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.
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