Medeski Martin & Wood (or MMW) is an American jazz fusion band formed in 1991, consisting of

John Medeski Anthony John Medeski (born June 28, 1965) is an American jazz keyboard player and composer. Medeski is a veteran of New York's 1990s avant-garde jazz scene and is known popularly as a member of Medeski Martin & Wood. He plays the acoustic piano ...

on keyboards,

Billy Martin Alfred Manuel Martin Jr. (May 16, 1928 – December 25, 1989), commonly called "Billy", was an American Major League Baseball second baseman and manager who, in addition to leading other teams, was five times the manager of the New York Yan ...

on drums, and Chris Wood on bass. The band is influenced by musical traditions including funk and hip hop and is known for an unconventional style sometimes described as "

avant AVANT, also known as AVANT street art guerrilla collective, was the artist group active in New York City from 1980 to 1984. By 1984 AVANT had produced thousands of acrylic on paper paintings and plastered them on walls, doors, bus-stops and gallerie ...

groove Groove or Grooves may refer to: Music * Groove (music) * Groove (drumming) * The Groove (band), an Australian rock/pop band of the 1960s * The Groove (Sirius XM), a US radio station * Groove 101.7FM, a former Perth, Australia, radio station ...

". MMW has found moderate mainstream success, often working with guitarist

John Scofield John Scofield (born December 26, 1951), sometimes referred to as "Sco", is an American guitarist and composer whose music over a long career has blended jazz, jazz fusion, funk, blues, soul and rock. He first came to mainstream attention in th ...

and touring on the

jam band A jam band is a musical group whose concerts (and live albums) are characterized by lengthy improvisational " jams." These include extended musical improvisation over rhythmic grooves and chord patterns, and long sets of music which often ...

circuit.

History

The band members were introduced to each other by jazz drummer Bob Moses, who had performed with Medeski and Wood, and was Martin's instructor. Medeski Martin & Wood's first performances together were at the

Village Gate The Village Gate was a nightclub at the corner of Thompson and Bleecker Streets in Greenwich Village, New York. Art D'Lugoff opened the club in 1958, on the ground floor and basement of 160 Bleecker Street. The large 1896 Chicago School structu ...

, a popular New York jazz club. Though they started out with a more-or-less straightforward piano-bass-drums jazz setup, the threesome expanded their sound with unusual configurations. Their first album, '' Notes from the Underground'', is a record of their entirely-acoustic era, but Medeski soon added electric piano (outfitted with distortion pedals and other effects), and began switching back and forth among Hammond organ, Clavinet, Mellotron and other keyboards. Wood alternated between

stand-up Stand-up comedy is a comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, a comic or a stand-up. Stand-up comedy consists of one-liners, stories, ...

and

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

, stuck paper behind his strings for a “snare” effect and occasionally employed a drumstick as a slide. Wood entirely eschewed the electric bass for MMW's first three albums, and still relies heavily on the acoustic upright bass in recordings and during live performances. Their earlier albums reveal a Hip Hop influenced updating of classic

soul jazz Soul jazz or funky jazz is a subgenre of jazz that incorporates strong influences from hard bop, blues, soul, gospel and rhythm and blues. Soul jazz is often characterized by organ trios featuring the Hammond organ and small combos including ten ...

sounds, which is the primary theme of their well-known 1996 album, '' Shack-man''. The band received some of their first significant exposure outside of the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

jazz scene by performing with Phish at their October 14, 1995 concert, which led to the association of the group as a

. In addition, their performance on

's 1997 album '' A Go Go'' helped to further their exposure. The band collaborated further with Scofield again in 2006, releasing the album '' Out Louder'' under the name Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood. This was the first album released on MMW's own Indirecto Records. From 1998 to 2005, MMW were signed to jazz label Blue Note Records, and showed them delving deeper into dense, electronic funk than their earlier albums, although the band continued to experiment with

free jazz Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians duri ...

and

free improvisation Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its ...

both on their albums and in concert. In 1999 the band performed in Toronto, Ontario. In 2001 MMW performed several songs for the Red Hot Organization's compilation album ''

Red Hot + Indigo Red Hot + Indigo is the 13th entry from the Red Hot AIDS benefit series of compilation albums produced by Paul Heck. It marks the tenth anniversary of the Red Hot Organization (RHO), an international organization which uses mass media as a fundra ...

'', a tribute to Duke Ellington, which raised money for various charities devoted to increasing AIDS awareness and fighting the disease. Medeski Martin & Wood's live performances are renowned for their exploratory nature. Their concerts usually involve extended improvisations, which may be both arrhythmic and

atonal Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a ...

, an aspect of their musicianship that is rarely documented in the studio. They occasionally tour using only acoustic instruments, reverting to the instrumentation that they began their career with. Their album '' Tonic'' is an example of these more contemporary acoustic performances. They have also done short tours of entirely improvisatory performances. These shows usually consisted of two sets of improvisation, followed by an encore of a song from an album.

Side projects

Each of the trio's three members is involved in a large music community, and has participated in numerous side projects over the years. In 2001 John Medeski collaborated with the

North Mississippi Allstars North Mississippi Allstars is an American blues and southern rock band from Hernando, Mississippi, founded in 1996. The band is currently composed of brothers Luther Dickinson (guitar, lowebow, vocals) and Cody Dickinson (drums, keyboards, ele ...

and steel guitarist Robert Randolph; together, these five musicians formed The Word, a bluesy

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words a ...

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...

. They released two albums and toured extensively. Beginning around 2005 Chris Wood formed

The Wood Brothers The Wood Brothers are an American roots band consisting of brothers Chris (upright bass) and Oliver Wood (acoustic and electric guitars), as well as multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix. Their music is a combination of folk, gospel, blues and jazz. ...

with his brother, blues guitarist Oliver Wood. They have released several albums to date and continue to tour and record together. In 2007 John Medeski and Billy Martin released an album as a duo, called '' Mago''. They performed that material together at the 2007 Bonnaroo Music Festival. In 2016, John Medeski formed supergroup Saudade with

Chino Moreno Chino Moreno (born Camillo Wong Moreno, June 20, 1973) is an American musician who is best known as the lead vocalist, primary lyricist and contributing guitarist of the metal band Deftones. He is also a member of the side-project groups Team S ...

Deftones Deftones is an American alternative metal band formed in Sacramento, California in 1988. They were formed by Chino Moreno (vocals, guitar), Stephen Carpenter (guitar), Abe Cunningham (drums), and Dominic Garcia (bass). During their first f ...

Team Sleep Team Sleep is an American experimental alternative rock/post-rock group led by singer/guitarist Chino Moreno. Moreno is better known for fronting the Sacramento-based alternative metal band Deftones. Other current members include guitarist Todd ...

, Palms, and

Crosses Crosses may refer to: * Cross, the symbol Geography * Crosses, Cher, a French municipality * Crosses, Arkansas, a small community located in the Ozarks of north west Arkansas Language * Crosses, a truce term used in East Anglia and Lincolnshire ...

; guitarist Dr. Know of

Bad Brains Bad Brains are an American rock band formed in Washington, D.C. in 1976. Originally a jazz fusion band under the name Mind Power, they are widely regarded as pioneers of hardcore punk, though the band's members have objected to the use of this t ...

; bassist Chuck Doom of Crosses and Team Sleep; and drummer Mackie Jayson of

Cro-Mags Cro-Mags are an American hardcore punk band from New York City. The band, which has a strong cult following, has released six studio albums, with the first two considered the most influential. With a Hare Krishna background, they were among t ...

and Bad Brains. In 2018 John Medeski formed John Medeski's Mad Skillet with two members of the

Dirty Dozen Brass Band The Dirty Dozen Brass Band is a brass band based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The ensemble was established in 1977, by Benny Jones and members of the Tornado Brass Band. The Dirty Dozen revolutionized the New Orleans brass band style by incorpo ...

, releasing an album and touring under the name. In March 2020 during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, Medeski and Martin released a free, hour-long, live in-studio video performance as "Bandemic" with

and Jesse Murphy under their Woodstock Sessions label.

Discography

(Artist name if not Medeski Martin & Wood)

Albums

* '' Notes from the Underground'' (January 1, 1992) * '' It's a Jungle in Here'' (October 18, 1993) * '' Friday Afternoon in the Universe'' (January 24, 1995) * '' Shack-man'' (October 15, 1996) * '' Farmer's Reserve'' (February 11, 1997) * (John Scofield) - '' A Go Go'' (April 7, 1998) * '' Combustication'' (August 11, 1998) * '' The Dropper'' (October 24, 2000) * '' Uninvisible'' (April 9, 2002) * '' End of the World Party (Just in Case)'' (September 7, 2004) * (Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood) - '' Out Louder'' (September 26, 2006) * '' Let's Go Everywhere'' (January 8, 2008) * '' Zaebos: Book of Angels Volume 11'' (August 19, 2008) * '' Radiolarians I'' (September 30, 2008) * '' Radiolarians II'' (April 14, 2009) * '' Radiolarians III'' (August 4, 2009) * ''20'' (March – December 2011) * (Medeski Martin & Wood + Nels Cline) - '' Woodstock Sessions Vol. 2'' (April 15, 2014) * (Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood) - '' Juice'' (September 16, 2014)

Live albums

* '' Tonic'' (April 25, 2000) * '' Electric Tonic'' (October 31, 2001) * ''The Stone: Issue Four'' (November 2010) * (Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood) - ''In Case the World Changes Its Mind'' (November 8, 2011) * ''Free Magic'' (September 25, 2012) * (Medeski Martin & Wood with

Alarm Will Sound Alarm Will Sound is a 20-member chamber orchestra that focuses on recordings and performances of contemporary classical music. Its performances have been described as "equal parts exuberance, nonchalance, and virtuosity" by the ''Financial Times' ...

) - '' Omnisphere'' (September 14, 2018)

EPs

* '' Bubblehouse'' (April 8, 1997) * '' Combustication Remix EP'' (April 20, 1999)

Compilations

* '' Last Chance to Dance Trance (Perhaps)'' (October 12, 1999) * '' Note Bleu: Best of the Blue Note Years 1998–2005'' (April 4, 2006)

Box sets

* '' Radiolarians: The Evolutionary Set'' (December 8, 2009)

DVDs

* ''Fly in a Bottle'' (October 25, 2011)

References

External links

Medeski Martin & Wood
official website

with John Poirier for Aural States (Sept 2009)
Conversation with Chris Wood
Interview with Chris Wood * {{DEFAULTSORT:Medeski Martin and Wood Jam bands American jazz ensembles from New York City Jazz fusion ensembles Gramavision Records artists Ropeadope Records artists Blue Note Records artists