On the Wood Brothers’ second album, Loaded, Chris employs his 1920s Pfretzschner upright to lay down foundations for the duo’s literate and darkly personal visions. But the ever-inventive Wood also embroiders the brothers’ Americana gothic tapestry with tricky syncopations (“Buckets of Rain”), slippery blues-funk grooves (“Pray Enough,” “Twisted”), and lyrical high-register work (“Walkaway”).
Meanwhile, earlier this year Medeski Martin & Wood expanded its oeuvre to include a children’s album, Let’s Go Everywhere. For that effort, Wood called on the Pfretzschner as well as his Hofner and Fender electrics for drum-like muted lines (“Waking Up”), New Orleans–style funk (“Let’s Go”), an off-kilter country feel (“On an Airplane”), and growling bowed double-stops (“All Around the Kitchen”). While the songs are whimsical, the grooves are typically MMW-deep. “We had no intention of playing down to the kids,” Wood said. “I think they’re ready for anything, within reason.”
Whatever the endeavor, Wood—who also turns up on CDs by such fellow categorybusters as guitarist Marc Ribot and reed man John Zorn—brings cliché-free bass concepts, sonorous tone, and a trunkful of gear that’s as idiosyncratic as his low-end approach. “I get interested in an instrument because it has a sound that makes me play a certain way,” he told BP in July ’02. “That’s why I use a number of basses—they all have totally different personalities.”
Wood’s musical journey began in his hometown of Boulder, Colorado, where he studied bass and composition before heading to New England Conservatory in 1989. At the esteemed Boston school, he studied with bassist Dave Holland as well as pianist Geri Allen and drummer Bob Moses. Moses and Wood toured in a band that included keyboardist John Medeski. In 1991, Wood and Medeski moved to New York City with their sights on sideman careers. But not long after meeting drummer Billy Martin—a denizen of New York’s creative “downtown” scene—the three musicians hit the road as Medeski Martin & Wood.
Thirteen albums and many road miles later, MMW enjoys a niche in the jam-band circuit as well as a following among musicians and discerning fans who enjoy the group’s textural and rhythmic subtleties, heady mix of influences, and high-wire approach to music-making. Taking their philosophy to a larger canvas, this year MMW is eschewing the usual music-biz record/release/tour routine, instead composing a unique set for each of ’08’s three tours, with post-tour studio albums planned for all three programs. Amid those duties, they’re be holding a music camp in the Catskills, and Chris and his brother will continue to tour behind Loaded.
Is it a big change to go from Medeski Martin & Wood's complex improvs to the Wood Brothers’ more straightforward, song-based approach?
It’s not really much of a change. I grew up with the music that influences what I’m doing with my brother, and playing with him is pretty natural and effortless. The big change for me is that I’m singing again, which I hadn’t done since before Medeski Martin & Wood.
Have you done any drills to get back into singing while playing?
Mainly just trying to do it a lot. I have taken some vocal lessons, and it’s given me an extra awareness of trying to correct some things that you want to correct anyway when you’re playing an instrument—but especially if you’re going to be singing at the same time.
Is there one particular challenge you’ve been working on?
It usually comes down to trying to be relaxed with your feet planted on the ground and not getting tight in your shoulders and your throat, and letting everything come from lower down— your diaphragm, your core. That’s important when you’re singing, but it really helps your playing as well.
I feel bowing is very similar to singing. If you get too tight, it gets in the way of the sound, of the instrument vibrating. That’s an analogy to how your vocal cords work. You have to let them do what they do and not get in the way—not to tighten muscles that you don’t have to use.
Does the kind of polyrhythmic playing you do with Billy Martin help you in playing and singing?
Definitely. Billy came out with a book on rhythm [Riddim: Claves of African Origin, Music in Motion Films]. He traced the roots of rhythms from all over the world, and he created little polyrhythmic pieces that we play together. That’s an amazing way to learn to hear what’s going on around you—playing a part that’s in a different rhythm. And that’s similar to playing a bass line while you’re singing different rhythms and harmonies.
What does the acoustic bass bring to the Wood Brothers?
We started out as a duo, and for me it’s the right sound. But we’ve talked about including some electric. I play a Hofner, and they have a certain sound that I’m sure I will add to the Wood Brothers at some point. Loaded is the next step toward fleshing out the songs— adding more drums, a bit of keyboards, guest vocalists, and guest musicians. So it’s a natural development that I would play some electric bass at some point, but this time it was important not to divert from the first record too drastically.
Do you think about bass lines when you’re writing songs with your brother?
It depends. Most of the time we come up with the parts of a song separately from each other. If I start the process of writing a song, I might have a rhythm or bass line in mind, but sometimes the music comes later. For some things my brother comes in with a guitar and the lyrics, and we have to figure out how to arrange the music. That’s a lot of fun, especially with a duo. It gives us a chance to imply a lot of the rhythm—what a drummer would do— and that’s a fun challenge. That’s one of the reasons we’re still touring as a duo; we’re having such a good time doing it. It’s also logistically a lot simpler—just two guys in a van.
Do you take a different approach to your upright tone with the Wood Brothers?
It’s pretty much the sound I go for in general. I try to get a tone that works for all kinds of music—I just try to make the upright sound really good. For the Wood Brothers’ songs it’s more a matter of note choice, the way I approach notes, how bluesy or jazzy a tune is going to be, or whether it’s simple rock or country.
It’s obvious I’m playing real simple—whatever the song needs. On the other hand, the music can be sparse, so that leaves room to fill in the chords, to maybe play a 5th here or a 10th there, or a 6th, or do little melodic things just because there’s space.
Medeski Martin & Wood’s spontaneous approach to music-making seems a natural fit for a children’s album. Was that a factor in deciding to do Let’s Go Everywhere?
A record company, Little Monster, approached us about doing it, and we loved the idea. In the spirit of spontaneity, we went into the studio and had no idea what we were going to do—we had vague thematic ideas but didn’t have any material written. We had four or five days in the studio, so we just started writing. It was great. Because we were so pressed for time we’d each be in our own room working on a piece of music, and then we’d come together to try it and lay it down. So we pretty much wrote the whole thing in four days, with some overdubs later. The fact that it was a kids’ record made us not agonize so much— it was just our gut reactions on the spot. I feel like we should do that more often.
Were there particular bass challenges to working that way?
No. We were just playing music, and we improvised a lot. But in a certain way it was very structured because we were writing pieces of music that had to be complete right there. So it involved trying to find good lines that were hooky and made the tune work. I love doing that. MMW has this reputation for being so freewheeling and avant-garde, but I love playing pop music. I love finding a hook— something that grabs you—and I try to slip that into MMW’s music. So even if a tune doesn’t have much melodic content—if it’s about texture or a certain vibe—I try to make something about the bass line that’s melodic. That’s what I love about someone like Aston “Family Man” Barrett—incredibly simple but melodic bass lines.
What other bassists do you admire for melodic work?
James Jamerson had a way of maintaining that in a busier style. Larry Graham—some of the Sly Stone stuff is incredible. Bootsy Collins and various bass players with James Brown created hooky, melodic lines that are a major part of the tunes. Michael Henderson with Miles Davis was great at that, too.
Are there ways you can prepare for spontaneity— exercises or warm-ups to connect your brain and fingers?
Basically you want to have your fingers able to play every combination of notes. So you can take one simple exercise and extrapolate beyond it—make that exercise encompass every part of the neck in every combination so your fingers are going in every direction possible. Things like that develop fluidity, so that when you imagine something, your fingers just do it. It’s not just for creating speed and chops, but so your fingers can react to get the sound that you want.
It’s also important to figure out what you’re practicing for. You’re practicing to be onstage playing music, not playing scales in your room. So you want to think about how you want to feel when you’re onstage. You want to be relaxed but alert and ready for anything, and you have to practice being in that state of mind while you’re playing, no matter what you’re practicing. Otherwise you’re not really hearing what’s going on around you.
How do you practice getting into that state?
In a way it’s like a yoga practice. While your fingers are doing an exercise and your ears are listening to make sure your fingers are going to the right places, you can shift your focus to, say, your feet and your shoulders, to check in with your body to make sure it’s relaxed and balanced with your feet planted on the earth. You want to be able to judge the notes you’re playing to get the sound you want, but it’s not the kind of judging where you get down on yourself, because that’s a waste of time.
It’s something you forget to practice, then all of a sudden you’re onstage and you go, Oh, I’m really good at playing scales real fast, but I’m freaking out because everyone’s watching me and I have to make music. That’s why I try to stress: Even though you’re practicing a scale, you’re actually practicing that state of relaxed alertness.
Can you practice that without your instrument?
Yeah, you can practice that state of mind any time. It’s almost as simple as remembering to remember. It’s not that it’s hard to do, but you have to remember, okay, I’m going to be up onstage . . . .
No matter what, everyone’s going to get thrown off balance at some point. You’ll get distracted onstage, or the music might not go where you thought, and you’re going to freak out. But if you’ve really practiced that state of being relaxed, you’ll know how to return to it when something goes horribly wrong. Otherwise the rest of the gig’s ruined and you can’t get your focus back.
What technical drills do you do on the instrument?
In the spirit of playing every combination of notes, while using the bow I’ll go up the G and D strings playing a major 3rd and sliding up to a minor 3rd. So if I’m playing E on the D string and G# on the G string, I’ll slide up one finger on the D string to F so I’m playing a minor 3rd, F–Ab. Then I’ll slide those back and forth with different fingerings. I’ll do that on the A and E string as well, and I’ll do the same thing with 4ths and tritones and 5ths and minor 6ths. When you’re playing a 5th and sliding your pinkie up to a minor 6th, you’re creating strength and precision in the left hand. I’m bowing it, so it’s a nonstop sound as it slides up. It can be done pizzicato, but with a bow you can’t get away with sloppy playing.
I use the bow a lot when I’m practicing. That’s incredibly valuable for the left hand and for the tone of the instrument, and it’s great for intonation.
On “All Around the Kitchen” you bow doublestops in a register that’s lower than bassists tend to play them.
That exercise I was just talking about is great for that. It’s great practice to do really slow bowing on those to get them to speak. It makes a big difference what part of the left-hand finger hits the string—you want to go for the fingertips. That gives you a lot more maneuverability—you can stretch more between notes and do wider intervals.
With 3rds on the A and D string, unless you nail that interval just right, it’s pretty muddy, but that’s not always bad. The priority is rhythm. Sometimes if your intonation is a little off but your rhythm is really strong, it’s amazing what you can get away with. Your rhythm helps everything sound good.
How do you practice rhythm?
Dave Holland has an exercise that came out of Contemporary Concepts for Bowing Technique [Fred Zimmerman, Alfred Publishing]. It’s a simple thing where you’re playing a 5th on the D and G strings toward the middle of the neck— an A on the D string and E on the G string. It’s written in three, and it’s all these different combinations of going back and forth between the A and E. In the book it’s a string-crossing exercise for the bow, but Dave would do it pizzicato, and it’s a great way to practice your right-hand string crossing. The trick is you have to alternate your fingers every time so you’re never using two fingers in a row.
I wanted to create an exercise that helps my left hand get stronger and my right hand do string-crossing, so I expanded that exercise so I’m doing a power chord with my left hand, which on upright bass and even electric is tough to do for a long period of time. So you play, say, E–B–E on the A, D, and G strings and do every possible combination of those three notes in a triplet rhythm. That means you’re starting every beat with a different finger, and that creates independence and equal strength between your two plucking fingers. And I’ve expanded that to include 4ths and different combinations of 4ths and 5ths. To hold down all of those notes for an extended length of time is a challenge—especially if you’re trying to be relaxed. So you have to find a balance between muscling it and not tensing up muscles needlessly.
I do that with a metronome, starting at about 72 bpm and playing triplets against that, bridging the power chord with my 1st finger on E on the A string. Then I move the metronome up about four clicks and move my 1st finger down to D and so on. That’s an incredible rhythm exercise, because you can’t help playing all of these polyrhythms as you accent different notes against the four-beat.
So you use two fingers for plucking?
For the most part. Sometimes for double-stops it comes in handy to use the thumb [on the lower note], or occasionally to use the ring finger.
On upright, do you use the Simandl left-hand method [with the 3rd and 4th fingers working together] or a four-finger approach?
I do both, depending on the situation.
MMW is in the middle of its year of writing, touring, and then recording. How’s that going?
Good—we’ve done one tour and recording so far. We’ve learned a lot—how much time we need to get the material together, how much time we need in the studio. We’re not the traditional kind of band that puts out a record and then goes on the road supporting it—it never works out that way, so it was great to do something to give us a creative shot in the arm.
It seems like a challenge to write three albums in the space of a year and make them each distinctive.
Like I said with the kids’ record, we have these ideas and then we find a way to make it work. I don’t have a preconceived notion of how we’ll make the next recording different, but I know it’s going to be different. It’s a tendency we’ve always had. We usually don’t know what we’re going to do, but we have a good idea what we’re not going to do, based on what we’ve done in the past. So I have a feeling it’s going to work out.
Then you’ve got a music camp in August. How did you come up with that idea?
It’s something we’ve been throwing around for a while, and we decided this year to go for it. We have a place we know will work really well—a beautiful Catskills inn that has a lot of performance spaces. The guy who runs it is a big music fan.
It’s going to be interesting. I grew up going to jazz camps, so I’m familiar with that format, and there are all these other things out there like rock fantasy camps. But this is MMW teaching a camp, so that could mean a lot of different things. We’ve gotten applications from all kinds of musicians—singer/songwriters, everything. So it will be a blend of specific and general teaching. There’ll be some traditional music-camp stuff—theory, technique—and there will be some music-appreciation listening to show people what is blowing our minds. Then there will be playing, performing; we’ll get people to play together. So it will be a mix of a jazz-camp format with different elements thrown in, MMW-style.
CURRENTLY SPINNING
“I listen to so much different stuff, everything from African field recordings to Charles Mingus to Bob Dylan, R&B. For bass-oriented music, there’s an instrument from Morocco called the sentir that’s used in Gnawa music—it’s one of the coolest bass instruments on the planet— and there’s a great studio recording produced by Bill Laswell called Night Spirit Masters [Axiom] that features the sentir.”
GEAR
Basses Acoustic: 1920s Pfretzschner with Pirastro Oliv medium metal-wrapped gut strings, “crappy” German-style fiberglass bow; various electrics with MMW including a Hofner Club, ’63 Fender Precision, and ’65 Fender Jazz
Studio sound Acoustic: vintage RCA 44-BX ribbon microphone in front of the bridge “to capture the big woofy low end,” plus DPA condenser mic clipped to the bass body. “The DPA does a great job capturing the higher, woody tone without too much string sound and clicking.” Electric: miked Ampeg B-15 plus direct through “whatever warm tube DI is available.”
Live sound With Wood Brothers: direct from DPA condenser mic plus Fishman Full Circle pickup; Ampeg B-15 “if I need it.” With MMW: direct from Fishman Full Circle plus David Gage Realist pickup; Ampeg SVT for electric basses.
Effects Various with MMW, including Mooger- Fooger MF-102 Ring Modulator, Electro-Harmonix Bass Micro Synth, Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, SansAmp DI
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
With Medeski Martin & Wood Let’s Go Everywhere, MRI; Out Louder, Indirecto; Uninvisible, Blue Note; The Dropper, Blue Note; Tonic, Blue Note; Combustication, Blue Note; Farmer’s Reserve, Indirecto; Bubblehouse, Gramavision; Shack-Man, Gramavision; Friday Afternoon in the Universe, Gramavision; It’s a Jungle in Here, Gramavision; Notes From the Underground, Accurate. With the Wood Brothers (both on Blue Note) Loaded; Ways Not to Lose. With Stanton Moore Flyin’ the Koop, Blue Thumb. With John Scofield A Go Go, Polygram. With Marc Ribot (both on Tzadik) Scelsi Morning; Yo I Killed Your God. With Karl Denson Dance Lesson #2, Blue Note. With Chris Whitley Perfect Day, Valley. With DJ Logic Project Logic, Ropeadope. With Gov’t Mule The Deep End, Volumes 1 & 2, ATO. With John Lurie African Swim and Manny & Lo, Strange & Beautiful. With John Zorn Film Works, Volumes, 3 & 4, Tzadik. With Bob Moses Nishoma, Grapeshot.