Speaking of the Downtown New York music scene, MMW has a long history with John Zorn. Billy played the new location of his venue The Stone in August and you and Billy are playing some shows at The Stone in February. Can you talk about how your working relationship with Zorn has developed over the years?

Zorn is such a force. He’s so prolific and diverse. He folded into his stable of musicians for certain things. I just played with him in San Francisco with his band Simulacrum. Matt Hollenberg was on guitar and Kenny Grohowski on drums, and it’s basically a heavy-metal organ trio. His music—it’s really complex and very cool. Zorn has this way of working with musicians where he understands what they can do and he also hears things that he wants to have happen and pushes all of us into deeper aspects of our music that we maybe haven’t explored. It’s always an incredible adventure and exciting and inspiring to work with him. We would do a lot of these sessions over the past couple of years where he—basically it would be two or three days, it’ll be like 25 different musicians in various combinations, playing different music of his and it’s just a blast. We were just in Chicago with Simulacrum about a couple weeks ago. It’s a band, you know, I hope they get more work, too, because it’s really an incredible project. We’ve already made five records with this band, and I think he’s working on a sixth. Zorn’s really brilliant at picking and pairing musicians together for an incredible outcome.

In February, your show at The Stone will feature Marc Ribot, too.

It’s an improv night. And those are always great. Ribot’s another one that’s always so great to play with. He’s so creative and, again, has such a diverse palette, yet at the same time always sounds like Marc Ribot no matter what he’s doing.

In a separate but equally improvisational world, you have played the music of the Grateful Dead with increased regularity in recent years. What was your gateway into that world and how has playing with Phil Lesh changed your approach to jamming?

I didn’t grow up listening to the Grateful Dead—I was coming from jazz and classical and R&B and funk music, stuff like that. I was familiar with the Dead hits, and just aware of them, but I didn’t know their music and hadn’t played much of it, at all. We were associated with the jamband scene through our friendship with Phish and some other bands that were apart of the beginning of that scene in the ‘90s, but we were doing our own thing.

Then, I got invited to play with Phil and Friends with Scofield and Warren Haynes. So I had to learn a lot, a lot of these songs to play on those gigs [Laughter.] It was really a blast. Working with Phil is great. I was coming into that world without a lot of preconceptions or any—I didn’t have the same sort of knowledge and reverence for that music that a lot of people have that come into that. For me, it was like coming into that with a fresh perspective. I gotta say—it’s really beautiful playing with Phil and seeing how he works. At this point in his life, for him to be so engaged, is amazing. At every gig, he’s really listening and he really cares about the music and he mixes up the sets. A lot of people at his point in their careers are caricatures of themselves. He’s very present. We’ll play like four hours, two two-hour sets. He’s present every moment, really listening to what’s going on. He really cares, and talks about it after, what he liked, what he didn’t like. What I really related to is he’s looking for everybody to be interacting in a conversation, where maybe two people are soloing at the same time, but interacting, and the energy that happens, it’s almost like Dixieland, where there are all these lines going on at the same time. That creates this collective energy that’s really great, and it’s really fun. It’s just been really fun and inspiring to play with him. Also, just to know that I can keep growing as I get older, and hopefully keep playing music. There are no rules about what you have to do.

MMW opened up for the Grateful Dead at the Greek on New Year’s many years ago. And we’ve played at a lot of these festivals. We’re sort of a fringe band to that whole scene. We’ve played at a lot of these festivals with big rock bands, and, for us, having seen many of these bands that are going out there who don’t get along, but go out there and they play the gig—we never wanted that for us. We wanted to make sure that if we’re playing together, we’re still growing and still enjoying playing music. Otherwise, we’ll all go do something else. It’s our promise to each other and to the music. There are a lot of bands out there doing their thing, whether it’s to make money or because they don’t have anything else to do. It’s not what I’m interested in doing. How Phil has managed to keep his music alive for himself in this way, taking his resources—he has this incredible venue in California [Terrapin Crossroads]—and he has a real diverse pool of musicians that he works with. He has all these different versions of Phil and Friends that he can pull out. We just did a new one this year, with Luther and Cody [Dickinson] from North Mississippi Allstars, where we played the Dead songs and covers that were really bluesy, which is a whole other aspect of their music, which is a blast. It’s fine how he keeps it alive.

With MMW scaling back touring and only playing a few shows over the last few years, you all explored a variety of music, from Chris Wood’s work in the Americana space with The Wood Brothers to Bill Martin’s percussion experiments and your interests in gospel, classical, New Orleans music and other styles. How have those outside endeavors changed MMW’s approach when you do come together for select gigs and special shows?

It’s hard to describe it, but it’s sort of how it’s always been for us, since we first got together. We came together as three guys with different musical experiences and backgrounds, with a lot of crossover. The most important thing was there was this chemistry that just happened when we played together, where we were instantly making music and things would just happen. Things that none of us planned would happen and it would be amazing. That still happens when we play. Even in the early days, we would do other gigs. I would play with people on different records. We were not doing as much as we do now because we were so busy as a trio, but that’s always been our thing. It’s important that we each keep growing as individuals, then we bring that back, and our chemistry is still there. Whatever we bring into the mix, add it in, and it makes it richer. It’s hard to put all that stuff into words, what it is. More music and more experience is what we have that separates us. It just makes for a richer brew when we get together. When we’re all thriving doing our own thing and are happy and growing individually, it’s good for the band. That’s how we play. We’re very collaborative, very democratic, given the way we make music and the way we work on music. The stronger each individual is, the better the whole is. We played our anniversary gigs at LPR a few years ago—our first shows were upstairs there when that was The Village Gate. To go back and do something downstairs there was cool for us.

It sort of came together naturally—I met Chris in Boston. And we both moved to New York at the same time. I actually had these gigs at The Village Gate where I played with different duos. You would do two weeks with a different duo. So Chris and I started doing those, and then slowly, The Village Gate started adding drums into the equation, and it’d be a trio. Chris and I actually worked with different drummers. I had met Billy through Bob Moses when I was in Boston. Billy was a percussionist, he played with Bob’s band, and I really loved the way he played. When I came to New York, I saw Billy play with his own group, he had a group called Illy B, and he was a percussionist with the Lounge Lizards. I admired his playing and loved what he did. Billy and I actually got together, just the two of us, and played at his place, way back and then, the three of us just got together at Billy’s loft. And I always tell the story, but the first time we got together—the very first thing we played—Billy played a beat, Chris started playing the bass line, and it wasn’t a jam session. It was instant music. We ended up taking that piece and transcribing it and it’s on our first record. It’s called “Uncle Chubb” on Notes from the Underground. It was that instantly that we were making music together. It just felt right. There was something about playing with Billy that was different than when we played with other drummers. It wasn’t like we were trying to play jazz, or that we were replicating something that we had heard on records. It really just felt like we were—because Billy was definitely coming more from dance music and groove music, Brazilian music and hip-hop, and that sort of thing, and less from straight-ahead jazz. So as we played together, and found the common ground, it took it in a really different direction that was really interesting to me, I mean to us, just in terms of how do we improvise and take some of these elements of jazz and making music in the moment for the moment, but also keeping current and have it be really true to who we were as people. We’re not just trying to replicate something from the ‘50s or ‘60s that we heard on a record, but we’re really being honest about who we are as musicians. The three of us getting together has really made that possible.

You have a number of other projects on the horizon. Can you talk a bit about your Fire Jelly project?

It’s with Dave Fiuczynski and Calvin Weston. We’ve recorded some stuff, but it’s microtonal. Dave has this department at Berkeley, the microtonal music department, and he’s been exploring that world. This trio gets a little into that realm, with some grooves and some other things with Calvin on drums, and it’s really a blast. And that’ll probably be mixed and coming out hopefully later this fall, early next year, depending on what would make sense. And another thing on a different tip, is I just recorded a duo record with a great cornet player named Kirk Knuffke, and it’s all music of Sun Ra. That’s more piano and trumpet with effects and stuff. That’s a blast, too and we’ve always had that connection. We used to play a lot with Michael Ray back in the day, and Marshall Allen, from the Sun Ra stuff, is a guest on The Dropper.

In October you played a special gig at the Cap with Warren Haynes, George Porter Jr. and Joe Russo. In certain ways, that band is a very specific Venn diagram of your work in the jamband world during the past two decades.

Joe we’ve known since back in the touring days when he was with Marco [Benevento] and The Duo. I’ve always loved them and their energy and their playing and the music. I actually really only started playing with Joe with Phil and Friends. He was playing with Phil for those years, going out there and doing those gigs. And that’s when I really started connecting with Joe and it’s great to finally get to play with him after all these years. And Warren, I’ve known since the very beginning of Government Mule. We opened for them very early on. I remember hearing them and just really—I love southern rock. They were the real deal. To hear something fresh and new that was rocking like that was such a treat. Over the years I’ve gotten to play with Warren more and more. With George, obviously he’s a legend. I’ve been listening to George since I was a kid on so many different recordings, from The Meters to all the stuff he’s recorded, Dr. John, everything he’s done. Lee Dorsey. I’ve been playing gigs with George in Zigaboo with his band, Foundation of Funk, every now and then. It’s been a real blast. For me, getting to play music with those guys is a real education. Warren put these gigs together at the Cap and we are trying to push envelope into things you weren’t expecting.

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