There may be only one band in America that can attract erudite jazz fans, hard-core avant-gardists, alternative rockers, aging hippies, youthful club hoppers, Deadheads, hipsters and anyone who loves to dance.
Like its audiences, its music defies categorization, yet one thing is certain: During the past year or so, the jazz-funk trio Medeski, Martin & Wood has soared from near obscurity to bona fide cult status. Though almost no one had heard of the group a couple of years ago, today it seems unstoppable, having appeared on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” contributed to the soundtrack of the hit film “Get Shorty” and sold out club dates across the country.
So when MMW rolls into Chicago’s Elbo Room for a two-night stand next week, expect to see the house packed with everything from classic grunge to power ties, and most points in between.
“I think we’ve hit a chord out there because there are a lot of people who listen to pop and rock music who want to hear something more experimental than the MTV bands,” says MMW keyboardist John Medeski.
“There’s a need for some people to explore deeper realms, to go on a deeper journey.”
In the case of Medeski, Martin & Wood, that journey is a nearly mystical one, with hypnotic backbeats and radiant organ chords setting the tone. Typically, the music begins gently and unfolds slowly, the three players improvising for 15 to 20 minutes at a stretch. There are no grandstanding solos here, no self-dramatizing virtuosity.
Instead, the three players produce one seamless fabric of sound, along the way offering strange sonic effects, catchy jazz riffs, ’50s camp melodies, avant-garde dissonances and easily danceable grooves.
It’s an unabashedly eclectic, freewheeling idiom that draws on everything from classic Jimmy Smith organ trio recordings of the ’50s to Sun Ra-like space music of the ’60s to vintage funk rhythms of the ’70s.
But MMW reworks all of these ideas, and then some, with a lean, stripped-down ’90s sensibility and an unpredictable improvisatory language all its own.
There’s nothing remotely like it in jazz, pop, rock or you-name-it, but the band’s penchant for plundering every musical source imaginable has drawn both praise and condemnation.
“Last year when we played in Baltimore,” remembers percussionist Billy Martin, “the clubowner told us that Baltimore’s jazz society had called him up and said they were going to boycott the place.
“When you get that kind of statement from a jazz society, it does indicate that some tension or resentment must exist.”
MMW certainly defies stylistic boundaries that some jazz connoisseurs worship, but their work amounts to far more than a musical hodge-podge. By taking snippets from so many idioms, then rearranging the parts to fit their own laconic way of playing, they have arrived at a musical language that speaks to many different sorts of listeners.
Just as jazz fans can savor the band’s sense of swing and improvisation, MTV devotees can feel its dance beat, alternative rockers can relish its bristling dissonances, and so on. It’s a music at once sublimely sophisticated yet eminently accessible, a style that welcomes all comers.
“You’ve got to remember that young people don’t view music of, say, Charlie Parker or Jimi Hendrix the way people who grew up with that music do,” says Medeski. “To those people, Parker and Hendrix are very different.
“But to young people, Parker, Hendrix are both old music. Young listeners have a broader view of music in general, which throws John Coltrane and Miles Davis in the same bucket with Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix.
“And that’s a great thing, because it suggests maybe we’re entering an expansive time for music.”
Certainly MMW is doing its part to shatter musical barriers, yet the band wouldn’t be nearly so successful if not for the particular chemistry its players share. From the moment these musicians sat down to rehearse together in New York, in 1992, “it clicked, as soon as we started a groove and started playing,” remembers bassist Chris Wood.
“We all come from different backgrounds, different musical educations and different influences, but it was obvious from the start that the chemistry was there.”
The gigs, however, weren’t. So Medeski (who’s now 30), Martin (32) and Wood (26) pooled their money, got on the telephone, booked two-bit jobs across the country and hopped in their van to play them.
“The first year we were just barely maintaining what we had and (spending) extra money from other gigs we were playing individually,” says Martin.
“After about two tours, we started making enough money to repair parts in our RV and buy decent food, but we still didn’t turn a profit.”
Nevertheless, MMW refused to give up, instead continually criss-crossing the country playing a relentless schedule of shows, along the way releasing two exceptional recordings.
“It’s a Jungle in Here” (Gramavision) established the trio’s credentials among some jazz listeners, thanks to unorthodox but musically sophisticated readings of everything from Thelonious Monk to John Coltrane. “Friday Afternoon in the Universe” (Gramavision) pushed into more experimental musical territory, with several ingenious, original compositions.
The enthusiasm of various critics helped put the trio on the map, and the group’s occasional performances last year with the rock band Phish introduced MMW to an enthusiastic young audience.
For all MMW’s pop influences, however, the group’s central inspiration remains the classic jazz trios of the ’50s and ’60s.
“All of those groups left a lot of music to the imagination,” says Medeski.
“Just look at the music of the Bill Evans or Ahmad Jamal trios–a lot is left unsaid, there’s a lot of space and silence. Even Miles Davis cited Ahmad Jamal as a big influence, because Jamal is a master of the unstated and the implied.
“Well that’s what we do, except we use more modern (musical) elements.
“People always say to us, `I can hear a guitar or a sax going over that.’
“And we say, `Of course, but we’re not going to do it, because that’s the idea, leaving it to the imagination.’
“We’re also like the old jazz organ trios, because those groups always have been about the dance beat, the groove.”
Exactly where MMW will head artistically after this strong beginning remains a mystery even to its members, who consider their work too deeply rooted in the spirit of improvisation and too broad in its range of musical influences to predict future developments.
Yet even at this point, MMW clearly stands as one of the defining jazz trios of the ’90s, in that their work brings vintage traditions into the fresh light of contemporary culture.
“All those geniuses in the bebop age were influenced by the pop music of the day, and that’s all we’re trying to do,” says Wood.
“We want to make improvised music relevant to people who are listening today.”
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THE FACTS
Medeski, Martin & Wood
When: 9:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday
Where: Elbo Room, 2871 N. Lincoln Ave.
Tickets: $8
Call: 312-549-5549
