After 17 years, nine studio albums and countless tours, Medeski, Martin and Wood are, in a sense, a band without a country. And they couldn't be happier.
Dedicated to what keyboardist John Medeski calls “the spirit of jazz" through a fierce devotion to improvisation, the trio nevertheless has struggled to find a place within the jazz community -- despite having recorded with established players like John Scofield and signing with iconic label Blue Note in 1998.
“We never felt comfortable in jazz clubs," Medeski said of the band's early days, which began in rock clubs and coffee shops. “Because we knew the jazz audience is . . . looking to hear stuff that sounds like what they've heard. The first time we got together we knew . . . this is something that's our own. This feels current, it's not like we're regurgitating something that happened 30 years ago."
Now the trio, which performs at the El Rey Theatre last night, planed to embark on a new stage of an already distinguished career, leaving its label days behind and releasing three albums in one year on its own imprint.
“It's not really the smartest business move from a record company's standpoint," Medeski laughed, remarking on how unlikely such an undertaking would be had the band re-upped with a label. “But I gotta tell you, [the record industry hasn't] been doing it right."
That musicians with a grass-roots fan base would go out on their own isn't necessarily breaking news in this post-Radiohead climate, but what is notable is their recording process for these albums, which flips the standard release model on its head.
Instead of recording an album and promoting it on tour, the band sketches out rough ideas in rehearsal then fleshes them out on the road. Those songs are then taken into the studio and the process starts all over again with a new batch of songs and another tour.
The first installment, “Radiolarians 1," was released in September. Volume 2 was just recorded, and tonight's show at the El Rey marks the final chapter of the three-part experiment, with the songs-in-progress to be eventually released as “Radiolarians 3."
