About

After a nearly five-decade (and counting) career as one of his generation’s defining rock bassists, Flea released his first full-length solo album, Honora, in March 2026, on Nonesuch Records. Time and space have finally allowed him to return to his first musical loves: jazz and playing the trumpet. Here is the album track “Traffic Lights,” co-written with Thom Yorke and Josh Johnson and featuring vocals, piano, and synth from Yorke:

For Honora, which takes its name from a beloved family member, Flea composed and arranged the music, and also plays trumpet and bass throughout, joined by an elite crew of modern jazz visionaries: album producer and saxophonist Josh Johnson, guitarist Jeff Parker, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Deantoni Parks. The record features vocals from Flea, as well as friends Thom Yorke and Nick Cave. Mauro Refosco (David Byrne, Atoms for Peace) and Nate Walcott (Bright Eyes), among others, also join the band. The album comprises six original songs–including one co-written by Flea, Johnson, and Yorke–as well as interpretations of tunes by George Clinton and Eddie Hazel, Jimmy Webb, Frank Ocean and Shea Taylor, and Ann Ronell.

“Deantoni and I played what became ‘Traffic Lights’ the first day," Flea says. "Something about it reminded me of Atoms for Peace, so I sent it to Thom. Just knowing him, I thought it would be a rhythm and a sensibility that he would relate to. And I was right, he did. With a gorgeous melody and the words, you know, about living in the ‘upside down’ and how do you make sense of things when we’re getting all this fake shit and real shit? Everyone has their ways of dealing with the world. But he’s just the warmest, free flowing, jamming motherf*cker.”

Best known as a founding member and bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea was first introduced to live jazz as a child, when family friends played the music together in his own living room. “It was the greatest thing I ever saw,” he recalls. “The wildness, warmth and we of it. Straight Bebop. Boom. I knew there were higher things on this earth, way above the pettiness that had left me disheartened. The holy trifecta of my life, music, sports and nature was complete.”

Though he dreamed of being like his heroes Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Clifford Brown, Flea’s path went a different direction: His close friend Hillel Slovak asked him to pick up the bass and join his rock band when he was sixteen, leading Flea into a decades-long career with the hugely successful Chili Peppers.

But late one night in 1991, in the midst of that band’s ascent, Flea was acting in the now-classic Gus Van Sant film My Own Private Idaho when he shared with a friend, “I want to make an instrumental record with deep hypnotic grooves, trippy melodies layered on top, meditations on a groove.” The caveat was that he first needed to get his trumpet-playing together. 

As Flea neared his sixtieth birthday, he realized if he did not pick up the trumpet again, he probably never would. So he resolved to practice every day for two years–in the midst of a stadium tour with Red Hot Chili Peppers, with a wife and newborn at home. At the end of those two years, he would make an album, regardless of where his knowledge or talents ended up.

Until Honora, Flea had never been scared of making music before. He worried that the all-star band he had assembled would think he was “a non-playing motherf*cker, charlatan, rock poseur or fan.” But, he says, “It turns out they were all the most genuinely supportive people, moving me deeply and daily with their generous spirits ... Sitting in a room and playing the music with them made me feel like I was on drugs. I was buzzing, tripping and floating around the studio. I love them, they truly gave of themselves. I bow all the way down.” — (via Label)

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It seems impossible that workaholic Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, a man who has released new music nearly every year since 1984, could have waited so long to produce a solo record. Besides 13 studio efforts with his faithful California funk-brothers, the man born Michael Balzary has collaborated with almost everyone over the past four decades – from Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke in supergroup Atoms For Peace to pop pioneer Janet Jackson to hip-hop legend LL Cool J. But he’s never found time to cut a proper solo album of his own.

Patching this small but not insignificant hole in the tapestry of recorded music is Honora, a quietly accomplished jazz project that he’s put out via Nonesuch. The choice of label should not go unnoticed. Whereas the Chilis are signed to Warner, a major, Nonesuch has historically put out experimental classical composers such as Steve Reich and progressive works from contemporary artists including Yussef Dayes and Tortoise. They prioritise musicianship over commerciality, pedigree above a quick buck, and Flea is saying he wants us to do the same.

The Chili Peppers, with their bloated live jams and thankfully retired socks-on-cocks stage shtick have often been accused of overindulgence – and occasionally during Honora, their ebullient bass wizard falls into that trap again. Luckily, he has some old friends around to keep him focused. And it’s within these starry collaborations that Flea’s innate feeling for the jazz genre – which he’s loved since first picking up the trumpet as a young boy – really comes to the fore.

By far and away the standout moment on ‘Honora’, however, is the devastatingly beautiful reimagining of Frank Ocean favourite ‘Thinkin Bout You’, from 2012’s ‘Channel Orange’. Stripping the track of its vocal, Flea instead alternates between picking out the verse melody on his four-string and swapping to trumpet for those sublimely comforting chorus lines. The effect is glorious, like slipping into a warm bath after a long run. It makes ‘Honora’ totally worth the wait. — (via NME)

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Is there ever a point where something should be gatekept? More experienced heads and more rabid fans than I have long opined about the acceptability of new and wildly different artists—especially those with established legacies elsewhere—in specific genre spaces. Is a sound without a uniform still a legitimate sound? Can a one-off experiment become canon? If you surround yourself with certain players, does that make you yourself a player? All of these questions and more encircle Honora, the solo debut from Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea that he unabashedly labels a jazz album.

To hear Flea tell it, his Hall of Fame career as a single-sock-wearin’ punk-pop bassist was all a long detour away from his school-age dream of being a proper jazz trumpeter. After the Chilis dropped two albums in 2022 and toured the world supporting them, he wanted to pause and return to his roots. Despite the relatively bright tones heard here, Honora holds music of struggle. It’s inspired by stories of his great-great-grandmother, the album’s namesake; it presents songs and lyrics that feel like responses to our current sociopolitical moment; and Flea made it with a healthy dose of impostor syndrome, trying to relearn what it meant to follow in the footsteps of titans like Miles and Mingus.

Let’s hit two of the most important notes here: The music of Honora is good, and Flea recruited a lot of help putting it together. Josh Johnson, saxophonist for SML, produced and played on the album. Fellow Chili Peppers John Frusciante (guitar) and Chad Smith (drums) both make appearances, as do multiple RHCP touring players and studio hands, as does Warren Ellis on flute and viola. Thom Yorke’s presence means the personnel includes an informal Atoms for Peace reunion. And four covers support Flea’s efforts here, including Nick Cave bringing wobbly vocal gravitas to a rumbling rendition of Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman.”

The other big thing to understand about Honora is that it’s not just a trumpet album. Brass is merely an accent on “Traffic Lights,” a vehicle for Yorke, the rhythm section, and guitarist Jeff Parker (this LP’s unsung hero) that could easily fit on an album by The Smile. Flea shares bass duties with Johnson’s SML bandmate Anna Butterss, notably hopping between his low end and his horn to carry the lead melody in an arrangement of Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You.” And the arrangements and original songwriting are almost exclusively credited to Flea here, and they largely work—even the electronic drum pad foundation of “Frailed,” even the protest/spiritual jazz of “A Plea” where his yelped spoken-word threatens to fly off the rails.

Honora is loaded with “fusion” moments, where Flea pulls elements of funk and rock from the long shadow cast by his main musical concern. But we also hear the kind of care and honesty André 3000 brought to his own foray into heretofore unexpected experimentation. This isn’t just a way to ease Flea back into the ways of jazz, but ease his Red Hot Chili Peppers fans—and maybe other genre neophytes—into them as well. You can’t stop the spirits when they need you, and maybe Miles and Mingus are indeed whispering the right things in this old punk’s ear. (— via Treblezine)

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- Flea's debut solo album.
- Released in exclusive red vinyl.
- Housed in gatefold sleeve.

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Label: Nonesuch
Format: Vinyl, LP, Single Sided, Stereo, Red, Screen Printed All Media, Album, Stereo
Released: 2026
Genre: Jazz
Style: Jazz-Funk, Fusion, Modern/Future Jazz

File under: Modern/Future Jazz
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