By Chris Hovan

Confronting the odds and defying categories comes naturally for progressive trio Medeski Martin & Wood. Since 1991, the group has held true to their vision, whether seeing the world through the dark glasses of jazz types or through the amber shades of the alternative crowd. Keyboardist John Medeski, bassist Chris Wood, and drummer Billy Martin are just as likely to find themselves on the bill of a prominent jazz festival as they are to take the opening spot for such pop acts as A Tribe Called Quest, Beck, or the Foo Fighters. MMW’s genre-bending point of view has been good for business and for developing the type of crowds who follow the band with the kind of allegiance and zeal that distinguishes your average Deadhead.

“It’s amazing and hard to believe, but it makes sense,” says John Medeski about the ardor of the band’s following. “When we first went out, we went to the places where young people go. We went to the coffeehouses and alternative clubs. We didn’t play jazz clubs or any of that bullshit. We went straight out to the people we wanted to play for. Which I guess is not common for jazz or more creative music which has always been supported by more aristocratic environments, like musical centers and jazz clubs and places where young people can’t afford to go nor do they want to because the scene is disgusting and it’s dead and it’s a bunch of bullshit. So, we chose to take a different path, to try to keep our music real.”

As quickly as John and the guys may be to cross those stylistic lines, they definitely acknowledge the impact jazz improvisation has had on their overall approach. In fact, it was through other jazz musicians and improvisational gigs that the trio began to take shape. “We heard about each other through this drummer, Bob Moses, who’s like a mentor to all of us,” explains John. “That’s how I heard about Billy and when Chris and I both moved to New York we were playing at the club called the Village Gate, which was a really legendary old jazz club. We started doing gigs there as a duo and then they expanded their format to trio. We tried different drummers and Billy did some of the gigs and there was a certain chemistry from the first time we got together.”

Timing had something to do with MMW’s early successes. Both 1993’s It’s a Jungle in Here and the following year’s Friday Afternoon in the Universe picked up on the funky organ groove that was just beginning to make a comeback for the first time since the chitlin’ circuit had died out in the late ‘60s. In a very fundamental way though, the organ was simply a necessity for Medeski, whose background is as a pianist. “When we started touring, there were no pianos anywhere.” As they’ve expanded their palettes, both Medeski and drummer Billy Martin have filled out their arsenals, the former adding various electric keyboards and the latter carting along a variety of ethnic percussion instruments.

It’s MMW’s efforts to broaden the artistic scope that make their fourth and latest Blue Note album, The Dropper, their wildest and most complex work to date. Tracks such as “We Are Rolling” and “Bone Digger” stir up quite a froth, with a dense collective interplay that is due as much to raw musical talent as it is to the expanded technical capabilities available through the use of the band’s own custom studio in Brooklyn, New York. “We kind of built the studio to do the record, which was great because we had a lot of time and had all of our instruments,” enthuses Medeski.

Drummer Billy Martin makes the most of postproduction by multi-tracking various percussion parts. Such native Brazilian instruments as the berimbau and cuica play prominent roles in “Felic” and “Sun Sleigh.” As Medeski explains, “We did a lot more layering of percussion and it’s fun to really have that freedom and get to be creative that way, be creative with the compositional process and the recording process all the way through mixing.” Of course, all of this is not to say that the fundamentals that have made MMW the darlings of their fans are still not in evidence. Concise vignettes like “Philly Cheese Blunt” and “Shacklyn Nights” rock the house with Medeski’s B3 getting as down and dirty as ever and Chris Wood’s bass imparting the low frequency vibes.

Through their live shows and the kind of extrasensory interplay that is unmistakable when the trio is in their “zone,” so to speak, they have been portrayed lately in the press as the jazz poster boys of the current “jam band” craze. Turning out to be something of a double-edged sword, Medeski makes no bones about his dissatisfaction with the semantic issues of the term. “It’s not intentionally a put down, but the term ‘jam band’ is just stupid. To say that people who are improvising or spontaneously composing are just up there jamming, I mean there’s some truth in it and I enjoy the simplicity of it, but then at another level it kind of brings it to a high school garage band mentality.”

Ultimately, MMW’s desire to go beyond category has brought its share of rewards and exasperation. For those who try to pigeonhole and categorize, Medeski has his own resolute stance. “I don’t waste my time with whatever stylistic lines people have created to help organize things in their brains. It doesn’t make sense to me.” As for the fodder that provides the trio’s lifeblood, pushing the envelope via a collective route seems to work wonders. “We’re changing all the time, hopefully, which is kind of why we stay together,” says Medeski. “We never really planned anything, just playing music and improvising along the way, taking advantage of the opportunities when they come, and hoping that the music will shine through in the end.”