2 Minds, 1 Groove
Renowned bassist returns to Boone March 19

By Frank Ruggiero

Victor Wooten is always learning.

Despite several Grammy Awards from his work with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, an ever-growing catalogue of solo albums, a devout loyal following and a recent novel, the acclaimed bassist remains open to new lessons.

As demonstrated in his most recent album, Palmystery, released concurrently last April with his novel, The Music Lesson: a Spiritual Search for Growth through Music, Wooten reveals a deep respect for the creative process – a lesson he hopes to share with Boone and Appalachian State University.

Wooten returns to Legends March 19 as part of his 2 Minds 1 Groove tour, accompanied only by drummer and friend J.D. Blair.

“I’m going back and doing something I haven’t done in about 10 years,” Wooten said. “When I released my first solo project, it was a complete solo bass record, no other instruments – me sitting down with one bass, no overdubs … making a record just by myself, and so when I went out on tour after that record came out, it was just myself and a drummer. People have been asking for us to do that again … so, this tour, we’re going back to that.”

Wooten promises the show will be quite different and, at times, difficult, but in a good way. Some of the songs on Palmystery feature a variety of instruments, “but people will be surprised that we can actually pull them off with just the bass and the drum,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun.”

Returning to Boone also means fun for Wooten, who has family and friends in North Carolina.

“From the beginning of…Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, we have always had a good history in North Carolina, and Boone being one of those towns, so whenever I get the chance to go back there, I feel very much supported and loved,” he said. “It always feels good to come back there, especially Boone. I always feel good there.”

It’s also a chance to see family, which has always played a significant role in his music, and literally at that. As the youngest sibling of the Wooten Brothers – Regi, Roy (a.k.a. Future Man of the Flecktones), Rudy and Joseph – Wooten learned his first bass riffs from Regi at the age of three. By the time has five years old, Wooten was performing professionally with his brothers. “I definitely wouldn’t be playing music, at least not this way, without them,” he said.

His brothers remain mainstays on his albums, and Palmystery is no exception. Stocked with an impressive array of noted guest artists, including Keb’ Mo’, Mike Stern, Richard Bona, Karl Denson and Blair, Wooten finds room to include his mother, aunts and uncles, and his own children. The song “The Gospel” features Wooten’s mother, whom he recorded over the telephone.

“My brother, Joseph, and I were working on this song, so we called up my mom and asked her to sing this particular song we had in mind,” Wooten said. “It was a song that might be one of my grandma’s favorite songs, and she started singing it. I was, like, ‘Wait a minute,’ and turned on the recorder and got a microphone and recorded her. It fit perfectly with what we were working on; it was really nice.”

However, Wooten’s aunts and uncles, who also provide vocal accompaniment on the track, were initially leery of the idea.

“It was almost like I had to pass a test for them to allow me to use the song,” Wooten said, “and it’s not because they own the song or because they were going to get royalties… It was only because they wanted to protect the sacredness of the song. It’s an old spiritual, an old song they sing in church, and they didn’t want it used anywhere. And these are my aunts and uncles whom I’ve known my whole life.”

This minor confrontation led to Wooten learning a lesson.

“It really made me rethink my own music, made me rethink how I think about my own music, meaning if someone wanted to use my song, how would I think of it? Would I protect my song or would I protect myself and make sure I get paid? It was interesting to think about someone protecting the music for the music’s sake.”

Palmystery is carefully packed with music for the music’s sake, distinctively Wooten yet varied through his guest artists’ own brand of creativity. Some of the tracks were recorded a couple years ago during the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) Show in Nashville, Tenn., where Wooten lives. A sizable host of musicians were visiting town for the show, “and I kept grabbing a few of them and bringing them to the studio and recording what I could come up with, so some of that has ended up on this record,” Wooten said, mentioning Stern, drummer Dennis Chambers and keyboardist Neal Evans.

“Most of the time, I leave the song pretty open so that they can interpret how they hear it. Rather than me just saying, ‘Here, play this,’ I play them the song and pretty much just put it on record with them plugged in and see what they come up with. Then, there’s usually a combination about the idea I had and what they naturally hear.”

In terms of combination, the simultaneous release of Palmystery and his novel, The Music Lesson, is no coincidence. For one, the invented word “Palmystery” is a play on palmistry, the perceived ability of palm-reading one’s future. “You put the word ‘mystery’ in there, like people can read your whole life story in the palm, which is letting you know that your life is in the palm of your hands,” Wooten said, “but with this title, you also realize that life is also a mystery.”

Such is a theme in The Music Lesson, which tells the tale of a struggling, young musician visited by a mystical teacher, who guides him on a spiritual journey to discover the music within.

Throughout the last decade and more in which Wooten has taught music, people repeatedly asked him to write a book about his philosophy of music, “because it’s a little bit different than most people,” he said.

While such requests seemed befitting for an instruction booklet, that was the last thing Wooten wanted to write. “It took me years before I…realized I could write a fictional story, a novel, and put that same instruction in there, and even more stranger things about music, even some of the things I wouldn’t talk to people about in public, because they’d question it too much.”

Now published by Penguin, the book is available in multiple languages and is now being recorded in an audio version, in which Wooten is playing a major role.

“Tons of music, oh yeah,” is how he described the audio version. “That’s the cool thing. I got the original Flecktones back together to record a song for it.”

Measures from a song on Palmystery called “The Lesson” appear at the beginning of each chapter. “When you read the whole book, you get all the measures and put them together, and then you have this song, and the Flecktones are playing this song,” he said. “And once you read the book, you’ll understand the music better, because you can hear some of the things that we’re doing…some of the things that are explained on the book you can hear on the CD, or especially when we play live.”

Folks in Boone can learn for themselves Thursday, March 19, at 10 p.m. at Legends on the Appalachian State University campus. Tickets cost $10 and $12. For tickets and more information, call (828) 262-3032.

For more information on Victor Wooten, visit www.victorwooten.com.