Jim McGuire / Submitted photoHusband-and-wife duo Abigail Washburn and Bela Fleck will perform Thursday at the Tower Theatre.

What does the “first couple of the banjo” do when they have a kid?

Easy. They go on tour with him.

Banjo-picking husband-and-wife duo Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn have been musical collaborators ever since Fleck produced Washburn’s debut solo album, 2005’s “Song of the Traveling Daughter.” Most notably, the couple makes up one-half of Chinese-inflected bluegrass group The Sparrow Quartet alongside cellist Ben Sollee and violinist Casey Driessen; to date, the band has released only one album, 2008’s “Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet.”

But up until 2013, straight-up duet performances between Fleck and Washburn were rare occurrences — a short set at Washburn’s grandmother’s church, a fill-in performance at a folk festival. Then their son, Juno, was born. In order to be with their son, the couple put aside their numerous other projects (The Flecktones, Fleck’s ongoing collaboration with jazz fusion pianist Chick Corea, Washburn’s solo career) and hit the road together.

“I think both of us didn’t know what to expect when we started playing as a duo,” Washburn said during a recent joint phone interview with Fleck from their home in Nashville.

“We hoped that it would work because we want to stay together and be with our little boy, Juno, who’s been growing up on the road traveling with us as a touring duo — we like to call ourselves a trio. And so we were hoping that it would feel good, and it has.”

The tour did more than just that, spawning a Grammy-nominated album, 2014’s “Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn”; last year’s “Banjo Banjo” EP; and even more shows, including slots at last year’s Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado and Bonnaroo in Tennessee. The whole family is back on the road for the next two months, including a stop at the Tower Theatre on Thursday.

“We’re sort of amazed that it’s gone this well,” Fleck said. “Because it really is just two banjo players — and one of them who happens to sing very, very well. But it’s kind of a folky, esoteric little thing, but it does have pretty wide appeal. Not only is it drawing really well, and we’re having good audiences and good response critically, but we’re having a heck of a lot of fun onstage goofing around with each other and being banjo warriors.”

Juno’s influence can be felt throughout the couple’s debut album together — his laughter closes out the very last song of the album, “Bye Bye Baby Blues.” And in a way, he helped arrange the album’s opening traditional number, a minor-key version of “Railroad” that quickly became a staple of the duo’s shows.

“It all connects to a very specific moment in time where Juno was probably six or seven months old, and he was sitting at the table with me. And he was just learning to bang on the table, and I got so excited about it, because I was like, ‘Cool, this is music,’” Washburn said. “So we started banging on the table together, and I just started singing ‘Railroad’ in a minor key, and that’s all there is to it.”

Not quite, though, as Fleck interjects:

“I was out on tour and I called home, and Abby said, ‘Hey, listen to this.’ And they started banging on the table, and Abby started singing that minor version, (sings) ‘I’ve been working on the railroad, all the live-long day.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I’m glad Juno’s banging on the table, but I think we ought to work up that song.’ … I don’t think it had really occurred to Abby that she had naturally come up with a new take on the song until I called in and busted her on it.”

This easygoing rapport is evident not only in the couple’s conversation, but in their playing as well. Though banjo and Washburn’s vocals are the only instruments heard on “Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn” and “Banjo Banjo,” the lush soundscapes the couple creates throughout are about as far from “Dueling Banjos” as it gets.

It makes sense, given the duo’s backgrounds. Since the ’70s, Fleck has pushed the boundaries of what three-finger style banjo music can be, exploring jazz fusion playing with The Flecktones and mining the instrument’s African roots for inspiration. Washburn, meanwhile, is an innovator in the clawhammer style of playing, cutting her teeth in the old-timey Uncle Earl and integrating elements of Chinese language and culture into her music (she spent some time living in China after college, and in the mid-2000s, The Sparrow Quartet became the first U.S. band to tour Tibet).

In order to blend their very different styles of playing, the couple enlists a near-army of banjos on tour and on record, from a high-tuned ukulele banjo to lower-tuned cello and baritone banjos.

“So basically every song has its own combination of instruments and its whole set of rules of how we’re gonna play,” Fleck said.

This varied mix of sounds and techniques is perhaps most apparent on Washburn’s “Shotgun Blues,” a dirge-y, modern murder ballad anchored by the duo’s percussive playing.

“I’m hitting the tail piece, the head and the strings (of the banjo), banging on it, while Abby’s hitting her big cello banjo, the head,” Fleck said. “And then going back-and-forth between that proves to be actually challenging as well — to go from banging on your instrument to coming right back in strong in solid rhythm and keeping a sort of rocking bluegrass feel going the whole time while Abby’s singing. It’s pretty challenging but it works, and once we figured out how to do it, it’s been a crowd favorite and one of our favorites, too.”

The couple worked on the album in their home studio, which offered up a different set of challenges than they were used to in past recording projects — namely, having a baby around that needed to be taken care of.

“(We recorded) when Juno was still just a wee infant and I was still nursing full-time, so it was a real challenge for us to push this forward and get it done when we did,” Washburn said. “Béla was really great about creating a space and the time in the basement where I could come and go fairly easily to nap and to feed Juno, which felt like a 24-hour-a-day job in those first six months.”

The two plan to do some more recording in between tours — Fleck has stints with Corea, the original lineup of The Flecktones and mandolinist Chris Thile coming up later in the year.

“If you look at it as a pie chart, I’m trying to have Abby and I be 70 percent of (my time), the bulk of it,” Fleck said.

And don’t be surprised to see Juno onstage soon. The ukulele banjo heard on the record is technically his.

“He’s been playing it a lot more lately,” Fleck said. “He’s got this whole Dylan thing he does with ‘Jingle Bells’ —”

“He doesn’t know it’s Dylan,” Washburn interjected.

“He walks around singing and strumming, like a troubadour,” Fleck said. “But he also is really into golf. So he sings, ‘Jingle bells, golf, golf, golf.’ And that’s a very strange turn of events, the golf thing.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7814, bmcelhiney@bendbulletin.com