Music
Medeski Martin and Wood
Playing Dec. 4 at Cannery BallroomIt’s a scorching late-summer afternoon in 2004, and the sun is thankfully beginning to set as Medeski Martin and Wood take the stage at the Austin City Limits Festival. Despite temperatures in the upper 90s, thousands of fans cram to the front as the trio launch into an extended improvisation. Organist John Medeski settles into a dark, greasy two-bar riff, and drummer Billy Martin and bassist Chris Wood lay down a slightly twisted hip-hop groove underneath. Medeski keeps repeating the riff, over and over again, subtly shifting dynamics, gradually building in intensity, but never changing the notes.
This goes on for five or six minutes, the crowd churning right in line, and then it happens. The musicians go to the 4 chord—and the crowd erupts. Yes! The 4 chord! Who woulda thunk it?
Well, actually, a lot of people. Nearly all rock, blues and jazz tunes go from the 1 chord to the 4 chord at some point. It’s likely the most common chord change in popular music. Medeski Martin and Wood, though, are masters of tension and release, dissonance and resolution, and in their hands, a few simple notes and a single chord change can become an epoch journey.
That’s part of the beauty of MMW. They can imbue the simplest musical ideas with such attitude that the most basic forms sound revolutionary. Granted, they’re not unique in this regard—making traditional musical concepts sound fresh is a hallmark of most great rock and jazz groups. It’s just that, more than most of their peers, MMW manage to appropriate from so many genres—rock, jazz, blues, hip-hop, house, funk, horror movie soundtrack—without sounding derivative. In a review of the film The Manson Family, Roger Ebert wrote, “…it exists in a category of one film—this film.” Likewise, it might be said MMW exist in a category of one band—MMW.
Yes, other groups bring a modern perspective to organ-based soul-jazz—Soulive and Robert Walter’s 20th Congress, for example. Both are fine bands, but take a random snippet of the music of either and there’s a fair chance you won’t be able to tell them from their progenitors. MMW, on the other hand, have created something of their own.
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Much of this specificity comes from John Medeski’s keyboard work, his imposing musical abilities matched only by his ear for textures and tones. In addition to his signature B3, Medeski’s typical performance rig features a Wurlitzer, a clavinet, a piano and an assortment of toy pianos and synths, many of them played through effects pedals and vintage amps cranked to the point of distortion. He flails fiendishly behind this bank of instruments, often playing two of them at once. Give him a cape and he’d be the Phantom of the Opera, an impression underscored by his proclivity for dark, often dissonant sounds, albeit with a strong tongue-in-cheek quality.
MMW’s rhythm section likewise has an identifiable personality. Much of this lies in the way drummer Billy Martin blends the insistence of machine-like beats with a seductive quirkiness. And, whether on upright or electric bass, Chris Wood’s heavily syncopated playing defines the groove with the fewest possible notes. Together, the pair emulate the trippiness of programmed loops while infusing them with unmistakable humanity—a case of life imitating art imitating life.
There’s a unique power to the trio format, with three arguably being the most stable number—only a table with three legs, for instance, is guaranteed never to rock. Yet in MMW’s case, as important as the trio configuration is their understanding of the preeminence of rhythm over melody. It can sound good to play a wrong note at the right time, but not vice versa. As Medeski often demonstrates, a series of random notes tied together in a compelling rhythm can sound intriguing. The catchiest melody played with no sense of time, however, invariably sounds lame. MMW don’t just know this, they have a deep grasp on the subtle though sublime effects of playing behind, ahead of or on top of the beat.
All of this said, the trio can be challenging, and their albums vary in consistency. In performance, MMW like to push buttons, whether through repetition (e.g., the Austin show mentioned above) or through excessive dissonance. But no matter how weird or indulgent their digressions may seem, an irresistible groove is always just around the corner. And even if this weren’t the case, some of us just like having our buttons pushed.
In the mid-’90s, Medeski Martin and Wood opened a series of shows for the then-reigning jam band Phish—a great marketing decision or a concession, depending on your perspective. As lions of New York’s early-’90s downtown jazz scene, MMW were gaining considerable cachet as avant-groove-jazz pioneers. In a matter of a few dates with Phish, they found themselves catapulted from the hipster underground to the neo-hippie mainstream overnight. It was a great move for the band, affording them a much broader fan base and a far more sustainable career, though it may have cost them some cooler-than-thou fans who thumb their noses at the jam band scene. Whatever. Over the last decade, MMW have breathed new life and energy into both worlds. There’s no one quite like them.