When Bela Fleck’s remembered off in the future, when there’s discussion of him among the pantheon of banjo players, he’ll most likely be remembered as the center of a group called the Flecktones. Initially formed to perform on some televised special during the late eighties, but not aired until a few years later, the show functioned as a proper introduction to a wide audience. The thing is, Fleck had been performing for over a decade by the time that performance hit the air. Regardless of that, the Flecktones, while innovative and interesting in a way, don’t really aptly explain Fleck’s background in bluegrass and its slight derivations.

In the late seventies, just a few years after he picked up the banjo, Fleck headed to Boston to perform in a group that would quickly disappear. It was about the same time, though, that he’d be afforded the opportunity to record an album.

Issued in 1979, Crossing the Tracks ranks as a pretty heavy entry in the then still emerging new grass genre. All that really means, though, is that Fleck enjoyed jazz and be bop improvisation as much as banjo soloing. And he should – there’s not a tremendous difference between the two. It’s just weird that it wasn’t until the seventies that everyone realized that.

Anyway, collecting Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Russ Barenberg and a few other folks around him for the sessions as sponsored by Rounder Records, the ensemble goes in on a spate of Fleck originals, fleshed out by a few jazz covers as well as the obligator Flatt and Scruggs number which opens the album.

Barenburg’s voice winds up being as unique and persistently engaging as the date leader’s. On “Spain,” a Chick Corea number, Barenburg turns in an endless procession of notes and when trailing off, passes the solo space to Douglass and his dobro. It’s the sound of an auld tyme string band. But since everyone here seems as entranced by improvisation, the string band takes on a sort of junkie jazz vibe each bar becoming potential space for either the most interesting solo space one might imagine or a complete train wreck.

Granted, those lesser moments would probably have been edited out, but Crossing the Tracks feels like it was recorded with everyone huddled around a single microphone, just a few inches apart. It probably wasn’t, but that only serves to explain the general tenor of the recordings.