Soprano Renée Fleming and banjo player Béla Fleck have recorded an album together that celebrates Appalachian folk music, The Fiddle and the Drum.
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As a teenager growing up with vocal music teacher parents in Rochester, N.Y., Renée Fleming wrote songs for piano and guitar inspired by American singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Jim Croce and Dan Fogelberg.
Fleming, who is now a five-time Grammy Award-winning singer best known for gracing the stages of some of the world’s most prominent opera houses, is returning to those roots in a new album with banjo player Béla Fleck.
Fleck has 18 Grammys and a Latin Grammy to his name. He produced The Fiddle and the Drum, a celebration of Appalachian bluegrass where other great interpreters of traditional American music also make an appearance.
There’s a soul-piercing duet with Dolly Parton of “In The Pines,” which the Country and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has sung since she was a child raised in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Jerry Douglas lends his dobro resonator guitar to two other tunes, while Sierra Hull, Aoife O’Donovan, Vince Gill, Sam Bush and Mike Bub contribute elsewhere.
Fleck, Fleming and musicians appearing on their joint album are touring across the U.S. through December.
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Fleming says the project began more than 20 years ago after the success of the 2000 Coen brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou? Its soundtrack, produced by T Bone Burnett, features bluegrass, country, gospel and Southern folk music.
“After I had recorded a lot of my standard repertoire… I thought it would be really fun to examine this music,” Fleming told Morning Edition host Michel Martin.
Recalling their first meeting in New York, Fleck said: “I’m still blushing.” Fleming had brought a list of around 100 songs she liked. They then recorded demos in Nashville, where Fleck is based.
“I put together an A-Team, even just for the demos, because I wanted her to be convinced that this was worth doing,” he said. The pair are also touring across the U.S. this year from Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles to Carnegie Hall in New York.
“I am a big fan of female vocalists of all stripes,” Fleck added, naming Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. “This is someone at the highest level coming up and saying, ‘Hey, do you want to do something you always wanted to do.'”
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The album takes its name from a song first recorded by Mitchell in 1969 that’s been reprised as an anti-war anthem, including to protest the Iraq War.
The lyrics ask: “Oh, my friend, how did you come / To trade the fiddle for the drum?” In this new version, Douglas’ resonator guitar adds extra poignancy to Fleming’s soulful singing.
The songs on the album are loosely organized around themes of loss and war. “Sometimes the events of the world are just so huge and you are swept around by forces beyond your control, and it’s horrible,” Fleck said. “Some of these songs kind of address that.”
Fleming uses her lowest range here, she says, because “otherwise, I start to sound operatic.” For musicals, she sings mid-range, having made her Broadway musical debut in a 2018 revival of Carousel, which earned her a Tony nomination. She’s also recorded pop and jazz.
“It’s not any different for me than the difference between singing French opera and Strauss in German opera,” she added.
“Those all require stylistic shifts based on the centuries in which the music was composed, the language, the actual style of the particular piece… It’s really just adapting to a different genre and style.”
Fleck, like Fleming, has recorded and collaborated across genres.
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In addition to sharing their love of working across genres, Fleck and Fleming also both cancelled performances that had been scheduled for earlier this year at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
“This was always the most beautiful bipartisan institution… there was something for everybody… I was proud to be part of the Kennedy Center,” said Fleming, who previously resigned from her role as artistic adviser there. “I’m just praying that it comes back and nothing gets destroyed.”
Her prayers may have been answered. On the day the album was released (May 29), a court ruled that President Trump’s name must be removed from the building and all branding of the performing arts complex founded as a living memorial to a slain president. The judge also temporarily blocked the president’s planned two-year closure of the site for renovations, though uncertainty remains over its future.
A slew of artists cancelled planned performances and ticket sales suffered after Trump took over the Kennedy Center following his second-term inauguration. A fresh wave of cancellations came after he added his name to it in December.
“I think the whole thing is very sad and very unmusical,” Fleck said, speaking with Fleming before the court ruling. “Music is about breaking down barriers, welcoming people, even what Renée and I are doing, reaching out from different musical idioms towards finding a way to make music together. That’s more like what the Kennedy Center is about.”
Barry Gordemer contributed to the production of the broadcast version of this story.
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