One of the world’s all-time great bass players is coming to Bend. Victor Wooten and the Wooten Brothers will play at the Volcanic Theatre Pub on May 10. I spoke with five-time Grammy award winner Victor Wooten and Wooten brothers Regi, Roy, and Joseph about six decades of making music together, how George Clinton and Bootsy Collins are staying busy, and what a two-year-old on a bass guitar sounds like.
Source Weekly: Have you guys played in Bend before?
Victor Wooten: I’ve been to Bend a few times over the decades, but I don’t think I’ve played there.
SW: It’s grown a lot in the last decades. We’re over 100,000 now.
VW: Wow.
SW: We’re a real city now, but still super outdoorsy. Speaking of, I want to ask Victor about his summer camp, the Victor Wooten Center for Music and Nature. This is the 26th year, right?
VW: Very true. 26, yeah.
SW: So, a summer camp open to all kids?
VW: Ages 15-99. I’m 60 and we get quite a few people that are older. But our main thing is that if you have a desire to get better, we can help you. And we’re lucky that we’re connected to the world’s greatest musicians, and they agreed to come and share with us.
SW: Is the camp bass-centric?
VW: We do all different types of camps for all different types of subjects and styles. It doesn’t matter what instrument you play; we know we can help you play it better.
SW: And are you immersed in nature?
VW: Absolutely. My wife and I have 150 acres on the Duck River, just a little west of Nashville. We built a retreat center and it’s all inclusive. We eat there and live there. We’re able to get a lot done. I want to make sure people get their instruments out of their hands, because if you have no life, your music isn’t about anything.
SW: Because life isn’t just about one thing.
VW: Exactly. We don’t write songs about music; we write songs about life. People who only stay in the practice room, it can cause your music to be a little shallow.
SW: Victor, during the pandemic, you took the bass out of your hands and focused on your family. Can you talk about that?
VW: It was really nice just to be home with my wife. I got to be there without having to look at the calendar every day and say, ‘when I am leaving again?’ I loved it.
SW: There are five Wooten brothers, right?
Roy: There were.
SW: Sorry, yes. Where did the musical influence start? When did Victor, the youngest, start playing?
Roy: Me, Regie, and Rudy would just play, and Vic would play along with us. He wasn’t really hitting particular notes yet. But when he turned three, Reg started showing him where the notes were. So, at two, he was just playing along in the band, just jamming, man.
SW: When did the conversation happen where Victor would be the face of the band?
Regie: When we started playing nightclubs every weekend in 1972. They would see an eight-year-old playing base, he was the feature.
Roy: And Regie would set him up to solo.
Regie: Everyone was set up to succeed. It wasn’t competitive. It was inspiring. Everybody gets better, and you want to make sure you get better, so you don’t drag things down.
VW: Regie would give me these routines that would make me stand out. And he still gives me things to do that will make me stand out. But the whole thing about Victor Wooten and the Wooten Brothers, a lot of promoters know my name, so that’s why we’re the name we are. If I had my way, we’re going to get rid of that. The Wooten Brothers. As soon as the new record comes out, boy. It’s all five of us. It’s not like one of us is out front. We’re all out front at different times of the show.
SW: Are you working on a new album now?
VW: Oh, yeah. It’s almost done. It’s the first album we’ve done in over 40 years.
SW: Any collaboration with Bootsy Collins or anyone on the new album?
VW: You must be psychic. We already got Bootsy and George Clinton on a track. We got Take Six on a track. So, yeah, there will be some collaborations, absolutely.
SW: Are you playing any new songs on this tour?
VW: We’ll sprinkle some in. And let me tell you a story about how we found some music. This guy reached out to me, he had been to my house, sent by Don Kirshner back in the 70’s for “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert,” and he had a demo tape, and this led to us finding some reels of tape in our parent’s storage that was a gold mine’s worth of music from the five of us in the 70’s. Half of the songs will be us playing currently with our old selves 50 years ago.
Roy: I’m not sure any band has collaborated with themselves.
SW: Victor, how do you feel about current talent with the bass guitar?
VW: The bass is in good hands. The talent level had risen, tremendously. But we need to make sure that the young bass players remember how to fulfill the role of the bass. Not just play the instrument, but to know what the role is—the support, the foundation of the music. You have to remember that the main job is to play the whole notes and the half notes and support the John Coltranes. A lot of people are learning in reverse. Nobody is going to hire you just to play the solo. But I feel good about the direction of the instrument.
This article appears in Source Weekly May 8, 2025.
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Learning the Bass and would have loved to see this! I was in Seattle and could not make it, unfortunately.