Bela Fleck will release Live Heart: My Bluegrass Heart at the Ryman on October 16 through Bela Fleck Productions and Thirty Tigers. The 20-track live album documents a single concert at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium on January 8, 2022, with Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas among the players.
That night pulled together many of the musicians who had contributed to My Bluegrass Heart, his 2021 album, which went on to win the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. The show had been scheduled for the previous evening and was pushed back a day by severe winter weather.
"Blue Mountain Hop" opens both the concert and the album, and arrives now as the first single with an accompanying video. Fleck played it alongside Bush, guitarist Bryan Sutton, Douglas, bassist Edgar Meyer and fiddler Stuart Duncan.
"We somehow managed to take and own the stage that night," Fleck said. "My amazing peers, friends, and iconic performers really brought the fire." Sierra Hull, who has played with him across the project, said he has an ability to bring out the best in people and let them do what they are good at.
The rotating ensemble also took in fiddler Michael Cleveland, multi-instrumentalist Justin Moses, bassist Mark Schatz and banjoist Tony Trischka. Chris Thile, who played on My Bluegrass Heart and was expected at the Ryman, could not reach Nashville because of the storm, and wrote in the liner notes that the recording gives everyone a front row seat to what he called a balletic intergenerational relay race.
My Bluegrass Heart completed a trilogy begun with Drive in 1988 and continued with The Bluegrass Sessions in 1999. The live album comes as a two-CD set and on triple vinyl, and the band has three concerts with Renee Fleming ahead in Nashville, Los Angeles and New York. Billy Strings, who wore protective headgear on stage this year after being struck by an object, is one of several country and bluegrass names carried over from the studio record, and the October date is on the release calendar.
The facts
- Live Heart is out October 16 via Bela Fleck Productions and Thirty Tigers
- The album has 20 tracks from a January 8, 2022 Ryman concert
- Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull and Sam Bush all appear
- My Bluegrass Heart won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album
- Lead single is "Blue Mountain Hop"
- Chris Thile missed the concert because of a winter storm
- Released as a two-CD set and on triple vinyl
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