Producer Profile: Kelvin Wooten – Making Hits and Multitasking

Kelvin Wooten is clearly comfortable wherever he is – the confidence of creating hits while remaining grounded will have that effect.

Kelvin Wooten is well on his way. (Photo Credit: Dokk Savage)

The Grammy-nominated producer, engineer and multi-instrumentalist is particularly well-situated this Christmas season, with the timely release of elite R&B artist Anthony Hamilton’s Home for the Holidays. Hamilton’s magical voice is the centerpiece of this 13-track release, but he’s also got plenty of good company on hand, including Gavin Degraw and Chaka Khan.

Hamilton calls Wooten his “musical soulmate”, and he’s not the only one who values his contributions in the studio. Wooten’s past collaborations include the likes of Mary J. Blige, Earth Wind & Fire, and Musiq Soulchild, and he also co-wrote and produced the song “Freedom” which was heard in Quentin Tarantino’s Academy Award-winning Django Unchained.

A multi-instrumentalist who first made his mark with the tuba (you read that right), Wooten runs a studio and label – both dubbed WoodaWorx – out of his Huntsville, AL, home base. Between recording platinum artists like Hamilton, developing exciting new voices like Deqn Sue, honing his Maschine chops, and ALWAYS serving the music, Wooten is a study on how to keep moving forward on all fronts.

Producing R&B seems to be a balance of classic and adventurous elements. Would you agree? How is your approach to the genre evolving?

The traditional side of R&B has always resonated with me – I grew up in that era. When I started producing music in the 90s, R&B was using a lot of digital and MIDI. Then that was me trying to emulate what was going on in classic R&B, because that’s what I’d heard from my dad, who was a DJ.

My approach is trying to do that type of R&B with the tools we have today, which obviously makes it a lot easier. If you think of every musical element, those elements exist today in some form, emulating what was there before.

I’m an engineer and a producer, running my own studio. If I mic an amp, and the guitarist leaves with his amp, the next time he comes back it will be a totally different sound. I’d rather use a plugin, master that plug-in and get the same sound the next time.

Tell me about this Christmas album you’re doing with Anthony Hamilton – how do you make it something different, but still in line with people’s expectations for the season?

It was a challenge trying to do this project, because we did in the spring and the summertime! Now we’re finally at the holiday season, but you have to have it ready in advance for the market.

Like we’ve done for all of the records we collaborate on, for the holiday album we wanted to record an album that we like to make. So the approach was to make an album like (2005’s) Ain’t Nobody Worryin’ or (2011’s) Back to Love. There’s a uniqueness.

Home for the Holidays is a mix of covers, and some originals. We have a cover of “The Christmas Song” with Chaka Khan, which I produced, and an original song we did with Gavin DeGraw, “Home for the Holidays.”

Anthony calls you “His musical soulmate”. That’s a nice compliment – I’m assuming the feeling is mutual on some level. What do musical soulmates get to accomplish that is extra-satisfying and creative?

When we work, it’s not a lot of talking. Instead, it’s a lot of non-verbal communication to get the music done. I can look at him and know, “He’s digging this.”

Time can tell you how he likes his vocals to sound, and things of that nature, but when you’re crafting music and just the chemistry of writing the song, where you connect is something you don’t have to talk about. We just go. There’s a benefit of not having to talk about it. It’s very stream-of-consciousness for him and me, and coming together to one point is very cool. It’s definitely mutual.

I like to connect like that with all of the artists that I write with. Once you know that can happen, you say, “I can do this with everybody.” It comes with knowing who the person is outside of creating – understanding their interests and who they are. Once you know that, it can happen with anybody. And 99% of the time it happens with Anthony.

Anthony Hamilton (foreground) and Wooten at home in WoodaWorx. (Photo Credit: Daniel Beard)

You’ve worked with a lot of the biggest hitmakers out there: Earth, Wind & Fire, Mary J. Blige, Al Green, The Bee Gees, Anthony Hamilton, Nappy Roots, Jill Scott, Macy Gray, the Isley Brothers, Tony Toni Tone and TLC. What’s the common thread you’ve seen between them, that makes them successful artists?

They absolutely love the music that they do – it makes them so much easier to work with, when they are so passionate about the music. It’s not just a career for them. At the height of their success, there’s so much that comes with being a great musician and artist, but when they’re in the studio they are passionate about it.

You’ve established your own studio in Huntsville, AL, Woodaworx. How is that studio set up to maximize your creativity and workflow?

(laughs) if you can imagine when I first started doing music in my parent’s house, I sat Indian-style with my eight-track cassette recorder, my Yamaha SY85, and an MPC 3000, and some headphones, just going day and night.

My studio today is almost the same way. I’m not sitting Indian-style, by have a chair where everything is around the site can produce, cut my instruments, my vocals, my virtual tracks, and I don’t have to move. It just surrounds me.

I’ve had several studios set up prior to the one I have now, and I said, “what is it that made me so creative?” When you’re creating music, you want to be able to reach out and touch what you need. When you have to get up and walk somewhere to pick up the bass or guitar, or pick up the cable and plug it in, that’s the one thing that might distract you. We musicians have ADD really bad!

Pro Tools is my main DAW, but I’ll work on anything. I have and use Logic, Maschine, Reason, and all that stuff, but I always wind up using Pro Tools.

I’m talking to more and more producers who are using Maschine. What do you like about it?

Maschine makes sense to Wooten. (Photo Credit: Dokk Savage)

I like its workflow. They have the MPC-style sequencing, with just the added boost of all the virtual instruments and effects in the style of Kontakt. It’s all right there.

It’s definitely changed the way I’ve approached writing songs. Whereas I used to get a keyboard and start in Pro Tools, I start in Maschine now, building the basic structure of the song. It’s the first thing in the process.

Why stay based out of Hunstville? Is it a challenge or an opportunity to work out of a place that’s not known as a musical center?

It’s for all the other things that aren’t music for me, but that highly inspires the music that I make.

I tend to be that way with what I do, just be a purist. When I’m doing hip-hop for example, I tend to love the purest aspect of hip-hop.

I think that there’s something about this area. Huntsville is growing rapidly. Not in the sense of its musicality, but because of space exploration since NASA’s here, which is what brought me here – my dad started working for NASA in the 1970’s.

Huntsville haven’t evolved so much musically, and I’m inspired by its not evolving. People don’t know what’s going on a whole lot in the musical aspect. In restaurants, people don’t have a clue of who I am and what I do. When it’s time to do that — rub elbows, and be that person — I’ll go to LA. But here I can just be who I was before all of that, just making the music that I like.

Anthony comes here all the time. It’s an opportunity for the artist to get away from that too, and strictly focus on the music. It’s a way different pace, a way slower pace. The air is clean, we can breathe, and enjoy the hospitality of good old Southern folks. We’re not making music for these people, but they’re real people that are concerned about us, regardless if we’re musicians or not.

Why is being a multi-instrumentalist so important to you? Why is it more important than ever?

It’s helpful because if people want that evolution of my sound, then I can do it. Keyboards and tuba are my main instruments, but I like to play the guitar and I like to play some drums too.

The things I don’t know how to do on guitar and drums actually lends itself to the minimalist thing which happens in a lot of music today. When I hear “Happy” by Pharrell Williams I can hear how he’s not the best drummer, kind of loose like Stevie Wonder. Stevie was a good drummer, but if you change the drums on “Superstition” it’s a whole other song. We all know it. It’s just important to the sound that we hear.

I just did an album on my own label/production company, where I develop and release my own artists. For Deqn Sue I played nearly 100% of the things on the album, all 14 tracks. That was a first for me. I love that album so much – it’s so freakin’ different! All of the quirkiness, all the imperfections of me being a musician come to the surface. I got to do all that on this album, which is named Zeitgeist, and it’s a lot of fun.

You earned a tuba scholarship to Alabama A&M. What’s something you learned from the tuba that helps you out in your productions today?

Just reading music – playing tuba put me on the path of reading music, which led me on the path to theory, and understanding the structure of music and chords. Had I not done that, there would have been a lot that I missed – all of the musical things that are not just me programming.

This way if I’m in on a session, and they throw a chart up in front of me, I’m not like, “What the hell is this?” Instead I can say, “What measure is this? What key, what time signature?” I’m there with the rest of the session members – I’m not just totally lost.

Collaborating with Deqn Sue (Photo Credit: Daniel Beard)

You finish off your bio by saying, “Producing is like being a coach and all the players are the musicians.” Which sports coaches in particular do you draw inspiration from?

One is Bear Bryant, the legendary coach for Alabama, and another is Pat Riley from the Lakers when he coached the dream team in the Olympics. It makes me think how you can have a roster of great people, but that doesn’t necessarily make it work – you need the right coach.

I’ve been one of the musicians that was part of what should been a great session, but there was no producer, and it was just a mess. We all played our parts, but there was no cohesion. I like doing sessions where there are lots of musicians involved, and there’s someone who can say, “This is where we’re going.” Then we all listen back and its unanimous, “Wow! We sound great!” I like being in that position, just putting it together.

Here’s a chance to get something across to up-and-coming producers and engineers – what would you like to say to them?

I sound like a broken record, because I say this everywhere: With all the technological advancements in making music, be a student of music. Don’t let all these tools we use to make music be crutches.

Instead learn how to be a musician, and let all these tools guide you in making the music. I love Maschine, Pro Tools, Logic, Reason, but those are just tools for me. Musicality should always be present.

— David Weiss

Please note: When you buy products through links on this page, we may earn an affiliate commission.