Last Updated on March 2, 2023

Victor Wooten Biography

Victor Wooten, born as Victor Lemonte Wooten is an American bass guitarist, record producer, educator. He is recipient of 5 grammy Awards. He 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.

He has been the bassist for Bela Fleck and the Flecktones since the group formation in 1988. He is an innovator on the bass guitar, as well as a talented composer, arranger, producer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist.

Victor Wooten Age

He was born in September 11, 1964 in Mountain Home, Idaho. He is 54 years old as of 2019.

Victor Wooten Family | Victor Wooten Brother

He was born to Elijah and Dorothy Wooten’s family and he is the youngest of the five Wooten brothers; Regi, Roy, Rudy and Joseph Wooten. When he was two, Regi began teaching him how to play guitar and when he was 6, he was already a performing with his brothers in their family band. As he grew up in a military family, a United States Air Force family, they often moved when he was young. They settled at Newport News, Virginia.

Victor Wooten Photo

Victor Wooten Wife

He married Holly Wooten and they are blessed with 4 children; Kaila Wooten, Adam Wooten, Arianna Wooten and their last born kid whose name is not disclosed.

Victor Wooten Songs

Victor Wooten Albums

Solo albums

• A Show of Hands(Compass, 1996)
• What Did He Say?(Compass, 1997)
• Yin-Yang (Compass, 1999)
• Live in America (Compass, 2001)
• Soul Circus (Vanguard, 2005)
• Palmystery (Heads Up, 2008)
• A Show of Hands (Vix, 2011)
• The Music Lesson (Vix, 2011)
• Words & Tones (Vix, 2012)
• Sword & Stone (Vix, 2012)
• Trypnotyx (Vix, 2017)

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)

With Bass Extremes

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

With Greg Howe

• Extraction (2003)

With SMV

• Thunder (2008)

With Vital Tech Tones

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

With The Wootens

• The Wootens (1985)

Victor Wooten Events | Victor Wooten Tour

Victor Wooten Bass

Victor Wooten Song For My Father

Victor Wooten Band

Victor Wooten Victor’s Jam

Victor Wooten The Lesson

Victor Wooten Website

He has his own website where one can find out more personally and interact deeply with him. Click Here to visit his website.

Victor Wooten Amazing Grace

Victor Wooten Bass Guitar

Victor Wooten Bass Camp | Victor Wooten Camp

Victor Wooten A Show Of Hands

Victor Wooten Trio

Victor Wooten Book | The Music Lesson Victor Wooten

He has written several books;

• Victor Wooten Bass Workshop: The Language of Music and How to Speak it (2017)
• The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music (2006)
• The Best of Victor Wooten (2003)
• Super Bass Solo Technique (1994)
• Bass Extremes (1993)

The Music Lesson Victor Wooten Pdf

Click Here to view this book.

Victor Wooten Solo

Victor Wooten Palmystery

Palmystery is the sixth studio album from  Victor Wooten.

Stanley Clarke Marcus Miller Victor Wooten

Victor Wooten Youtube

Victor Wooten Ted Talk

Victor Wooten Norwegian Wood

Victor Wooten Argentina

Victor Wooten Interview

Victor Wooten If people were more like music… 

Source: innerviews.org

I understand you just finished working on a soundtrack project a couple of days ago.

Yeah, The Flecktones—we were working on some music for this movie. It’s a new Demi Moore movie called Striptease. We were in New York for two days recording some more music for it. They had to re-shoot the ending so they had to redo the music for the ending of the movie.

Is working on film music an enjoyable experience for you?

It’s fun—a great experience. It’s really not even our own Flecktones music. It’s Howard Shore who wrote the soundtrack. We’re just doing some of his music. We’re mixed in with a bunch of other people—a whole orchestra, Chuck Loeb on guitar and Gordon Gottlieb playing percussion. The Flecktones with Howard Levy are part of the band. But for the most part we’re playing along with the whole orchestra.

A Show of Hands was just released, but it’s actually been in the can for several years.

Yeah, I recorded the bass parts about two years ago at least—maybe three years. Let me think. Was it June of ’94 or something…? I recorded it quite awhile ago and played it for some people. And since then, I slowly added vocals to different songs. Some of ’em already had it, but certain songs—even up to the last minute—I was adding just little bits and pieces here and there to make it totally the way I wanted it. I had already mastered the whole album when I decided to put the vocals on the first song, “You Can’t Hold No Groove.”

So, the original version of the album had no vocals at all?

There were none at all. I had mastered the whole thing and was ready to send it over to Compass and I thought “Wait a minute, man… this would be neat if this happened.” So, it was like a copy of Larry Graham-style vocals that I put on there—myself and Will Lee.

A couple of years ago, you told me you had finished the album and couldn’t get label interest from anyone.

Yeah. A lot of people are kinda scared of it, you know. I mean I got some good response and some major labels wanted to put it out. Some labels said “Man, this is great. Let’s do it.” Then they would turn around for whatever reason and say “Well, no, I don’t know if we should do this” and then vice-versa. Some labels at first said “No” and then turned around and said “Yeah, we wanna do it.” But I decided to either put it out myself or put it on a small label. And I ended up sticking to that. Being with The Flecktones, I’m in a great position because it’s sorta like I have a major label affiliation being with them and it’s sort of like having a major label deal because as much as I get to play and as much as I get showcased with The Flecktones and with those recordings, I get the benefits of what Warner Brothers has to offer through The Flecktones. But sometimes the major labels see things differently than I see them. My main goal is not just to have a record in everyone’s home or something like that, but it’s maybe to touch a few people… or as many people as possible—not just to put a record out for the sake of having it out there. I wanted to do a record that was totally me. And I had the feeling that that wouldn’t be major-label-type of material—it’d be a smaller type of thing or even just puttin’ it out myself. But the people that got it would totally be touched by it—affected by it. And, hopefully, it would make them think and just appreciate life better.

Last summer, we discussed the album again and you seemed really frustrated. You said “You know, I’m just glad I got the album done. I did it for me. If no-one ever hears it but me, that’s fine.” You’ve obviously had a change of heart.

Well… uh, yeah. [pauses] That’s not out of frustration, though. That’s just the way I did it. I mean, you can live a whole lifetime trying to please everyone else and I think that’s what most other people do—they make records that are gonna have the mass appeal, but a lot of times you end up forsaking your own joy and things that you like to do because you’re pleasing the record company or whatever. But my goal was to make a record that I was pleased with—totally. I kinda did it totally for myself in hopes that other people would enjoy it also. But I really didn’t go into this record thinking well, you know, “What are people going to like?” That wasn’t my main goal. My main goal was to get a record together that I just totally felt good about. And I think live… in performing, you know, if you totally put yourself into it and be honest and true with what you’re doing—which is what I did with this record—I think that will carry. And the people that do get it—get it in a way that people don’t get things if you just do a project with ulterior motives, maybe just to make money or just to do something that’s popular at the moment… [pauses] You know, people enjoy that, too, but that’s kind of superficial and it doesn’t really last. I don’t know really how to explain it. I just wanted something that was more real. And since I don’t know what the whole world likes—I only know what I like—I decided to do a record that I liked.

How did A Show of Hands end up on Compass Records?

Compass is run by friends of mine and they’re musicians. And I remember when they started the label, they really wanted to do something that was really about music—a label that was about the music and about the musicians. They’re really into helping the musicians be able to make money and make records the way they want them made. And them being musicians themselves, they’re really good at that ’cause they know what musicians need. But when I first made this recording, I just kind of gave it to a bunch of friends of mine. I didn’t send it to a lot of labels at first. I gave it to a bunch of musicians just to see what kind of buzz it was gonna get that way. At the time my main goal wasn’t like “Okay, what labels are gonna be interested in this?” I got it to different musicians like Branford Marsalis and Chick Corea and friends of mine that way and I figured, “Wow, if they dug it then it would make its way to the record labels.”

And how did those cats react?

Well, they loved it. Because GRP almost put it out—it was either gonna be GRP or Chick Corea’s Stretch label. They were totally set and, then, for whatever reason they changed their minds about it. But they really loved it. I sent one to Marcus Miller and he gave me a phone call and he just totally loved it too. And Stanley Clarke, he really liked it. He actually thought that it was out when I gave it to him. When I talked to him again he was just sayin’ “Man, if there’s anything I can do to help this thing…” He was just totally into it.

That must have been pretty gratifying. I know Clarke is a hero of yours.

Oh man! So gratifying to have these guys that I grew up listening to, you know, digging what I’m doing—and even Stanley saying that he can hear himself in my playing, you know. That’s a major thrill. But yeah, I was getting good response through these musicians and even they were turning it on to their record labels and things like that. So, you know, I was getting to talk to some of these people. But the overall response was “Yeah, it’s great, but I don’t know what we could do with it.” That’s the major label mentality. I don’t know how I mean it. Well, I do know how I mean it, but I don’t know how to say it without making people upset.

Go ahead and upset them.

[laughs] With a lot of these labels, the goal is not to put out good music. It’s to put out music that will sell. Does that make any sense?

That makes total sense.

Yeah.

I’m still amazed at the fact that there was a time—in the mid- to late-’70s—when some bass-oriented albums would actually sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

Right, right. Exactly. But I do think that that era is coming back. I really do. Yeah, I think it’s comin’ back with certain groups. There’s a lot of groups that are coming around nowadays—even in the grunge scene and alternative bands. That’s one thing that I like. Bands like… even Hootie and the Blowfish. You know they have their own sound and they’re a band. They’re not popular because there’s this one guy who dances great in the video or… you know, these guys look like models or whatever. You know, part of their whole appeal is just their sound. And there’s a lot of alternative rock bands that are coming around that are like that. Like Blues Traveler, you know, they even won a Grammy this year and the lead singer’s this large guy that plays harmonica. But that’s great! You know, there’s the Dave Matthews Band, even bands like Green Day, you know, that are just these crazy bands, but people are liking them, you know. And it’s not even whether I like their music or not. It’s not so important, but the people that dig ’em are digging ’em because of their music. And they’re bands. They have a sound. It’s not just, you know, computer generated and molded to fit the mass appeal. They’re just doing what they do and people are catching on to it. So it seems like that that era could be coming back. I hope so anyway.

Describe how A Show of Hands evolved from a solo bass album into one with vocals.

Well, I have for many, many years wanted to make a solo bass record where I did no overdubs and had no other instruments, but I wanted to make it in a way that someone could sit down and listen to it for 30 to 40 minutes—you know, even myself. Because even myself, just to sit down and listen to the same tones and things like that for 30 minutes or whatever, I’ve had enough. If I go to a concert, even if the band is amazing, if it’s the same thing for awhile, I’ve had enough after about a half hour. So I was trying to think of ways to make this record with just bass, but make it interesting so that someone could enjoy it and not have their ears get tired for the duration of the recording. So, I chose songs that I had been working on and I just did songs using timbres and tones and EQ and different things to make each one slightly different. And then I started thinking “Wow!” because I had come up with this version of “Words of Wisdom.” I had come up with this music and I thought “Man, this would sound so cool with people just talkin’ over the top of it.” And then I thought “Well, you know, it would still be solo bass and this would actually make the recording better.” And that’s eventually what I wanted, a good recording, not just something that’s solo bass. It’s got to be good first. So, I started adding vocals here and there—and then vocals in between songs and the idea just started to develop and I just loved it. And I started adding more and more—adding some comical things. And it turned into a record that I enjoyed more than my original idea.

The album goes way past the conventional idea of a “bass player’s album.” But that’s not going to stop the media from labeling it that way. Does that bother you—the fact that it will be regarded as a “great bass album” instead of “great music?”

No, because you can’t decide what people are going to think about what you do. And a lot of people drive themselves crazy because they don’t get the response they want from people. But again, you can’t decide people’s responses. I hope that people call it whatever it is they truly want to. I just hope people give it an honest look, and come up with an honest opinion. Don’t call it a solo bass album just because the only instrument is bass. You know, just be honest. If you like the music, I’m happy. If you don’t, I’m happy still. I’m not real concerned as to what people call it or think about it as, long as they’re honest with themselves. And what I mean about that is, you see, a lot of people fall into the fads. They’ll like a group not because they like it, but because everyone else does. And with this record, it’s so different. It’s not real easy to jump on the bandwagon to find out what this record is because there’s really no bandwagon. It’s really an individual record. You have to like it by yourself or not. And I just want people to look at it that way. I want people to decide for themselves. And I don’t even so much think people have to decide whether they like it or not. Just listen to it, you know? [laughs] Enjoy it and see how it makes you feel.

Despite the labeling and tags the media will slap on A Show of Hands, I think its greatest strength is that average listeners can completely forget that they’re listening to mostly bass—and the vocals go a long way to helping that.

Well, I think that’s great because first it’s about music. It should be anyway. And the instrument is just a vehicle to express the feeling inside of you. You try to get it out through the music. And it really shouldn’t matter what instrument a person plays as long as he’s making the music that he wants to make out of it. And so that was my goal—to be able to make music. I hope people can hear the record as music and not get caught on the fact that “Wow that’s just a bass! I like it or I don’t like it because it’s just bass.” And that’s the way a lot of record companies look at it. They see that first rather than the music first and it should be about music.

You’ve got a piece called “Classical Thump” on the album that totally contradicts most people’s expectation of what can be expressed via bass guitar.

Right. [laughs]

Tell me how you go about structuring a piece that intricate and complex for the bass.

Well, that’s a really good question. I’d have to figure it out—it’s something I started doing really young. I’m the youngest of five brothers and all my brothers play different instruments. And I used to always take the things that they did on their instruments and learn how to do them on the bass whether it was an actual melodic line, whether it was a drum rhythm or whether it was a technique—I would apply it to the bass. And so I would hear my brothers play these type of things and also, I played cello in the orchestra. And I would hear these type of things or I’d hear Flamenco guitarists doing these techniques and I just figured out a way to do them on the bass. I used to also learn drum solos, but I would learn them on the bass. And it would make me figure out different techniques and I learned a lot of different rhythms that were different for the bass. So, if I heard a whole orchestra do something, I tried to recreate that whole sound on the bass. You know… I don’t really know how I go about doing it. Umm… but to me, it’s more of a feeling. Music makes us feel a certain way—a lot of the times whether we realize it or not. And so when I’m working out a song, I try to recreate that same feeling. The technique or whatever is secondary.

Do you enjoy the process? Many musicians would start banging their heads against the wall trying to put together a piece that difficult for four strings.

[laughs] Right. Sometimes you can get there because you’re just not producing what you want. You have it inside, but it’s just not coming through the instrument. But a lot of times I’ll just let it go for awhile and come back to it later. But the process is fun though. I mean, it was really enjoyable because you’re seeing the birth of this new idea come about and that’s an amazing thing.

You’ve started to play a lot of your solo material live.

Yeah, most of this month The Flecktones have been off. Béla’s been home finishing up a live recording that we’re gonna come out with in a few months. So, I took the time to grab a drummer—a friend of mine named J.D. Blair, and we’ve been out just doing bass and drums. And, man, it’s been fun—great turnout and some great responses. Yeah, we’ve just been having a great time.

Do you plan on taking this on the road in a major way?

Well, we’re planning on doing more. We did about 15 or 16 dates. The main thing that’s been keeping me so busy is the fact that The Flecktones are so busy. I have to work during The Flecktones’ off-time which ends up leaving me with no off-time. And it’s been really, really tough that way, but we definitely plan on going out again and doin’ it some more.

How do your tunes translate live in the duo format?

They actually translate very well. They translate better it seems, because with the drums, you really latch on to the rhythm and the groove of the whole thing much, much easier. You see, when I’m playing these songs, I’m trying to add in the drum part when I’m doin’ it solo. I’m trying to make sure you hear the drum part along with the bass line—you know, some semblance of the chords and a melody. And with a drummer I don’t have to work as hard to pull that off. And so I can concentrate more on some of the other areas even though I’m pretty much playing the same parts. But a listener understands it much, much more.

“Me and My Bass Guitar” must be devastating with drums.

Oh, yeah. It’s powerful… [laughs] It’s powerful.

I understand you’re using some sequences too.

What I’m doing sequence-wise is I have all the vocals in a sampler and I’m triggering them. I’m triggering the sampler with a foot pedal. And I also have the drummer triggering some of them. So, for example, when I do the lyrics for “Me and My Bass Guitar,” when I get to the chorus, you hear the whole chorus, rather than just, maybe, myself saying “me and my bass guitar.” You hear the whole thing and I also have Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and the children singing in “More Love” and all that stuff from the record in the sampler.

Innerviews has spoken to a wide variety of bassists over the years and the consensus seems to be that club owners are simply not interested in bass-oriented shows. Have you faced any problems getting gigs?

Well, I’d say no as far as this last tour went, but I didn’t do any of the booking. I turned over to the same guys who do The Flecktones and they booked it. But when I first moved to Nashville, I got a job in a health food restaurant called “The Slice of Life” playing solo bass in 1989 and 1990. And the way I convinced them, ’cause they wanted me to come in and audition… they asked me what instrument I played, and I told ’em I play guitar. So that got me to the audition. And once they heard it, they understood it. And they loved it. It turned into a great thing. But yeah, I can see how a lot of venues would have trouble with the fact that they’re gonna give away one of their nights in this club for a bass player to come in and do a show. I can see how they’d have to think twice about that.

Why do you think that is?

Well, most people still don’t see the bass as a lead instrument or as an instrument that anyone’s going to listen to for longer than a couple minutes solo in a song. So I can see that as being why they don’t think they’re gonna make money with that. Where a guitar player, you know, we’re used to seeing him out front. And we’re used to a lot of frontmen guitarists like Yngwie Malmsteen or Steve Vai, and a lot of jazz guys like George Benson that play guitar. We’re used to that being out front, but the bass we’re still not used to.

The perpetual question people pose about boundary-breaking bassists like yourself and Michael Manring is “are they really playing bass?” Many can’t seem to cope with bass outside of a supporting role.

Well, see, it’s not the instrument. All Michael Manring and myself are doing is just trying to make music. When we’re playing solo maybe we aren’t playing bass. We’re playing music, basically, is what it comes down to. We’re going past being a bass player and are being musicians. And that’s the goal. You know, it’s like a guitar player sits down and plays a solo piece. You’re gonna hear the bass lines, the chords and a melody more than likely. But you still recognize it as a guitar. Whereas with the bass, we’re so used to just hearing the bass line by itself that when someone like Michael or myself or Stu Hamm plays a full composition, sometimes we get drawn away from the fact that the bass line is actually still there most of the time. And because we hear so much more, we think that we have forgotten our duty or whatever. But, actually, it’s not that case. We have gone past that and realized that the instrument is there to make music. And that’s what we’re doing with it—making music.

The bass instrument’s purpose is not just to play one or two notes to support everyone. It’s to make music. And basically, that’s however you wanna do it. Now, yes, the bass usually performs a certain role and that’s that support role and holding up the bottom and defining the core, but that’s like saying all tall people have to play basketball. A tall person should do whatever makes him happy when it gets down to it. You need to get past all the stereotypes, and those type of things. I understand the people that have problems with what Michael Manring or I do, but I would also say that a lot of the people who are saying that are the people who can’t do what Michael Manring does. They don’t feel like putting in the time that Michael Manring has put in. And they’d rather put in the time to complain about him or ridicule him rather than just listening to the music or seeing whether Michael’s getting enjoyment out of what he’s doing. Cause that’s the main goal, anyway.

What do you think of Manring’s music?

Michael’s great. He’s incredible. I love the way he can do all that tapping stuff on a fretless. And Michael’s himself. He’s not being like anyone else. He doesn’t play like anyone else. He plays exactly the way he plays. And I love anyone who does that whether I like their music or not. That doesn’t matter. As long as they’re doing what they love to do and they’re just being themselves, that’s great.

Some believe the bass is one of the most misunderstood instruments out there. As you said, it’s surrounded by stereotyping. Why do you think people are so closed-minded?

Because people get stuck in patterns.

But they don’t for other instruments.

Well, that’s because the other instruments have evolved over the years. I mean, the bass is getting there. It’s definitely getting there, but the same with guitar. It had its role. Same with the banjo. The banjo was in jazz music before the guitar was. But for some reason, the banjo hasn’t made the transition into jazz like the guitar has. You know, for whatever reason. But the electric bass is still such a new instrument and I think people are still just stuck in the traditional roles that it’s played. People are slowly waking up like all of us. We’re slowly waking up to the possibilities of the bass. People wouldn’t think twice about hearing a solo bass vocalist—that’s no big deal. But a solo bass guitar is another story for whatever reason. People just need to kinda open up their minds and listen to the music. Don’t get caught up on the instrument. The instrument is secondary.

In many ways, that’s been the driving force behind The Flecktones, hasn’t it? All of you are doing unconventional things on your instruments—or even creating entirely new instruments in Future Man’s case.

Right, right. And it’s been kinda neat. Because of that fact, I didn’t think the band was gonna be successful. I figured we’d be successful underground—meaning musicians would dig it and understand the music. But we play all this strange music and the public’s been gettin’ into it—children and grandparents. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we’re just doing what we do. We’re honest with what we do. We’re playing music that’s totally us. We’re not trying to conform to anything or make records for radio. And I think that honesty gets through to people. I really think it does. People can pick up on it in ways that maybe they don’t even understand, but they end up liking it.

How did The Flecktones first come together?

Well, starting from the very beginning of me finding out about Béla, I was working in Virginia at a theme park called Busch Gardens and I used to play a friend of mine’s banjo. I was playing in a country band at this amusement park. And I used to play my friend’s banjo during the breaks. Because the banjo has this altered tuning, it’s different from the bass. When I would play my regular bass patterns, they’d sound quite different on a banjo. And I would do all my thumbing patterns and stuff. My friend kept saying “Man, that sounds like Béla Fleck!” And I was, like, “Who is Béla Fleck that plays banjo like this?” I wasn’t used to hearing any weird stuff like this on banjo. And so he brought in some New Grass Revival records and I was totally hooked into that music. I loved it. And later on, with the same friend of mine, John, we took a trip to Nashville to visit. And I was staying with my friend Kurt Storey, who actually ended up engineering my record. I was staying with him and he knew Béla. So we called him up on the telephone. And Kurt had told Béla about my brothers and me. So Béla said “Well, hey man, just play something over the phone.” So I just played some stuff over the phone. And he liked it. He said it sounded a lot like a bass banjo because I was using a lot of similar techniques that he used. And that led to Béla and I getting together and having a jam session at his house—just the two of us. And we just hit it off musically and personally.

A few months or about a year after that he called me about doing this television show called the Lonesome Pine Special. They were gonna produce a one-hour show on Béla and he could do whatever he wanted. And he was interested in jazz music and stuff. He had been writing a bunch of weird music. And he asked if I would play bass for this show ’cause he wanted to end the show with a band playing some of his music. And I said “sure.” And he had told me that he knew this harmonica player, this guy who played harmonica and keyboards that he had met up in Winnipeg at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. And he wanted to get him and he wanted to get me and he needed a drummer. And so I told him about my brother. And I was telling him about these experiments my brother was doing with this electronic stuff. So Béla kept asking me questions that I couldn’t answer. [laughs] Eventually, I said “Look, let’s just call him up.” And they ended up talking on the phone for hours—just talkin’ you know. And after just talking, Béla said “Man, this is the guy for the show.” He hadn’t heard him play or seen this instrument or anything. But just talking, he said “Man, this is the guy.” So we got together to do that one show and that was the birth of The Flecktones.

During the last half of “Sinister Minister,” you’ve been known to switch instruments with Fleck and go nuts on the banjo.

Yeah, it’s lots of fun. We have played that song so many times that we were just trying to figure out how to make it interesting for ourselves and we decided to do that. Because so many people have noticed that our techniques are very similar. It’s always fun to hop on another instrument anyway. But the audience also gets such a kick out of it. It’s just a lot of fun doing that. It’s not something we do every night, but we have been doing it quite a bit.

Victor Wooten News

Concert Review: Victor Wooten Trio takes audience on a musical journey (VIDEO)

Source: readingeagle.com

A few current jazz heavyweights flexed their musical muscles on Saturday night in Reading, along with the next generation.

The Victor Wooten Trio blazed through 90 minutes of jaw-dropping dexterity at the Miller Center for the Arts, as part of the 28th Boscov’s Berks Jazz Fest.

Wooten is without a doubt one of the greatest bass players alive, continuing to reinvent what can be done with the instrument. Best known in the jazz world as the bassist in the genre-bending Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, the 53-year-old keeps things a little more grounded in jazz-funk in his side and solo projects, but it’s far from predictable.

“We’re going to take you on a musical journey, a musical trip,” Wooten told the full house after announcing the group was about to perform a song in the off-kilter 10/4 time signature. “So sit back and relax. But buckle your seat belt. It might get bumpy.”

Joining him onstage behind the drum kit was Dennis Chambers, a veteran of the Parliament/Funkadelic collective who has racked up an impressive track record of studio and live work, including stints with Carlos Santana, Steely Dan and a litany of jazz fusion artists. On woodwinds was Bob Franceschini, another popular studio musician whom Wooten called his favorite saxophone player.

The trio interconnected perfectly, Wooten and Franceschini taking leads or locking in to incredibly intricate runs at warp speed, while the deceptively understated Chambers kept everything from flying off into space.

The band is touring in support of its recently released “Trypnotyx,” an album that Wooten informed the crowd could be purchased as a two-record set.

“CDs hold more time; vinyl holds more quality,” Wooten said. “We didn’t want to cut out any songs so we had to put out a double vinyl. You know we live in a day and age where many people don’t even buy records anymore. I remember when I was young I used to get TV for free and I paid for my music. It’s a new day and age.”