Medeski, Martin & Wood: Higher Ground, South Burlington, VT – 2/21/08

Having just released a brand new album, the children’s themed Let’s Go Everywhere, it would be easy to think Medeski, Martin and Wood would be playing the Chuck E. Cheese circuit. Instead, this ever-evolving three-piece is focusing its energy on the ambitious goal of rewriting the “traditional” rules of touring.
 
For 2008, MMW has set the goal of completing three new albums of original material. Each of their seasonally themed tours will begin with a five-day writing session before segueing into a two-week tour that will serve to work out the new material.  From there, the trio will head into the recording studio and document the music developed on the road. According to the band’s official website, “Each body of new material will be unique to each tour.”

The sold-out Higher Ground performance marked the second night of the phase one tour of this novel experiment. As the lights went down, the audience was greeted with a piece that was reminiscent of classic Shackman flavored MMW with full-on mad professor Medeski banging away on his clavinet. Continuing through the five-song first set were compositions that were both unique and surprisingly well rounded, considering they were less than two weeks old.

The second song evoked images of a Boris Karloff horror film before morphing into a Latin feel towards the end. Many familiar elements of the MMW cannon were present including Medeski’s uniquely straight-forward use of the melodica which was featured prominently in the tribal leaning third song.

The highlight of the set came during the execution of the following number, which had a “Third Stone From The Sun” Hendrix foundation with Medeski on top switching to the acoustic piano for a middle section that held a flavor to some of the great third stream jazz players like Cecil Taylor or John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet. The set ended with a New Orleans flavored groove that featured nice solo breaks from all three members.

During the set break the stage crew began dismantling Martin’s percussion setup and reassembling it stage front and center, leading to a second set starting with MMW forming a drum circle. They performed two separate pieces of minimalist tribal drumming. After this interesting beginning, MMW assumed their normal spots and jumped into an oscillating and spacey ambiance than slowly crept into a mellow groove that had some very developed and catchy Medeski melodies. This dissolved into a Chris Wood bass solo that eventually rose to an upbeat acoustic piano “classic jazz trio” piece.

Flowing out continuously was another upbeat Latin flavored Friday Afternoon In The Universe type song that slowly morphed into a straight up "Bubblehouse" influenced groove that finally resolved into another New Orleans flavored straight ahead groove to end this continuously flowing set.

Following this spontaneity, Wood ditched his bass in favor of a steel guitar for one song. He kicked off the new gypsy influenced song with an original approach to his guitar that blended a bass playing style to a metal tinging instrument, creating a creepy sound that blended with Medeski’s melodica for something resembling Sun Ra meets Django’s "Nauges." With Wood reconnecting to his stand-up bass, following was a piece that featured Medeski’s more stride piano playing side, something any avid MMW fan would recognize as “The Medeski Shuffle”.

The group closed the set with a song that sounded vaguely akin Stevie Wonder’s Higher Ground. The similarity was mostly in the bass line, for which Wood used a “this night elusive,” electric bass. The song developed into a monster with the return of the clavinet raging mad professor style of Medeski. It was another powerful set, followed by a quick encore of a reworked version of the title track from Let’s Go Everywhere, a song that could be simply described as a classic Medeski groove; the kind of groove that has set MMW apart from other great jazz trios, both past and present.

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