The dwindling avant-garde and glitzy entertainment worlds are such uneasy partners, it’s hard to believe they could spawn the widely popular experimental-jazz outfit Medeski, Martin & Wood. But there they are, poised between the overlapping traditions of loft jazz and the kind of deep, alpha-wave-inducing grooves that have endeared the trio to the vast jam-band crowd. Medeski, Martin & Wood’s vitality is based on an improvisatory desire that’s led them to flavor their jazz foundation with a variety of contemporary and traditional musical sub-currents, from blues to hip-hop to international folk styles including Afro-Cuban, Brazilian and West African.
“We have kind of attracted the fringe of a lot of different audiences, and I suppose the reason for that is we continue to do what we do, which is just honestly trying to make good, relevant music that’s creative,” says bassist Chris Wood.
Keys player John Medeski met Wood when both supported the master percussionist Bob Moses on a tour of Israel in 1991. The two hit it off so well, they decided to move to New York City together. Both had attended the New England Conservatory of Music, where they studied under Moses, several years apart. Interestingly, drummer Billy Martin also had encountered Moses in New York in the early ’80s; Moses became one of Martin’s first mentors.
Jazz was thriving at the time on Manhattan’s downtown “Knitting Factory” scene, propelled by such experimental artists as John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards (featuring Martin on drums), extreme-noise saxophonist John Zorn, producer/musician Bill Frisell and frequent MMW collaborator, guitarist Marc Ribot.
“It was great. The East Village and all the clubs were within walking distance. Everyone was playing in each other’s bands and eating at restaurants together. “Everyone lived near each other — the whole scene was really concentrated,” Wood recalls. “It was very mutually supportive and different than traditional jazz, which is more elitist. I think that’s part of why we were attracted to it.”
Moses recommended Martin to Medeski and Wood, and the three began working together in Martin’s loft. In 1992, they self-released their debut, Notes from the Underground. There was no overarching approach to those first sessions, just three musicians in the moment.
“We just knew we had a lot of fun playing together. We weren’t really going for one style or another. We would just improvise and write together and see what came out,” Wood says. “It was just a natural combination of groove influenced by the avant elements of the downtown scene, and it all kind of melded together.”
For a dozen years, the trio has explored a variety of sounds, and made it fashionable for bands to play with DJs. (Beginning in 1996, DJ Logic served as MMW’s unofficial fourth member.) The group recorded a couple of albums (including 2000’s gritty The Dropper) with hip-hop producer Scott Harding (Wu-Tang Clan, P.M. Dawn), and built its own studio in Brooklyn. While the trio’s record company — legendary jazz label Blue Note — has been good to them, Medeski, Martin and Wood are ready to release albums on their own again.
“We’re at a point right now in our careers, and just creatively, that we’re ready to do a lot of different things,” Wood says. “When you have a record deal and can only release one record every year-and-a-half, you don’t have enough output to appeal to all those different kinds of tastes that people have. But now that we’re out of our contract, we’re really excited to put out more music and very different things. We can make a really grooving record, we can make a real avant-garde record, we can make an acoustic trio record, whatever.”
Medeski, Martin & Wood haven’t had time to fully formulate their plan, but they’ve already started looking at studio dates and recruiting guests. A sturdy road draw, the trio never had to rely on album sales, yet it’s different when the money comes out-of-pocket, up front.
“It’s exciting, but it’s also scary. We’ve really wanted to do this for a long time,” Wood says. “It’s a way to bring it back home and get back to our do-it-yourself mode, how we started out.”
Medeski, Martin & Wood play the Neighborhood Theatre, Friday, Dec. 9, at 9:00pm. Tickets are $20.00 in advance and $22.00 DOS. Call 704-358-9298 or visit www.neighborhoodtheatre.com for info.
This article appears in Dec 7-13, 2005.
