Bela Fleck and David Spencer of Sisters Morales with Dueling Banjo and Electric Guitar

Sisters Morales electric guitarist David Spencer and banjo player Bela Fleck engage in a guitar/banjo duel, during the encore of the second Sisters Morales show at the Mucky Duck Pub in Houston on the night of September 2, 2006.

Bela's then girlfriend and now wife, Abigail Washburn, opened for both Sisters shows that night, with Bela backing her. Abigail sang and played some Chinese bluegrass songs she had written, having lived in China and being fluent in Mandarin Chinese. She was formerly in the great all female bluegrass band, Uncle Earl, which played once at the Mucky Duck a few years before.

At the end of their second show that night, the Sisters invited Abigail and Bela up to the stage to jam with them, when the Sisters' great electric guitarist David Spencer got into an electric guitar/banjo duel with Bela for 5 or 10 minutes.

David is very good and kept up with Bela for several minutes, but Bela is unbelievable, kept ratcheting it up, and finally David just laughed and threw up his hands, throwing in the towel. After the show, I talked to David, and he said he had never seen anything like that, and I said, neither had I.

In the video, from left to right, are David Spencer, on electric guitar, Abigail Washburn, Lisa Morales, Vicente Rodriguez, on drums, sitting, Roberta Morales, Bela Fleck, on banjo, sitting, and Cornbread, on bass.

The song they start singing and playing is Rodney Crowell's hit song, "Ain't Livin' Long Like This", which the Sisters have covered for years. Lisa knew Rodney while he still lived here (in Houston), and the Sisters opened for him at least once, in the Crighton Theatre in Conroe, Texas, about 10 years ago.

When Rodney first played at the Mucky Duck, in December of 1999, Lisa and Roberta were in the audience for the second show, and Rodney invited them up to sing with him on his encore, where they did "Ain't Livin' Long Like This".

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Bela
• Fleck
• Abigail
• Washburn
• David
• Spencer
• Sisters
• Morales
• Mucky
• Duck
• duel
• banjo
• electric
• guitar

[thevernonator1]

The Duck has also had bands from the Czech Republic (bluegrass band Druha Trava, an excellent band), from Russia (Limpopo, the Red Elvises, a folk band from the Karelian Republic), and much more. It has had local boy made good Hayes Carll, who was on Leno in January. It has also had Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell (former local boy once married to Rosanne Cash), Townes Van Zandt, Billy Joe Shaver, and on and on.

[thevernonator1]

The Duck has also had Carla Bonoff (who had songs covered by Linda Ronstadt), Maria Muldaur ("Midnight at the Oasis"), one of the Monkees, the Dixie Chicks when they were just starting out (pre Natalie Maines), plus many, many less well known but excellent musicians and bands, local, regional, national, and outside the country, from Canada (like Bruce Cockburn, Fred Eaglesmith, Corb Lund, and many others), from Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, Spain, Madagascar (world beat band Tarika), and so on.

[thevernonator1]

If you read the description, it says when and where right at the start. It was at the Mucky Duck Pub in Houston, on the evening of Sept. 2, 2006. The Mucky Duck is one of the country's premier small live music venues, a listening room that holds about 100 to 130 people. It has been around for 21 years, has hosted a number of great musicians, some well known, some not so much, like Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary last week, also Al Stewart, Del McCoury, Ralph Stanley, and more.

[wowbanjosrock]

Where and when was this?