Victor Wooten is one of the most incredible musicians I have ever seen perform. He pushes the boundaries of what is humanly possible. While I was hosting a college radio show in 1997, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones played in our studio. I had the privilege of sitting in the same room with Victor and watching him take a solo that, to this day, is still one of the most awe-inspiring displays of musicianship I have ever witnessed. However, the thing that impressed me most about him was his work ethic. Before we began recording, everyone in the studio headed into the control room. We were discussing some details of the taping schedule with the band, its manager and the studio engineers. Victor never moved from the studio. He stayed in his seat and practiced his bass. The man has been playing bass since before he could efficiently walk or talk. While everyone else involved with the taping was talking logistics, Victor remained in the studio, alone, playing his bass.

His latest solo album, Yin Yang, was recently nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Contemporary Jazz Performance. It is the only album on an independent label to be nominated in the category. Victor took time out of his busy schedule to speak to Jambands.com this past week from Los Angeles.

JW: So you first learned to play the bass when you were three years old?

VW: Yeah it was somewhere around that time. I was about three years old, learning from my brothers how to play.

JW: Regi taught you, right?

VW: Yeah, my oldest brother Regi, guitar player, he started teaching me. They started teaching me the musical language when I was actually younger than that, but when I was about three years old is when they actually put the instrument in my hands and started teaching me the notes.

JW: They do say that the human brain is a lot more malleable at that age. It's much easier for children to learn other languages. Do you think music just became part of your vocabulary?

VW: Definitely. Definitely, your mind is just open. You know? You can learn anything at that age. Your mind is open and it was just like learning another language. It was identical to learning another language.

JW: And then you were gigging regularly by the age of eight?

VW: Well, it was actually when I was five. When I was about five or six my parents started booking gigs for us.

JW: (laughs)

VW: We were living in California at the time. Before, when I was first learning to play the music, we were in Hawaii, but then we had moved to California. We started playing out, first at rec. centers and then some clubs. Then I think I was five years old when we were doing some dates opening for Curtis Mayfield and we did at least one date opening for the band, War at the Oakland Coliseum.

JW: Now that's pretty incredible for a band of kids to be getting those gigs. Did your parents have some kind of entertainment background or connections to get you those gigs?

VW: No, none at all. My parents are the kind of people that will do whatever it is that they want to do. If something in the house is broken, they figure out how to fix it, because they figure if someone else can fix it, they can too and they're right about that. So they would call venues and book us gigs and after a while the word started getting out and people would start calling us for gigs.

JW: Do you remember what age you were when you realized that conventional bass playing just wouldn't cut it for you?

VW: No, I don't think I've ever really thought about it that way. It's sort of like when you learn how to talk, you talk with your own voice, whether you realize it or not. It's not like when you're a kid, you're saying, 'you know, my voice is gonna be different than anyone else's.' It just happens that way and I believe a lot of it is because I started at such an early age.

When you're playing at a really early age, you do things your own way and you don't even have to think about it as much. So I believe that's the way it was for me. I wasn't even thinking about it. The way it really happened was the fact that my brothers all played different instruments and I was learning all the different things they do on their instruments. I was learning that stuff and applying it to the bass. That's what really got me into the different things. That's how I got into two-hand tapping, because that's how my brother played keyboards, with two hands. So it made sense to me to try that on the bass. My brother Regi used his guitar pick in an up and down manner and he showed me how to use the exact same thing, but just using my thumb on the bass. So that all just kind of made sense at an early age.

JW: I know you apply a lot of the same techniques that drummers use, or trumpet players or flamenco guitarists to your bass.

VW: Definitely, but it just made sense to me at that time. When I was young, eight, nine and ten, still developing the bass, it made sense to try these techniques that were working so well for my brothers on their instruments.

JW: I heard a crazy story about the first time that you moved to Nashville to play with Jonell Mosser. After you took a bass solo, the drummer hyperventilated and had to be hospitalized?

VW: That's actually true. I don't usually talk about that story too much. I'm surprised that you even heard it, because I rarely talk about it. I kind of hate telling that story, but it's very true. I'm not positive that I'm ready for that story to be out. I will say that when I first moved to Nashville, people had never heard anyone play the way that I was playing and I'm not saying this to brag. It's just true. I came in with a different thing going on, on the bass. The first night that I played with Jonell, who's an amazing vocalist and an amazing person, I did some things during the show that I hadn't done during the rehearsal. You know, there was one place where she gave me an extended solo and during the rehearsal, I wouldn't do a whole lot, because there was no need to, but during the show I went ahead and let loose. So some people just flipped out, just literally flipped out. That was the night that our drummer got sick and we ended up having to get another drummer out of the audience to finish the show. That was the start of a good relationship with Nashville, Tennessee.

JW: You're obviously someone who has an amazing technique and has perfected a lot of different styles. I've read a lot of about you're analogy about a juggler dropping a pin and moving on and capitalizing on the mistakes. Can you talk a little bit about that?

VW: Sure. Sometimes you listen to a record or you go and see a show and everything seems so polished and so perfect and artists will make sure that everything is in such perfect order, or at least appears that way. But I like to say, let's say you go and watch a juggler perform and the juggler's juggling the balls and he does a picture-perfect, flawless routine. You know, he doesn't drop any of the balls or any of the clubs. Everything is picture-perfect. At the end of the show, you'll applaud for him and you'll say, 'man, this guy is great!' But let's say he's juggling five or seven balls and all the sudden, he's starting to almost drop them. You can see him sweating and he's almost dropping them and the ball's rolling off of his fingertips, but he still reaches out and grabs it before it hits the ground and you see him almost drop it, but he doesn't. After he finishes his routine and doesn't drop anything, once you see that, you're gonna give him a standing ovation. That's gonna pull you in, because you can see that this guy is recovering and you can see that there is some effort to it. To me, when you see that, that's what really pulls you in and what will make you give this person a standing ovation. You know, you'll remember the juggler with the picture-perfect, flawless routine, but what you'll really tell others about, is the guy that almost dropped the ball, but didn't.

JW: So what you're saying is you always want to be pushing your own limits, trying to go for something just out of your vocabulary?

VW: Yeah, I'm saying that, but I'm also saying that if there are mistakes and some really rough edges, that's fine. The audience loves that stuff, maybe even more. They might like that even more, if there're some rough edges and some things where they can see that you're really putting some effort in to it.

JW: So when you're making an album, do you leave some rough edges in there, if you hear something that you're not quite satisfied with?

VW: Yeah, I leave a lot of rough edges in. A lot of the times, the rough edge may capture your point a little better than a smooth edge. The roughness may help get the point across. Really, in language, it's how you get your point across. It's the point that you're trying to get across, because music to me is like a language, where it's describing your feelings and getting messages out there. It's really about that: if the message gets across. So, you can make that point and sometimes if you smooth it out, the point may be made a little less or a little softer. Not that one is better than the other, but they're both OK.

JW: How do you approach improvisation? You have such a broad musical vocabulary and a lot of times certain songs or melodies will pop up in your playing. Does that just come to you subconsciously? Do you make an effort not to think when you're taking a bass solo? Is that the goal?

VW: Coming up with something like "Norwegian Wood," I'll work it out, but when we're talking about improvising, yeah, my goal is not to have to think too much. Because, right now, we're talking and we're improvising. That's exactly what we're doing, improvising. Even though you may have words or questions written out, you're not reading them verbatim. You're improvising around your idea. Music is the same way. You have an idea where it may be chord changes. It may be something that you've been playing every night. That's your idea, but you improvise around it. You're not really thinking when you're talking, 'OK, now I need a noun. Now I need a verb. I need a proverb. I need an adjective. I need to fit this many syllables in this sentence.' You're not thinking about any of that stuff. You have a feeling, a point, that you want to get across and you're so free with the language, and you know so many words, that you can freely pick and choose, without thinking too much about it. Now, when you run into a jam and get a little stuck, because you don't know what word to use or maybe you've been using the same words over and over and you know you're ready for a change, then you may have to think a little. You might say, 'OK, what else can I do?' Then you resort to the theory of the English language. 'OK, what is an adjective? Where can I get more adjectives? Maybe I need a thesaurus.' Music is identical to that. When you're soloing, you have your idea that you want to get across and that may be called chord changes. You have your idea and you're just talking about it. You're gonna describe it and hopefully, your language, your vocabulary, is big enough that you can freely pick and choose without thinking too much. But if you get stuck, then you think about. You pull out the theory and say, 'OK, what chord am I soloing over? What chords am I talking about? What chords am I describing? Let me describe it another way. I describe it this way every night. Let's do it this way.' Then you think about it, but the goal, like with talking, is to not have to think, so that you can feel more. For me, my goal is to be able to feel the music, not to have to think about it, just like when I'm talking.

JW: In the spirit of improvisation, I'm just going to throw two words at you: Yin Yang. Philosophically speaking, what does that mean to you?

VW: Basically, what it means to me is that everything is OK. Everything works: the good, the bad, the right, and the wrong. It all makes up the whole. So, you're not really gonna leave one part of it out. The wrong notes make the right notes sound better. You know? So if you're playing blues, you gotta stick in some blue notes sometimes and that'll make the sweet notes, the major thirds and the major sevenths, jump out at you. You have to stick it all in there and know that it's not about what notes are right and what notes are wrong, it's just about getting the whole point across. You can see the two parts of the yin yang symbol or you can see it as the whole and you realize that without one part of that yin yang, you wouldn't have the whole. You couldn't just have the white half of the circle. You have to have the black half also. So in playing music, that's the all of it. Everything is OK. On the piano, you need the black key, along with the white key to make it a piano. It'd be a different instrument. It'd be half of an instrument if it weren't there. So yin yang to me, talks about the wholeness.

JW: I know you did a lot of spontaneous composing in the studio for the latest album. Did you go in with a mindset of what you want to accomplish or did you just wing it?

VW: I do have a mindset, but I always stay open, you know? I allow that to change if it takes me in what I would call a better direction. That's with the song or with the whole direction of the album. As with life, period, you set your goals, but you have to stay open. So when I go in to record, that's definitely what I'm doing. I'm staying open to all of the different possibilities and all of the different nuances that life throws at you that show you, 'wait a minute, you might want to take a turn here.' So yes, I have my idea, but I stay open to change.

JW: It seems that you had a pretty loosely structured format for recording this album. I know that there was one track that you recorded with Bootsy Collins that almost didn't make it onto the album and was a last minute addition. There were some musicians on the album who had never recorded before and yet, you got a Grammy nomination. What does that tell you?

VW: It tells me that I should keep sticking to what's true to me. It also tells me that so should everyone else. For me, my goal is to be 100% who I am in my music. Because, I'm not really making the music that I think the public will like. That's not my goal anyway. I'm making the music that is truthfully me and then I allow the public to think what they want to think about it. You know, if they like it, great; if they don't, that's great also. They have that choice and I don't want to take that away. I definitely don't want to take away my truthfulness to myself in just trying to please you. In the end, I realize I won't be happy about that. So, I'm just truthfully sticking to who I am and it seems like the public is saying, 'OK, we like that. Keep doing that,' and that makes me happy.

JW: Can you talk a little bit about how the technology has effected your recording career? Certainly twenty years ago you couldn't have made an album the way you can now. I know you record a lot while you're on the road. You recorded some of Jeff (Coffin)'s solos in a dressing room in Seattle.

VW: Yeah, well twenty years ago, you had to go to the big record labels and try to convince them to give you money to make a record. Where nowadays, you can just save up a little bit of money and even if you don't have a home studio, you know someone who does. You can go in and record very, very inexpensively and that's what I did with my first solo album. My friend Kurt Storey, who actually introduced me to Bela Fleck, is the one who actually brought me to Nashville for the first time when I was visiting him and ended up playing with Jonell Mosser. He's also engineered all three of my CDs so far. He had a little home studio with an A-DAT, when I first did A Show of Hands. So I just went in there and it was just solo bass anyway, so we sat down with this one A-DAT and I made the record so inexpensively. It was just amazing. So now I have a little recording equipment, not even that much, just enough that I can sit at home and just record music. With the Roland equipment that I'm using now, the VS1680, it's so portable. It's a studio in a box. If I call up a friend of mine and say 'can you record on something for me?' and they agree, I can say, 'OK, I'll be over at your house in a few minutes. We'll do it in your living room.' So-

(At this point Victor gets a call on the other line).

VW: Can you hold for me a second?

JW: Sure.

VW: OK, I'm sorry about that. That was Kurt Storey, believe it or not.

JW: That's appropriate.

VW: Yeah, we're getting ready to go out on the road soon and do a solo tour. He told me to say 'hi' for him.

JW: Definitely. I'll keep it in there.

VW: So, I wanted to summarize that whole thing. Technology has allowed just about everyone to record now. You don't have to go to the moneymakers and borrow the money. Between four-track cassette recorders and twenty-four bit Pro Tools systems that you can have at home, it's possible for almost anyone to get a home studio now and bypass the record labels where you have to borrow a lot of money. That's a pretty good thing that is opening up the music business.

JW: Do you see any irony in the fact that you went around the big record companies, but yet you got a Grammy nomination? What does the Grammy nomination mean to you?

VW: It means a lot. It really means that people are hearing and appreciating what I'm doing. I don't know if I see it as ironic, because I don't want to be negative about it, but it just does let me see that it can be done. You can bypass the record labels. Not that it's the right thing or the wrong thing, but it just let's you know that yes, it can be done.

JW: Could you talk about your relationship with Oteil Burbridge? I know that both of you get mentioned in the same breath a lot when people talk about great bass players. What's your relationship like?

VW: Yeah, Oteil has always been one of my very top favorite bass players. I mean, at the top of the list. We've known each other I don't even know how many years, maybe twenty. We used to live near each other in Virginia and used to get together. He and his brother Kofi would get together and jam with my brothers and me. Oteil used to come over to the house. He had a six-string guitar that he had strung up like a six-string bass and he'd get my brother Regi to teach him chords and things like that. That was something that I wasn't really into at the time. I remember them sitting down and going over the stuff. I wish I had done it too, now. Oteil just has his own voice. I mean, I could hear two notes and I know that's Oteil. That's amazing that he's kept his own voice. The great thing about Oteil is that he's not a person that found his voice. He's a person that never lost his voice. That's a big difference because if you never lost it, you know that that voice is truly yours. If you go out and find your voice, you don't know if that was the voice that you had in the beginning or not. Oteil is just one of my all time favorite musicians.

JW: Is there anyone out there that you'd like to play with, either solo or with the Flecktones, that you haven't had the chance to play with yet?

VW: I would like to do some more playing with Dennis Chambers. We haven't done much yet. I've jammed just a little bit with Mike Stern and I want to do some more playing with him. I'd love to do some playing with Arturo Sandoval. I'd also love to work with Steve Vai. There are lots of people I'd like to learn from too, like Oscar Peterson.

JW: What's been in your CD player over the last month? What's some of the new stuff you've been checking out?

VW: I've been listening to Deep in the Heart of Tuva. Basically, it's a group of guys from the country of Tuva and they do this thing called throat singing. It's where they're hitting all these guttural sounds and harmonics with their voice and sometimes hitting two or three notes with their voice, singing chords and things. It's the total opposite of how anyone in our country is trained to sing. I've also been listening to Vertu. It's the new Stanley Clarke and Lenny White CD.

JW: So as far as your immediate future, I know you're doing some more solo dates and then the Flecktones in February and then will there be a summer tour?

VW: Oh yeah, we're gonna be touring the rest of the year.

JW: And will that line up include Jeff Coffin?

VW: Yes, it sure will. We're working on a new CD right now. Actually, I just got to L.A. last night. I was at the studio with everyone earlier that day. So they're still at home finishing up the new Flecktones CD. That will be the four of us including Jeff Coffin and a bunch of different guests.

JW: I've always been curious how it is playing with your brother, Future Man, as opposed to playing with a conventional drummer.

VW: To me, the music comes from the musician and not the instrument. So, Future Man is a drummer and we've been playing together since I was about two. It doesn't matter to me what he is playing on. He's going to make good drum music out of whatever it is, because the music comes from him. So the fact that it's electronic or the fact that it's acoustic doesn't quite matter to me. You know, it's like someone playing acoustic guitar or electric guitar. If I'm playing with John McLaughlin or somebody, it's not gonna to matter to me. John's an incredible player and he's gonna make it work and that shows the musicianship. I'll point it out to you this way also. Whenever somebody puts on a CD, whenever you put on the radio, whenever you play a cassette and there are drums on it, at that moment you're listening to electronic drums. It doesn't matter if they were played acoustically. You're listening to electronic drums. Because if the drummer's not sitting there in your house, it's electronic by the time it gets to your ears. The CD is not real. The CD is a sample. All my brother is doing is playing samples also. So to me, there is no difference. The difference comes when you are standing right there. Now, acoustic drums have a different feel and a different air to them. They move the air different. When you are actually standing right beside the player, it's a different thing. When we're on the stage, we're using ear monitors and so I'm getting the drums through my ear monitors. It's great because you don't have to worry about getting so loud on stage because of the acoustic drums. A lot of times, playing on stage with acoustic drums, the band has to be loud because it has to get above the acoustic drums. Well, we don't have that problem. The number one rule for me is that the music comes from the person so the instrument that they play is kind of obsolete. It's how good the musician is.