Features

H.O.R.D.E. Stories: Bela Fleck

The current issue of Relix looks back 20 years to the inaugural H.O.R.D.E. tour in 1992 which featured Blues Traveler, Phish, Widespread Panic, Spin Doctors, Col. Bruce Hampton and Aquarium Rescue Unit and Bela Fleck & The Flecktones. We’ve been offering weekly audio from the tour and this week, we began presenting music from the Southern leg of the tour in which The Flecktones stepped if for Phish. Accordingly, here are Fleck’s memories of the 1992 tour. To view all of our special H.O.R.D.E. content, which we will post over the coming weeks, visit www.relix.com/HORDE .

Can you recall your thoughts when you were told that the Flecktones had invited to be part of something called H.O.R.D.E.?

This was a very special time for all of us. All these band were coming into their own, and we were excited to be together.

How familiar were you with the other bands?

We were very aware of all of them. ARU was probably our favorite band of the time, and showed us that there was a bold future ahead. Spin Doctors were reaping fantastic success and we were a bit in awe of Blues Traveler. Widespread and Phish were not on the shows that we were on, but we were very aware of them. It was magic…an amazing club that was willing to have us be in it!

At that time (August 1992) did it feel odd for you to be on such a bill?

It felt great. We felt that we fit and contributed something different.

Was this the first time the Flecktones played in amphitheaters and if so, can you describe the experience?

The first big gigs were quite early in our first year, when we opened the entire Chicago tour. Now that was surreal.

All of a sudden we were playing these huge places, and I was MCing for the first time, and it was very awkward, and the fans were not convinced that they liked us.

A little later, we opened for the Dead on New Year’s Eve at the Oakland Coliseum. Now that worked. It actually seemed like one day we’d be in these rooms a lot, and that did happen, when we became Dave Mathews Band’s opener on some 70 shows…

In looking back at those four shows, John Bell’s prevailing musical memory is of being quite impressed with the Flecktones. Do you recall your perceptions of the other bands, if any?

Yes, we loved all of them. And we were quite familiar with them all. Howard [Levy] had made us aware of John Popper, and Vic [Wooten] was close with Oteil, and I had a nice musical connection with Matt Mundy, who later played on my first Tales From the Acoustic Planet.

Did you have any memorable interactions with any of the other musicians over those four nights?

I remember jamming backstage with Matt [Mundy, ARU mandolin player] and the most epic jam ever on the last night at Merriwether Post. We all got out there, and John Popper said ‘This is called E’! Then we went wild for 20 minutes on E.

What, if anything, do you feel is the legacy of HORDE?

That was a golden time for those people and that music. It was before ‘Jam-band’ became a derogatory word, or became associated with a particular time. And I imagine that those times are happening now with a new group of people, I wish them great success and also the wisdom to appreciate the great moments when they happen.