Victor Wooten

0:00Sitting here in Los Angeles, California with a no you probably not gonna like here in this best place base player in the world Sure you hear that quite a bit. I've heard it a few times Yeah, Victor Wooten of the Bella flag in the flag down go serve your own solo career. Mm-hmm download a couple songs the other day I Don't know if that's a touchy subject for you How do you feel about the whole downloading of music like the other stuff like lime wire and that kind of stuff? I don't mind it at all as long as the music is available. You know, I know that's been very very popular in in over the past few years with artists speaking out against it or for it or whatever, but to me that's not even the issue we need to be addressing yet. The main issue to me is that record labels don't allow the artists to make most of the money

0:45generated from their sales. That's the first issue. Do you think it's changing with the whole mind space thing and all that? Well, it's definitely changing because the major record labels can't exist anymore. They're crumbling. Yeah, and I'm not speaking for or against any of it. I'm just stating what's happening. Definitely. But when I go in a record store and I see my CD selling for $15 and I try to calculate how much of that $15 I'm getting, you know, it's pretty scary, if any. Yeah, it's very, very scary. And I don't know many other, many other, what's the word, like careers or many other, you know, jobs, pretty much. Jobs, you know, where that happens, you know. There wouldn't be jobs.

1:31You create something like that and you know, and don't get the bulk of it. A lot of times you don't even own that creation anymore. So, you know. Do you own your stuff? Some of it. Yeah. The solo stuff or the flex tone stuff? How does it work? No, what a flex tone stuff, you know, we own our, definitely own our publishing and things like that. But a lot of the times, because the flex tones are on major labels, a lot of times those labels are owning the actual masters and things like that. You know. It's too bad. It is. It really is. But again, it's changing. Yeah. You know, artists are getting smarter and the big labels, they can't control the artists that way anymore. You know, normally it's like group of numbers where it's like strength of numbers where that's just how it's always been done. So that's what we do. That's what the record labels say.

2:18But artists are waking up and changing things. I believe for the better. And for the consumer getting back to your question, the consumer just wants to hear the music. And they're going to get it, however they get it. You know, whether they download it. But I think because downloads makes it so easy, easy accessible for the consumer, he doesn't have to get out of his pajamas or whatever. Exactly. He wants to tune boom, there it is. That's what's real cool. And the proof in the pudding is cell phone rings. Yeah. Pay more for a 10 second cell phone ring than they will for a whole tune because it's right there, it's easy. They get what they want right then. So, you know, for the most part, I'm all for the whole download thing. I think it's cool.

3:03Everything comes with its problems. Definitely. And I'm sure it brings more people up to the shows. Well, yeah. When you have people that can access your music right away. Yeah. People want to come and hear it. Definitely. Well, the reason I mentioned downloading is because I downloaded a track called Overjoyed. Really cool tune. Sounds like kind of an acoustic guitar type thing. Is it all acoustic bass? Is that how you record it? It was all electric bass. Sounds good. Sounds good. I'll have to get that sound. It's just the particular bass I played it on. I got to think way back to when I recorded that tune. That was on my record called A Show of Hands, which was just strictly solo bass record. And I might have used the bass that has special pickups in it called Piazzles pickups that are way back in the bridge and they give the bass a certain type of sound, a real acoustic sound.

3:50But it was just solo bass. It's me on the bass. Sounds good. Well, that's why I signed right now. That'll work.

6:42Should Victor Wooten Overjoyed? Started playing bass the age of three I read. Now something like that. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's the bio says. It makes me think of the whole nature versus nurture thing. How much of is it talent? And how much of is it just practice, practice, practice? Well, it's a little bit of both. But if anybody played the bass as long as I played it, you'd be probably better than me. Because you'd probably practice. You know? Oh. I think it's a little bit of both. I think it's a little bit of nature and nurture. But I know that if anyone played the bass as long as I played it, especially starting young like I did, they'd be as good as I am or better. No one would say that. Because most people probably wouldn't even practice more. You didn't practice much. No, not really. I mean, because I did have and I do have a natural ability. I have a very, very natural ability. But I think I have a natural ability

7:29because I have a natural approach. Or maybe I have a natural approach because I have a natural ability. I don't know which one it is. But like you're an expert at talking in English. OK. You know? Well, not really. You wouldn't call it yourself an expert because everybody else is just as good as you. Yeah. But you can improvise. If you were as good at music as you are at English, you'd be called a pro. You'd be called an expert. I'm not sure enough. OK. You can improvise. Everything you say you're making up right now. That's true. Right? You've got notes written down, but you improvise. OK. If I say something, doesn't matter what it is, you can repeat it right back. You don't have to practice. I do that in music. People are talking about how great I am. Yeah. So if you were as good at music as you are at English, you'd be called a master. Right. So you are a master at English. It's just that everybody else is too.

8:15So we don't recognize ourselves as that. So you started English very, very young. How much did you practice? Well, all the time. Did you? Or did you do it all the time? Oh, you just talked. Right. OK. It's the difference. Right. There's a difference between practicing it and just doing it. Yeah. Right. And with English, you got good quickly, because you were put in a situation that allowed you to do it all the time. No one sat you in a room or the woodshed, like we say, in music. And say, practice these rudiments or these alphabets or these words all the time. So we learn English through a natural approach. You know what I mean? If I give you a word and I say, here's a new word, right? You don't sit there and say that word over and over. You immediately start using that word.

9:01Right. In other words, you're using these things all the time, wearing music we practice. Well, I was fortunate enough to be in a situation where I could play all the time. And the people I was playing with were always better than me. As my brothers. They're brothers, yeah. And so I say I started to base at three, just because that kind of doesn't, I don't have to defend that. But it was really a lot before that. Like if I ask you when you start speaking English, you don't have an idea. You don't have an idea, because it was the day you were born. Or before. Or before. As soon as you start using your, you may not have said your first real word. Until you were, you know, two, one and a half, two, three. But you were speaking way before that. You were working it out. But by the time I was born and real young,

9:46these guys put an instrument in my hands and allowed me to play along with them. I wasn't that I was making the same music they were, but I was playing. And when I was about two or three, they actually started teaching me real notes and I started actually producing the sound. So I say three, but it really started way before that. Cool. No, I wondered if you ever picked up a guitar and tried that as well. Or any other instruments? Do you play any other instruments? I do play any, I do play other instruments. And I think a real musician can play any instrument, because the music's not any instrument. The music's in the musician. And so it may take you a minute to figure out how that instrument works. And I don't have the technique to be fluent on the piano, but I know where the notes are,

10:32and I can figure out any song. Because the piano's not musical. I am. You know what I mean? I look at it as like you go up to a mechanic and say, can you use a flat head to the driver? Can you use a crescent wrench? You don't ask a guy that. You ask him, can you fix my car? And whatever tools he gives out, you realize that his skill's not in his tools. But for whatever reason, we don't do that much with music. You know, we think that the skill's in the instrument. Wow, he can play two instruments too? That to me is not so impressive. Fair enough. You know, it's a person musical. You know, that's the way I would. Now you mentioned your brother's earlier, Roy Future Man from the Flak Tones. He plays the drums rather, on like a standup keyboard. I think I wonder, did he have a kid as a kid?

11:18Is that how he learned on a drum kit? Yeah. And then moved it on to that? Absolutely. He still plays kit. Oh really? And you can hear it. Because you know, he's playing drums. Does he ever tour with you and your solo shows? He has before. Yeah. But I keep my solo shows as different from the Flak Tones as possible. How about the, well, if I had him on the other hand, I'd be half the band. Yeah. So I do it differently. But in the last year, the five of us brothers did a tour together. Oh really? Which was the first time we'd done it in 20 years. See, I also, I always used Reggie and Joseph. If I brought Roy out here on drums, that'd be four out of five of us. That wouldn't really mean I would need to bring Rudy too. Yeah. Saks play. You know, so I just keep it different, you know? So that when the five of us brothers do our thing,

12:05it's not going to be a Victor Wooten show. It's going to be totally different than anything you've ever seen. Yeah. You know, rather than saying, oh, I already seen four of them with the Victor Wooten, you know. So I keep my show as different as I can. What entrance do you have in the live show tonight? Guitar, Reggie on Guitar as my brother, my brother Joseph on keyboards. I got a great drummer named Dorico Watson. And then my bass tech, Anthony Wellington, plays most of the show on bass. And there's a girl named MC Divinity, who's a rapper and a bass player. So she plays bass during the show. Cool. And you go back and forth soloing stuff? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's spread out. And then Sandra Williams is vocalist. Very nice. So a full show, funk music, jazz music, everything. Everything, kind of a little bit. We'll go into some rock stuff. We'll do a little bit of reggae groove.

12:51Very nice. Any covers that you're throwing? I'm trying to think. Yeah, we probably will. You know, see what we're going to do. I don't know yet. Yeah. But we've been doing a very cool reggae type version of the song Summertime that Sandra's been singing. But the Will Smith song Summertime? No, Will Smith. No, no, no. It's maybe a little before your time. Well, I don't know. But it's kind of a jazz standard type of thing, you know. And Sandra puts her own twist on it. You know, she gave us the groove she wanted. And it's kind of a reggae type of thing. So it's real cool. Sometimes we do an earth winning fire cover. But probably tonight, most of it will be original. You know, a lot of people from industry and record label and stuff's coming out. So we'll probably do most of this stuff from our record.

13:36Cool. Name and song off the new record that you want to play. Oh, which we spin the audience. Well, let's do the cover too. Let's say you can't hide love, which is an earth winning fire cover. Very nice. I can hear with Victor Wooten.

18:10A lot of the stuff you've been saying, it sounds like it's kind of the speeches you get to the kids at the camps. And I was hoping you could explain to the people what exactly the base of the beach camp is and the base of the camp. Well, sure. Well, for one, it's not just kids. You know, it's the assumption when you mention the word camp, you think kids in the summer. Yeah. But our oldest person has been 74. No way. You know, basically it's ages 15 and up. Oh, OK. And what I say is just, you know, is what I tell everyone. Whenever I start talking about music, this is how I talk about it. And I always tell them I don't claim to be right about it, either. But this is how I think about it, what works for me. But yeah, the camp started doing a couple of camps a year in Nashville, Tennessee, base slash nature camp.

18:56Because what I realized is that, and I didn't realize this until I started studying the outdoors, nature. I started taking classes in Native American philosophies and skills and how to live off the land and stuff like that. And I realized, man, this is the link to everything else. You know, on this planet. It stems from nature to the point that if somebody's really good at something, we call them a natural. You know, and the word natural from the dictionary says to be like nature, having the characteristics of nature. And we're all questioning, we're all trying to become natural at whatever it is we're doing. You know, if you want to interview someone, you want to be natural at it. You know, at the height of our game, we don't have to focus.

19:42You know, in other words, I don't have to concentrate real hard at the height of my playing. Now, when you're talking the best, it's flowing. You're not focusing. It's just happening naturally. That's the way nature is. That tree's going to grow, whether I'm standing here or not. You know, nature's going to do what it does. Whether nobody goes into the woods, it's just going to follow its natural process. And that's how we are trying to be, no matter what we're doing. So I raised the question is, if we're trying to be like nature, why do we lock ourselves as musicians in a room? We call it the woodshed. And you know, we pay high helmets to the woodshed. Oh man, I can tell you've been shedding. You know, I can tell the people who've been shedding. I can hear it. But I can tell the people who've been out playing. That's different. That's why you hear blues musicians. And you know, they're just talking through their history.

20:29They're telling their story. And everybody can feel that. The jazz musician who's been shedding, everybody can't feel that. You know, the jazz musician who's been out playing, people can feel that. You know, now when you can shed and play and put it all together, then you know, you're a master musician, there's a place for both of it. And again, this is just my thoughts. I don't claim to be right about it, you know. But I think there's a place for all of it. You know, when you were learning English, like I was talking earlier, you didn't sit down and shed on it. You didn't lock yourself in the room. And I'm OK today, I'm going to work on A to G. I'm going to work A, B, C, D, E, F, H. Oh man, messed up. Let me go back. You know, you didn't learn to talk as good as you talk like that. You got out there in the field. And as you were a baby, you were allowed to jam

21:16with the English language. You jammed with other masters. You were just a novice. You were just a baby. But the people you spoke to were masters. So you got good quick. And music, we take the beginners and put them with all the beginners. And they stay there a few years until they get a little bit better. And then we let them progress to maybe the intermediate level. You know? And it takes them 20 years. And of course, it's going to take you 20 years to speak English. If we didn't let babies only talk to other babies, you can't talk to me. I'm your dabbies. You can't talk to me until you get a little better. So you know, with musicians, the musicians that grow up in a household of musicians. And so as kids, they get to play with good people by the time they're five, six years old, they're good.

22:02And that's what happened with me. So that's why I say I don't say that I'm so talented. I was just born into a good situation. And maybe because of that, it allowed me to recognize my talent. But I think everybody's talented. Definitely going their own way for sure. Absolutely. Definitely in your own way. You can't be talented in somebody else's way. Yeah. So yeah, you're in your own way. And that's the thing we need to recognize is because when we're speaking English, right, we grow up talking with our own voice. You know, you're not trying to make your voice sound like mine. No. I'm not trying to make mine sound like yours. You know, in music, we're always learning somebody else's method. And so we're trying to sound like somebody else. You know, and so we're trying to do things not in our own way, but in someone else's way. And then when we finally get good,

22:48we have to go back and relearn how to do things our own way. And it's kind of a backwards step. I was just fortunate enough to not have to go through that as a musician. And it's not that it makes me the best musician, but it allows me to be who I am. And I'm original, not that I'm the best. I'm not saying that, but I am original. The same way your voice is original. But you don't think about it. It's not special to you, but it is original. Only voice like that in the world. Oh, hopefully. You know, yeah, I'm guaranteed. You know, guaranteed. You're the only one. And you never thought twice about it. You know, but now I will. You know, my music's the same way. I just played away. I play it. I don't think much about it. I enjoy it. I recognize where it stands in this country, in this world, you know. But it's no more special than anybody else's music.

23:35It's funny you mentioned that because, I mean, one of the first times I heard it, you saw you open with the flag, but I didn't recognize Victor Wooten as a person like, you know what I mean? Like, there he is playing. It just sounds amazing until I saw the Dave Matthews live in Chicago video. How do you get into situation? Like, do you just basically go on stage with them and just jam out and just think of everything on stage to play? Or do you have it kind of you jam it up before? Right. It depends. It depends on who you're playing with, how comfortable you are, how comfortable they are. People like the Dave Matthews band, they just say, hey, come up, play his tune. You know, they may tell you the key. They may not. But they're good musicians and they recognize me as a good musician. In other words, we just sat down and started talking. You didn't brief me on what we were going to talk about.

24:21No, sure. No. Because we're both masters at the English language. So we don't have to. We can improvise. Yeah. Now musicians that know each other that well, you know, I know you're a master musician, I don't have to brief you. You know, I can just start playing and allow you to play along. And that way we're just talking. We're just conversing. You know. And so with the Dave Matthews band like that live CD I was on, it just happened the way it happened. You know, no rehearsal. You know, I just happened to be in Chicago that day. You know. Oh, I just figured the Flecktons were opening for them that day. No. Oh, yeah. I just happened to be there. The Flecktons weren't even there. Or else Baylor would have been up there too. That's true. I just happened to be in town and it came out that way. You know. It's amazing. I didn't even know what's going to come out until, you know, later on they asked me about it.

25:07I didn't know they were recording or anything. And now man, that's how a lot of people found out about me or anything. You know. And so you never know how things are going to happen. You know, Dave Matthews band has been such a great help to my career, you know, and the Flecktons too. And I'm happy that they're so successful because I knew a lot of them before they were even the Dave Matthews band. Because we all lived in Virginia not too far from each other. So we get together in jam and learn together. And so I'm just ecstatic at their success. Definitely. Very happy about that. Cool. Well, let's play at number 41 Live in Chicago. That'd be great. Talking to Victor, you're starting Live in Chicago, Dave Matthews band featuring Victor

35:40with number 41. Yeah. What's next for you? What do you have planned coming up? Well, I'm kind of open. You know, I do have some loose goals. You know, I got to get close to the time where I need to record another record. You're a nice solo record, Flecktons record. Well, no, Flecktons just came out with a new record. Yeah. Valentine's Day. So I'm out on tour supporting that with the Flecktons. But it's time for me to get in and start working on my next record. You know, and I needed to do that before the Flecktons start recording again. So we have to kind of stagger all that stuff. But for the most part, I'm, you know, enjoying time at home. You know, I've got four kids. My oldest is eight. My youngest is one. So they're all young kids, you know, a lovely wife. I love spending time with them.

36:27And that's kind of my main focus right now. Yeah, that's a good day. Yeah. I mean, of course, being able to play music and traveling around allows me to provide for them. But it also keeps me going a lot. You know, so I'm structuring things where I'll be able to stay home a little more. And structuring things where like my good friend Chuck Rainey, a great bass player, he calls it, he calls it mailbox money. You know, when you're just sitting at home and money shows up in the mailbox, you know, getting things set up like that. You know, like owning your music and, you know, other royalty things coming in so that even when I'm going, my kids will still be very nice, you know, set up. That's cool. We just think every week on the show called five questions. Five quick questions, one word answers.

37:12Okay. iPod or CDs? Your choice. Choice. What's up to you? What are you prefer listening on? Do you like having the actual album or is it all the, you know, iPod now? Both. Interesting. Letting or McCartney? I don't know. Yeah. No. Not a big Beatles fan? You know what? I'm sorry. One word answers because one word answers to me, there's an end result to a one word answer and I like to leave things open. I didn't grow up a Beatles fan. Not that I didn't like them. I just wasn't my music. You know, I was listening to Slice Stone, James Brown, Motown. As I got more into music and started branching out and I was a little older, I started finding out about the Beatles. So I'm a big fan right now.

37:59And I love both of their writing. You know, I'm kind of partial to Paul McCartney because he plays the bass and he plays the bass very, very lyrical. But I don't like one over the other. All right. Well, this whole five question thing is going to go. Both. Again. Fair enough. Well, let's play another song. Anything. Your choice. What do you want to hear? Are we done with the five questions? Well, you know my answers. I do know your answers. Both. All of the above. Sure. Let's another song from the Soul Circus, I guess. Sure. Yeah. Let's play a song called Back to India. It's a different type of song. You know, it's not your standard pop radio tune. It's got some percussionists from India on it.

38:46I'm playing a bass that kind of sounds like a sitar. Cool. It has my good friend, Speech from the band Arrested Development, singing on it. Of course. Yeah. My wife is actually singing some back. My wife and I are singing back around vocals when my wife Harley. Alright. So it's a fun song because it has a little different feel to it. Cool. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it.

39:38Yeah. Oh. This inside is from the ancient place of old full of stories to the top. Yeah.

40:44Let me learn the keys of harm only. No. I'm not. So let me see who the man is that I'm supposed to be. And I'll find a love that aims to take me to a place where I am right now. Go back there someway. Somehow, me to go back. Tell you what I see when I'm lying in between her.

41:46So you better be the way. Let me tell you what I'm talking about. I don't really know what I mean. See