The Story Behind Renée Fleming And Béla Fleck’s Unlikely Collaboration

At first glance, a partnership between acclaimed opera soprano Renée Fleming and boundary pushing banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck might seem unexpected. In reality, their Appalachian inspired album The Fiddle and the Drum, arriving Friday, May 29, has been years in the making.

The duo, who collectively hold 23 Grammy Awards along with numerous other accolades, first discussed the idea nearly 20 years ago during a meeting at a restaurant on 57th Street in New York City. “Renée was thinking about making a record like this, and for some reason I don’t understand I was suggested as the producer,” Fleck, who was recommended by Fleming’s team at Decca Records, tells Billboard. “And I was like, ‘I’d love to do this.’”

“I’ve always been a fan of great female vocalists, from Joni Mitchell to Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou (Harris), people like that. I always liked their records even though they didn’t relate so much to what I did in my own music. So I was very excited to work with somebody of (Fleming’s) ability and stature, with creative music.”

The Fiddle and the Drum, which includes appearances from Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Jerry Douglas, Aoife O’Donovan, Sierra Hull, and Sarah Jarosz, may be a more surprising move for Fleming than for Fleck, whose career has frequently crossed into bluegrass and folk music. The album’s 10 songs blend traditional public domain material such as “In the Pines,” “The Cuckoo,” and “Blackest Crow” with newer selections, including Joni Mitchell’s title track, Ola Belle Reed’s “My Epitaph,” which was released in advance of the album, and Elvis Costello and T Bone Burnett’s “The Scarlet Tide” from the Cold Mountain soundtrack. It is a collection far removed from the works of Mozart, Verdi, Handel, or Strauss.

Fleming says her appreciation for Americana music has deep roots. “I’ve always had eclectic tastes in music,” says the singer, whose grandfather played both fiddle and drums in rural Pennsylvania. “In junior high and high school and through college I played guitar and dulcimer. I did coffee houses. I was studying classical music but I was also singing with a jazz trio every Sunday night. Up where I went to school (SUNY Potsdam) there was a band I saw every weekend, and we clogged; I didn’t know what clogging was, but it seemed like a natural response to that music. So I always loved it.”

According to Fleming, the soundtrack for the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? helped reignite her passion for roots music. “It was T Bone Burnett’s work on that film that reminded me how much I loved that music,” she explains. The experience helped inspire The Fiddle and the Drum. Fleming and Fleck even recorded several demos during their early conversations about the project. “They turned out pretty good, but they never got acted on. They never got completed,” Fleck recalls. “But we would run into each other in all these different situations, including in China with Abigail (Washburn, my wife), and (Fleming) said, ‘We should do something with that stuff sometime.’”

The album finally came together in 2023 when the pair began serious recording sessions in Nashville. The core band featured Douglas on Dobro, Sam Bush on mandolin, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Bryan Sutton on guitar, and Mike Bub on bass. “We had a really fun time working on the music,” Fleck says. “For me, if you can get those guys, they’re just such marvelous musical people who are also very comfortable with that direction and trying unusual ideas and putting their hearts and soul into it. Being in the room with Renée was really fun and interesting and new. And everybody brought their A game.”

Fleming credits Fleck as playing a much larger role than a traditional producer. “He did more than a producer normally would, in my experience,” she says. “He had more artistic kinds of ideas and felt strongly about certain things, and in my recording experience that wasn’t the norm. I felt like we really worked on this together, and (Fleck) did the lion’s share of the work... and he kept coming back to it, like, ‘I found some more things. What do you think about this?’ That’s unheard of in classical music.”

Fleck says one of the most fascinating aspects of the project was hearing Fleming perform in a completely different vocal style. “I discovered that in her low voice she was like a different singer altogether, which was really interesting, too,” he explains. Fleming agrees. “I learned early on that when I step outside of the classical word I need to stay within a certain range, because when I get to the top of the staff my voice is going to sound like my voice. So we keep the register low for me, and then I could really find another, more spoken sound that seemed to work really well. I did sing some more whoops and hoo hoos and things like that. People who know my classical singing would never recognize my voice in this.”

To that, Fleck jokingly replied, “whoops and hoo hoos — that’s going to be the next album title.”

Fleming says she was touched by the willingness of so many guest artists to participate. “I would’ve thought, ‘Bluegrass with an opera singer? Run away!’” she says with a laugh. One of the album’s standout moments is the closing a cappella version of “Pretty Bird,” featuring Hull and Jarosz. “The thing was it had been done a lot,” Fleck says. “But Renée did such an incredible performance of it that it changed my point of view.” He explains that Fleming suggested adding other singers. “I was like, ‘I think we’re done,’ and Renée said at various times, ‘Hey I think there should be some other singers on it.’ I was like, ‘Oh, how do we match what you did?’ I didn’t want to lose anything. It had to be singers who were willing to work on it and figure out how to match her. But I knew the people who could do it.”

Fleming and Fleck gave audiences an early taste of The Fiddle and the Drum on May 16 at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Additional appearances are planned for the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado this June, the Chautauqua Institution in New York this August, and Carnegie Hall in New York City on Dec. 3. As for the possibility of another album together, Fleming says, “We haven’t had that conversation. I’ve been concerned since the beginning that it would find an audience at all, and Béla’s convinced me people will like what they hear, so we’ll see. It is really fun to step outside your genre and do other things. Béla’s a phenomenal example of that.”

Fleck believes the partnership still has plenty of potential. “We have a good trust and a good friendship, so I think the door’s open for other things. We just have to get there. It has to be the right thing at the right time. We both have such busy lives, but I loved working with Renée. It was a really wonderful experience and cool thing to do. I would love to do it again if we can.”