“At this point, we’re a band,” keyboardist John Medeski says about Medeski Martin & Wood’s occasional collaboration with guitarist John Scofield. Though Medeski’s statement seems obvious, MMW’s interactive with Scofield has changed considerably since the trio first backed the former Miles Davis guitarist on his 1998 groove classic A Go Go. During their initial recordings sessions with Sco, Medeski, bassist Chris Wood and drummer Billy Martin functioned primarily as support musicians. The quartet never formally toured with Scofield and, when they did come together for select festival dates or one-off appearances, they were billed as something of a collaborative super-group.
It wasn’t until the musicians reconvened to record 2006’s Out Louder, they truly started to combine their DNA and form a tried-and-true band of equals—they even shuffled their name to Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood highlight their new approach.
With the exception of a live album, MSMW haven’t released any music during the past seven years but they continue to play together when their other commitments allow. While on Jam Cruise, the four musicians sat down for a rare joint interview to discuss MSMW’s continued evolution and their recent live shows. Scofield also gave us the scoop on his new studio album, which will reunite him with his classic Uberjam ensemble.
John, after playing more straight-ahead jazz and even some gospel music in recent years, you are going to focus on your groove-jam project Uberjam this year. Who is in the group at this point and who will appear on your new album?
John Scofield: It is the original Uberjam lineup, except Andy Hess is on bass [instead of Jesse Murphy, who plays in Brazilian Girls]. He was on the second album we did, Up All Night. Adam Deitch is on drums and Avi Bortnick is on guitar and samples. Special guest John Medeski is on keyboards, and Louis Cato also played drums on a few tracks. You might know him as the bassist in Eric Krasno’s solo project Chapter 2. He is an amazing drummer as well [Cato and Deitch will alternate dates with the band in 2013.]
It has been a decade since you have recorded with this band. What inspired you to reunite these players and have you been writing new music for the project all along?
JS: It is cool to give it a lot of time—I like doing different types of projects. I had some stuff I hadn’t really finished and Avi had a bunch of music. He was nice enough to let me take his music and add to it—and vice versa. So we co-wrote a bunch of tunes.
Where did you record the album?
JS: We recorded it Sear Sounds on W. 48 in New York City. It is called Uberjam Dos and it will come out this spring.
Moving to your current collaboration with MMW, do you plan to enter the studio anytime soon?
JS: We are trying to do some new stuff. It is always great to play with these guys.
Chris Wood: We’ve been talking about doing some recording but nothing has been planned so far. As of now, all we have on the books for MSMW is Jam Cruise and the two gigs we did in December.
John Medeski: At this point, we’re a band. The first time we got together was for John’s album, A Go Go.
JS: There is a little contention on when we first met, actually. Nobody can quite remember when it was but that album was released in 1998. I think 1996 was when I made the initial phone call.
CW: You had already heard Shack-Man then, right?
JS: I’d been stalking you guys, and I had heard all your records. I was on Gramavision, too. That is actually the first time I heard you—your first record with them. I had heard of Billy and John, too. Bass you don’t think of because it is bass [Laughter.] They were around the New York scene.
Of course, there is the famous story of how you did not know how to contact them so you called their fan hotline.
JS: We are pre-internet!
John Medeski, you mention that you guys are a real band now. Can you talk about how the band’s dynamics have shifted since you first played with John? At first, you really just backed him on his record.
JM: We had the first record with John [after which John, Chris and James Brown drummer Clyde Stubblefield backed Scofield, though Martin missed the tour since he was on his honeymoon]. After that we did a few festivals and would play together on occasion. There was a lot of cross-pollination—certain things we had in common. A Go Go was the record where people turned around and said to us, “We love A Go Go, we love that record.” So we got together and made another record, Out Louder. We went out and toured on that record and it felt great—it is always so natural when we play together. For that year when we toured behind the record, we played together a lot then we all went off and did different projects. But we kept running into each other and doing different things and we’d always say, “We got to do this again.” Every once and a while we will get a festival offer and try to fit a few dates in.
Billy Martin: From the very beginning, when we did A Go Go, it was so easy. It was this instant connection. We all have so much in common: jazz and an interest in New Orleans music and this rhythmic, Afro-stuff. It is always so easy to play with John: all we have to do is set up a gig. It’s not like we have to have a rehearsal. It is very effortless.
JM: We collaborated on [the writing for] Out Louder. What happened was every night when we were on tour we had these spontaneous moments.
JS: We improvised a lot…
You recently did a few shows in Colorado in addition to Jam Cruise. Did you work on any new songs or covers for those shows?
JM: It was always very great when we get together. I think we’d like to do another album where we [build the songs out of improvisation]. All of us play in a lot of different types of projects. John has a lot of different sides and different projects. For us, it is really just great to play behind John.
JS: We have been playing different covers [including some Bob Marley songs]—we have been playing free and they turn into songs. The great thing about these guys and me is that we can actually play spontaneous music that sounds good. It is really hard to find people who do that. These guys and myself have really worked on that from a different angle from any other bands in the jamband worlds. All we have to do is talk about a thing—say something like, “lets do this song”—and we know it is allowed to go into whatever—or not.
JM: Even the songs we have all recorded have changed a lot since we recorded them. That’s why we put out a live album…
CW: It is called In Case The World Changes Its Mind, which came out the year before last.
JM: [On that album] we got to go back and revisit a bunch of these songs which are really different from the record. We really got to open up the playing and expand on these songs. Every time we get together with John it is really different. Those songs are designed as launching pads and it really doesn’t matter if we play a tune we record 15 years ago on A Go Go. It is going to be really different when we play it now.
JS: Yeah, I noticed that when we played “Little Walter Rides Again” in Ft. Lauderdale [on January 6] I forgot how we end the song. But it was cool because we got into some different stuff. We had a set format but thank God I forgot that. Also, we played “Scarlet Begonias,” the Grateful Dead song, because John and I were playing with Phil Lesh [this fall]. We totally demolished it!
Speaking of your recent collaboration with Phil, can you talk about your experience playing with Phil at Terrapin Crossroads?
JS: Phil likes us because we are good players and because we can improvise and that’s what we really do. The other guys in that band like Warren Haynes—he is a great singer and great guitar player—but I think Phil likes the way John and I improvise as well as the fact that we can play those songs. He is really interested in improvisation.
JM: We had to learn 42 songs for the run and there were only a few that I really knew before the rehearsals.
JS: The thing is with those Dead tunes, they are easy tunes but four minutes into it they do the song with two different chords. The Dead remember that when they play but, for us, we really had to rehearse to learn over 40 songs for four days.
CW: They are not difficult songs to play, just difficult to remember.
JS: Also, there are so many different versions of the songs. Phil would go, “that is the version of the song we did in ’83 or whatever—we don’t do it like that anymore” and we’d have to relearn the thing.
CW: Did you sing at those shows John, I heard something about that?
BM: It was Warren, actually, but there was a rumor they sang “Fire on the Mountain.”
JM: We kind of just sang along and mouthed the words. Thankfully, they didn’t let us sing. [Laughter.]
John Scofield, you attended the Grateful Dead’s first-ever New York City show at Tompkins Square Park way back in 1967. What were your initial impressions of that show?
JS: I remember seeing these guys with long hair and going, “How did they grow that long hair?” They had hair down to their backs and I thought, “How did they grow their hair that long?” Because I thought long hair was only invented 8 months earlier!
Shifting back to your Terrapin shows, how did you approach organizing the setlists?
JM: Phil would let us know what he wanted to play for each night. Then, he told me to check out different Phil Lesh & Friends eras to listen to. I suggested a few songs, and we did some of them.
JS: For Phil it is all about the improvisation. He is the only rock star I have met where intellectually, as a concept, he wants it to be spontaneous. He doesn’t care if there are mistakes. He wants there to be some magic stuff—more than just playing the right chords.
MMW also recently released a new acoustic live album, Free Magic. It came out after you celebrated your 20th anniversary—and MMW started as an acoustic group. Why did you decide to release an acoustic album at this stage in your career?
CW: The tour where that music came from was 5 or 6 years ago. And the reason we didn’t put it out sooner—[mimicking an advertising voiceover] on our new record Free Magic, out now [Laughter.]—is the same reason the live MSMW record didn’t come out sooner. It is hard to listen to yourself so close to when a show happened. You need time to go by to have any sort of perspective at all. If you are going to produce yourself you need time to separate yourself—to forget and to really hear the music objectively. We tried to put that MSMW live album out but we couldn’t—you can’t listen to yourself. You remember how you felt at the gig and you are too caught up. You remember too much. A few years go by and you can really put the recordings on and judge it for what it is. So I think the timing really worked out where our 20th anniversary happened, and we felt ready to tackle all that stuff and make the live record happen. It seemed like a logical next step and was a fun way for us to tour—that’s how we began, as a piano trio.
JM: We always feel like we are doing [all of our musical sides] but we don’t have time to always go back and listen to what we just did because we are moving onto what’s next. We also all have individual projects. We always think about where we are going. It is hard to sit around with all these tapes. We are not really a nostalgic band.
CW: If you multi-track record an entire tour it is hard to sort through. You have 10 versions of all these songs—it takes long boring plane rides and van rides where you have nothing else to do but sit there and listen to all that.
BM: Thanks to Chris’ long boring tour rides [with Wood Brothers] it has really helped us to get this album out.
CW: I was good at starting. Once I said, “I like this song,” then you get someone else to listen to it and say, “I don’t like this song.” But it is cool because we’ve started the process and something is happening. If they don’t like that version, they have to find one that they do like. The ball is in their court and, eventually, we all come to a consensus. Democracy takes a long time, let’s face it.
JM: We started as an acoustic band and expanded from there for touring reasons. I don’t think we thought, “Let’s do an acoustic record to restart after our 20th anniversary.” It has always been one of the things we do, and we like to do it. It creates a different vibe, and it is more intimate. For us, it forces us to listen and play in a different way. We like to do it to keep that connection.
BM: It also coincided with this acoustic tour we just did. It was really only our second official acoustic tour so it made sense to release at that time. What I love about the record is that it is like chamber music. You are really hearing each of us in a different way. There is a lot more dynamics and space to listen to each other. John has a prepared piano and all these other instruments that he brings out, which are acoustic. He has a shepherd’s flute. We get into these other worlds and it is a nice change. All these other types of composing and improvising comes out after these acoustic songs.
JM: It is almost like when we play with different people. It brings out different voices—if you really are improvising and interacting it is going to be different. Look at John Scofield, who has his more straight-head jazz project and the Uberjam. That is another way we are similar, we like to do all these different projects.
CW: Yeah, we like playing on the Jam Cruise and when we go up there we know it is going to be a party. There is no question—we are dealing with a deck of a ship where people are drinking and dancing and talking. It is nice and it is fun but what we liked about the acoustic tour is that it sets up this whole different environment where we are playing concerts in this seated, listing environment. You can hear a pin drop.
JS: We are doing Jam Cruise without a roadie—schlepping our own gear—a sign of the future. Maybe the fans will help with our gear!
