Casey Driessen announces the second video from Fiddle/Sticks featuring Roy “Futureman” Wooten, the follow-up to the premiere session with country music drummer Kenny Malone. Fiddle/Sticks is a collaborative exploration of rhythm which pairs GRAMMY nominated fiddler Casey Driessen – the leading voice in percussive fiddle/violin technique (AKA The Chop) – with a list of the landmark drummers and percussionists of our time. Cutting across all genres and traditions, the project documents these rhythmic explorations through recordings, videos, photos and journals.
Roy “Futureman” Wooten is a five time GRAMMY Award-winning percussionist, and founding member of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. The inventor of the Drumitar and the RoyEl, he has reached unprecedented heights within the possibilities of percussion and composition. Whether playing traditional drums with a jazz combo, conducting his own symphony, or performing with the Flecktones, Futureman continues to reinvent and fascinate audiences and peers alike with each recent development in his mysterious world of creation.
There is a true kinship between Casey and Futureman: two musicians who found a great love for an instrument, but also an insatiable need for creativity and innovation. Over two days in the fall of 2012 Casey and Futureman jammed, listened, and talked. What unfolds are warm, otherworldly musical collaborations, and moments when the fiddle truly becomes a percussion instrument: when Futureman plays the RoyEl (a melodic MIDI controlled instrument with guitar picks for keys and the sound of a piano), Casey must become the pulse.
Futureman talks about growing up with a musical family, opening for Curtis Mayfield with his brothers as kids, playing on boxes, the history of his name, and receiving a call from celebrated jazz drummer Max Roach. The session ends with Casey and Futureman sitting across from each other, 3 miked fiddles in the middle, inside of a recording space known as the Infinity Room. Futureman plays a loose and funky melody on Casey’s fiddles with bamboo sticks, while Casey holds down the rhythm. With no corners for sound to bounce, both musicians play to each other, but also to the epic reverb that the room creates.
Fiddler Casey Driessen is a bold genre crosser who listens for inspiration from Tennessee to Tibet. A GRAMMY nominee, Casey regularly tours as a solo performer & with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. He has released two albums and his new fiddle/percussion video project, Fiddle/Sticks, successfully raised $15,000 via Kickstarter in June 2012.
