Over the past two months, Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn have been criss-crossing the country, their banjos reverberating with the sounds of their new record Echo in the Valley. After their self-titled debut was awarded the Grammy for Best Folk Album, the pair doubled down for their sophomore LP. Echo in the Valley is poignant and purposeful; it informs the present with songs from the past, and simultaneously considers how our actions echo into the future. “That’s a lot of what Echo In The Valley means for me,” Abigail says. “Returning to these things have been a part of our human history forever and ever—of struggle, trials and hope. I think in our new, contemporary lives, we sometimes forget that people have lived these trials over and over again.”
Considered by many as pioneers of their instrument, Béla and Abigail are a family band in the truest sense, playing together, writing together, enacting political change together and even enlisting their young son, Juno, to toddle along for the ride. During a brief respite from the road, the duo chatted from their comfort of their living room in Nashville, Tenn.
You’re in the middle of your tour to support the new record, Echo in the Valley. How has this series of dates treated you far?
Abigail: Great! We’ve been having a blast. We’ve been a lot of places—all over Colorado, parts of California, Florida, North Carolina, and a lot more to come.
Béla: And Nashville—we did three shows here. They were in small clubs as part of a special series called Circle Round Home, where we play places that would seem to be small for us, but we do several of them. So that’s been fun but, really, just playing the new music has been a lot of fun; our set is sort of reinvigorated.
I’m going to ask about Circle Round Home in a minute, but as you said, you’re playing a lot of the new record on this tour. Have you found that any songs in particular are really resonating with audiences?
Béla: Yeah, I thinker “Younger Me” really hits them hard.
Abigail: I do too.
Béla: It’s one of those that’s jumping out, of the ones we have onstage. I think we have maybe six of them onstage, and another six to get onstage. And we’re curious what will happen with those—the ones we haven’t gotten out there yet. “Take Me To Harlan” is so strong that we have to end the show with it, because—if people are listening to the record they might think there’s some kind of percussion, but it’s all live dancing and singing—it’s pretty much an impossible feat that Abby does very, very well.
Yeah, I was going to ask about “Take Me To Harlan,” that kind of soft shoe work—that’s you, Abigail, on the record?
Abigail: It is!
Is that something you learned as a child? Or something you picked up more recently?
Abigail: It was part of being in the band that I was in, Uncle Earl. We all would clog, because it’s a part of Appalachian banjo and fiddle music—having a clogger or a flat-footer doing percussive dance to go along with the music. So, the other girls in the band knew how to do it, and they started teaching me. And I just loved it. Then we actually did a video of us clogging, along with a bunch of other amazing cloggers from North Carolina called “Streak o’ Lean, Streak o’ Fat.” But it’s actually a kung fu clogging video. You’ve gotta see it.
That’s awesome. I’m definitely going to link that in the article.
Béla: When you see it, you’re going to die. It’s so stupid and so great. She’d had that song in her head for a while—she just had a few lines of it, and this idea of dancing and singing, and so together we completed her idea.
So going back to the Circle Round residency, you guys did those shows to benefit a bunch of local nonprofits in your home of Nashville. How important is it for you guys to touch base with your community in that way?
Abigail: It’s very grounding. And eye-opening too, because you get to see all of the hard work that people are doing day in and day out around here, trying to make a difference.
Béla: Yeah, I think the thing that really cemented us more to Nashville than ever was having a child, and having him go to school. We take him to school everyday; the school he goes to is a Waldorf school, which is very special. It’s pretty easy to get behind that, so that was one of the benefits we did—fundraising for them. And then the Tennessee Environmental Council—the environment is hugely important and hugely worrying to us. So we try to support those kinds of organizations. And then the TIRRC, which is a refugee organization.
Abigail: Yes, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
Béla: And so all three of the subjects represented by those nonprofits are in our record—they’re sort of embedded in the songs, and are things that we care about. Songs like “Over the Divide,” which is really about Syrian refugees. Abby heard about an Austrian shepherd who ferried Syrians over the border during the night, while yodeling. That became sort of the basis for the song. A lot of times we feel powerless to help; the problems can seem so insurmountable and so big. Sometimes it’s important to just do something—just find something to do, even if you’re afraid to. And that song is kind of about that, too. It’s easy to say, “Oh, we should do something.” Part of it is to just do something… Even if it’s small, it makes a difference.
So one of the things we like to do when we’re on tour is to find a nonprofit in every town, and give them our merch money—give all the income to that nonprofit. And usually we do a raffle, where we’ll raffle off a banjo uke that I’ll play in the show. Everybody that buys merchandise gets a ticket, and then we raffle it off at the end of the night, so somebody walks home with an instrument. That also connects us to the country more as a whole than just to Nashville, because it’s always a local nonprofit that we partner with.
Another song on the record that kind of ties into your activism is “Don’t Let It Bring You Down,” which kind of has this defiant, resilient tone. Could you talk a little about writing that song?
Abigail: Béla came up with the idea for that one. It just came to him one day. He said, “Let’s just try this.” So we sat down and I started singing, “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” over and over again. And that’s pretty much how the song ended up.
Béla: Yeah, we had that one line and I said, “Well, just sing that while you learn the melody. Just sing that one line over and over again.” And Abby did and it sounded great. We were like, “Hey, maybe this is one of those simple songs where you repeat something.”
Abigail: Lyrically simple, but when you try to count what we’re doing, it wouldn’t be so clear.
Béla: It’s actually a compound time signature, which gives it a different feeling. When things are complicated, it’s kind of nice to repeat lyrics in music so that the ear can get used to the rhythm—and feel the rhythm—instead of being confused by lots of new information. So in that way, having the same lyric in the whole chorus actually makes sense. It sort of makes something that could be dismissed—because it’s a little complicated—into something that’s almost mantra-like.
Abigail: I think Béla and I are both glad to have a mantra that says, “Don’t Let It Bring You Down,” because it feels like there are so many things in the media right now that if you pay attention to it, it can really bring you down.
Béla: Yes.
Abigail: So that’s a lot of what this is about too—to not let the divisiveness bring us down, and to keep searching for where we connect and where we overlap.
Béla: In the aftermath of the election, for those of us who were unhappy about the result—it was devastating. People were just—as you know—knocked over in shock and dismay, and then became addicted to the news cycle. It was just an emotional tailspin. To get out of it, I think you have to make a decision to step away from it. And then you have to look for things you can do that you can feel good about, and when you look around you see that there’s a lot of great stuff happening everywhere. So we’re trying to be part of that.
You guys have definitely been out there, releasing this record, out on tour, doing all of this activist work. You also recently hosted the International Bluegrass Music Awards, and I wondering what that was like. Do you see yourselves working on the award show circuit anytime again soon—maybe the Grammys or the VMAs?
Abigail: [Laughs.] We really enjoyed it. We took our time, and over a few months wrote jokes for it, and practiced them in our shows, and really built up to that night. So we gave it a lot of our attention together, as a couple. We felt really honored to have that opportunity, because sometimes—I myself being an old-time musician and more based in old-time music—it can feel like I’m on the margins of the bluegrass world.
Béla: I also feel that way. Because I’ve done so much that’s outside of bluegrass, I’m always a little insecure that they’re actually not that thrilled over there in that part of the world. But when I do spend time there, it turns out that they’re not that way at all. It’s just something you can get in your head. You know, some people are going to like what you’re doing, and some won’t, but there’s a lot of family feeling in that world to me. I really came into my own, I guess you could say, as a bluegrass musician. I knew when I first came in that if they’re still alive, they’re still part of it—it’s like the mob. Bluegrass musicians always come home to roost.
And Abigail—I want to pick up on something you said, that you’re kind of an old-time musician. You guys included some Appalachian classics with deep histories on Echo in the Valley, like “Sally in the Garden / Molly Put the Kettle On.” I was curious how you chose those songs from such a vast American songbook?
Abigail: Well, I think that just like anything, you find yourself kind of drawn to this or that. It’s something I learned. I really love the “Sally in the Garden” one it because—I’m going to nerd out a little bit—it’s in an Open C tuning, but played in a minor key. So it just resonates on the banjo in a different way than if I was in mountain modal trying to play that tune. So I really get excited about that tune, because it’s an open tuning in the minor key, and I just think it’s a beautiful and graceful melody on the clawhammer banjo. “Molly Put the Kettle On” I learned while I was in Uncle Earl, at jams. We never played it as a band, but at jams we would. It’s just such a fun, uplifting tune. I learned it from the fiddling of Rayna Gellert. I don’t know if she would claim me, because I don’t play it at all like she actually does, but I learned it from her playing at jams. She was the fiddler in Uncle Earl. So yeah, those are the reasons I love those two tunes. And then it was such a neat thing to play “Big Country,” because it’s one of my favorite things Béla has written. It’s inspiring; it has a profoundness to it. But it’s also uplifting. So that’s been really neat to be able to play that with Béla.
And you guys recorded each of the album’s tracks live, playing all of the instruments which were variations of traditional banjo.Why was it important to have that live organic feel to the record?
Béla: Limitations actually define you. If you’re everything, then what are you? Every group, every musician, has their limitations. Those are the walls around you that you build your house in, or you build your life in. So with us, for one thing, to have a bunch of people play with us—or a lot of other instruments—we wouldn’t be able to duplicate it live. In essence, I think this collaboration was about the two of us playing our banjos together. So if that’s the rule, that it’s all about playing our banjos and Abby singing, then we can spend a lot of creative energy trying to figure out unique ways to do that. But if we opened it up to everything else—horn sections, string sections, jams with friends, drums, etc—it would be the kitchen sink.
But also, it fits into our record ethos, which is like, fitting it into our lives. If it’s just the two of us, we can go downstairs to the basement, get our engineer over here, and do it as a part of our lifestyle. It’s just a lot simpler than calling up people and having to conceptualize everything up front. There’s a lot of reasons; I guess that’s not the best reason…
Abigail: One thing that Bela and I both value is when you go to see an artist live and you fall in love with it or have a special experience with it, it can really be a bummer when you pick up the record and it sounds so different. So there’s this value in the idea that when people come to see us and pick up the record and take it home—which we really encourage them to do, because first of all it creates a stronger relationship between us and our music with them, but also because it supports the local nonprofits when they buy it—we want them to put it on in there car and be like, “Yeah, that’s what I loved about what I saw tonight.”
Béla: Right. It reinforces them being glad they bought the record, and hopefully they’ll stick with us and check us out in the future. Which, you know, most of my favorite artists, I follow them. Even years down the line, whether all the records knock me out or not, I tend to want to follow them, once I fall for somebody.
You were just talking about “years down the line…” What I think is so interesting about you guys is that, obviously you’re married, and your music is a reflection of your life, and your life is a reflection of your music. It’s kind of your creative goal to have that longevity and just keep making music…
Béla: Yeah, and I think if we had a role model for the duo, it’s more like Doc Watson or somebody like that who’s out there on the scene. You know, somebody that’s playing little clubs, theatres, and festivals, and just out there playing guitar with one or two people in an acoustic group—holding the flame for that kind of music. This duo has a piece of that. And it doesn’t mean it’s the only thing either of us is going to do, or that everything we’re going to do will have this character. Because it won’t be that way. But this is where we do this. I think there will be a time when we want to have the banjo orchestra, or have four banjo players onstage playing with us, but in a surprising way, making cool sounds that nobody has ever heard, at least not for a long time. But I think we still have a lot we can do between the two of us. We’re not bored yet. [Laughs.]
What was the inspiration behind the title for the new record, Echo In The Valley?
Abigail: It’s drawn from the song, “Take Me To Harlan.” That song is really about the struggle in returning home. It’s a place that you love, but it’s also a place that’s full of struggle and hard memories, too. That’s not true for everybody, but I think it is for a lot of people. It’s that feeling that it’s hard to go back, but in the end your heart is tied to that place. And so you just feel that urge to return. I think that’s a lot of what Echo In The Valley means for me…about returning to these things have been a part of our human history forever and ever—of struggle, trials and hope. I think in our new, contemporary lives, we sometimes forget that people have lived these trials over and over again. It can be really comforting to listen to that echo—that echo deep in the valley. It reminds us that we are tied endlessly and relentlessly to the past, and it will undoubtedly be a part of our future. In that, I feel some hope. That if we shift some of our behaviors, we can set new patterns that start to repeat themselves, and echo and self-perpetuate.
Obviously both of you have a deep emotional connection to music. Abigail, in other interviews you’ve said that it’s really important for you to connect a mood or a feeling to the songs that you sing. Can you talk a little bit about your choice to include “Come All You Coal Miners” on the record? That’s one of the songs that’s really important to you, right?
Abigail: Yeah, talk about an echo from the past. Coal mining is still a present issue in America, however, the basic idea of humans not treating humans well is what she’s singing about. What I love about that song is that it’s from a female perspective, and in American old-time music, we haven’t recorded to many of those perspectives. That repertoire is a limited pool. And she speaks from such a place of deep emotion and personal experience, and I just really dig her. Sara Ogan is her name—she’s not here anymore. She ended up being discovered by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and they ended up bringing her to the Newport Folk Festival before her life was over. But she was born and raised in the coal camps in East Kentucky, and had a very strong opinion about it, as you can hear in the song.
Béla: One of the things I love about playing with Abby is that I get to explore moods that I don’t tend to get into in other music that I play with. When I’m playing instrumental music, it’s hard to get into that same zone as when there are lyrics that show you exactly what’s happening emotionally. There’s a lot of different places to go, and I’ve really been enjoying that about the duo.
So to wrap this up, Béla, I know that after this tour, you have a bunch of dates with Brooklyn Rider, and then some trio dates with Victor Wooten and Futureman. Are you excited to kind of explore these other creative avenues with these guys? Do you have plans already, or are you just taking it day by day?
Béla: Well, we plan stuff way ahead. But yeah, I did some touring with Brooklyn Rider in the past, and I’ve written a couple of big pieces—by big I mean long and complex pieces—for them that we play together. And I love those guys, and I’m really excited that we’ve managed to find the time to get together and play. It’ll be over before we know it—that’s the sad part about it. And then, with the Flecktones, we were invited to play at the Snarky Puppy festival down in Miami. I was looking for a way to do it that made sense, and they said I could do anything I wanted. I thought it would be an opportunity to go back with Victor and Futureman, and redo the trio years that we had, which was a very creative and exciting time—right after Howard Levy left the Flecktones—that lasted for about two and a half years. And there’s a whole repertoire that none of us have played since then that will be fun to bring back. So it won’t take a ton of time or take me away from my family for very long, but it will give me a little bit of musical inspiration and some different experiences.
Flexing different muscles.
Béla: Exactly, and we’re both always looking for that balance. We really want this duo to be the center of what we do, because it connects our family and holds us together and keeps us with our son and helps with the traveling musician syndrome, which is where the father is away all the time and never gets to see his family. We’ve managed to reduce that down to a pretty manageable amount by touring together. But like you say, I still need to blow it out and play with Chick Corea or Victor and Futureman and Howard, or Sam Bush and those guys every once in awhile. But it doesn’t have to be all the time for me to be satisfied. It’s nice to touch on it, though.
And Abby has a whole world that she occupies without me, with this whole Chinese part of her. And it’s really important that she doesn’t let that go, because it’s a big special part of who she is. So that helps us understand each other and support each other. When we go off and do these other things, we’re proud of each other. Like I’m proud of Abby that she speaks fluent Chinese and collaborates with Chinese musicians. I think she feels the same way that I can go out and play with an orchestra, or play jazz, or whatever the heck it is that I do.
Totally, I can feel the love! You mentioned your son—he’s on the road with you guys. Is he enjoying himself?
Abigail: I think so. He’s really happy, and we’re so happy to be with him. He’s only four and a half now.
Béla: There could be a point where he’s like, “I don’t want to go on the road.” And we’ve talked to other musicians that have had that happen, where they’d bring their kid on the road, and at one point or another they mutinied, and said, “No! I want to be with my friends at school!” But so far, he’s loving being with us, and we’re going to cherish that.
That’s great. How soon until he gets his first banjo?
Béla: Oh, he’s had his first banjo for a long time. He doesn’t play it that much. But we’ve discovered that when you combine a clawhammer banjo player and a three-finger style banjo player—and they mate—your offspring will be a golfer [Laughs]. He’s been golfing since he was two, and with a lot of intensity. He’s very good at it.
