brook, NY (12/13).
December 14th in North Bethesda, MD will mark the last show of the tour with Hull, but the Flecktones will continue on to Charlottesville, VA (12/16), Durham, NC (12/17), Athens, GA (12/18), and Atlanta, GA (12/19), before the tour finale at the Joy Theater in New Orleans, LA on December 20th. Click below for a full list of tour dates.
Limited tickets remain available here. Most shows have the option for a VIP pre-show experience with an intimate soundcheck performance, Q&A with the band, and exclusive merchandise.
Released in 2008, Jingle All the Way was the band’s 13th studio album and the last to feature Coffin, who had joined the Flecktones in 1997, restoring the group to a quartet after Levy’s 1992 departure. He remained until 2010, when he left to join Dave Matthews Band. The album comprises 16 far-out arrangements of festive tunes, including an ambitious rendition of “The 12 Days of Christmas” that builds up to 12 different keys and 12 different time signatures, and a medley of several Christmas classics described by Fleck as “five or six are being played together, simultaneously.”
“I have a long habit of pulling out my banjo and playing holiday songs while waiting for flights during the holiday season,” said Fleck. “These arrangements appeared and developed over the course of several years of airport holiday play and eventually some of them, in 2008, with the help of The Flecktones, turned into the album Jingle All The Way.”
Though grounded in the familiar, Jingle All the Way, much like the band itself, was far from traditional. Also like the band, it nonetheless was met with critical acclaim, reaching #1 on the Top Contemporary Jazz chart, the group’s first album to do so since 1991, and winning the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Album. “Sleigh Ride” was nominated for Best Country Instrumental Performance.
“Christmas music is inside everyone’s DNA,” Fleck said in a 2008 interview with The Washington Post, which named the Flecktones its Editor’s Pick that year. “Jingle All the Way is an open doorway for listeners to understand the Flecktones’ music.”
In addition to the Jingle All the Way tour, the Flecktones have released a remastered version of the album on CD and limited-edition vinyl just in time for the holidays, available here. The band also shared a previously unreleased solo banjo medley of “The First Noel/Joy To The World” that was recorded back in 2008 but didn’t make it on the original CD. Listen to the track below or click here to stream it on your preferred digital platform.
Béla Fleck And The Flecktones – “The First Noel/Joy To The World”
Formed in 1988 for a single performance on PBS’ Lonesome Pine Special, Béla Fleck & The Flecktones began touring in 1989 and garnered widespread acclaim with their adventurous fusion of classical, jazz, bluegrass, African music, blues, and Eastern European folk.
“The band was so fresh and powerful that we all wanted more of it,” said Victor Wooten, who auditioned for the band over the phone and volunteered his brother Roy to play percussion. “I think we gave other musicians the courage to be different.”
The band accumulated a number of accolades, including 13 Grammy nominations and six Grammy wins.
