Finding a groove

In a music industry
that insists on categorization, Medeski Martin & Wood have successfully
refused to be pigeonholed. With very little radio airplay, they have built a
following across the country and around the world. Perhaps most surprisingly,
they have managed to combine borderline avant-garde jazz with catchy grooves,
drawing fans from all over the musical spectrum.

            Their show should be the hottest
ticket of the festival, especially with the addition of DJ Logic.

            When we spoke recently by phone with
the group’s keyboardist, John Medeski, we began by asking him how he arrived at
his current musical outlook.

City:When you were a teenage pianist, you were
headed in a classical direction. What happened?

            Medeski:
At the time the idea of going to school for jazz didn’t really make a lot
of sense to me, so I thought I’d go and major in classical music. But I knew
before I went [to New England Conservatory of Music in Boston] that that was
not what I really wanted to do.

            City: What were you listening to that made you
gravitate toward jazz?

            Medeski: My dad played a little stride piano. I started playing with him before I even
started taking lessons. I would take out some books and play some of those old
popular show tunes. I only heard the stuff my parents had, a lot of big band
stuff and people like Frankie Carle, that side of popular music. Then when I
was 11 or 12, somebody played me Oscar Peterson and I was just like, whoa! From
then on I started checking out all kinds of stuff. I had a great teacher, Lee
Shaw. She had studied with Oscar and she ended up giving me all kinds of
records — Monk, Bud Powell — she gave me a really good foundation.

            City:So you had mixed feelings in school?

            Medeski: When I went to the conservatory they said jazz and classical could work
together. That became hard. What attracted me to classical music was what
Beethoven was doing, what Bach was doing. It wasn’t the actual performing
of the music, it was what was going on in the music, and I wanted to find my own music.

            City: Some classical people seem to have forgotten
that Beethoven and Bach were great improvisers.

            Medeski: Exactly! I don’t know if you’ve seen the film The Universal Mind of Bill Evans, but he looks at jazz as the
spirit of music that is made in the
moment for that moment. He said it
used to be in classical music until the late-1800s. Every performer would
improvise in cadenzas. Then suddenly there became so many styles that there was
a way to play Bach, a way to play Baroque, a way to play Romantic music. And then the
whole idea of individuality is gone for the sake of preserving a style. Now the
same thing is happening to jazz.

            City:What do you mean?

            Medeski: You’re supposed to play certain tunes a certain way. Bebop is a certain thing;
hard bop is another kind of thing. All these styles instead of you playing what
you feel and hear that’s coming out of you.

            City:Is that why you’ve turned away from
traditional jazz?

            Medeski: Absolutely. It’s all about
coming to terms with who I am. Because at the same time I was studying
classical music I was listening to Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles and Bob
Marley. It’s really about trying to be honest about who I am and where I’m
coming from musically, instead of being a “jazz” piano player. Ultimately, it’s
about playing and really tuning in to what I feel and not being afraid of any
kind of beat or rhythm or melodic idea.

            City: And a lot of people want to hear it.

            Medeski:
A lot of people like improvisation and want that spirit and that cathartic
experience you get when musicians are improvising and the audience is right
there checking it out and something is really happening and it’s really fresh.

            City:What’s amazing is that you had your
vision and you found an audience and a record company to sign you.

            Medeski: I feel like we’re really lucky. We’re also lucky that we found each other as a
trio willing to put the time in. And the timing of when we came around; a lot
of our teachers and mentors had a hard time. A lot of the guys who played with
Miles had to go to Europe to make a living. What we realized is there are young
people in this country who have disparate musical tastes and they’re looking
for a feeling from music. America — really the whole idea of freedom and
democracy — jazz is the language of freedom, personal expression, in a
certain way.

            City: How did you get started?

            Medeski: We kind of knew that there would be an audience for this stuff even if it was
very small. You’ve just got to find it. The way to find it is to go and play
and attract people. The way to do that is to drop your ego and do it for no
money. A lot of people spend their lives studying jazz and classical music and
they really develop a high level of artistic expression and then they want to
be compensated for it.

            City: Did you play for free?

            Medeski: Yeah! When we first went out we were sleeping on people’s floors. We’d just go
and see if we could find somebody to put us up for the night. The way we look
at it is, anybody who starts a business has to take a loan. If you’re a dentist
you’ve got to buy your equipment and go into debt. We looked at it as an
investment. We’re going to go out there and play and if we attract 50 or 60
people at the Knitting Factory, we can attract 50 or 60 people in every college
town in the country. We’d go out and lose money. At one point, around 1993, we
couldn’t afford to keep our apartments. We were living in our camper. At the
time we had the intensity and the energy to do that.

            City: You’ve been together a long time. Is it
still fresh every show?

            Medeski: It’s felt really fresh again in the past couple of years. There was a moment
when the whole jam band scene — the little circuit out there that we sort of
found and started playing — suddenly there’s all these bands out there doing
it. Kind of jangley guitar players and mono-dimensional rhythmic music and all
this noodling stuff; it kind of became frightening to us. Like, what are we
doing? How did we get associated with this? It was kind of a hard time. But
then we all started doing other stuff outside the band, which helps feed what
we do.

            City:What kinds of other projects have you
worked on?

            Medeski: I did a soundtrack for an audio book of a Kerouac screenplay. I played on the
Blind Boys of Alabama’s Christmas record. I’ve been working with Susanna Baca,
a Peruvian singer… All kinds of stuff.

            City: I’ve been reading about instant CDs of
performances. Are you doing that?

            Medeski: We’re going to do it. It’s not quite instant; you’ll get it two weeks later.
You have to find different ways of making a living in this modern world, because
record companies are suffering, as they deserve to be.

            City:Why do you say that?

            Medeski: Because they’ve created this mess that they’re in now by downsizing any
artistic music. Classical and jazz departments have been downsized for the sake
of money-making. The decisions are being made by accountants and lawyers as far
as who stays and who goes. That’s one of the beauties of Blue Note. They’re
great.

            City:I read Clear Channel was doing the
instant CDs. You’re not working with them, are you? They’re ruining radio.

            Medeski: They’re ruining music. I think the instant CD thing is good if bands do it
themselves. At the end of the day the audience will buy things that are very
much endorsed by the band if they love the band, because they want to support
the people making the music. But the record companies have created a thing
where the profit margin is so sick — everybody knows it — that they’d
rather just download it. A CD costs a couple of bucks and they’re charging $20
in a store. You couldn’t make records at home so the quality the record company
provided was higher than one could create at home. Now they can’t give us
anything you can’t do at home.

            City: When you’re in a concert playing and
improvising and it’s really going well, what’s in your head?

            Medeski: Very little. If you’re surfing, as soon as you start really noticing what
you’re doing, you fall over. The whole thing is to keep tuned in. Mainly it’s
the music that’s going through your head. Then you start feeling like we need
to go here, so I’ll give Chris [Wood] a cue for a different chord change.
Really being in it is the key.

            City: Is the audience a part of that?

            Medeski: I think so. You feel it. They
are when they’re ready for it. Unfortunately, because of this whole jam band
thing, there tends to be this sort of meathead, frat mentality. These guys just
want to hear some heavy grooving, rocking thing all the time.

            City: You’ve attracted some Deadheads, haven’t
you?

            Medeski: Actually, Deadheads are pretty good because they’re open. It’s more like the
guys who want to hear the same stupid riff for three hours. We like to break it
up. Sometimes I think some of these kids haven’t learned about foreplay yet.
You’ve got to build up to it. That’s what makes it feel so intense, the development
period and then bam! it hits you. I keep wanting to stop some time and ask
these guys, ‘Is your girlfriend here?’ And then ask her, ‘Does he know about
foreplay or does he just want to get in there and get it over with?’

            City: How does the DJ fit in.?

            Medeski: To me, it’s just another great instrument. Herbie Hancock had it when he did
“Rockit” a long time ago. Now, there are a lot of DJs who are very creative and
can improvise and the scope of what they do is so immense that it’s always a
great addition. Because DJs perform solo and create beats and forms and
structure, when a good DJ plays with us their sense of composition is a lot of
times better than a lot of instrumentalists because they have that experience
of creating a whole. A lot of people just want to come in and play their stuff
all over you. A lot of DJs are very good at fitting in to what’s going on and
finding the right part. That should be the ultimate goal of any musicians
playing together: to do what’s needed for the music not just to get your rocks
off and do your thing.

            City:You’ve been able to bring elements of the
avant-garde to a larger public.

            Medeski: That’s what we love. When I was a kid, Cecil Taylor was one of the first jazz
pianists I really related to. I love all kinds of music, contemporary
classical… So many concepts have been opened: What is melody? What is harmony?
It’s suddenly been blown wide open. And we use it all. To me it feels natural.

            City: When you think about it, Hendrix and The
Doors got pretty far out there.

            Medeski:
Yeah, it feels as normal to me as playing a triad. When you feel it, you do
it. When we go there we know that we’re probably stretching the audience a
little, but what are you going to do?

            City: What do you see in the future?

            Medeski: I think some great music’s going to happen in the next 10 years. A lot of stuff
has been blown open and a lot of young kids are going to be coming up and it’s
going to be like the 1960s. Also, the world is so screwed right now. America’s
not so comfortable and fat and I think we’ll get to hear it in the music. It’s
always been there, it’s been happening in HipHop.

Medeski Martin & Wood play with DJ Logic on Friday, June
14, at the High Falls Festival Site. Doors open at 5 p.m.

This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2003.