Sunday Cinema | Dave Matthews Band & Bela Fleck
By Scott Bernstein May 3, 2015 • 7:56 am PDT
On Wednesday Dave Matthews Band announced they would be joined by banjoist Béla Fleck as a special guest at four summer shows. Fleck will add to the 66 shows and 253 songs he’s performed with DMB since 1996 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York on July 3 and 4 and at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre in Englewood, Colorado on August 28 and 29. Among the 66 Dave Matthews Band shows Béla has appeared at was a quick jaunt through Eastern Canada that yielded three of the more adventurous jams in the band’s history.
In April 2002 Béla Fleck and The Flecktones opened for Dave Matthews Band during a three-show swing through Ontario and Quebec. Matthews was battling what his crew described as a “frog in his throat” which led to an extended jam each night featuring Fleck with the rest of the Flecktones joining in on two of the three improv-heavy guest appearances. Flecktones saxophonist Jeff Coffin went on to become an official member of the Dave Matthews Band seven years after this historic run.
The run started April 19, 2002 at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre, where Fleck sat-in on “Don’t Drink The Water” and a “Lie In Our Graves” that extended past the 15-minute mark. On April 20, 2002 at the Corel Centre in Ottawa the banjoist and his bandmates made history when they joined in on DMB’s longest performance of any song -the 32:03 “#41.” Béla Fleck and The Flecktones helped the Dave Matthews Band close out the final set of the brief Canadian run with an adventurous “Two Step” at Centre Molson in Montreal. Thankfully, fan-shot footage of all three jams is available on YouTube.
[Dave Matthews Band & Bela Fleck -“Lie In Our Graves” | shared by JayBTV, filmed by Ethan Sinclair]
[Dave Matthews Band with Bela Fleck & The Flecktones -“#41” | shared by ChesterCopperpot5]
[Dave Matthews Band with Bela Fleck & The Flecktones -“Two Step” | shared by JayBTV]
In April 2002 Béla Fleck and The Flecktones opened for Dave Matthews Band during a three-show swing through Ontario and Quebec. Matthews was battling what his crew described as a “frog in his throat” which led to an extended jam each night featuring Fleck with the rest of the Flecktones joining in on two of the three improv-heavy guest appearances. Flecktones saxophonist Jeff Coffin went on to become an official member of the Dave Matthews Band seven years after this historic run.
The run started April 19, 2002 at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre, where Fleck sat-in on “Don’t Drink The Water” and a “Lie In Our Graves” that extended past the 15-minute mark. On April 20, 2002 at the Corel Centre in Ottawa the banjoist and his bandmates made history when they joined in on DMB’s longest performance of any song -the 32:03 “#41.” Béla Fleck and The Flecktones helped the Dave Matthews Band close out the final set of the brief Canadian run with an adventurous “Two Step” at Centre Molson in Montreal. Thankfully, fan-shot footage of all three jams is available on YouTube.
