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LISTEN: Bela Fleck Has The Mountain Stage Song Of The Week
Bela Fleck My Bluegrass Heart, performing on Mountain Stage in 2022.Chris Morris/Mountain Stage
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Mountain Stage officially kicks off our 40th Broadcast Season this week with our 39th anniversary celebration featuring Bela Fleck My Bluegrass Heart, The Brother Brothers, Alice Howe with Freebo, The Bing Brothers featuring Jake Krack, and a special appearance from West Virginia’s Poet Laureate Marc Harshman.
By our best count, Bela Fleck has appeared on Mountain Stage more than 15 times, including trips with his wife Abigail Washburn, alongside his band The Flecktones, small group performances with Edgar Myer, Zakir Hussain, Chris Thile, and his very first which occurred in 1989 as a member of New Grass Revival.
New Grass Revival, 1989, courtesy of Mountain Stage Archives.
His most recent appearance is perhaps the most star-studded yet. Bela Fleck My Bluegrass Heart features Fleck on banjo with Sierra Hull on mandolin, Michael Cleveland on fiddle, bassist Mark Schatz, multi-instrumentalist Justin Moses, and guitarist Bryan Sutton. The corresponding album My Bluegrass Heart won top honors in the Bluegrass Album category at the 2022 Grammy awards.
Our Song of the Week is the opening track on that album, “Vertigo,” performed live on Mountain Stage.
This week’s episode of Mountain Stage is a compilation of our "Festival Favorites." This special episode features performances by some of our favorite festival acts that have also graced the Mountain Stage. You'll hear songs from Phish, Joan Baez, Widespread Panic, Greensky Bluegrass, and many more.
Starting this Friday, May 19, episode 1,012 of Mountain Stage will be heard on nearly 300 NPR stations nationwide. Our guest-host Larry Groce steps in for this week’s show, with alt-country pioneer Robbie Fulks, award-winning bluegrass band The Gibson Brothers, folk rocker Jaimee Harris, Portland singer-songwriter Anna Tivel, and up-and-coming Kentucky artist Nicholas Jamerson.
This week's broadcast of Mountain Stage features Tex-Mex Americana indie rock group Calexico. Plus, David Wax Museum, Steve Forbert, Anna Mieke, and David Huckfelt. Join us starting May 12 for the broadcast.
This week’s Mountain Stage was recorded at the iconic Keith-Albee Performing Arts Center in Huntington, WV. Host Kathy Mattea welcomed fellow Grammy-Award winner Catherine Russell, along with Ireland's The High Kings, Tom Paxton, The DonJuans, and emerging West Virginia group Kindred Valley.