Image courtesy Victor Wooten
Victor Wooten has heard all of the bass player jokes. “Béla likes to tell one onstage, after we finish with the banjo jokes,” he says, referring to his longtime bandmate (and banjoist) Béla Fleck. “ ‘Why do you have to make banjo jokes so simple? So the bass player can understand them.’ ”
Calling, and laughing, from a tour bus en route to Charleston, South Carolina, Wooten is best known as the much-celebrated low end of the Grammy-winning jazz-fusion group Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. But the dreadlocked father of four is also an educator, an author and a solo bandleader who runs his own record label. Touring behind a new solo album, “Trypnotyx,” Wooten brings his expansive genre-mixing of jazz, funk, hip-hop and experimental sounds to The Broadberry on April 3.
“To me, it doesn't matter what people say about the bass,” he says. “All I know is that when the bass stops playing, people don't like the music as well.”
Wooten was born in the unlikely jazz spawning ground of Boise, Idaho. His father, an Air Force man, relocated the family to Newport News from California when his son was in the third grade. “Those were my formative years. In my mind, I’m from Virginia.”
Wooten has been a bass player from birth. “I’m the youngest of five brothers: Regi plays guitar, Roy [aka Future Man, a fellow Flecktones founding member] plays drums, Rudy plays sax, and Joseph plays keyboards. When I was born, they already knew that they needed — a bass player.” He was playing onstage with them by age 6.
Billed as The Wooten Brothers, the five boys would perform everywhere — weddings, clubs, Busch Gardens; the group even opened some dates for Curtis Mayfield on his “Superfly” tour. Over the years, Wooten has shared the stage and studio with such illustrious musicians as Branford Marsalis, Chick Corea, Prince and Bootsy Collins, and he made Rolling Stone's list of the 10 best bassists of all time. “They say that bass players are just frustrated guitarists,” Wooten says. “And that's largely true. But, really, I'm a frustrated bass player. I’m still trying to figure that out.”
He's helping up-and-coming bassists figure it out, too. Nearly 20 years ago, he founded Bass/Nature Camp, which eventually became the nonprofit Center for Music and Nature, where, in a Tennessee forest, he oversees scores of young musicians thumping it out in the summertime.
On his solo tour, Wooten will perform with his trio, which includes ex-P-Funk and Santana drummer Dennis Chambers and saxophonist Bob Franceschini, who’s a veteran session player. “It's just fun,” Wooten says of his new disc, “Trypnotyx,” which came out last September. “It's the first record I've made on my own with the same band all the way through, and you can expect to hear more than just jazz, but funk and other things.”
But what about the Flecktones, his most popular gig? The fusion-jazz trio led by banjoist Béla Fleck celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, but no new recordings are planned, Wooten says. "The last few years we haven't been touring together a lot. But [recently] we got asked to play this festival in Miami, and then decided to add some dates around it. It's been fun relearning the old material, but we have no recording plans. It really takes a whole year [of your life] when you make a record — you have to play the material live, then go into the studio, record and then tour around it." Although they aren't together as much as they were in the past, he adds, the group bond remains strong. "It's all based on friendships. Music may have originally brought us together, but friendship keeps us together. I learned how to be a bandleader from Béla."
Right now — traveling on the Flecktones bus — the bass, banjo (and Drumitar) jokes fly fast and furious. “I heard a joke recently,” Wooten offers. “A man goes to Africa and hears drums. He asks a native, ‘What do the drums mean?’ and he's told, ‘Drums are good, if drums stop, bad.’ It goes on and on, and he asks, ‘What are these drums about?’ and he's told, ‘Drums are good. Drums stop, bad.’ Until finally, the drums stop. The man asks, 'What does it mean?' and he's told, ‘Drums stop, bass solo.’ ”
Victor Wooten laughs. He’s heard them all.
Victor Wooten performs at The Broadberry, 2729 W. Broad St., on April 3. $25 to 30. 7 p.m. 804-353-1888. thebroadberry.com
