Flea - Honora

Nearly five decades after picking up the bass and helping to co-found Red Hot Chili Peppers, Michael "Flea" Balzary has made the album he always dreamed of making. "When I was a kid," he told NPR, "I wanted to be a jazz trumpet player. I wanted to be Dizzy Gillespie." Honora, his debut solo album on Nonesuch Records, is the fulfillment of that dream, a deeply personal record named after a beloved family member and rooted in the jazz and trumpet playing that captured his heart long before rock and roll ever did.

Recorded at Sunset Sound in Hollywood and Soundtree in London in early 2025, the album was produced by saxophonist Josh Johnson and features an extraordinary ensemble of modern jazz visionaries: guitarist Jeff Parker, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Deantoni Parks, with contributions from Mauro Refosco and Nate Walcott. Flea plays both trumpet and bass throughout, and the guest vocal appearances are as stunning as the music itself. Thom Yorke, Flea's former Atoms for Peace bandmate, sings on the co-written "Traffic Lights." Nick Cave delivers a quietly devastating reading of Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman." The New York Times described the album's ten songs as embodying "a deep pathos," and it is easy to hear why.

Alongside six original compositions, the album features interpretations of George Clinton and Eddie Hazel's "Maggot Brain," Frank Ocean and Shea Taylor's "Thinkin Bout You," and Ann Ronell's "Willow Weep for Me," each transformed by Flea's singular musical vision into something new and entirely his own. The record debuted as the highest charting jazz album of 2026 on Billboard, confirmation that the world was ready for this Flea.