The Broken Circle Breakdown Bluegrass Band

The story began on stage. Heldenbergh and Mieke Dobbels wrote the play The Broken Circle Breakdown featuring the Cover-Ups of Alabama for the theater company Compagnie Cecilia, and Van Groeningen’s film, from a screenplay he wrote with Carl Joos, opened in Belgium in October 2012. Heldenbergh plays Didier, a banjo player in a bluegrass band, and Baetens plays Elise, a tattoo artist who becomes the band’s singer. The film won the César for Best Foreign Film and the 2013 Lux Prize and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Eriksson won the Ensor for best music at the 2013 Flemish film awards.

The soundtrack album, issued by Universal Music Belgium on 19 October 2012, was produced by Eriksson. The core band on it is Eriksson on guitar and Dobro, Karl Eriksson on banjo, Nils De Caster on fiddle and mandolin, Geert Waegeman on mandolin and fiddle and Lenn Dauphin on bass, with Baetens and Heldenbergh, who also plays banjo and guitar, singing lead. The set mixes traditional songs such as “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn,” “Wayfaring Stranger” and “Over in the Gloryland” with Townes Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You,” Lyle Lovett’s “Cowboy Man,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Further On Up the Road,” “Country in My Genes” and the instrumentals “Sand Mountain” and “Blackberry Blossom,” plus Eriksson’s own score pieces. It entered the Flemish Ultratop 50 on 27 October 2012, held No. 1 for six weeks from late November and six more from early January 2013, stayed on the chart for 86 weeks and was certified double platinum. It also reached No. 35 in the Netherlands, and “If I Needed You,” sung by Baetens and Heldenbergh, reached No. 8 on the Flemish singles chart.

The album’s success was followed by a concert tour with the musicians from the film. Unbroken! Live in Concert (Universal Music Belgium) entered the Flemish chart on 1 November 2014 and peaked at No. 20. On it the band is Bjorn and Karl Eriksson, De Caster, Bert Van Bortel on mandolin and guitar and Tomas de Smet on bass, with Baetens and Heldenbergh, and the set adds “Black Mountain Rag,” “Sin City,” “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “The One I Love Is Gone” and “Cherokee Shuffle” to songs from the film.