Vaylor Trucks: Bonobos Convergence, Frogwings, Cecil Taylor and The Yeti Trio
March 16, 2010
Wanee 2010 Live Oak Florida -Bonobos Convergence
Bonobos Convergence started as drums/keyboard duo, eventually adding you on bass. What were you doing prior to joining Pete Orenstein (Keyboards) and Frank Registrato (drums)? How did you decide on the use of a Chapman Stick as one of your instruments?
That’s right. Pete and Frank had done a few shows as a duo but wanted to add a third player. They had originally wanted to find some kind of instrument which, like the B3, could handle not only solid bass but also comping and improvising, but in the end settled for placing an ad on Craig’s List for a bassist. When I auditioned, I played MIDI guitar and not bass and they hired me based on the fact that I could cover all the parts they needed. With my other trio – The Yeti Trio – I’d had a similar issue to deal with many years before. That is, with drums, keyboards, and guitar how do you fill out the low end, especially when the keyboardist is improvising? I started out by using a Boss Octave pedal, but this limited me to only being able to do bass lines and no comping or improvisation while I was covering the bass role. MIDI guitar was a good solution because it allowed me to patch a bass sound to just the lowest two strings. As a result I developed a style which allowed me to play chords and bass lines simultaneously. The Chapman Stick is the next logical evolution, in that it allows for greater independence between low and high parts – like a keyboard. But handling all this output – two guitar outputs, MIDI, and two Stick outputs – means that my stage rig has to be rather complicated.
What does your current gear consist of?
At the heart of it, I use a Crown DC-300A power amp and a Mackie 1202 mixer. These power a Community CSX-35 15″ two way cabinet for the mid/high instruments and a Hard Truckers 2×15″ bass cabinet for the lows. For signal processing, I use amp modelers for both bass and guitar, and my pedal board has a Big Muff, a Tube Screamer (for gain more than distortion), my Boss Octave, and three pieces of Moog gear: ring modulator, low-pass filter, and MP-201 pedal to control them both.
BC has a phenomenal 5 year presence at Wanee. The “word” is that the festival is actually a Trucks Annual Family Reunion. Can you shed some light on the “Family Affair?” You can go to almost any ABB show where someone will refer to Derek as Butch’s son. There must be a family joke circulating?
The word’s right, but it is not only a Trucks family reunion. The whole idea behind Wanee is to gather together all those bands related to or influenced by the Allman Brothers, so not only are the Trucks family out in full force, but you also get Oteil, Scrapomatic, Devon Allman’s Honeytribe, Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band, and of course Gov’t Mule – and each of us has done multiple Wanee sets.
As for Derek being Butch’s son rather than his nephew, yes that comes up sometimes, but is easy enough to correct. In that same vein, I’ll tell you something amusing. Before John Popper joined Frogwings (my dad’s side project), their singer was Edwin McCain, but after Dawson’s Creek made him a big time star, he moved on to bigger things. Well, at the time, I wore my hair long and had a goatee and the look was very similar to the look Edwin was sporting at the time. Actually, more than just similar: my ex and I went to a Frogwings show in Atlanta and, before they took the stage, I went backstage while she and her friends remained out front. When the band finally did take the stage, my ex saw Edwin and thought to herself “why did Vaylor change his shirt, and where did he get that acoustic guitar?” Now the funny part is, Edwin is adopted! So, he started referring to Butch as “papa”.
In 2006 BC released “Who’s Chuck Fimp” which garnered good reviews from various music magazines. Are there plans for another BC recording?
There are definitely plans, yes. We’ve written enough material for at least two new CDs at this point, but the challenge, as always, is getting either the gear or the money together to make it happen. Things look good for us to record this year – perhaps even this spring.
What are your musical influences and what new artists/bands do you listen to in 2010?
Influences? How far back do you want to go? Obviously being that close to the Allman Brothers and their music was an enormous influence on me – both directly through their recorded and live output, and indirectly through learning about what influenced them – like John Coltrane, Tony Williams Lifetime, Miles Davis, etc. Looking back over the 28+ years I’ve been attempting to play guitar I’d say that the guitarists I keep coming back to over and over are John McLaughlin, Frank Zappa, and Ralph Towner, but there have been so many others which range from Roy Buchanan and Stevie Ray Vaughn early on to Richard Thompson and Fareed Haque more recently with a ton of others between. The music I’ve been playing the most of recently is Mike Keneally’s newest release “Scambot 1”, Jonathan Coulton’s “Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow”, and a collection of some of my avant-garde favorites, such as Cecil Taylor’s “Unit Structures” and Dave Holland’s “Conference of the Birds”.
If you could change one thing in the musical world and it would become a reality, what would that be?
Great question. There’s no doubt that the music business is undergoing some pretty radical changes. It used to be that the technology that was required to record, master, and distribute music was expensive, complicated, and controlled by companies which used this technological gap to exploit artists and control and filter the eventual dissemination of music. But now, with little more than a laptop, anyone has at their disposal everything they need to record and distribute their own music, making the old business model all but obsolete. The problem, as I see it, is two-fold. Nothing like the kind of promotion a record company can generate is available without a record contract, making “getting signed” a priority for many artists who otherwise could have done just fine without it. Also, while artists, especially independent artists, have more control than they’ve ever had over the sale of their recorded output, much of the way that the current distribution system operates is based upon compromises made between record companies and digital distribution outlets, such as iTunes and Amazon, with almost no consideration given to how the artists themselves wish to market and sell their works. So, if I could change one thing? I guess I would say put the means of promotion and distribution into the hands of the artists and eliminate the need for record companies altogether.
The Yeti Trio:
The Yeti Trio started up on 1999 and, aside from me, was Eric Sanders (from Fiji Mariners, Gibb Droll, Fozzy, Stuck Mojo) on drums and Brooks Smith (from The Grapes, Lester’s Farm) on keyboard. The idea I had when I started Yeti was to make completely improvisational music, heavily influenced by early 70’s fusion (Mahavishnu, Lifetime, Return to Forever, etc.) After some time, some patterns started developing in our improvs and complete and complex tunes began to form. In 2002, though, Brooks underwent some medical procedures which required him to stay away from loud music and as a result Yeti went on hiatus, and for 7 years we didn’t play together at all. This past August we were finally able to perform again and we’re hoping to play more frequently soon.