Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn Perform NPR ‘Tiny Desk Concert’

While Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn have each performed for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert, the husband-wife banjo pickers never played the video series together. The pair crossed that item off their musical bucket list during a recent visit to NPR’s Washington D.C.’s offices.

Bela and Abigail’s Tiny Desk Concert performance features four songs off Echo In The Valley, their 2017 collaborative album. An eight-month pregnant Washburn jokes about Fleck’s role towards the beginning of the set, exclaiming “this is his fault!” Bela and Abigail open with “Over The Divide,” a track the pair wrote during the height of the Syrian refugee crisis. Washburn does most of the talking and explains the genesis of both “Over The Divide” and the “Bloomin’ Rose” that follows.

Abigail puts down her banjo for a performance of “Take Me To Harlan.” Washburn tap dances throughout the song after telling the audience she had her doctor’s permission to do so. For the finale, Bela and Abigail offered their interpretation of the traditional “My Home’s Across The Blue Ridge Mountains.” Before the song, Fleck took a moment to thank the NPR Music staff for all they do.

Take a look at Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn’s Tiny Desk Concert: