Interview Medeski Martin And Wood talk Radiolarians and jam bands

You can call Medeski Martin And Wood a jam, jazz, or funk band—just don't call them stingy. On Nov. 24, MMW is releasing Radiolarians: The Evolutionary Set, which compiles the previously released Radiolarians I, II and III along with bonus tracks, an unreleased 70-minute live album, a double vinyl LP set consisting of highlights from the three Radiolarians albums, a DVD (directed by Martin, who moonlights as a visual artist and filmmaker), and a 10-track remix disc featuring Dan The Automator, DJ Logic, and Scott Harding. Named after a single-celled organism with an intricate exoskeleton, the Radiolarians series was purportedly the band's way of subverting the music industry cycle of creating an album and then touring behind it. MMW is touring in support of the box set, though, and will visit The Rave/Eagles Club Friday. In advance of the show Billy Martin talked about Radiolarians and why he's not crazy about MMW being labeled a jam band.

The A.V. Club: When John Medeski talked about the box set, he said that if a canary writes a new song a year, MMW should be able to do the same and write a new song for every season. So, was Radiolarians inspired by canaries?

Billy Martin: It was just another way for us to put out more material in a shorter amount of time. We don't want to play the same set of music for a year. A lot of bands tour on one record, play all those tunes, then burn out on it. We can't do that. So this is our way of breaking up our writing.

AVC: It is a lot.

BM: Do you mean a lot of music or a lot of money? Or both? [Laughs.]

AVC: Both. Is the hefty box set a result of having more material than usual?

BM: We weren’t thinking we were writing music for a box set. We weren’t even thinking we were writing music for an album. We were just going to write music. From that we said if we were going to tour for that music, we'd try to get into the studio and be really economical by going in for a few days to capture the developed music. When the record came out, we thought, "We're independent now, we can release as many new records as we want."

AVC: What was the songwriting process on this album? Does someone direct the songs?

BM: It’s different. We try to keep it as open to development as possible. Sometimes someone will bring in an idea, other times we’ll just improvise together, whether it’s in front of an audience or during rehearsal. And then we take notes on what seems to work, where we can go from there, talk about it, play some more. Once we have the seed of an idea, which could be a simple little melody or a mood or a beat, and then the other two kind of react to that in a session and then everyone starts collaborating. And people say, you should play this bass line, or you should play with less notes. We kind of direct each other. It's usually a real collective thing, a democracy, like a conversation.

AVC: How do you differentiate between Radiolarians I,II and III?

BM: Radiolarians I was the biggest challenge, because it was something new. In a way it’s unbalanced; I actually wrote two tunes in there, which is very unusual for me. The difference is there are more individual composers in I. On the other two records we collaborated 100 percent on everything; you can hear that. Radiolarians II is really strong, original material, but on III there are more cinematic pieces.

AVC: Do you envision this being a process you’ll use for succeeding albums?

BM: If anything this is one of the better ways to write together and not get stuck in the studio. It’s a really good, open-ended format.

AVC: If it was a reaction to the "make a record, then tour" model, how does it feel to go on this tour and play Radiolarians again?

BM: Originally we said we were never going to play this record again! [Laughs.] But it’s hard not to do that because we did write a lot of material and a lot of it is still fresh to us. The whole idea was to just have a lot of material to keep things exciting on the stage. So there’s still a little bit of life left in performance, so we’re just going to add this to our repertoire of hundreds and hundreds of songs.

AVC: People lump MMW into the jam band category. Do you like being affiliated with the jam band scene?

BM: I don’t really like affiliations to any one term or category. If I say I’m a jazz musician then people are just going to see me for that, and maybe say "I'll stay away because I’m not into jazz."  But that’s not what I am. I’m a musician who loves every kind of music—any kind that’s good. The jam band term to me—as far as the phrase goes—is just not as cool as rock 'n' roll. Because the words "rock 'n' roll" are more abstract. And I’m not into really literal terms. I’m not into bands that jam, although that’s what we do, I’m not denying it. But I like the word composers, I like the word improvisers.