|
 |
| |
If you take any current music that you love, you can trace it back and find where the roots are. And to really find those roots, to learn and to imitate the roots music as opposed to learning and imitating a current version of it, you're more likely to find your own way of playing it and actually end up sounding more original by imitating something old and updating it yourself, as opposed to imitating something that's already been updated.
--Chris Wood |
|
|
| |
|
Photo by Adam George
Well, I think the organ is a percussion instrument. You can be incredibly percussive on it. And I think rhythm is really where it all starts. It's the most important thing - the phrasing that you play, the way the rhythms interact. If you have that, the harmony comes easily. You can hear the notes. But if the groove and the rhythm aren't there in the first place, then unless you're playing something really abstract and you're purposely playing something out of rhythm, you're really missing something. Billy has been great because Billy Martin was a percussionist. For a while he even gave up the drum set, and he was deep into the Brazilian scene in New York City.
DJ Logic, another "Inside the Music" veteran, has often been referred to as the fourth member of the band, serving as a common guest on stage and in the studio. How does his presence affect the music the band creates on stage?
MMW & Logic :: Red Rocks :: By Adam George |
Well, in one sense what's great about Logic is that he doesn't affect it at all because he knows how to slip into the cracks of what we already do naturally with the three of us, and he just adds to it. We don't really feel that we have to change what we're doing – that's why it felt so natural with him.
How did the Boulder music scene affect your musical development, and when did you decide that you wanted to become a musician?
By the end of high school, I was pretty much hooked. I was always a pretty good student, but I always hated high school because I was just ready. I just wanted to practice and get better. And I was lucky because I went to Boulder High, and the jazz band leader at that time was a professional bass player in Denver, Jeff Jacobsen. He'd sub out gigs to me - corporate events, weddings, everything. I had to learn every style of music, so at that time, at that age, it was the perfect learning experience. I'm just glad that I'm not doing those gigs now!
In a conversation with Gov't Mule guitarist Warren Haynes, he was asked how the band practiced. His response was that they played live every night. Because MMW doesn't tour quite as much as the Mule, how do you guys practice individually and as a band?
Chris Wood by Matt Schwenke |
We rarely get to practice as a band anymore. I think we'd like to, but our lives are a little more full and complicated now with families and mortgages. It's good ultimately for the band that we have separate lives, because when we get back together we're so happy to see each other and we're ready to play. Luckily, Billy is not a loud drummer. I really feel for guys who are in bands with loud drummers and play every night because you'd have to wear ear plugs, and when you do that, it's hard to get into the subtlety of the music. That freshness for your ears is really important. So we purposely don't play every night like that, and we also purposely take time off so that we can go off and rest our ears, listen to music and be inspired, and come back and do it again.
In the early days of MMW, you guys were spending months at a time together touring around the country. What effect did the constant touring and communal living situation have on the music?
The early touring days were really important because we were spending so much time together, and then by the time that we got the RV, it allowed us to be on the road for most of the year. To the point that we gave up our apartments so that we were basically living together like gypsies. We were out cooking because we are really into food. We're passionate about it; John is an amazing cook. We spent a lot of time in this RV, and we would sleep in State Parks and RV parks. That was an important time because we were listening to tons of music together as we were driving. We had 500 or 600 CDs in the RV with us. We were listening to all kinds of amazing music from all kinds of obscure field recordings from all over the world and intense avant-garde classical music and some of the funkiest hip-hop and R&B music and jazz and you name it. We were getting excited about it, we were listening to it together, we were talking about it together, and I think all that listening gave us a vocabulary to talk about our music because we could always refer back to a record and say, "Do something more like so-and-so did." And that shaped our music. Then when we ended up going to Hawaii, we were spending a couple months at a time living in a shack in the jungle, and at that point, it was an opportunity to just play for hours on one groove and kind of develop our groove vocabulary.
You mentioned that in the early days the band was really into cooking and good food. What is your favorite meal?
My favorite meal? Wow, that's like asking what your favorite music is. I mean, there are so many great... Wow. What matters most is that the ingredients are really fresh, you trust who's in the kitchen, and you've got some good wine.
MMW are currently On Tour.
Sam Johnson
JamBase | Worldwide
Go See Live Music!
|
