The funk gods smiled Tuesday night as Nashville, Tenn.'s, Victor Wooten and his two-piece band turned in a roof-raising performance of highly danceable rhythms.
Wooten, a three-time Grammy winner who moonlights as bassist for Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, never met a groove he didn't like. At The Granada show, he bounded the stage sporting a huge grin, popping and slapping his bass like a man possessed.
Alternating between four- and five-stringed instruments, Wooten and his band (guitarist-brother Reggie Wooten and drummer J.D. Blair) put on an old-school funk exhibition that was as entertaining as it was educational.
Ranging from unadorned thumping grooves to spaced-out jazzy excursions, the songs paved the way for extended jams galore. A cover of the Ohio Players' knee-deep classic, "Fire," was only a warm-up as the group locked in to heavier and heavier tracks.
At the epicenter was Wooten, displaying boundless good vibes, nimble fretwork and more chops than a meat market. The sparse sound of the Wooten trio was augmented at various times by hornmen Fred Wesley, Karl Denson and Preacher, an upstart trumpeter for Elvin Jones who wowed the audience with his dexterous hyperkinetic style.
The grand finale had all musicians front and center, delivering grooves aplenty and nearly bringing the house down with their raucous cacophony. The crowd, consisting of a few hundred enthusiastic onlookers, danced and cheered for nearly two hours, clearly loving every funk-filled minute. For them, Wooten's joyful performance turned an otherwise ordinary Tuesday into a musical event.
-- Geoff Harkness is a part-time music writer for The Journal-World.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.