JAN/FEB 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM SPOTLIGHT Can’tCan’t taketake itit withwith you?you?
soren solkaer starbird Billy Martin, chris Wood, john Medeski
Benedetto “ANDY” c. taylor MEDESKI MARTIN ¾ scale archtop electric guitar YES, you can... & WOOD Andy LOVES to travel! Improvisation is key—just don’t call ’em a jam band 629 Forest Ave. • S I, NY 10310 • 718-981-8585 [email protected] • mandoweb.com
In late 2008, jazz-rock trIo MedeskI bass player chris Wood, embraced onstage Martin & Wood pondered ways to inspire improvisation. Medeski likens the group’s themselves to write new material. they found exploratory process to the coordinated play that inspiration in the animal kingdom. of a finely tuned basketball team. “each of us “there’s a bird, a certain canary, that knows where the other is going to be as we comes up with a new song every year, which work our way down the court,” he says. “It’s it never repeats in its lifetime,” explains also like keeping a ball in the air. You have keyboardist john Medeski. “We thought, to keep tipping the ball, and watch where it ‘Yeah, let’s do that, except let’s do it for goes and what it’s doing.” each season.’ the concept was to write the not surprisingly, the emphasis on music, tour behind it, record it and then never improvisation has led some people to play it again.” characterize the trio as a so-called “jam the result of the group’s experiment band”—a label Medeski vehemently rejects. is The Radiolarians Series, three albums “a lot of these bands claim to be jamming released last year and now compiled as part but it’s just bullshit,” he says. “they’re just of a new box set. titled after a spectacularly rock bands playing music that has some beautiful single-cell organism, the discs offer solos in it.” up funky pop grooves, caribbean-flavored In his view, Medeski Martin & Wood jazz and luscious atmospheric pieces. operates in a fresher and more original Medeski insists the music, which despite its range of the musical spectrum—one in many facets sounds cohesive, was created which innovation trumps easy categorization. without regard to how the final product would “nobody ever asked john coltrane or fit together. “there’s no logic to anything we Miles davis or sun ra who their influences do,” he says. “any logic or analysis comes were,” he says. “I’m not saying we’re on the after the music is finished.” same level as those guys, I’m just saying the unique project is just the latest that everyone should be searching for adventure for a band that has always their own voice. the extent to which these approached its music in an unconventional [Radiolarians Series] albums rekindled that fashion. Formed in 1991, the trio, which voice for us was a real surprise.” also includes drummer Billy Martin and –Russell Hall
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