CM If I come bang up to date Victor, I know that you’re midway through the tour – you’re in Sacramento tonight I think?

VW That’s correct yes.

CM And I was looking through the dates that you played and I could help noticing that last Thursday you played Vegas.

VW That’s correct.

CM I was wondering how the Fremont Street crowd there were reacting to such adventurous music.

VW Well, the people that made it into the club loved it. We had a great audience there and it was a wonderful show.

CM Yeah?

VW Yeah – we had a good night.

CM Fantastic! I should, I guess, start with a confession. Your new CD “Palmystery” – I absolutely love this CD – I’ve been playing it a lot – but I’ve got to confess to you that it’s the first of your albums that I’ve heard.

VW Alright – that’s OK.

CM If you were to choose which one I should hear next, which one would you tell me to go and listen to next?

VW Well, they’re all different. Maybe I’d say since you’ve heard my latest one, you could go back and hear my first one, which is called ‘A Show of Hands’ and that’s a strictly solo bass record. No overdubs, no other instruments as such. Just solo bass.

CM Well, that’s what I’m gonna do then.

VW All right!

CM Because I’m certainly loving the new CD and I’m loving all the technique that’s on there. The things that are really sticking out in my mind are the lyrics to ‘I Saw God’ and there’s one line in the song ‘Sifu’ which just haunts me and that’s the line “doesn’t mean one of us is wrong”.

VW (laughs) yeah…

CM Yeah, what’s the story behind that song – what does ‘Sifu’ mean?

VW ‘Sifu’ is a Chinese word for teacher.

CM OK.

VW Yeah, and that gentleman who was speaking is a martial arts teacher and that was one of the quotes he would say a lot of the time – I knew him when I was younger. He would say “you wear that shirt – I’ll wear this shirt. It doesn’t mean that one of us is wrong”. And I’ve always liked that quote, that’s why I put it in the song.

CM It’s really haunting in fact because you’ve managed to get that sound of his voice so that the beat comes right down on top of it.

VW Yeah, that just happened by coincidence, so it was perfect.

CM Right, because I know that you’ve done some work where you’ve taken sound clips and kind of cut them up with your music and the result of that has really surprised people.

VW Thank you – well I didn’t have to change that voice, sifu’s voice at all – it just happened to fit perfectly.

CM That’s fantastic. Now the other song that I can’t stop singing and it really doesn’t leave my head is ‘I Saw God’. And the more listen to it, the more I think it’s a song maybe that’s written for children or children would love it.

VW Yes, children would definitely love it – but I would say it’s adults that need to hear it (laughs).

CM I guess that’s the truth.

VW Children do love the song.

CM That song absolutely follows me round – I just can’t stop singin’ it.

VW Wonderful, good, good.

CM Your website, I think anybody would agree, gives a really good insight into who you are and the kind of things that you’re setting out to do. One thing that’s very noticeable on there is your ‘Bass and Nature’ camp. What started that Victor, what kinda motivated that?

VW Well, in the early 90’s I started studying from a man named Tom Brown Jr. And I started learning ways of living off the land, the way all of our ancestors used to do.

And he called nature tracking and awareness but I was hearing it as music. You know, because it was very musical to me, so I realised through learning from him that the way most of us learn music is backwards, it’s just totally backwards.

Because most of us when we’re playing music, or whatever it is we want to do very well, whether doing an interview, driving a car, playing sports whatever, we want to be natural at it. We want to do things naturally. You know, I pick up my bass – I don’t want to work too hard, I don’t want to over-concentrate, I just want it to be natural.

And I realised that the word natural means ‘to be like nature’. So, in our quest to be natural, we’re trying to really be like nature. And so, I wonder why musicians do the exact opposite. We close ourselves off into a room and we tell ourselves that “the more time I spend in that room practising, the more I’m gonna be like nature”. And that’s as backwards as it comes.

So I started asking “what if we made nature the classroom and nature the teacher? What if we follow nature’s example?”

CM Yeah, I like that.

VW And a bunch of things opened up for me… as well as confirmed a lot of things. Because when we learn to speak English or whatever your first language is, you learn it naturally and you learn it in a couple of years – from birth. You can improvise at 2 and 3 years old, you can jam with the professionals, but when it comes to music it takes 10 – 20 years. And if they’re both languages, it means one of the processes is taking a long time and the other one works quickly.

So I look at that process and I’ve been able to help other people speed up the time it takes to get good on their instrument.

CM Because it’s too easy to fall by the wayside and hear techniques like the kind of thing someone might hear on your album and say “I’m never going to achieve that – I’m never gonna get to that standard”.

VW Well, that’s the thing – if you’re listening for techniques you’re in the wrong place anyway. I mean when people talk, you don’t listen to the technique. It’s what they have to say – that’s what’s important.

And music should be the same way. When I listen to BB King – if we take any of our really favourite music, I mean music that’s lasted for generations, decades, we’re gonna think of a few people – BB King, maybe the Beatles, Elvis, Ray Charles, James Brown…

CM Stevie Wonder…

VW Stevie Wonder, and none of these musicians do you think about their technique. It has nothing to do with their technique – their music says something.

CM It just hits you, doesn’t it?

VW Right! And that’s why we’ll listen for ever! So, we even have to change how we listen to music, because a lot of people are just listening for techniques and things like that.

CM It’s tempting to do it but it’s not satisfying in the long term is it? And I guess you’re really confirming what I’m trying to tell you about listening to the album. All of the technique’s there – and I’m dazzled by it – but in the midst of it there’s something really quite simple which, you know, I can walk around in the street with no MP3 player and I’m still singing the song.

VW (laughs) great! And that’s why kids will gravitate towards songs that are simple and easy to sing. Which is why ‘I Saw God’ is a very simple song, easier to sing. Kids do love it, yes.

CM Victor, also on your website I saw a quote that I loved by Martha Graham, when she’s talking about vitality and life-force and the one chance that you might have to express that. I found that very inspiring and that’s sort of an inspiration to pick up the bass or the pen and it’s almost like an obligation: if you can do something, then you have to do it.

VW Yeah, yeah and you definitely should, because when are you going to get another chance, you know? But the only thing is that life, and society I should say, makes it hard to really go for your dreams, because the consequences are too hard if you fail.

The world, society rather, doesn’t really support individuality. In music, if you have a hit they want you to have another one just like it. Politicians aren’t allowed to change their mind – whatever they thought 20 years ago they still have to think today or they’re called a ‘flip-flop’ or whatever.

Society doesn’t really support change. Or individuality. You know, we’ll preach it one-on-one but it really doesn’t support it.

So, you know, to get out there and really live your dreams – man that’s too hard. I gotta pay my bills and put food on the table…

CM Exactly…

VW Who’s got time to live dreams? You have to really be daring to go out and live your dreams, but again everyone says to do it. But society doesn’t really support it.

CM No. It is inspiring when you see people do it but it feels like a leap of faith to try and do that kind of thing for yourself.

VW Right, exactly. And that kind of thinking should start from grade school. From kindergarten you should be taught how to fulfil your dreams. You should be given encouragement to do so because that’s what really drives society forward.

If you think about inventors and people that lead the way, you know Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan. Can you imagine, this little black kid on a golf course? I’m sure all his friends playing basketball were laughin’ at him.

Even the fact that we have electricity was because some silly kid was out flying a kite in a thunderstorm. You know, you have to go out on a limb in order for society to move forward.

CM I definitely hear that.

VW So the fact that we don’t embrace it doesn’t make sense to me.

CM While we’re on the topic of inspiration then Victor, before I catch up with more of your music I’ve already ordered my copy of your book ‘The Music Lesson’…

VW Oh cool.

CM … and I wondered whether that book was aimed at your fans, music fans generally or people just looking for something a little inspirational.

VW Right – the latter – it’s definitely geared towards everyone, which is why I wrote it as a story. If I’d done it as a music instruction book, non-musicians would never read it. But done as a story, other people that don’t even play music might read it and become inspired.

And that’s my hope.

CM I’ve heard some really good things about it and when I heard the album I’d already made up my mind that I would go out and look for it, so I can’t really wait to read that.

VW I hope you enjoy it.

CM I’m sure. Can I just skip maybe backwards a little in time Victor?

VW Sure.

CM I have this vague awareness of your involvement in writing some music for movies and I wanted to ask you how you got started in that.

VW Well, I haven’t written any movie music yet – that’s my next task. That’s the next avenue I want to go down. My song ‘I Saw God’ was just put into a movie called ‘ The Moses Code’ and that just kinda almost happened by accident. The guy doing that movie heard that song and decided to put it in there, but I haven’t done any music scoring yet. I’d like to.

CM When do you think that’s gonna happen?

VW Well, soon. I think over the next few years I’m going end up doing a little. Either a movie short or an independent movie – something like that.

CM I’m looking ahead again a little way and I’ve had the very great pleasure in the last two weeks to speak with both Marcus Miller and Stanley Clarke.

VW Oh great! Two of my heroes.

CM Yeah – two of mine, without a doubt. And they both hinted that we can expect an album from the three of you before too long…

VW Very, very true. We’re in the middle of working on that right now and we already have some tour dates lined up, starting in the middle of August, all the way to the end of October.

CM OK… all I could get from Stanley about the kind of material that was on there, he spoke about one song by Marcus called ‘Milan’ and he said that that was a really beautiful song.

VW Yes. It’s going to be a variety of things. You know, Stanley will get to play acoustic bass, electric you know. But it’s going to satisfy the musicians. A lot of playing of course that bass fans are gonna want, but the main thing is like Stanley said, the record is very musical. So you won’t have to be a bass player to enjoy it.

CM He said one thing that made me smile – he said there are moments on the album where the music’s so funky it’s embarrassing (laughs)

VW (laughs) that’s a good way to put it.

CM He really whet my appetite right there ‘cos that’s really my kind of thing.

VW Yeah that’s great – I can’t say it any better than that.

CM Now I know that you’re a family man, and you have your book that you’ve written, you have a solo CD out, you have the collaboration I mentioned and the touring that’s coming up.

How do you keep the energy levels up for this amount of work, this amount of different things you do?

VW Well, there’s a few key elements. One, I know how to get rest even when there’s no real time for it. Even in the car ride to this restaurant that I’m at right now, I know how to set my mind down a bit, to let my mind rest. Because a lot of people know how to rest their body but not many people know how to rest their minds. Fortunately I do and that’s a really, really good thing to know how to do.

The other thing is that I surround myself with good people: my wife’s taking care of my home life and our kids, my manager’s taking care of my music life, my tour manager’s taking care of my life on the road. So I’m surrounded by a lot of good people that make everything much easier.

CM And you really need that.

VW Oh yeah, definitely.

CM One of the things that keeps coming out, every time I’ve read about your career so far, Nashville seems to have a central importance there, it seems like it’s a very musical city that just draws talent to it. Is there some sort of special vibe there that just attracts talent?

VW I believe so, because from the outside all you hear about is country music but when you finally get here and you realise it’s not, it’s eye-opening.

Some of the world’s greatest musicians of all genres live there. And the other cool thing is that a lot of musicians go to New York or L.A. to thrive musically and those are hard places to survive. So you get to Nashville and people are friendly, the cost is down, it’s safe and it’s like “wow, this is a great place to live”. And so a lot of people migrate to Nashville and stay there.

CM Yeah, from the outside – from England that’s way outside – but it seems like a very relaxed place and almost like America as it was 20 years ago or like a lot of people wish it still was…

VW Yeah, mentality-wise a lot of it is. You go into a store and they say “hello”. People are talking to each other, so it’s very nice that way. It is building up – we got a skyline downtown, we got a football team, a huge stadium so it is building up but it’s not too big of a city or too small.

CM It sounds beautiful – I’d love to go.

VW Yeah, I love it!

CM My last question for you is whether there’s anyone you didn’t have the chance to work with yet that you would really like to work with?

VW That’s a long list. Many, many people. Some of ‘em it’s gonna be hard – people like Miles Davis. Jaco, I never got to meet or see him play. But there’s people still around today. I’m finally living the dream of working with Stanley and Marcus – that’s been a long time one. I’d still like to do some work with the bass player Larry Graham…

CM Yes!

VW ..so hopefully that’ll happen one day. But there are other guitar players too like Allan Holdsworth, Steve Vai, Eddy Van Halen – I love those guys. So I could really name a whole bunch of people.

CM Their styles would work well, I think, with the way that you play…

VW I believe so, because I can change the way I play.. You know, music is broad, music is big. And I want to learn all of it – as much as I can.

CM And the latest CD is a surprise to me because I put it on expecting to describe it as a jazz album and it’s not really.

VW No, no it’s not.
When I look at most people’s musical collection, it’s diverse. But the business wants all of our records to be non-diverse. If it’s a jazz record, they want it to all be jazz. If it’s an R&B record then it should all be R&B. And I just don’t believe it that way so I make the records that I want to make, which attracts an audience that is acceptable to that. And I’m not selling millions of records but I have true fans, that like me for who I am.

So I’m going to keep my records diverse.

CM Well, Victor, you have another fan.

VW I appreciate that – thank you.

CM It’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you – I know how busy you are. And I thank you for the time that you’ve given me today and I want to wish you all the best with the touring and recording projects through to the end of this year.

VW Thank you very much! I hope I get to meet you when we come over there.

CM I would really love to see you live, because once I’ve heard some more recordings and read the book, that’s the piece of the puzzle that’s missing.

VW Great man – I hope I get to see you over there.

CM I really would love that, but in the meantime thank you again and I wish you every success with all your projects this year Victor.

VW I really appreciate that. Thank you very much.