“Up and Around the Bend” is a Béla Fleck composition, the third track on his 1988 Rounder album Drive. He recorded it in Nashville at the Nashville Sound Connection in December 1987 with Sam Bush (mandolin), Jerry Douglas (dobro), Tony Rice (guitar) and Mark Schatz (bass). Fleck has written that Stuart Duncan and Mark O’Connor took turns on fiddle through the album and “played together on a couple of tunes as well.” This is one of those tunes: the credits on the Rounder CD and the Mobile Fidelity reissue list both fiddlers here.
Fleck put the band together to go back to his roots after two more modern records, Deviation and Inroads. By his account, playing on Tony Rice’s Cold on the Shoulder persuaded him that Rice, Bush and Douglas could carry his tunes. Drive was nominated for the 1989 Grammy for Best Bluegrass Recording. Mobile Fidelity reissued it on SACD in 2005 and Rounder on vinyl in 2023.
Others have recorded the tune since. Jerusalem Ridge & Leroy Mack included it on Together, a 2001 Canadian release, with LeRoy McNees on dobro.
