Medeski Martin & Wood

Bio:

Wide open: That’s the phrase John Medeski uses to describe his bandmates’ musical sensibilities, the attitude he seeks in himself, and the spirit of musical adventure that Medeski Martin & Wood have pursued for two decades.

The trio’s amalgam of jazz, funk, “avant-noise” and a million other musical currents and impulses is nearly impossible to classify, which is just how they like it. Medeski’s keyboard excursions, Chris Wood’s hard-charging bass lines and Billy Martin’s supple, danceable beats have come to resemble a single organism, moving gracefully between genre-defying compositions and expansive improvisation atop a relentless groove.

The trio first collaborated in Brooklyn in 1991. Though they started out with a more-or-less straightforward piano-bass-drums jazz setup, the threesome expanded their sound with unusual configurations. Medeski added electric piano (outfitted with distortion pedals and other effects), and began switching back and forth among Hammond organ, Clavinet, Mellotron and other keys. Wood alternated between stand-up and bass guitar, stuck paper behind his strings for a “snare” effect and occasionally employed a drumstick as a slide. Martin, who enjoys, in his words, “the whole pots and pans approach,” began keeping an international assortment of percussion instruments in his battery, as well as objects for banging that are not typically considered musical. “You need to be in touch with that feeling you had as a child when you listened to sound,” Medeski insists. “Everything going on around you is music. When you’re in touch with that, you can play from that deep place more easily – you can create music with real freedom and openness.”

Though the “jazz spirit,” as they like to call it, has been ever-present in their sonic voyages, Medeski Martin & Wood have won over a substantial audience that rarely responds to instrumental music, let alone a guitar-less trinity purveying an unholy blend of Jimmy Smith, György Ligeti and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. In fact, their club and festival appearances are packed with alternative-rock lovers as well as jam-band aficionados and jazz heads. “I blame Billy for that,” Medeski muses, hazarding that the drummer’s body-moving beats tend to disarm even the most pop-minded listeners. “Once they feel the groove he’s playing, I can get in there and infect their minds much more easily – and Chris can lay it down to keep them from losing it.”

The band’s onstage adventurousness sparked an experimental approach to recording as well – as on 1996’s solar-powered Shack-Man, recorded in a plywood shack amid the mango trees and plumerias on Hawaii’s big island (and featuring Martin’s artwork on its cover); the funked-out 1998 Blue Note disc Combustication, which enlisted two radically different engineers to create complementary sonic approaches; the acoustic live set Tonic (2000), recorded in New York, and its plugged-in twin, 2001’s Electric Tonic; 2004’s End of the World Party (Just in Case), produced by John King of the Dust Brothers; their two collaborations with guitarist John Scofield, A Go Go (1998) and Out Louder (2006, under the name Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood); the 2008 children’s record Let’s Go Everywhere; and the 2008-09 Radiolarian series, a trilogy of albums generated according to a strict policy of “Write > Tour > Record > Repeat,” as the band noted in an online announcement. They’ve also founded and run their own label, Indirecto.

The band members have also kept things fresh by pursuing scores of other projects. Medeski produced two albums by the Wood Brothers, Chris Wood’s rootsy partnership with his brother, Oliver, as well as work by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band; has played with a dazzling array of artists, including The Word with Robert Randolph, Ray LaMontagne, The Blind Boys of Alabama, John Zorn, Trey Anastasio, Susana Baca and the rock band Grizzly Adamz; fronted his own band, John Medeski & The Itch; and performed as a solo pianist. He and Martin have also performed and recorded as the duo Mago. Martin, for his part, has recorded several solo discs and an album of breakbeats (under his own name and as Illy B), collaborated with DJ Logic, DJ Spooky, Dave Burrell and other artists, authored a book, pursued his own visual art, and produced and directed Fly in a Bottle, a feature-length documentary film about the making of the Radiolarian series. The Wood Brothers have released three LPs and an EP of cover songs and toured with the likes of Zac Brown Band, Levon Helm, Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers and k.d, Lang.

The three also conduct a yearly musical retreat, Camp MMW, in the Catskills; with music classes, seminars, films, guest teachers and jam sessions, the August gathering encourages promising musicians of all stripes to get out of their comfort zones.

Their reflections on having reached the extraordinary milestone of playing together for some 20 years? “We’re old motherfuckers, man,” Medeski replies with a laugh, adding, “We’re in a really good place. We’ve been writing a lot of new music. We always want to create a certain vibration in the evening – if we’re doing something new and feeling the excitement, that’ll do it.”

For more information about Medeski Martin & Wood, visit www.mmw.net.