William and I went to see Bela Fleck and Tony Trischka tonight.
It was a really good show. One of the best I've been to.
We got there at 6:10 only to find out that the doors didn't open until 7:00. We were the first people in line. After about fifteen minutes, another guy showed up and got in line. By 7:00, there were around twenty people in line behind us. They didn't actually get things together and open the doors until about 7:10, but we were the first ones in and we sat in the center of the front row. They had put out two rows of folding chairs in front of the regular seats, so it wasn't very comfortable, but the view was great. William rested his feet on the stage for a little while.
The show was great, and I got several good pictures. They played Whitewater and Take Five, among other things. At one point they asked for requests of straight ahead bluegrass tunes. They ended up playing blackberry blossom, earl's breakdown, whitewater, and something else that I can't remember. One of them made a comment about burning a lot of testosterone on that group. While people were calling out requests, William, sitting right next to me, yelled out "Freebird!". At that point, Tony said that at every show they had done that week, someone always called out "Freebird" or "Stairway to Heaven". After he said that, Bela started playing Stairway to Heaven, and then he played the intro to Freebird. Tony looked at him and said, "Do you know know how to play that?" Bela looked over at him and said, "I can, but I really don't want to." Some people requested Whitewater, but I wouldn't have had the nerve to ask them to play that.
Bela had a very elaborately decorated banjo that he called "The Pope's Banjo". I didn't get any good pictures of it, though.
At one point, Tony was playing and I snapped a pic of Bela relaxing. About half a second later, he looked right at me and smirked.
Between the first and second sets, Tony and Bela traded shirts.
Between every other song, they would read a little retrospective on the history of banjo music over the last century. It was rather amusing. "And banjo music was the music of the day."
During the other break between songs, they would ask a queston and write first letters of the answer to the question on a chalkboard. At the end of the show, Bela played the notes that had been written on the board, but it didn't make sense. Then Tim O'Brian came out with a special note that explained that the answers were correct, but it was backwards. Bela reversed it and it was the intro to The Ballad of Jed Clampett. They played that as a closer.
When they came back for an encore, they both played bela's banjo.
After the show, as we were standing there waiting in line to get our tickets signed, Edgar Meyer walked up and said hi to Bela. Very cool.
Malachi B-J Brown malachus+spencerandbrown@gmail.com
