Show Review: Béla Fleck and the Flecktones: Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland, OR 8/29/25

I’ve been listening to Béla Fleck and the Flecktones since 1995 and hadn’t seen them play live until this show. For whatever reason, over the years, the stars have never aligned just right for me to see them. A few months ago, on their website, a show opening for Dave Matthews Band at their annual Gorge Amphitheater Labor Day weekend run was announced. For a while, it looked like I was going to be heading to The Gorge to see a 45-minute set from a band that I did not want to miss out on for another year. When this show in Portland was announced, along with the rest of the tour, I knew I was going to go and finally get to see one of my most listened to bands of the last 30 years. I was not going to miss out on them again after countless missteps and near misses. What I got to experience was about as close to a perfect show as I possibly could’ve asked for.

When the Flecktones took the stage, they wasted no time, and multi-instrumentalist Howard Levy started the night off with the opening mouth harp parts of “Frontiers,” the second song from their 1990 self-titled debut album. I’ve listened to “Frontiers” so many times over the years that while I know improvisation is baked into the nature of the band, when flourishes and fills not on the album happened, I was gobsmacked at how hearing those little differences made me feel like a teenager hearing one of his favorite bands for the first time. They tore the roof off with this iconic number of theirs, and based on the gigantic applause, the audience was more than ready to go. Up next was “Flying Saucers Dudes”, a space-aged fast from their legendary sophomore album Flight of the Cosmic Hippo. Cosmic Hippo-related items were all over the venue. It was the only Flecktones album for sale that night; most of the merchandise had Cosmic Hippo images emblazoned on it, and they were even selling little Cosmic Hippo dolls that each band member had on their amps and instruments. Each time a FotCH song was played, it felt special and important to the night.

As I mentioned earlier, Béla and the Flecktones have improvisation built into their identity. During the evening, each member was given an improvisational spotlight, where they were allowed to play a solo without accompaniment for a part of the show. Victor Wooten was first and for good cause. Wooten is one of the most well-respected virtuoso bass players in the world, and although he has been a part of many other projects, including his own, most people are familiar with him due to his work with the Flecktones. His solo incorporated loops and pyrotechnic playing while the rest of his bandmates stood by watching him do what he does best. Parts of his solo performance elicited laughter from the crowd. Always a delight to see when instrumental music can garner a vocal, emotional response from its intended audience. Victor’s solo lead directly into a song from 1992’s UFO Tofu, which was named after a dessert called “Sex in a Pan” that they once shared with the owners of a North Carolina venue they had frequented in the 1990s.

I spoke with several people about the band before the show started, and each time it didn’t take them long to mention either The Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, or both. The Flecktones opened for the Dead at their 1991 New Year’s Eve show, and Bela sat in with the Jerry Garcia Band at a now-famous show that’s received an official release on Garcia Live Vol 2. In the spirit of the Grateful Dead, Béla and crew perform two sets and an encore when they play. I was truly delighted to discover this at the show.

Throughout the rest of the first set, they played additional songs from their self-titled debut album and from UFO Tofu. My personal highlight was when Bela told the story of a song he wrote for his son and the circumstances of how it came to be. Then, they played the song “Juno,” which was originally released as part of his collaboration with the late great jazz keyboard legend Chick Corea. After an incredible full Flecktone arrangement of “Juno”, Levy was given his chance to take his solo, which ended up being a solo harmonica rendition of Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”. This would be a feat on chromatic harmonica. Still, Howard plays a diatonic harmonica, and his techniques to get three notes out of every hole and play them accurately are unlike what almost any pro-level harmonica players are capable of. While he was performing the nearly 300-year-old song, one could wonder how Bach would’ve reacted to seeing his incredibly complicated and beautiful piece of music played on a small instrument that didn’t exist during his lifetime, which at first glance appears to have only 10 notes on it. Levy’s solo led directly into “Life in Eleven”, from The Flecktones’ most recent release of original material: 2011’s Rocket Science.

It’s worth mentioning that in 1993, Howard Levy left the Flecktones. After a year of performing as a trio, they were joined by saxophonist Jeff Coffin for several years, until he departed to join The Dave Matthews Band. Howard then reentered the picture and has been a permanent band member ever since. To open set two, they played “Big Country,” which is a song from the Coffin period of the band’s history. Hearing Howard’s contributions was stunning and really made me appreciate him as the MVP of the band on this night.

Set Two was expansive and covered songs from all of the Howard Levy albums with particularly amazing renditions of “True North”, Bela’s solo being a truncated version of his solo banjo rendition of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue(grass)”, Futureman’s vocals on the gorgeous originally instrumental “Sunset Road” and his unbelievable drumitar solo which lead into the set closing “Sinister Minister” which featured some pyrotechnic bass soloing from Victor Wooten with a full jam own The OJay’s “For the Love of Money”.

When the band returned, Béla asked, “Should we do the whole Hippo thing?” What followed was audience participation at its funniest and its best. Béla directed all of us to finger snap to “create the sound of the hippo’s toenails on the runway”. Once the snaps created the rhythm, he directed all of the men in the audience to give their deepest “Oooh.”, and the women to voice their most feminine “Ahh,” While the band played the title track from 1991’s “Flight of the Cosmic Hippo”. As the song was ending I rushed to the front of the auditorium to ask for a stage setlist and the band threw their plush hippos into the audience, the hippo Béla threw went right into my hands and I knew this was one of the greatest concert moments I’ve ever gotten to experience. I’ve already been wondering if I’m going to fly out to any shows this fall.

Before the show, I ran into percussionist and instrument inventor Roy “Futureman” Wooten of the band. I asked him if Jeff Coffin would be playing with them at their Dave Matthews Band show the next day. He told me “There will probably be some jamming.” (Coffin ended up joining them for “Sunset Road” and “Sinister Minister” that night”. But he also told me that for the first time Jeff Coffin will be going on the road with Howard Levy starting November 26th they’ll be “The Flecktone Five” as Futureman excitedly put it to me.

If you get the chance to see them, you should not wait 30 years like I did.

“I think we escape categorization just simply by existing, and it’s just doing exactly what I want to do with no compromises, and I found three people who, you know, wanted to do that too.” – Bela Fleck.