Miles Davis was a heroin addict. Jim Morrison was a raging alcoholic. Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia and Kurt Cobain? All at the top of their games but the bottom of their lives. Talent, it seems, does not come without a price. There is, however, another breed of genius-Stanley Clarke, Frank Zappa, John McGlaughlin, Billy Cobham-that, whether from the spotlight’s lack of interest or their own knack for willful invisibility, manage to avoid the public eye but still allow their own brilliance to shine through the veil they put up between themselves and fame.
Widely touted as the best bassist currently walking this earth, Victor Wooten falls into the latter category. Possessing the flexibility and eccentricities of a chameleon and the precision and force of a laser-guided bomb, Wooten consistently amazes audiences with his virtuosity and vision. Like the greats in whose tracks he follows, Wooten lets his music do the talking.
He has worked hard for everything, including his talent, but to hear him talk about his musical development, one would think it has been a breeze. An ordinary man with extraordinary abilities, Wooten couldn’t be happier about the way things have turned out. This giant among men is so content, in fact, that some might even consider him a little boring. Though his star is one of the brightest, however, Victor Wooten is not a rock star. He is a gentle human being with a strong sense of where he stands in the grand scheme of things-and a strong idea of where the rest of us fall as well.
While he appreciates the praise heaped upon him, Wooten doesn’t define himself by it. Music is his bread and butter, but at heart, the greatest bass player on earth is a family man. Speaking from the comfort of his home in Nashville, Wooten picked up the phone for a few words on where he is, how he got there, who helped along the way, where he’s going, and how he gets away from it all.
You were just out on the road for a few shows. What are you guys listening to on the bus?
Well, let’s see…what were we listening to on the bus? Usually everybody’s got something. But most of the time, instead of listening to music, we’re watching movies.
What are you watching?
We were just watching Matrix Reloaded, I think it was. It was the second one we were watching. This was a short trip. We had the movie What the Bleep? We had that on. Um…I can’t even think of what else. But everybody’s got iPods, everybody’s got there own music that they’re listening to. I probably listen to music the least.
Do you have a summer album that you have to break out every summer?
No. [Laughs] No, I don’t. But there are some albums every once in a while that I have to listen to again, like Jaco Pastorius’ first CD, or some early, early Stanley Clarke, or Larry Graham. Every once in a while, I just want to hear that stuff again. One of my favorite records is a record that Bobby McFerrin did with the Yellow Jackets. It’s called Bang Zoom, and that’s one of my favorite all-time records, so I get that out every now and then.
Summer always means festival season. How do you feel about festivals? Is it something you look forward to?
Yeah, it definitely is. Everybody-especially when the weather’s nice-everyone’s having a great time. Everybody’s already feeling good. But I think my favorite part about playing festivals is getting to hear other people. A lot of friends that I have, I never get to see until we’re out at festivals.
Is there anything that you don’t like about festivals? Anything that you prefer a smaller club? Obviously, there’s the intimacy thing, but anything else?
I’m just happy that I get a chance to do the festivals and I get a chance to do the intimate clubs. And then, we get to do the openings for Dave Matthews Band-arenas and things like that. So they all kind of fit together to make the whole picture, and I’m just glad I get to do all of them.
You’ve always had a somewhat rotating cast, but how did you develop this latest incarnation?
Well, two of the members are my brothers. My brother Reggie on guitar and my brother Joseph on keyboards. And there’s the drummer that I met in Michigan. His name is Derico Watson. My bass tech, Anthony Wellington is a longtime friend of mine, and MC Divinity-I met her at the end of the year 2000 at my first Bass Nature camp as a student and she just blew me away. So I called her up and she’s been touring with us ever since.
And of course, Sandra Williams is a new edition. I met her not long ago in New York City and had her sing on one track on my album and it sounded so great, I had her sing on a bunch of stuff. I had to go back and add vocals on all kinds of music, and now she’s all over the record, so there’s no way to tour without her.
She sings on other stuff that’s not on the record?
Well, most of it is on the record. She sang “On and On” where she sings the lead vocal. We have another version of that song that’s only going to be on a Japan release right now. Speech of Arrested Development is doing lead vocals on it and Sandra’s singing the choruses and the background. But she also sings on the song “Stay” that’s on the record. She’s also singing on “Higher Law” and “Prayer” and an Earth, Wind and Fire song. So she’s on quite a few songs on the album.
Obviously every time you make a record, and you get a different group of people together, you take a different approach. How did you take a different approach with this specific group of people and this specific group of songs?
This record, I didn’t have a certain time where I it was like, “Now I’m recording and I’m going to finish his record.” It wasn’t like I had a month to do it. This was taking place over a few years, actually. And for a lot of it, I was utilizing whoever was in town. A couple years in a row, I was in town for the Nashville Summer NAMM show, and lots of musicians are there, so that’s when I got a lot of the bass players to come and sing on the “Bass Tribute.” You know, they just happened to be in town. At the same time, I happened to be recording a lot of instrumental music also-more jazzier stuff. So I have some other stuff where I have a lot of these bass players playing with me, I just haven’t put it out yet.
Listening to the album, it sounds more like a funk or soul or R&B; record than it does a jazz record. Does it frustrate you at all that people stick it in the jazz bin in the record store?
Well, no, because I know that it has to go somewhere, and I do know that if someone has to go looking for Victor Wooten, that’s where they’re going to go look. So, that doesn’t bother me so much, but I do want to reach an audience outside of that. I want to reach more than just the jazz listeners. So, you know, if that doesn’t happen then I might get frustrated. Or, for example, what gets frustrating is that we’ll only get radio play on some smooth jazz station, and I’m like “This is not a smooth jazz record.” If mainstream R&B; radio would play it, people would love it, but because some people might think it’s a jazz record, they won’t even… So that can be frustrating.
There are several songs on the new album that seem to express some kind of frustration with the state of our world or with the state of our relationship to each other. “India,” “Native,” “Higher Law.” The more humorous one is “Cell Phone.” Was there a specific instance that inspired that song or any of those others?
As far as the “Cell Phone” song, that’s just an idea I’ve had for probably a few years. Since cell phones have gotten so popular, I’ve always wanted to…and the cell phone rings have gotten better and better, funkier and funkier. The original version of the song had a Nokia ring in it, that’s really popular, and I approached Nokia with it and they asked me not to use it.
Really?!
Yeah, I couldn’t believe it. They said the song was too risqué. And then I watch movies like Man on Fire and all these violent movies that have their rings in them, and I can’t believe it. And I think the song was actually better with their ring, because it really made you understand it, because it was so familiar. But, no, they said no, so I said OK. But that was just an idea I had of taking a bunch of rings and putting them into a song. Just to make a fun song, based on these different rings, then I had Divinity come and help me with some lyrics and we just kind of came up with some fun stuff.
The other songs-I don’t really look at it as frustration or protest or anything like that. I would look at them more as “wake up” songs, just to point out a few things. Like in “Higher Law”: “There’s a higher law / we need to turn to it / There’s no more time to wait.” Even with “Natives,” it’s just, you know, “Let’s wake up and pay attention to what’s really going on.” Because a lot of times I believe we live our lives blindly. We just coast on autopilot, and I’m not frustrated with that, but I do think we should wake up and really open our eyes. Because I do believe that if we don’t change how we live our lives, life is going to change drastically. And I don’t think we have a whole lot of time left before it does, before things drastically change. Things are going to change, in my opinion, unless we make a change. We’re just coasting, and the only way you can coast is downhill, if you’re going to keep coasting.
When you write songs like that, do you ever feel like you’re just shouting in the dark?
No. I don’t believe that’s possible. There’s always someone that’s listening. Even if no one physically hears that vibration that you started, it’s still out there. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this thing, I think it was called the 100 Monkey Experience, where they had all these monkeys on different coasts, different continents, oceans apart, and they taught a certain amount of monkeys how to wash their fruit before they ate it. When enough of them started doing it, the monkeys across the ocean started doing it, too. It just took a certain amount of the original monkeys to start before it-the other monkeys started doing it. And I believe that, because vibration is a real thing. It’s the only way that we hear or see or anything, and vibrations can be felt, and I believe that once you create the vibrations, it may cause other people to create it also. So I don’t think I’m doing anything blindly. I don’t think that’s possible.
Speaking of vibrations, have you considered releasing an abstract record?
Yes I have. My brothers and I-well, two of my brothers, Reggie and Joseph-and the drummer Derico…when I first met Derico, the four of us got together and just recorded a record. We haven’t put it out yet. We’re looking for the right company that says “Yeah, I’ll put this out.” But there’s about a fifteen minute jam that ends the record, and it’s totally abstract, and I think it’s one of the greatest things I think we’ve ever done. [It’s bass, drums,] keyboards, guitar. It’s called W3W-the band and the record-because there are three Wootens and one Watson.
Back to the new album-the second track is titled “Tribute,” and then you reprise it again at the end. Did you intend for the whole record to be a tribute?
No, mainly just that song. I wanted it to be a tribute to bass players, because the bass is such a young instrument-the electric bass, rather, is such a young instrument-which means that a lot of people who made it what it is are still alive. They’re living legends. And most people don’t get a tribute until they’re dead, and I didn’t want to wait that long. I did that song, and when I had all these bass players singing, and when I had them in the studio, I asked them to just name five to ten of their favorite bass heroes. And then at the end of the song, I stuck them all at the end of the song. But over like a year or so of listening to it, I kind of got tired of hearing all those names all the time. So what I did was I cut the ending, and I just put all those names at the very end of the record, so you can skip it if you want. So that’s how that came about.
Aside from all those bass players that you name on the record, are there any other musicians that aren’t bass players that you would have give a shout out to if that song had not been specifically about bass?
Oh, there’s tons of ’em. You can pick the obvious guys like Miles Davis. You can pick the obvious John Coltranes, Charlie Parkers, Chick Coreas, people like that. But then there’s some more obscure people who are just amazing. People like Bobbie McFerrin, who is such an amazing musician. And people probably don’t even think of him as a musician, maybe just a vocalist. But he is just so musical. He’s just amazing. And then there’s the different members of a band like The Yellow Jackets. Russell Feronte, the keyboard player, who’s just amazing, and the drummer that used to be with The Yellow Jackets, Will Kennedy-amazing guy. Dennis Chambers. Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, Billy Cobb. You know, there’s a big list of people. And then the guy who used to work with the Flecktones, Howard Levy – he’s the best producer I know. There’s a lot of ’em.
Aside from musicians, are there any other non-musical teachers that have influenced not just your life, but even your music as well?
Well, my parents for one. They taught me how to be me. But then, I think it was in 1991, I went and took some nature classes from a man named Tom Brown, Jr., and it changed my life. I have had quite a few nature teachers that have really shown me a lot. A guy named Charles Wershim, who I learned a lot about tracking from. But whenever I go take classes from him…a whole lot more than just tracking. John Young’s another guy. Richard Cleveland. These are all nature teachers. But then there’s people like Bruce Lee, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan. People that just excel at what they do. When they excel, it causes the rest of us to get better. I like people who take their life to such a high level, and they don’t do it by themselves. They bring the rest of us with them. You know, people like Martin Luther King. I mean, everybody plays basketball better now because of Michael Jordan. He just set the standard. So that’s very, very inspiring.
I wanted to ask you about your childhood growing up in Newport News. I wanted to see how those years had an effect on you and if there was anyone in the area whom you really feel like you’ve taken them with you the rest of your life.
Sure, well, I really got it together musically in Virginia. I was already playing before we moved to Virginia at the end of 1972. Living in Newport News, VA, all my brothers and I went to Denbigh High School, and this was the time where my brothers and I had a house with my parents and the garage was ours, where we set up our music. We used to jam there, and during the summer time we used to jam there all day, every day. It was amazing and some of the best musicians in the world would come by. That’s how I met Carter Beauford and some of the guys from Dave Matthews Band, and some other amazing musicians that are playing out there right now. Some of them you may know of, some of them you may not. But it was from those all day jams and me being a little kid, a third-grader, getting to jam with them. I mean, it quickly got me to a really high level musically. And if you think about it, that’s how you learn to talk. Everybody you talk to as a kid is like a professional. They don’t stick you in a classroom with other two year-olds and let you talk to them until you’re good at it. You know, that’s what we do with our music beginners, but I was in there with professionals, high level musicians, jamming all day. So that’s how I got really good really quickly and had my own style.
Were there ever any specific milestones in your career that you can look back on and see those as reference points throughout your career?
Yeah, but the ones that come to mind are probably not what you’re talking about. There were a lot of instances where my brothers and I could have gotten musically beat up just because of a lot of situations we were involved in that didn’t turn out the way they should have. But I look back at it now and I realize that we were being prepared. A lot of young people that are good, especially nowadays, they may get the fame and stuff before they’re ready. And if you’re not ready, you’re just a flash in the pan, because there’s no substance. And then you wind up having some kind of breakdown or whatever. Well, with my brothers and my parents all sticking together, we went through a lot of pretty bad musical situations that could have been that way, but we had each other to support each other, so I can see how we were learning and being prepared for later times with these situations. So those are the things that really stand out in my mind. But I’d also say that meeting Stanley Clarke when I was about ten years old was a huge thing. And also getting to see James Brown in the early seventies. I learned a whole lot about performance and about just being able to make your energy reach every person out there so that they get excited.
At what point did you realize you were good? At what point did you get that confidence?
Well, I had confidence, but it’s the type of thing where you’re not thinking about it. Like if I were to ask you about the English language, at what age did you realize you were really good at it? You don’t know. You don’t think of it that way. English is too close to you. It’s too natural. It’s so natural that you don’t even have to think about it. Music is kind of that way for me. I never really think about it. I was much older before I ever looked at it and said, “Wow! I don’t ever have to do anything else if I just play music. I could just do this and make money. It’s just like if someone told you, “All you’ve got to do is speak English. And I’ll pay you. And you’ll never have to work.” You’d be like “What?!” Music has always been that way to me. It’s just something that I always did. It’s who I was. It’s who I am.
The reputation that you have, as the best bass player around…how do you feel about that?
I mean, it makes me happy that people enjoy what I do. But I also know that it’s not true. Or maybe it is true. But if people called me the worst bass player in the world, I’d put them all in the same category. It’s just opinions. It’s not who I really am. Only I can tell who that person really is. But once I do something, I have to allow others to think about it however they choose. I have no control over it. So if they say I’m the best, that’s cool. If they say I’m the worst, that’s cool, too. I’m just being me. However you feel about it, that’s up to you.
Obviously, you’re a family guy. What kind of role does your family play outside the family? You play with your brother in the Flecktones. A couple of your brothers are on this record, but do they have any direct influence? Do you sit down and go over ideas?
Not officially, but yes. My brothers are always giving me advice or criticism on different things that I’m doing. “Oh, I like that tune” or “You need to play this bass more, because it gives you a different sound.” I have this acoustic bass that I use on “Prayer,” and my brother, Roy, said, “Man, you gotta do a whole record of just that bass.” So different things like that-sometimes you can be so close to it that you need that outside opinion.
You’ve incorporated the Yin-Yang idea a lot. What do that symbol and that idea mean to you personally and as a musician?
A lot. But I think the simple answer is that you can easily see that it takes both sides of the Yin-Yang to make the whole, where you have two exact opposites. But at the same time, you can see how similar they are and that they actually contain a bit of each other. But if you only had one of the sides, one of the symbols, then you wouldn’t have the whole symbol. So to me, the Yin-Yang symbol is a great representation of life, that it’s through differences that you get the whole and without the differences, you don’t have the whole.
Can you pinpoint your own Yin-Yang? Are there two sides to you?
Oh well no, more than two. Definitely more than two-to everyone. But for my own self, I try to see the different sides of myself so that I know myself a little bit better. That’s a good think to know how to do.
Do you ever find it necessary to separate your personal self from your musical self?
Not really. I don’t think I really ever find any situations where I need to do that. Except a lot of times when I’m spending time with my kids, and especially when I haven’t seen them in a while…Like for example, earlier this year for my son’s fourth birthday, we took him to Disney World. So I’m with my wife, and we have four kids at Disney World. Well, for me, this is their time. Totally their time. And so, for me, that’s not the time when I want to be recognized, when I want to sign a lot of autographs. I’m here as Dad. I make sure that my kids have a great time. I don’t want the attention to be on me at all.
How do you react when you get that attention?
It depends on what I’m doing. If I’m taking a picture of my son who’s standing next to Mr. Incredible, then whoever wants the autograph is just going to have to wait.
But they’re still going to get it.
Oh, more than likely. Unless it’s just too much, and then I’ll politely explain the situation, you know: “I’m sorry. I’ve got to do this with my son.” And they usually understand.
Do you take a bass with you on vacation?
Oh, no. I play too much to have to play when I’m off.
So you do need time off…
Oh yeah, because music is just a part of my life. You know, I have to live my life first, and music is just a part of it. My whole life is not about music. So I have to be able to get away from it just so I can be me.
