Victor Wooten

Victor Wooten
Wooten playing at the Belly Up in 2006.
Background information
Birth name	Victor Lemonte Wooten
Born	September 11, 1964 (1964-09-11) Mountain Home, Idaho, U.S.
Genres	Jazz, jazz fusion, funk
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, producer, author
Instruments	Electric bass, upright bass, fiddle, cello, banjo
Years active	1980–present
Associated acts	Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Steve Bailey, Vital Tech Tones, SMV, Greg Howe, Dave Matthews Band, Chick Corea Elektric Band
Website	www.victorwooten.com
Notable instruments
Fodera Monarch Fodera Monarch Yin-Yang (4 string) Steinberger bass guitars

Victor Lemonte Wooten (born September 11, 1964) is an American bass player, composer, author, and producer, and has been the recipient of five Grammy Awards.

Wooten has won the "Bass Player of the Year" award from Bass Player magazine three times in a row, and was the first person to win the award more than once. In addition to a solo career and collaborations with various artists, Wooten has been the bassist for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones since the group's formation in 1988.

In 2008, Wooten joined Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller to record an album. The trio of bassists, under the name SMV, released Thunder in August 2008 and began a supporting tour the same month.

Wooten was also a judge for the 4th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.

Early life

Born to Dorothy and Pete Wooten, Victor is the youngest of the five Wooten Brothers, the other four being Regi, Roy, Rudy and Joseph Wooten, all of whom are musicians. His brother Regi began to teach Victor to play bass when he was two, and by the age of six, Victor was playing in front of crowds with his brothers in their family band, The Wooten Brothers Band, and toured supporting Curtis Mayfield, among others. When his family moved east, they continued to hone their skills. His brothers began a residency at Busch Gardens. When his brother Roy asked if Victor could learn the fiddle to play with them on quick notice, he complied, adding another instrument to his repertoire.

Instruments

Wooten playing his Steinberger headless bass guitar at the Belly Up in 2006.

Wooten is most often seen playing Fodera basses, of which he has a signature model. His most famous Fodera, a 1983 Monarch Deluxe which he refers to as "number 1", sports a Kahler Tremolo System model 2400 bridge. Fodera's "Yin Yang" basses (designed/created for Wooten) incorporate the Yin Yang symbol - which Wooten often uses in various media - as a main focal point of the top's design and construction. It is often mistakenly thought that the Yin Yang symbol is painted onto the bass, but in reality, the symbol is created from two pieces of naturally finished wood (Ebony and Holly, for example), fitted together to create the Yin-Yang pattern.

Though Wooten's basses receive much attention, his most frequent and consistent response when asked by his fans about his equipment (or equipment in general) is that "the instrument doesn't make the music ... you do".^{[citation needed]} He'll often go on to state that the most important features to look for in a bass are comfort and playability. During a question and answer session at a 1998 concert, Wooten stated that "If you take a newborn baby and put them on the instrument, they're going to get sounds out of it that I can't get out of it, so we're all the best." This philosophy seems closely related to Wooten's approach to music in general, which is that music is a language. According to Wooten, while speaking or listening, one doesn't focus on the mouth as it is forming words; similarly, when a musician is playing or performing the focus shouldn't be on the instrument.

As well as playing electric bass (both fretted and fretless) and the double bass, Victor also played the cello in high school. He still plays cello occasionally with the Flecktones. This is the instrument to which he attributes his musical training.

Discography

See also: Béla Fleck and the Flecktones#Discography, Bass Extremes, and Vital Tech Tones

Solo

• A Show of Hands (1996)
• What Did He Say? (1997)
• Yin-Yang (1999)
• Live in America (2001)
• Soul Circus (2005)
• Palmystery (2008)
• A Show of Hands - 15 (2011)

With Bass Extremes

• Cookbook (1998)
• Just Add Water (2000)

With Vital Tech Tones

• Vital Tech Tones (1998)
• Vital Tech Tones 2 (2000)

With The Wootens

• The Wootens (1985)

With Greg Howe

• Extraction (2003)

With SMV

• Thunder (2008) (with Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller, as SMV)

With Béla Fleck and the Flecktones

• Béla Fleck and the Flecktones (1990)
• Flight of the Cosmic Hippo (1991)
• UFO Tofu (1992)
• Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1993)
• Live Art (1996)
• Left of Cool (1998)
• Greatest Hits of the 20th Century (1999)
• Outbound (2000)
• Live at the Quick (2002)
• Little Worlds (2003)
• Ten From Little Worlds (2003)
• The Hidden Land (2006)
• Jingle All the Way (2008)
• Rocket Science (2011)

Religious beliefs

While Wooten considers himself to be a spiritual individual, he is not a part of any particular religion. He believes that, "God is too big for any one religion."

Bibliography

• The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music, ISBN 978-0-425-22093-1, Penguin Group, 2008

External links

• Victor Lemonte Wooten - official website
• Victor Lemonte Wooten Intervew with Anil Prasad of Innerviews
• Live performance photographs
• Interview from honesttune.com
• The Music Lesson website
• The Bass Vault
• Bass/Nature Camp
• Victor Wooten artist page at Guitar Video Channel