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.
__________
Jeff Waful is the daily news editor for Jambands.com and manages Uncle Sammy.
No Comments comments associated with this post