Left of Cool by Bela Fleck & The Flecktones

Left of Cool, released on Warner Bros. in 1998, was the fifth studio album from Béla Fleck and the Flecktones and the first with saxophonist Jeff Coffin, who had already been touring with the band since Howard Levy's exit. The cover makes a joke of his arrival: Fleck, Victor Wooten and Future Man stand on the new guy's head.

The music is the Flecktones' usual glorious mongrel, banjo, bass and Drumitar trading jazz licks with bluegrass, funk and rock, and Coffin's horns give it a fresh, brassy lift. Fleck got the melody of "Big Country" down by phoning his own answering machine and singing it before it could escape, and "Sojourn of Arjuna" turns up in a different arrangement from the one on Wooten's What Did He Say? a year earlier. Dave Matthews and Amy Grant drop by as guests. It reached 191 on the Billboard 200, the band's best showing, and AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine singled out the opener, "Throwdown at the Hoedown", while advising fans to listen for the small details tucked inside the solos.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.