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Yes, No and Maybe: Celebrating 20 years of Medeski, Martin & Wood’s musical adventures

In the early ‘90s, the band began playing electric at East Village clubs like the original Knitting Factory on Houston and CBGB’s gallery space. None of the venues had a piano.

Medeski: We did a tour and at that point there were hardly any pianos any more in the clubs and, if there were, they were shit. And for me, playing a digital piano is a lot like sex with a condom. People use them now and that’s great, but I just need that connection. I had played organ before and it made sense.

Wood: I remember the first gig where we were going to use organ and John didn’t even have a B3 yet. He was using this Korg organ which still had a great sound even though it wasn’t a B3. It was something he’d been playing and knew how to get a lot of amazing sounds out of it. So we booked this gig at the Knitting Factory and up to that point we had been doing acoustic piano stuff like on Notes From the Underground. So basically we had to write a whole set of music for that gig and a lot of that music ended up on It’s a Jungle in Here. We wrote “Beeah,” title track and others. It was a turning point because we realized we had this sound with the organ.

John Scofield (guitarist): When I first heard them, I definitely thought they were in similar area to me. To me, they really put together a lot of stuff that I loved and was trying to put together myself. I played in the fusion years, but I really loved the James Brown kind of funk. I really loved R&B, and I really heard an awareness of that. And I like playing free, so when I heard these guys I thought, “Wow, this is interesting.” These were people I could really play with.

Trey Anastasio (Phish guitiarist): The first time I saw them was in the small space that used to be attached to CBGB’s. It must have been in the early ‘90s. They were playing some incredibly deep, tightly woven and entirely out music. It was the furthest thing from dance music. It was atmospheric and rhythmically layered; I loved it. Everyone was sitting down and it was really quiet and weird. The drum set was a strange mixture of African drums and a traditional trap kit. They had an upright bass, but it wasn’t traditional jazz, and the keyboards didn’t sound like anything I had ever heard before. I’m not even sure they had songs back then. I remember thinking it sounded like wind at one point.

Wood: For us, it made perfect sense to have a bass player and an organ player. That’s what Bob Marley had—a bass player and an organ player who played clavinet. Booker T. and the MGs were organ based but had a great bassist. There is plenty of great organ music that has bass, too. We didn’t just think of ourselves as a jazz trio or an organ trio until we started reading about it in the press.

Marc Ribot (guitarist): I think some—or all—of the lads were staying at Sim Cain’s loft on Ave. A and 7th St. I was walking by on my way to rehearsal and I could hear this music coming out Sim’s window—MMW must have been rehearsing. I remember that they were playing this really fierce groove. Anyway, I went to my rehearsal, played about three hours, had some lunch, sat around and then walked home about four hours later. And when I walked by Sim’s window, they were still playing that same groove. And I thought, “Man, these guys are doing it right.”

Whereas many up-and-coming New York-based jazz musicians tend stick to around the city gigging and doing studio sessions, MMW hit the road.

Martin: At first, we were in the Brown Booger, which was my brown 14-passenger Dodge van. Then John announced that his dad would co-sign a loan for an RV and the next day we were driving back to Atlanta with me following the RV in the van. We gave the van to a guy in Atlanta who fixed one of John’s keyboards or gave him one—something like that. We didn’t need to sleep on anyone’s floor. We didn’t need to stay in hotels. We were together so much that we didn’t even need apartments in New York at this point. We’d live in Hawaii when we weren’t on the road.

Dickinson: They rolled into Memphis and Oxford, Miss. in their RV and it turned out we had mutual friends. They were instantly interesting, friendly and welcoming. It felt like we were fast friends. Soon after that Cody and I rolled into NYC and played the Lakeside Lounge and they all showed up, which was so cool of them.

Medeski: If we could get 50 people to come and see us in every college town, we would be working all month doing that. We’d do this rather than have to play in 25 different bands. Or you’d have to play weddings. When I left Boston, I threw out my tux and told myself I’m not going to play weddings any more. There’s nothing wrong with that because live music is great no matter what, but I really wanted to try and do my music. But truth be told I still did a few weddings with friends: When Oren Bloedow and Billy Martin are playing it, how am I going to say no?

Wood: Nobody was doing what we were doing at that time—traveling around in a van playing that kind of music. We were definitely a weird anomaly, which kept things interesting. There was no roadmap to tell us how to do things so everything was improvised—both our careers and lives. We were making it up as we went along.

Steve Bernstein (trumpeter): I remember being on the [music from Robert Altman’s film] Kansas City tour and the guys in the band saying, “Your friends in MMW, man, they are really doing it.” I told them, “You don’t understand what they did. They were all sidemen. They gave up their apartments to tour and that’s how they got to where they are now.” That was some brave shit.