Medeski Martin & Wood covered Suspicious Minds at their show at Rams Head on Stage in Annapolis, MD - 2012/10/14. Written by Mark James , whose own version failed to chart, it became a number #1 for Elvis Presley in 1969. The NYC avant-jazz trio have just announced a hometown residency at the Blue Note Club in December: The band will perform 2 shows each night (8:00 & 10:30PM) December 11 - 16, 2012. Special guests include guitarist Nels Cline [...]
Courtesy Ian Rawn Listening to the Wood Brothers' newest release Live Volume 2: Tooth & Nail, you get the immediate sense that these are folk songs composed by instrumentalists. The effort exhibit
Sure, Halloween is a bonanza for kids and dentists, but any self-respecting, debaucherous adult holds the holiday in high regard as well. It comes with a requisite “get out of jail free” card for any and all misbehavior. Imbibing is encouraged. Scantily clad females – a must. Most of this is conducted behind closed doors, where privacy further encourages our willingness to indulge. As we all know, music is an essential lubricant to any successful house party. So, what to play at said masquerade ball? Just how many times can Thriller and the theme from Ghostbusters [...]
Sure, Halloween is a bonanza for kids and dentists, but any self-respecting, debaucherous adult holds the holiday in high regard as well. It comes with a requisite “get out of jail free” card for any and all misbehavior. Imbibing is encouraged. Scantily clad females – a must. Most of this is conducted behind closed doors, where privacy further encourages our willingness to indulge. As we all know, music is an essential lubricant to any successful house party. So, what to play at said masquerade ball? Just how many times can Thriller and the theme from Ghostbusters [...]
Sure, Halloween is a bonanza for kids and dentists, but any self-respecting, debaucherous adult holds the holiday in high regard as well. It comes with a requisite “get out of jail free” card for any and all misbehavior. Imbibing is encouraged. Scantily clad females – a must. Most of this is conducted behind closed doors, where privacy further encourages our willingness to indulge. As we all know, music is an essential lubricant to any successful house party. So, what to play at said masquerade ball? Just how many times can Thriller and the theme from Ghostbusters [...]
Medeski, Martin & Wood - Jordan Hall, Boston, MA - October 5, 2012 Words & Photos: Parker Harrington An evening with avant-jazz masters, groove kings and funk wizards, Medeski, Martin & Wood at Jordan Hall in Boston on Friday, October 5th, could not have taken place at a more appropriate venue. Offering some of the most impeccable acoustics of any hall in the world, Jordan Hall pristinely showcased the same type of blues, funk, grooves and free-form jazz that the trio released on their new album, Free Magic. Coming [...]
And now for some sit-down funk, well-suited to kicking back in a rocking chair with a nice whiskey or whatever you like at the end of the day. I'm still impressed that these guys were able to accommodate a legion of jam band fans and still keep their credibility intact. Guess that just speaks to the universal appeal of wah-wah on a Hammond B3. Medeski Martin and Wood - Wiggly's Way
In their 20 plus years as a trio, Medeski, Martin & Wood have this magical presence in their dizzy musical explorations, melding free-form jazz, experimental “unsounds,” funk and ample improvisation - all the while, never once foraying into trickery or ulterior illusory motives to dazzle their listeners. Genres cease to apply with the improvisational wonders John Medeski, Billy Martin and Chris Wood, resulting in an undeniably fresh approach to not only jazz, but to our conception of sound as a whole. The trio’s latest release, Free Magic , a documentation of their exemplary live performances, was recorded during [...]
Avant jazz trio Medeski Martin & Wood like to turn it up, so it came as a bit of surprise when they embarked on acoustic tour in 2007. They will do it again in October and the new live album Free Magic is an indication about what might happen on stage. Culled from performances in Princeton, Wilmington and Alexandria during the 2007 tour, the five tracks show the versatility of a band taking on the sonic limitations of an acoustic set-up. Drummer Billy Martin 's sense for tonality is far more [...]
Medeski Martin & Wood have just announced a week-long December residency at The Blue Note from 12/11 - 12/16 . The band are performing two sets each night (8 PM and 10:30 PM) and special guests include Nels Cline on 12/12, Marc Ribot on 12/13 and Bill Evans on 12/14, with other guests still to be announced. Reservations for tables are available now . The trio will release their new album, Free Magic, on September 25 via their own Indirecto label. Before their Blue Note residency, [...]
If you're in an indie-rock band these days and not involved in some sort of collaborative side project, then you're in the minority. The latest merging of talents comes in the form of the Divine Fits , who feature Spoon front man Britt Daniels, Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs and Sam Brown from New Bomb Turks. The band, who released their debut album, A Thing Called Divine Fits , late last month, made their late-night debut last Friday night on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. The Divine Fits, who played a handful of warm [...]
Back in 2007, Medeski Martin & Wood did an acoustic tour. I had the privileged of seeing them on that tour. It was incredible. Maybe one of the best shows I have ever seen. The band has sifted through their archives and compiled an album's worth of live tunes from that tour. They'll release that album - Free Magic - on September 25. This will be a great autumnal album. Listen (via SoundCloud ): See 'em on tour: 10/03 - Fall River, MA - [...]
[Photo from the Mountain Jam Facebook Page] With its all-star lineup of sacred steel /modern jazz/blues musicians, you can't help but call The Word a supergroup. Featuring Robert Randolph ( pedal steel guitar ), John Medeski ( keyboards ), and all three members of North Mississippi Allstars - Luther Dickinson ( electric guitar ), Cody Dickinson ( drums , washboard ), and Chris Chew ( bass guitar ), The Word don't generally get to tour together often (although they've done some festival dates this summer), but when these players share a stage, it's an [...]
This may be a little preemptive, but I’m sure we all know the world is due to end in 2012. Saturday night may very well be the last New Year’s Eve any of us celebrate. With that in mind, I’d thought we’d all enjoy a good party song, with an appropriate title for the occasion: Medeski, Martin, and Wood’s “End of the World Party” of their 2004 End of the World Party (Just In Case). I briefly mentioned MMW in my entry on Jimmy Smith. While Jimmy Smith’s influence on any Hammond B3 player cannot be underestimated, John [...]
The exploratory guitar patterns and progressive tempos of Philadelphia's Caveman easily recall another indie-jazz combo of note: Medeski Martin & Wood. So it's no accident that the four-piece finds itself opening for Mago, the side project of John Medeski and Billy Martin, over at University City's Blockley Pourhouse this Wednesday. Last December, the band released its self-titled debut EP, and today's we take the XPN2 Philly Local Philes on a mellow detour to immerse ourselves in the wandering vibes of "Dream Land." Opening out on the humming tones of Brian Marsella's organ, the pointed punctuations of [...]
Hot on the heels of their "trilogy of terror" Halloween run in New York City with Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, fiery jazz-funk trio Medeski Martin & Wood are steering their 20th anniversary tour
I am very excited to be making my first trek down to Live Oak Florida in less than 3 weeks for the Bear Creek Music Festival, and the anticipation has only increased now that the schedule dropped last week. It's my first time ever flying to a festival, so it'll be a definite change from [...]
As we mentioned last week, on October 25, avant-jazz-groove act Medeski, Martin & Wood will release their first-ever full-length documentary entitled Fly In A Bottle . The film, which was previously only available as part of the Radiolarians: The Evolutionary Set , documents the trio both on the road and in the studio, as they worked on material for the trifecta of albums the project spawned. Let's check out this extended trailer for the doc, that features an extended, vampy, Jimmy Smith-inspired organ solo from John Medeski in the middle... [...]
For the last seven years, influential music website Pitchfork has curated an eclectic multi-day music festival in their hometown of Chicago, IL, while later this month they will present their first festival overseas in Paris. Yesterday, the New York Times Arts Beat blog broke the news that P4K would be expanding its empire to the Big Apple, where they already have offices, this winter by teaming up with the folks at Bowery Presents for a new multi-day fest that they are dubbing Forms . Scheduled to take place from February 1-4 at Bowery booked venues [...]
Fact: Medeski Martin & Wood are cooler than you think. I mean, they have to be, right? There's no way they could get away with half the stuff they do otherwise. A case in point is their 2008 album Let's Go Everywhere . It's music for children. For years, kids' music has been uniformly dreadful, all cloying simplistic singalong stuff. It's as if someone decided that every line must end with a perfect cadence, forever, and nobody got around to challenging this. Not until MMW, anyway, who offered an alternative agenda: [...]
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