The Flecktones just finished up their short run of west coast shows. The original lineup performed 8 venues in 9 nights starting in southern California near San Diego and finishing up in Idaho.

The sets were pretty similar for the first run of shows in California and Oregon with the majority of the songs coming from their first 3 albums. They also played Juno from Béla and Chick's latest album, Rememberance. Plus 2 tracks from the Flecktone's most recent album, 2011's Rocket Science. The Flecktones showed why they continue to be a can't miss act with their unique instrumentation, jaw-dropping solos, and just a touch of humor.

The tour got even more interesting towards the end as the band made their first ever appearance at the Gorge Amphitheater out in Washington opening for the Dave Matthews Band. The shorter set didn't include any song surprises, but it did feature two guest spots by former Flecktone Jeff Coffin. The first time he's guested with the group since the 2019 Friends and Family show at Red Rocks. Then the band took the stage with DMB for a 16 minute jam on DMB's #41. A classic that the Flecktones have been jamming on since they first toured with DMB back in 1996. Later Béla joined DMB multiple times as DMB performed their 1998 album, Before These Crowded Streets, in full. An album which originally included Béla on several tracks.

From there, the Flecktones headed to Montana, then Idaho to finish up their short tour with 2 shows each night.

It was a great tour and a great warm up for their larger Holiday Tour this fall which will include guests Jeff Coffin and the Alash Ensemble. This will be both Jeff and Alash's first tour with the Flecktones since the 2010 Holiday Tour. And the first time ever that all 5 Flecktones will tour together. It should be a blast, be sure to check the tour page for dates and get tickets now!

And if you're looking for stats on the west coast tour, go here.

If you attended any of the recent shows (or any shows at all) and managed to grab a paper setlist or a picture of one, please share it with us at cowtownarchives@gmail.com. We are always on the lookout for Flecktone or Flecktone adjacent memorabilia including ticket stubs, posters, setlist scans, or anything really. Thanks!

It's been a while since we made an update. In fact the site was down for a bit while we made some tech upgrades, but we've been back up for quite some time and we've been busy. But you may not have noticed if you haven't been looking for it.

First, tomorrow (Feb 2) is the 67th Annual Grammy Awards and Bela is up for 4 awards himself, plus Chick is up for another award for their album Remembrance. With these 4 nominations, Bela has now been nominated 45 total times with 17 wins. And, of course he still holds the record for being nominated in the most different categories (21 of them!). He'll also be performing at the Grammys Permiere Ceremony at 3:30pm ET so check out that live stream.

Next, we've moved off of Twitter and mostly off Facebook/Threads and we are now posting most of our updates on BlueSky, so follow us there for more frequent updates, trivia, and other fun Fleck/Flecktone related posts. @archivesincowtown.bsky.social

In addition to BlueSky, we've also got a few more accounts that we spun up to expand the archives.

• YouTube: We've been posting older videos from our collection, some full live shows and even some bonus tracks from older albums that you may or may not have heard. Plus we have about a dozen different playlists aggregating videos of Béla, New Grass Revival, The Flecktones, and others.
• Sporcle: We've started making quizzes! We have 3 now, one for Flecktone Songs, another for Bela Fleck discography and another about Bela's Grammy nominations. Check them out if you want a challenge.
• Spotify: We've create our first playlist on Spotify in honor of the Grammy awards this year. It's a playlist of every song Béla was nominated for (minus 2 that aren't on Spotify). And it ended up being a great showcase of his career.

As for the site, there has been a LOT happening.

• We've been backfilling a lot of older dates from the Flecktones and the many side projects. Adding setlists where we can find them. Check out some special performances like Béla Fleck with Friends & Family at Red Rocks and Béla's Rhythmn, Raga & Rhapsody at Carnegie Hall for some interesting setlists, then just browse around the years and check out the different tours.
• While backfilling dates, we also backfilled a lot of Flecktone setlists specifically for their later one-off tours including a Trio tour and a few dates with just Béla and Vic. Check those out in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
• We also made some UI updates to different pages like the Artists page and Album pages. Slowly we'll take this site out of 2004 when it launched and maybe into the 2020s if we can.
• We also have done tons of research on pre-Flecktones Béla Fleck. There's plenty more to come, but we've started adding Spectrum dates and we've increased our New Grass Revival content by about 1000% adding all their studio albums and around 200 shows, 40 of which have setlists. For some specific goodies, check out the Farewell for Now Tour from 1989 where we have around 60% of the setlists entered.
• We've done more with albums, in fact we've added almost all of Béla's 60+ albums including Flecktones and NGR. Check out the updated Songs page for a jumping off point to those albums. Then dive into specific songs to see setlist history.
• And finally, perhaps the most fun part, we've been getting data dumps from the Flecktones sound engineer Richard Battaglia with tons of setlist data. We hit 2005 the hardest so far, adding lots of setlists for the different Béla projects that toured that year including the Acoustic Trio, the Stanley Clark & Jean-Luc Ponty Trio! and the Béla Fleck & Edgar Meyer tour. Just browse around and you'll find lots of new setlist data.

As we close out Béla's 50th year of touring (and our 20th anniversary year), we plan to continue bringing you updates to the site itself, new and exciting touring data, and, with our new social accounts, fun video, audio, and even trivia where we can. So follow us everywhere so you can take part as we celebrate these huge milestones!