Audio By Carbonatix
Since the early 1980s, Victor Wooten has been a sonic force, nurtured and tempered by his musical family — four older brothers and parents, all supportive and all innovative musicians themselves. Better known for the rhythm section he shares with his brother Roy “Future Man” Wooten in the long-running progressive jazz fusion outfit Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Victor’s been a solo recording artist for many years. This year, though, he embarked on his first tour in support of a pair of recently released albums.
See also:
– Béla Fleck’s Bassist Victor Wooten and His Grammy-Winning New Grass Revival band the Flecktones
Named Bass Player magazine’s “Bass Player of the Year” three years in a row, Wooten has also been involved with the Chick Corea Elektric Band and SMV (with Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller), as well as lending session work with numerous artists.
Surrounded by a who’s-who of the modern jazz scene; Krystal Peterson, JD Blair, Steve Bailey, Anthony Wellington, Dave Welsch, and Derico Watson, Wooten’s tour is garnering accolades from the jazz world and from the fans who appreciate his innovative, honest and unrestrained approach to the instrument. Ever the true musician, Wooten will be holding a clinic at the Miami Lakes Sam Ash from 1 to 3 p.m. before melting some brains at the Culture Room this Friday.
New Times: I’ve often heard you, or rather read, that you had musical parents who weren’t musicians.
Victor Wooten: Correct.
And what did you mean by that, supportive, really good record collections…
Well, yeah, it just really means that they understood music very well, a lot of times I’ll say that they understood music better than musicians, in other words if a song comes on, most people who don’t know anything about music don’t have to ask questions before they dance or sing or before they enjoy, when a lot of the times, people who claim they know music if a song comes on questions arise, what’s the key? What’s the time signature, you know? We don’t even know how to just play without asking questions the way a child who knows nothing can play air guitar does.
So my parents knew what good music was, they knew what we needed to listen to, they would take us to concerts, they knew sections of the music, what they were about, my mom’s sister turned us on to music when we were kids that kinda got us in the right direction, or rather in the direction that we are in now playing music. So they knew a lot about music but not the theory behind or the names that we’ve given it but they understood it totally the same way a person a person who’s grown up farming, though they might not know the PH level of the soil or all that stuff, but they know what the soil will do from day to day and from year to year. So my parents were that way about music and a lot of things even though they didn’t play any instruments.
And all of you turned out musicians is that correct?
Absolutely, all five of us.
So they were fairly intuitive and got you guys in the right direction. Now let me ask you a question, given that all you guys are musicians I know that on the new album you just put out, you’ve got a lot of family members involved in that, which we’ll get to in a second, first I would like to know how does it feel to you now with the Flecktones, not only to be part of that band, but to be a part of it with your brother, because you are going on what, your fourth decade that you’re playing together?
Oh yeah! I mean, right now I’m on tour for the first time with my own band and it is the first time that I do not have one of my brothers with me.
Right.
You know, having a brother, at least one, is like having a piece of home with me when I’m out on the road. And now remember, I am the youngest of the five brothers so I’ve always grown up with their guidance, their tutelage and all of that, so when I have them on the road with me, there’s a comfort level and a relaxation that I have because of them and I know that they have it under control even when I don’t.
And so, this time, not having my brothers in a sense is like I’m having to be a grownup all of a sudden, and still I have other brothers, my longtime friends and band mates on tour with, JD Blair who I’ve toured with. It’s similar, but not really since every time I’ve been on the road, I’ve had at least one of them with me including Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.
So now you have the two new albums, Sword & Stone and Words & Tone, let’s talk first about Sword, that’s the one that is completely instrumental, correct?
Sword & Stone is instrumental, yes.
I would imagine that’s the one that you worked on first and then afterwards, since I know the second album does not share all of the songs but the majority of them and they are set to vocals?
Yeah, there are fourteen tracks on each record and eleven of the tracks can be found on both records and I started recording with the intention of only doing a vocal CD but as I was recording these records, I would place a melody on in place of the vocals with another instrument, usually bass because that is what I play comfortably.
I would put the melody on because I always have the intention, or I usually have the intention I should say, to allow the vocalist to write some of the lyrics. That way, because a lot of the times, the vocalists are friends of mine, some of the times they have never been on a major record, this way they get songwriting credit and also singing lyrics that they wrote so they are singing a part of themselves.
I put the melody on so that I can sing it to them, so they can get ideas for the lyrics. But as I was putting melodies on these songs, I liked it that way. Man, I liked them as instrumentals, it really works! So that’s when I got the idea to do both. And this is an idea I wanted to do many many years ago, you know, when I was on other record labels, I wanted to put out two separate records on two separate record labels on the same day, but in most cases business don’t like to work together if they are in the same field. Record labels don’t like to work together on things like that. So now that I am the record label, I felt that I could do it.
But the idea at first was to do a vocal record then I loved the instrumentals of it so I made different versions and the instrumental version has different arrangements, different musicians in cases and you get a different experience of the same song.
Usually, a vocalist, like a pop vocalist wants to put out a record but then a jazz musician comes around, you know, a few years later and does and instrumental version of it so it happens all the time, I just did it myself this time.
I guess the vocalists that you’ve employed on the album, you had thought about for particular songs, how did that come about because I know you also involved a lot of family members in it and I also read somewhere about a cousin of yours that can’t sing at all that’s involved in it?
[Laughs] Yeah! On one song, I needed a chorus, a choir of people singing this song that is all about our relatives who have passed on and that’s what the song is about, so my brother Joseph just happened to be having a 50th birthday bash where he threw a big concert, big special thing and a lot of my relatives came in for it. And so I took advantage of that and I grabbed them all and brought them back to the studio and asked them to sing in this choir.
I have this cousin named Tony who’s been always known to not be able to sing. But that’s not a problem because neither can Bob Dylan and it’s never stopped him you know and some of us who pay attention realize that it’s not always how good your voice is that makes you a good or bad singer, it’s what you have to say, it’s your emotions, your convictions and Bob Dylan has all of that! His songwriting, his lyrics; so Tony, he’s always been a good speaker, in our family reunions growing up, he’s always been one of the leaders and to have him on the CD makes sense to me because if the pitch is not totally there, we’ll surround him with people who can sing the pitch but we needed his emotion, we needed his conviction, his energy.
We needed that, I wanted that on the CD anyway, so just because you can’t hold the right pitch, in my opinion that doesn’t make you a bad singer and so we put Tony on anyways and to me, I love hearing him in the middle of that choir because he’s giving it an energy that the song deserves.
That comes from your compositional background so that’s why you’d do something like that…
You know most people with no pitch would be laughed out of the room and then their confidence is shot and they don’t and they don’t pursue anything, but we have to be smarter than that. Same way that one of the smartest men on the planet, Stephen Hawking talks through a little machine and just because he doesn’t have a great voice, it doesn’t diminish anything that he’s saying, and he is still smart and we put him on TV and buy his books. The quality of his voice does not diminish who he can be, we as people need to be smarter than that and be more open and look past it. I did that with my cousin Tony.
And now he can claim that he’s on a record!
Oh man definitely, he’s letting everybody know that. He’s all like “I’m on it, you might not hear it on the final record, but I’m on it.” I told him not worry that he’d be on it.
That sounds very positive and pleasant not only in that you’re creating your own music and putting an album out but also the time you get to share with your family and all that, which I think overall you’ve always had that sense of family and that spiritual connection.
Yeah definitely, there’s nothing that can take the place of family, you can try, you can act like it, but there’s nothing like family…
And you also got your kids involved which I think is pretty cool.
Absolutely! My kids have been on my records ever since the first one had a heartbeat, my first child Kayla, even before she was out of the tummy, I used her heartbeat on my record What Did He Say? and my kids have been on every record since then. That probably won’t change, you know, there’s nothing more special than that, you get married, that’s cool, but when you have a child, man, you see that part of you and you start to recognize how, not to be religious, but in the Bible it says that we are made in the image of God and I don’t know of anything that could show you that more than having a child.
All of a sudden you and your wife come together and produce a living life form that has the qualities of both of you plus their own qualities. I’m amazed by that all the time and to have them on my records is just great.
And they are also readily available and free musicians.
Well yeah! They’re always around when I’m recording. A lot of times they fall asleep right in the studio with me when I’m up real late and the cool thing is that now, they are all old enough to do it really, really well. I can call Kayla, really, any of my kids and say can you sing this idea for me? I need to hear it and Kayla’s fourteen now and she can sing whatever I ask her to, even if I’m asking her to create her own part, she can do it.
On one of the songs on Words & Tone, my daughter Ariana’s singing harmony and she’s only six-years-old and I don’t have to tell her what harmonies to sing. My eleven-year-old son is playing drums on “It’s Alright” and he plays in an adult band and he does the club circuit around Nashville, they’re out there really doing it. So now I’ve got real musicians and vocalists and songwriters that I can bring in that I live with and that’s not even mentioning my wife who grew up singing. They’re real quality musicians and people so I enjoy having my family around. Including my brothers, we live close to each other and I have access to them also.
You just had little summer tour, how did that go with this new band that you’re with? I guess now before you go on the road in the fall alongside Jimmy Herring.
Right, we’re out on the road right now in Little Rock, Arkansas, today. And it’s an interesting band, it’s amazing, I think it’s something that people haven’t seen before were all of us on stage will be switching instruments throughout the show. We all decided and go back and find all the instruments we used to play and dabble in as kids so four of us, there’s seven in the band, but four of us our primary instrument is bass guitar but it’s rare that the four of us will be playing bass guitar at the same time; one will be playing trombone, one will be playing trumpet, another one’s on keyboards or guitar. I might be on cello, or upright bass or guitar.
We’re all switching around to the point where even our female vocalist Krystal Peterson will hop on the drums or the keyboards during the night. So it’s a lot of fun just to watch the show. Of course, the music is good but you’re watching the show and all of a sudden you realize that Krystal’s behind the drum set and JD is off and has already picked up a bass, it’s really, really neat to see it all happening with everybody vocalizing and so it’s musicianship, in my opinion, musicianship at its best because to be a well-rounded musician you need to understand music in a well-rounded way. And this band certainly personifies that.
It also sounds like you’re having a lot of fun on stage too.
Ab-so-lutely! When you play with instruments that are not your instrument, that’s when you see the smiles come on the musicians. It’s amazing and really a lot of fun and we’re having a really good time doing it. By the audience I can tell.
Sounds fantastic, now, just in closing, the two albums just came out, you’re on tour, outside of that, what are some future plans for you, artistically? Personally? Anything that you want in the foreseeable future that you are actively pursuing.
Absolutely, now that I have my own record label and putting out my own records, with the record label I don’t have to meet anyone else’s time schedule except mine…
And that’s Vix Records, right?
Yes, Vix Records. I also don’t have to meet anyone else’s musical criteria except my own. So I plan on putting out lots of different records. Children’s records all sorts of things. Also writing a second book, a sequel to my book, The Music Lesson that’s been doing very well. My plan is also to start running more camps because in the next two years, when I turn fifty myself, I’m planning on taking a couple of years off from touring just so I can give my kids the time at home that they deserve because I’ve been touring their whole lives.
So I plan on a two year hiatus from the road and run more camps, you know, have camps running every day during the summer and all sorts of things like that and I’m really looking forward to that time when I can just be home and be a dad without my kids wondering how many days left before I leave.
Victor Wooten, October 5 at the Culture Room, 3045 N. Federal Hwy, Ft. Lauderdale; 954-564-1074; cultureroom.net. Tickets cost $25 plus fees via ticketmaster.com. For more on the artist, visit victorwooten.com.
