Track Listing

1. Invocation
2. Afrique
3. Seven Deadlies
4. Your Lady
5. Rise Up
6. Buster Rides Again
7. Thaw
8. Hey Joe

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #77905 in Music
• Released on: 2000-04-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live

Amazon.com
With Tonic, John Medeski, Billy Martin, and Chris Wood clearly have in mind both a window on their roots and a boundary test. A bristling live album, Tonic whisks listeners back to the trio's auspicious, acoustic-piano-driven debut, Notes from the Underground, without even a glimpse of Medeski's electric keyboards. That the trio has made its name in music circles beyond the jazz crowd by using these very keyboards--as well as their trance-like rhythms and deeply involved jams--is largely irrelevant for Tonic. The album starts off with cascading, chromatic rushes on the piano and steamrolls through an often twisting, even free-leaning topography with churning energy. Without the sustain and ambient effects of electric keys, Medeski attacks the piano fiercely, with the rhythms largely driving at the same pace. "Rise Up" is a killer, soulful piece, using a funky hard-bop core as its focal point. The trio closes with Hendrix's "Hey Joe," delivered with a tender, sad calm. It's a fine coda to a thrilling session. --Andrew Bartlett

From Jazziz
On Tonic, recorded at the lower Manhattan club of the same name, Medeski Martin & Wood leave the electronics at home, along with most of the acid-jazz rhythms and trance-music structures that have made them so successful. Like other jazzmen who've hit it big by playing music significantly removed from their roots, MMW want to remind us that they can still handle the lingua franca - the post-bop mainstream - as well as they used to. On the opening "Invocation," they do more than that, shuttling back and forth on the freedom train before the piece melts into Lee Morgan's "Afrique." Soon Coltrane's wistful "Your Lady" sets the stage for the trio's own "Rise Up," a post-modern boogie-woogie distinguished by Chris Woods' bravura bass.

Since they're using the traditional piano-trio format, you might expect pianist John Medeski to take an even more prominent role than usual, but MMW remains an equal-opportunity outfit. In fact, I'd venture that less than half of Medeski's work on this album consists of the spotlit, single-note soloing found in most piano trios. (Of the three, it's the drummer, Billy Martin, who actually commands the most attention.) It all results in a quite competent performance, more impressive for its arrangements and mood swings than for the notes themselves - a 21st-century update on the Ramsey Lewis Trio of the 1950s. Hard-core MMW fans can take solace in the fact that their follow-up disc, The Dropper (due late October), returns to electronics and acid. Others will likely wonder (despite MMW's appropriation of source music from Bud Powell to Cecil Taylor) what the fuss is all about.

--- Neil Tesser, JAZZIZ Magazine Copyright © 2000, Milor Entertainment, Inc.

Customer Reviews

mmw forgot to pay the electric bill...
listen to notes from the underground and then slip tonic on immediately after- mmw has taken a quantum leap in improvisational and compositional prowess in just a few short years. gone are the self-conscious attempts at integrating contemporary stylings into a jazz format. now the band confidently plays a different kind of juggernaut, concocting a stew that is indistinguishably their own. wood's acoustic walk on the chorus of "afrique" thrills me each time while their understated version of hendrix's "hey joe" breathes new life into a song that i felt was ready for the fm graveyard. and i haven't even begun to mention medeski's wondrously choppy, bombastic chords or martin's brilliant-as-always percussion. mmw has truly grown up on this album, showing that they can rock a dark house in the middle of an electric storm.

Back to their roots.
For those only casually familiar with MMW, this disc may come off as somewhat of a surprise.The mainstream press has pidgeon-holed these boys as just another "groove-band". While there is definitely a post-hippie following associated with the group, they are at their core, a jazz trio. This is where their roots lie. And as anyone who has seen them live can attest, they are not swayed easily by the desires of their fans to play endless [body]-shaking encores. I have seen them live quite a few times and they always exceed my expectations for great jazz based improvisation. Past tours have generally consisted of an opening set of acoustic jazz trio exploration, followed by a second set of electric groove oriented pieces.

When they made their residency stay at Tonic, their focus was an all acoustic setting. No electric instruments. Back to the basics. This album contains the fruits of that endeavor. Within it are swinging jazz piano trio stylings merged with free form explorations and rhythmic vamps.

MMW sometimes have a tendency to dwell rather long on AACM inspired quiet free introductions to their sets, which often tests the patience of their hippie-fan base contingent, but here all the fat is trimmed. And after a brief introductory fanfare things are immediately off to swingland. Lee Morgan's "Afrique" is the first cover tune on the album. Coltrane's "Your Lady" and Bud Powell's "Buster Rides Again" also make welcome appearances.

You can tell they've been playing with each other for years. You can hear it in how they shift gears at a moment?s notice from sprightly walking bass, be-bop 4/4 rhythms and 16th note piano flurries straight into a maelstrom of modal ostinato bass plucking, free fill drum exhortations and dissonant piano swirls. These telepathic and dynamic interactions make up the majority of the playing on the disc, with only a few super quiet numbers. Remarkably, one of the softest tracks on the album is their cover of "Hey Joe". When things do get quieter, such as on the Coltrane piece, interesting instruments begin to appear, like Medeski's melodica and Martin's collection of ethnic percussion.

There are four original tunes on the album, and all of them contain the same momentous push and pull of structure vs. free improv. The general feel of the album can best be summed up by describing one of the original tunes, "Seven Deadlies". The band slowly starts the piece out in vamp mode, building it up with swaggering R & B piano chords, ostinato bass playing and a quick spirited boogaloo drum pattern. But just as quickly as the theme is conceived, it is mutated again. Dissonant piano chords and meandering bass playing overlay a still steady shuffle rhythm. But then the pace quickens to a speedy free-bop rush complete with frenzied piano runs. But once again, the theme re-emerges and off it goes and then back again, like endless waves.

The interesting thing about their approach to free playing is in their sense of democracy. One of the trio members is almost always holding down the structure of the piece. As a shuffle rhythm contorts into a bashing free cymbal soliloquy and the bass wanders off into metric patterns, you can hear Medeski holding it all together by playing the song's core melody as a chordal vamp in the background. In a few bars he could be pounding out atonal chord clusters and Martin could be playing call and response figures with him, but you'll be able to hear Chris Wood keeping the bass ostinato going, and so on and on it goes.

If you dig good telepathic jazz trio improv and / or are already a fan of the band, this is definitely worth getting. If you thought they were merely a "jam" band, then you need to hear this to dis-spell that fallacy. Oh, and by the way, the live sound is pretty good, very little audience noise.

This is the Current State of the Art
While Eric Nisenson (see the book "Blue : The Murder of Jazz"), Tom Piazza, and others argue about the current state of jazz and the "jazz wars," Medeski, Martin & Wood have been pushing the envelope further and further for years now, seemingly oblivious to such squabbling. For MMW, it's all about the music. It's not about ego, it's not about solo time, it's not about being a band leader or having marquee status in the "jazz world." Every night, these guys are riding out on the edge, taking risks, hanging them out there, pushing further and further out, honing their chops, deconstructing, amalgamating, distilling. MMW knows, as Miles Davis did, that "jazz" (or perhaps it's better to just say "music"), is nothing without constant innovation. "Tonic" is an incredible document of the current state of MMW's constant innovation, but it is also more than that. To me, it is proof that this music we call jazz is alive and well.

"Tonic" is a live recording from the club it is named after, a very small club in New York City. The songs are actually pulled from several nights in a row that the band played there to sold-out audiences at the beginning of 1999. The intimacy of the recording is an achievement almost as remarkable as the music being played. Whenever I listen to this, especially on a good set of headphones, I feel like I'm sitting right there in front of the band. It's really amazing. This recording has surpassed my other favorite live jazz recording, the 1964 Miles Davis Quintet Plugged Nickel dates.

Listening to this gives me goosebumps, and that is not an exaggeration. Goosebumps creep up on my arms, back, and neck every time I listen to this. It's not just that the music is skillfully played--and it is that--but rather that the music is so exciting, so alive.

If you are a fan of serious jazz (and I hate to use that term, but we have to use some term to separate real music from this cheeze jazz and "jazz flavors"), then this recording is a must. Forget the fact that you may not have gotten into MMW's electric, funk-based music in the past. The music recorded here is a whole different animal.

I'm running out of space, and I haven't even gotten into specifics about the style, technique, or influences of the individual songs. I'd like to go on about the brilliant playing of all three members, about the psychic link these guys seem to have, about the totally non-selfish commitment to the music that you can hear throughout, about the brilliant use of dissonance, about-- I hope you'll forgive the rambling, but "Tonic" is so exciting it is difficult for me to get into the specifics without all this lead-up. I'm going to quit while I'm ahead. Do yourself a favor and buy this CD.