Medeski, Martin & Wood: Shacking Out (Billy Martin Interview)

Formed in the rich and diverse New York City jazz scene in 1991, Medeski, Martin and Wood have slowly and precisely climbed up the rungs to become one of the most respected improv-based jazz groups of the modern-day. All three members bring in their unique personalities to form a group that is more than the “more than the sum of their parts” cliché. Listening to them is like mediation, seeing them is like a spiritual experience. The music is on, and sometimes, over the edge. With over ten albums under their belts, these very seasoned veterans do not fail to please. Glide’s Joe Adler spoke with drummer Billy Martin just before the group’s latest tour outing to discuss MMW: past, present and future.

You’re on your way down to Philly for the opening night of your current tour. What can we expect from this run of shows?

In general, we have been in the spirit of the music lately. It’s been very fresh. So there is a mix of improvising and the fresh energy of just bringing whatever we feel like playing. Shaping and spontaneously coming up with stuff and mixing that in with some of the new material and going back a little bit. We haven’t played in a week and a half so it’s always great to come back after not playing. It’s a special thing. It’s going to be a nice little four day run. We have been touring, we have been playing since the beginning of the year, since February.

Do you have any brand new songs to debut this tour?

No, not really. We are doing some P.J. Harvey covers from her new record that we love and of course, our own arrangements. The thing is we are coming up with new stuff every night. People hear it as written music, and I guess once they hear it, it is [laughs], but we are writing music as we play, and more so this year. We call it ‘Shacking Out,” you know, we “Shack,” we vibe, which is reminiscent of being in Hawaii, when we used to hang out at the time, chill out and work on music. We would play for hours.

With all of the side projects the three of you have, how do you keep MMW as the root of what you do? Or do you?

We made a conscious commitment to be available to be this band. And the other gigs sort of are amendments to our musical lives. It enhances our playing together when we do other gigs, but the root of our playing just comes from who we are. Hopefully we bring that to other bands and other projects too. We have a commitment to this band and we have for 14 years. Over the last 10 years we’ve been serious about keeping it going because it’s very rewarding and we’re able to sort of be our own bosses. There is no leader and at the same time we’re not sidemen to someone’s project. Our personalities define what it is and it feels really good and it’s really rewarding.

Do you guys adjust the setlists at all for the bigger venues, the Coachellas and Bonnaroos…the bigger, more diverse crowds or is just see what happens?

Well it depends on how we feel and where we’re at and how much music we’ve been playing before. It has a lot to do with the sound. Sometimes we know that the sound might be difficult, it may not be such an intimate space to be able to get into the nuisance of the improvising. Sometimes we’ll have a setlist, but even when we write a setlist it’s not like we have to play the songs in order or that we have to play them all. It’s just sort of something to fall back on, so it’s not mandatory that we have a setlist that we play. But there are times when we really need to do that, just make a list of songs that we’d really like to play for the crowd. In those bigger amphitheater places, sometimes it’s difficult to improvise on an intimate level.

So let’s talk about the albums a little bit. You guys truly reinvent yourselves with every new album while still building on the foundation of the previous one. What do you think initiates the change or reinvention?

Well I think it’s the need to keep going and growing. Every record we do is sort of a stepping stone to growing and developing our language of music. So there are a lot of areas to delve into or out of and each record sort of may define where we’re at, at the moment. We still have our style of playing, so we’re sincere in how we play and who we are, we have our limitations and our styles define us. We know that there is something about us where people are gonna go “Oh yeah, that’s them,” so it’s not like we have to fall back on some record that did really well to sell records or whatever it is. So we’re like “Let’s take it from here, we’re not going to try to sound like we did on the last record.” Although sometimes we just create music not thinking about any of that. There might be something reminiscent of the music we’ve done before, but the music is so strong that we just wanna put that on the record. I feel like that’s happened and I feel there is some music that is reminiscent of other records.

I can see that in some of Dropper. I think it really went back to the roots of what you guys sounded like in the beginning.

That’s a good observation. I agree with you.

So which of your albums do you hold with the highest spirits and regards?

The Dropper [laughs] and Shack-Man. And there’s a record called Farmer’s Reserve which is completely different than those. It covers all those bases. For me The Dropper, I really feel like, all around says it all. And with Shack-Man the songs, the performance of the songs, the vibe, how we recorded the record and how it ended up were all really quite unique. I don’t ever think we could quite do that unless we went back to Hawaii. You know there would be something about the sound that we could probably get close to. The instruments that we used are probably still there rusting away, but the music would be a little different. So that record I hold deeply to my heart, it’s more about the songwriting and the composition as much as it is about performance. The Dropper is performing, being in the moment, you know a lot of that stuff was improvised and there were some things that were previously figured out before we recorded them.

You have some great guests on that album. I love the piece with Marshall Allen, which is probably one of the best off the album.

Aww man, that was great to have the opportunity!

Speaking of guest players… how about Marc Ribot? He has collaborated with everyone from John Zorn to Tom Waits, and always fits perfectly with the MMW sound. He’s like a member of the band when he plays with you guys. How do you explain the musical connection with him?

Well I think the connection is the openness to the music and the experience of playing a lot of different music. Also, coming from an artistic, creative standpoint, Marc’s not like just a song writer or just an avant-garde player, he has done a lot of things. I think what brings us together, first and foremost is the music scene that we have all sort of been around in the eighties and nineties in New York; the downtown scene which is very experimental. But at the same time it is not just avant-garde, there are a lot of other things we love to do. I just think that he has a great intuitive sense, I don’t know, the spirit and his sound. He’s kind of crazy and he really can create his own dimension. He’s really such a strong player when he solos, it’s real obvious he’s throwing down and not messing around, and at the same time he’s not prancing around the stage like he’s a rock star.

So what would be some of the biggest accomplishments Medeski, Martin & Wood has had as a band?

I think the number one accomplishment is that we’ve created our own language of music as a whole by being our individual selves and collaborating the way we do. As far as what we have to offer, it’s of course the music and how we do it. I also think it is how we work together. I just think the uniqueness and how we work together is somewhat of a contribution or some kind of message of “it can work.” You can actually collaborate with each other and it doesn’t have to be one person running the whole thing and that you can all contribute as one and create this whole. You know I don’t sit around thinking too much of what it is. [laughs] I feel very fortunate and grateful to be who I am, do what I do and feel good about it whether it’s right or wrong to anybody else. I just feel like I can make a contribution by being part of a band. It’s really rewarding you know and it’s very satisfying

In the future, where do you see MMW in the history of Jazz music itself?

Where are we in the lineage? One of the branches of the big tree. [laughs] I don’t know because I’m not someone who categorizes things.

In terms of the lineage, which branches?

John [Medeski] said the fallen branch. He just woke up out of a little nap. We are one of the fallen branches of the tree. But it’s spouting up it’s own little sapling out of the ground. [laughs]

Who have been some of your biggest mentors in the music business or music world itself?

There are so many. It’s maybe an individual who leads a band and creates music. Someone like Ornette Coleman or Duke Ellington or Mingus, where, not only are they great players, they have there own sound, they are also great composers, also have the ability to get an amazing band together, as well as Miles of course. After seeing the release of this Miles Electric thing on the Isle Of Wight, it really sort of fortified…for me, that period really. One of my favorite records is Filllmore East and I think a lot of people get stuck on the older stuff, and I think it’s great. Of course I love Kind Of Blue, of course like anybody else, and all the other records. But I just think in the sense of how Miles would pick individuals to make a band, and pick individuals that can actually collaborate and compose on the spot. I think that’s something really special that I feel inspired by also. And working with people like Bob Moses as a kid, I was 19 when I worked with Bob Moses, and got to play with some great players…and John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards. Those are some other band leaders that I worked with that I enjoyed how they made music and how they picked musicians. I enjoy that kind of energy.

How did the your distinctive MMW logo come about?

The logo is from one of these periods of line drawings, sketches, doodles. At the time I was hanging out with John and Chris, in the early days. We were thinking about making some t-shirts and we needed some images. So we were sitting around one day and I had a notebook with some of these things. John saw something in that one particular logo. It was unique, and there were a whole bunch of them. So we said this could be the band logo. It’s visual but it’s ambiguous in a way in which it sort of keeps it open. You could say that the logo doesn’t really fit in any category, [laughs] like our music in a sense. So it was sort of perfect. It didn’t have our name, it just sort of represented the band. It also came from the concept of…I was drawing these, sort of, circles with a dot in them, with some little hairs on them which, for me, was some kind of conscious being. Like maybe a one-celled organism in a microscope. Putting a pedestal on it was sort of an Andy Warhol thing, where you put it on a pedestal and frame it and it’s art. Then I put a little punctuation so it makes it a language, like a hieroglyph or something. So there are lots of dimensions. I always tell people, “whatever you see in it, that’s what it is.” And I like to hear everybody’s interpretation, it’s like an ink blot test.

So where do you see things going, in the next year, with the band?

What we’re gonna do is slow down and do some other projects. Whatever we need to do because we’ve been doing this for 14 years. But we’ll still be playing together, of course, and I think it’ll just make the music better. Who knows, we may be even more independent and that may lead to a lot of interesting other things. It’s hard to say where we will be next year but I think we will be making more music, making more records and producing more stuff and getting involved in different ways and not just touring. I think we will be open to some more recording, but it’s hard to say cause it’s hard to know.

So you don’t have any studio time booked right now?

No we don’t. The only thing we’d like to have is a studio where it’s really accessible for all of us to meet if we needed to. Just basically come up for a few hours. If we could all do that, it would be great. Right now we are pretty busy, and we have families. There is not much time between tours to really get a break. Also the location of our studio/rehearsal space is still in Brooklyn and we’re all on the other side of the river, Upstate New York and I’m in New Jersey. So we have to go over the George Washington Bridge. It’s all such a commitment to get down there and set up our instruments. Hopefully we will find a place closer or nearer by, where we can drive less than an hour and it’ll be easier for us to have everything right there. So booking studio time is always possible, it’s more like when we’re ready, we will know and we’ll do it.

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