Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast - EP 27: Billy Martin (Medeski Martin & Wood)

Episode Date: November 13, 2018

Friend of the show, Jack Brown jumps back on the mic for another week of slinging spit with Frasco. Where's Yeti? Probably lost in some Hot Tub Time Machine in Bend, OR. And lookie what we got here: Billy Martin from Medeski Martin & Wood on the interview hour! Billy and Andy get deep in some stories of coming up as a musician in NYC and our guitar player, Shawn sings the world's saddest song. This is Episode 27. To keep up with the podcast, follow us on Instagram @WorldSavingPodcast For more information on Andy Frasco, tour dates, the band and the blog, go to: AndyFrasco.com The views discussed on this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of the guests. Follow our guest, BIlly Martin at medeskimartinandwood.com Produced by Andy Frasco Yeti Joe Angelhow Chris Lorentz Audio mix by Chris Lorentz Featuring: Shawn Eckels Matt & Chad Cocuzza Arno Bakker

Hey Andy, it's Yeti. Derbyshire told me that Jack from Sophistafunk is hosting for two episodes, and I'm just wondering what is going on and when you are going to tell me about this. Like, I don't want to make this a big deal. I'm a team player. But two episodes? I just kind of, you know, I miss talking to you. But, you know, see, like, I'm not mad at you.

Like, I totally get it. Like, you're busy and you, but, you know, see, like, I'm not bad at you, like, I totally get it, like, you're busy, and you're touring, and call me. Yeah, Andy, uh, I, you know, I, I didn't mean to sound, you know, desperate, you know, like, I mean, I'm really glad that Jack was on there. Hey, um, I just feel like, you know, maybe, uh, maybe we should talk about it, and, you know, I've heard from you a couple days, and I see the years. Show guest cancel. Like, what's going on? So call me. Hey, buddy.

I'm here at the house where we met and been, like, 11 months ago when we started this podcast. You know, the one that we do together. You might think that you could push the send the voicemail button every time, but sometimes you're going to pick up on accident. Man, you know what's going to happen, but sometimes you're going to pick up on accident. Man, you know what's going to happen, mister?

You're going to probably hang up on me. Oh, man! Seriously? Seriously? Here we are, live in full effect. We're on a rooftop in New York City. This is the Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast with Yeti. Yeti is on another sabbatical. I was going to say, no it isn't.

It ain't with Yeti. I don't see Yeti. Yeti ain't here today in the building. We got my boy Jack Brown from Sophistafunk. We're doing to a second round of just ruthless, ruthless shit talk. more than enough proper. What's up, Brooklyn? Jack, here we are on a rooftop overstaring the whole skyline of New York. What does that make you feel? I feel like I'm in Rocky, but New York version of Rocky, where I'm just like, Adrian!

Doing some workout shit. Like, this city inspires the fuck out of me. And it also makes me sad as fuck at the same time. Yeah, I will say, it's like everything is here. Human accomplishment, and, you know me and it also makes me sad as fuck at the same time yeah i i will say it's like everything is here human accomplishment and you know and it's it's all coming together right here one thing i always say is when you come to new york city and you're on the ground floor you feel tiny you see these giant billboards bigger than life and all these things happening all these

people moving around and doing stuff and it makes you feel small and insignificant. But, you know, standing up here, I realize it's all a matter of vantage point because now we're looking out at everything and seeing it for what it is. And, you know, anything can happen in this city. So I think there's a beauty to it, and there's an anxiety-filled dread and terror that comes along with it,

but that's what life is, you know? Bring it on. Basically, life is like your jump shot. You just got to keep working on it, Jack. It's like a baby. You got to feed it. You got to water its sunlight to all relationships, all things you work hard at.

Being in the city, it's a good place to reflect, but like I was saying to you when we were getting breakfast this morning, great place to visit. I don't know if I'd be ready to live out here. Well, you're a Syracuse cat. I grew up in the city where it's like la this kind of feels like la but like if la took a bunch of fucking steroids and everyone is actually says what they actually feel instead of instead of just keeping it in well you know i love that east coast fast talking like you know laying it all out

on the table. I grew up. I worked in Brooklyn for eight years. You worked in Brooklyn for eight years? What'd you do? Empire Bedford, baby. That's what we used to do. Ebbetsfield Apartments over Flatbush area.

What did it teach you? You know, I think I was a suburban kid, and my dad was born and raised in Brooklyn, and he just felt like, I got to bring this kid out to the city that when he was my age, he was older than me. He was, you know, he used to say like, when I was 10, I was babysitting my nephews. And when you're 10, you need a babysitter, you know, like, so I think he wanted to just kind of wake me up out of that and show me what life is like working blue collar in a warehouse. And I would go out every week and I'd work over the weekend out in Brooklyn and I would play basketball. And it's where I started really writing my first rhymes and kind of seeing another side of the world and understanding how we're all connected and all going through the same things,

whether you're rich, poor, we're all going through, whether it's issues, mental health issues, enjoying life, everything. Like, we're all in this together. I don't know. Just changed my perspective. Do you think it's helped you, like, with patience in the music industry? Like, learning how to, like, fucking grind it out, you know, not just quit when a couple shitty shows, you know? Like, I feel like these cities, like LA and these New Yorks,

they're going to keep pushing you down. It's just basically testing you to see how badly you could take this shit. I was sweeping gutters. I'd have to clean the streets out in front of the store and everything and picking up garbage in the middle of the city. I think that

I needed to break myself down to build myself up and understand what it takes to stay the course so but i had to move to new york and learn that hustle where'd you move where'd you go i moved to brooklyn i moved to williamsburg 2006 i bought i didn't buy i rented this shack of a room with these two hot sisters who were really cool and And they took me under their wing. I faked my age. I was 20. I had to pretend like I lost my ID everywhere I go. They didn't even know I was under 20, 21.

So I wanted to make a record. I was really into Damien Rice at this point in my life. And he made a record in his loft in fucking Dublin. So I'm like, fuck yeah. I'm going to do this in Williamsburg. So you came here to record. I came here, I had $9,000 left for my bar mitzvah money.

And I came here. Jewish ballin'. Dude, I'm telling you, you make a lot of money as a fucking 13-year-old Jewish kid, that's for sure. Like all these bar mitzvah people made some dough.

But anyway, I had this mental breakdown. I was working at Atlantic Records. I thought I went up to the VP of Atlantic Records saying, you're doing this all wrong. The young kids aren't buying records anymore. It was 2006 when the music industry was taking a dump. That was right when the CD sales started dropping.

You went Jerry Maguire on them, who's coming with me. Yeah, and the VP said, who the fuck are you? And fired my ass. And then I'm like okay i gotta become a musician like a real musician so i had like cut your teeth on the road yeah i had nine thousand dollars left to record the record i had two thousand dollars to make me last for three months so i bought like two ounces of crumbled weed and i bought a shit ton of top ramen and i just fucking grind it mixed it all together mixed it all together you know i would used to take my piano and my speaker in the subway and like take it to gigs because that's all i knew was fucking

pulling this big ass keyboard pulling a jbl speaker with me and just walking a mile and a half because I couldn't afford a cab. It's probably good that you had your LA thing going and then came out completely to the other coast and planted an anchor there. It kind of already started you. Well, it was just a fresh start. I didn't have to be the people that they wanted me to be. I could be the exact person that work hard like put the work in

let's fuck this is the hours this is my workshop this is us in the gym like i had to really go through those years to understand like do you really want to do this because it's going to be hard you're going to have to work multiple hours i saw it up in syracuse because we're playing in college doing these big shows and then all of a sudden everybody graduates. And now I'm all alone. I'm like playing in coffee shops in front of nobody and everybody else is going on, graduating

to these different jobs and stuff. And it was like, alright, what is it going to take? And I think that's when a lot of musicians give up. I think that's when a lot quit. You know what I mean? Yeah, what's that pinnacle moment when they start thinking they're, they're quitting, like coming from a cause sound, like you said, like your friends moved away. So it's not about fun anymore. My first shows were like full house and I'm coming up as a guest artist and it's like,

we're raging and opening for Method Man and Afro Man. And you know, this was all back in the day, like, and then all of a sudden, okay, I want to go for it. This is going to be amazing. And then I set off to do it. And now I'm playing in front of nobody. And all my friends have graduated and moved on. I'm like, what the hell am I doing? And what I've later learned is they move to different cities and you're going to see them again later in life, but you got to go out and work and get your way back to them. I think so too. I think and get your way back to them. I think so too.

I think people give up when it's tough and when it's not exactly what the dream said. Whoa, the dream told me that I'm just going to progressively get bigger and bigger. The way we figure out who the persons we are is when we're falling on a fucking face. Yeah, the dream is always being pushed against the cold, hard, crushing truths of reality that we have to deal with. Life issues, financial issues, family issues, relationship issues.

Everything else that we're balancing starts to push against that one little idealistic voice inside of you saying, dream, live. And people learn to kind of bottle that voice up or move on from it. And I think artists and people who inspire you of bottle that voice up or move on from it. And I think artists and people who inspire you are always about, you know, trying to unleash that, let that back out, you know, let that part of you, no matter what you do, you know. That lion inside you. This is why we're artists, you know, like we want to express that inner lion. And speak to the lions in everyone, in every single person out there, you know what I mean? Whatever that means to you. It's like to let that, don't suppress yourself because you feel the needs and weights and

pressures of the world around you. And I think a lot of times someone would say, well, easier said than done. I got to deal with this. I got to deal with this. And that's true. So I think in some way, maybe, you know, the people who inspire us can be there to just remind us that there are people out there living like that to give us that kind of hope. You know, the people, we, the music I love that inspired me growing up, that made me look deeper at the world. That's what I'm trying to recreate for others and, and people out there, kids and, you know, keep them rocking. When's the last time, what was, what was the last experience that made you cry? the last time what was what was the last experience you that made you cry um i was uh driving down to a radio show and i was going to be hosting this radio show in ithaca that shouts to cornell

university wvbn and i had to pick songs that influenced us and i was going through all my favorite songs in my entire life and i'm driving down in the car and i'm playing i'm like okay i can only pick 10 songs for this hour what are these songs that just influenced me that I could imagine like somebody driving in their car and hearing. And I was going through some of my favorite songs ever. And some had me going, but I do remember like the beginning of the song, I am the walrus by the Beatles came on and I played it. And there's something that's like, I had it cranking and I can't explain it, man, but it was like the music just unlocked something and I felt tears in my eyes.

And to me, that is, it's happened on stage in certain moments. It's happened during the songwriting process. If I'm writing a song and a lyric that I write makes me cry, I'm like, okay, we got one here. You know what I mean? Or the hairs in the back of your neck. Yeah, that kind of feeling like, whoa. So I think it took me, I think a lot of times you want to suppress that side.

And people, you know, guys shouldn't cry and things like that. Cry out of happiness. Cry out of, that's living to your full emotions to me is like accessing that range of emotion. I just cried a couple days ago for the first time in maybe 15 years. Because I beat your ass one-on-one in basketball? Get the fuck out of here. No, I was on this date and with this girl and it wasn't working out. Well, let's backtrack two days. So I've been in New York for about a week. I went to Mexico City, drank way too much, and kind of just depleted my serotonin a little bit with alcohol. And I went on a date with this girl who's way more celebrity than I am, and it just didn't work out.

And I was looking forward to this date for, I don't know, seven months. Because when you're on the road, you meet someone, and you go on the road, blah, blah, blah. So that didn't work out. So I bottled it in. And then. So this happened how long ago? Oh, like, I don't know, a week ago. Okay.

So I bottled it in. Felt like shit. Felt like, oh, God, I'm just useless. You know how you feel when things don't work out. I'm just useless You know how you feel When things don't work out Then I just like We had the Airbnb

This Brooklyn place Because We got back from Mexico City A day early So I was like Alright we need to get a hotel So I End up

Trying Hitting up One of my old friends That I hooked up with Like 12 years ago Oh he's digging deep In that phone book I was doing

I was like in recon mode Like I need to We need to have a place to sleep. And I'm like, so blah, blah, blah. So I'm like, all right, I'll go on a date with this girl. I don't want to be just using her. And I realized that I'm spreading myself too thin. This is my only Saturday off.

And I'm going out with a girl that... We're friends but like we barely we have hardly anything in common we're trying to make this work she's crying at the bar and like tries to bring me in and maybe I was

the asshole in the whole situation I felt just so depleted like I'm trying to make everyone happy all the fucking time. And you had a moment like, what the hell am I doing? What am I doing? I'm spreading myself too thin. Everyone's like, oh, you changed.

And oh, blah, blah, blah. Everyone's just getting at me on all different ways just because I'm busy. And this is what I want to work on. It's like being a better friend. Being someone that I can like you know and like I feel like that's what it is but everyone else is like throwing these different ways and different how I should live my life that I got so confused that I was I jumped out of the cab I jumped out of the cab And the cab driver Is fucking Pulls over

She's still in the cab She's still in the cab She was like Oh let's We don't have to have sex Let's just cuddle Whatever I'm like

Oh fuck Cuddle buddy Annie Fresco I was drunk And I was like Fine let's go I was just You know I didn't want to do that

I just wanted to hang out With my fucking friends You know it was like It was like going back To a past in my life Like okay here we go I'm gonna have to have One nice stand so i could get a place to sleep tonight and i was like what the fuck am i doing man like who am i like what have i become like this is the

person i didn't want to be and the minute i say no to that i become the asshole So I'm walking around Upstate You know 60th street Like I have no money Like I have like 17 dollars In my My fucking bank account And I'm walking down the street And I'll

And I My high school teacher Calls me That he was my Biggest inspiration He's the one who got me Out of the teacher When I fucked teacher

And shit Like he was the one Who got me out of that stuff Cos I fucked teacher and shit. Like he was the one who got me out of that stuff. Cosmic reality right now. He called me out of the fucking blue. He said, this is just a test. You know,

you're going to fight your way through everything in life. You know, if you could stick it out, you're going to make it. You know, cause I was, and all of a sudden I broke down and cried. I'm like, I'm trying too hard.

I am working harder than mostly everyone out there. And why am I still unhappy? Because I'm spreading myself too thin and giving too much and not going back. George, maybe you have the wrong dream. I thought I did. But then I go on stage And I'm like the happiest fucking guy You wake up

This is why I'm alive All this other stuff That we fucking fight for And we fucking grind out It's all worth it When you get that spark of pure happiness Like I get when I'm Running around on stage,

when you get, when you write a great fucking lyric. Yeah. The ebb and flow of, you finally get to release all that, that built up energy and you have something that, because there's always stress in life. At least you have something that you do that when you're doing it in the

moment, it relieves the stress and it takes that away. And that's what I think, no matter what your passion is out there, find that place that you can get to, that passion of life. And I think that's the key to helping us through these dark times. We're all being tested right now. Everyone out there, this country is being tested. This global structure is being tested like never before. And where do we find ourselves in it? It's not always going to be everything you expected, but you need to learn to basically appreciate the journey for

what it is. And certain stress, like the stress you were feeling, I think that's natural and healthy. That's good. It's like an alarm clock going off saying like, this is toxic. I'm doing something wrong here. And that's why I said you had the wrong dream. You had the wrong dream in that moment. You're so focused on the end goal that you're getting stuck trying to just force your way through it, like ramming your head through a wall. You know, in chess, two pawns can face each other, but the move in chess, they'll never touch.

You can't go any forward. You can only make the lateral move, you know, and that's what to me is an analogy for life. You can look at something, stare you right in the face. It seems like it's right there. But the truth is you have to, you can't, you won't be able to grab it even though it's right in front of you. It's all about thinking a few steps ahead in chess and building and going through it. But it's the same thing as we started this episode.

When you're on the ground in New York City looking up at the buildings, it's an intimidating thing. But look at us now. We're on top of a 12-story rooftop. We feel like we're on top of these mountains or top of these buildings. You know, that's the perspective you should have in life

that you aren't looking up. You're looking with. Yeah, and just, you know, enjoying the balance of it, enjoying the ride in life that you aren't looking up. You're looking with. Yeah. And just, you know, enjoying the balance of it, enjoying the ride for whatever it's worth. And don't be afraid to make those changes to get you to that place. You know? Fuck yeah. Let's listen to Billy Martin's interview.

Rock on. Enjoy it, guys. We're here, live and indirect with Billy fucking Martin, man. How you doing, man? What's up, Andy? How you doing? Nice to actually meet you. I know.

I feel like I've just stalked you via Instagram. Me too. I'm stalking you. Dude, so when i first found out that you i didn't even know you knew who we are until you made that post about raging against the machine yeah and that was like such an honor to have like ever like dude billy martin's hitting you up like i was like totally fanboy that's well i mean you know when i i was i think i was kind of the last day or the day before I was getting off the boat.

I was just cruising around and I was on the top deck. And you guys had this midday concert. Yeah. And you were just killing it, man. You were just like, it was just like, it was for me, it was the antidote, you know, for what I was feeling. I needed it, you know. And it was so intense and beautiful and so in your face. I was feeling. I needed it. It was so intense and beautiful and so in your face.

I appreciate that. It was the kind of vibe that I think actually was kind of healing. So then I just had to let people know. That's respect, dude. Thank you, man. Dude, so let's talk about your band. MMW,

wow. You guys brought so much culture to these to american jazz and you and to the jam scene i mean like they really brought you in like you guys have been a band since 1991 yeah yeah so how'd that start like let's explain it to the people who don't know mmw as much well i mean it started when i heard about Madesky through one of my mentors, Bob Moses. He's a drummer, composer, kind of a polymath himself. You know, he's played with Pat Metheny and Gary Burton and all these legendary, you know, jazz musicians, even Mingus and Rahsaan. He played with Mingus?

As a kid, as a little kid. Yeah, as a kid, he played. How old was he? He was probably a teenager. I mean, he was like, you know, his parents knew all these great musicians. And he grew up in New York City. And I met him, you know, in the 80s. And he took me under his wing.

And then years and years, you know, of just knowing him and working with him, he eventually moved to Boston and taught at New England Conservatory, where Medesky was going to school and Chris Wood. And he was just telling me about this amazing piano player and then I did a gig with Moses up in Boston because I used to play with Bob Moses' band called Mozamba

which is sort of like this mix of sort of like Afrobeat meets jazz and Madeski showed up and introduced himself and you wouldn't recognize him man he was like overalls big beard big bushy hair and all this no way and uh anyway so he said man i love the way you play and you know and i said yeah i heard i heard a lot about you and we should get were you playing before this with anybody uh well i was touring a man i was playing with a lot of

different bands uh but like who uh well back then you know what bob moses was probably the coolest thing i had done at that point i was actually playing with this group was another group of musicians that were going to nec called sweet lizard il tet whenever they were like punk rock like uh meets you know rap they were like you know definitely like right like the chili peppers but the chili peppers are kind of like taking off they had just eclipsed that whole thing these guys were freaky deekies dudes like my friends like what were the antics like what were they doing that was so freaky well i mean you know they shaved their head and then you know one to half their you know like shave the sides of their heads but have long hair and they would like dye their hair like you know was this late 80s

this was 90 i would say mid to late 80s yeah late 80s and um they just were like in your face they you know they were just really you know they just they loved hip-hop and they loved to groove and they loved to rock out and uh not not far from like what you guys are doing you know but uh the bass player mike ill would you know he played uh bass and rapped and uh emilio uh played a violin electric violin and also rapped. And they went to New England Conservatory. So they were at this like conservatory. Yeah, play punk rock music. And so they ended up playing with, sitting in with Moses.

And I would sit in with, I would come up from New York City and play. And they're the ones that, they're the guys that dubbed me Illy B. That's where I got Illy B from, is from these rappers. But, and to get back to the situation with uh moses and meeting medesky uh that was um so did he watch that band how did he know he came to the he came to the gate because he was studying with moses yeah he was just in boston and i think moses would told him about me and then he came to the show and then we finally met. And I said, Hey, whenever you come down to New York, I live in Brooklyn. I was living in Dumbo in the eighties, late eighties. So then Medesky, so when I met him, we just talked about

getting together. I said, when you come to Brooklyn, give me a call because I live in Dumbo or New York city. And he said, well, I'm going to stay with a friend in Brooklyn. I said, cool. Call me when you come down and I'll pick you up and we'll just play at my place because I had this loft under the Manhattan Bridge you know Dumbo's like the super hip neighborhood now but when I lived there it was like artists were squatting in buildings it was like burning cars down the street you know it was like kind of pretty rough pretty scary you know but I loved it because I had a larger space and I loved being in a remote kind of spot underbelly, you know, in New York where I could experiment and build the drum booth and, you know, grow pot on the roof. Yeah, totally. So you bring Medesky.

Right. So Medesky, so Nessie calls me, I pick him up. He's got his Korg organ under his arm. It's one of these, you know, you plug it in into an amp. So I picked him up in my van, came to my place, sat up in my drum. I had like a drum booth, like a place where I could rehearse inside the loft. And we played for two hours straight, like nonstop. We played, we went everywhere under the sun. What were you playing? What type of music? Oh, it was just like, just hardcore, avant-garde, groove, blues, anything, you know, everything that we fucking knew. What were you playing? What type of music? Oh, it was just like, just hardcore avant-garde, groove,

blues, anything, you know, everything that we fucking knew. Just as a duo? Yeah. Just hanging, jamming. Yeah. I mean, at one point we were like speaking in tongues. Like, we were like going everywhere. We were really pushing each other. And it was like, this is the shit. So at that point, it was sort of

like, we got to do something. Then he ended up kind of making trips down to New York. This bass player, Reggie Workman, who played with Coltrane, had this gig at the Village Gate. And he often used Medesky. And back then, the cabaret law, they didn't allow drums in some of these bars. Explain that. This is a noise ordinance thing and when that lifted medesky had the gig at that point and he was playing a lot with chris wood

chris wood was coming down from boston and they actually ended up moving to the east village and you know i they at john asked me to you know kind of sit in with them and and at that point they had been through all these bebop drummers and stuff, and they were so tired of the bebop thing. The jazz thing was like they wanted, and they knew I could swing in my own hip hop style. I was, I was into go-go music. I was into like, you know, it was coming from a different place, Brazilian, African music. So like. Yeah. You were in the Brazilian scene, weren't you?'t you yeah yeah that's where i met bob moses oh wow scene yeah where uh well i mean i i played at sobs i played in this band called pegy boy i was like the substitute drummer i i studied with this brazilian uh this guy manuel monteiro who's back in brazil and i learned a lot of that stuff at drummers collective there

happened to be a really good program there. That's another place where I studied. I'd studied with like three different teachers and I would take the samba class and I ended up teaching that class because I, in my own way, mastered it. My teacher was like, man, could you take over? It was an honor. And then I became, I played with, you know, I played a lot of Brazilian gigs.

We would go, well, we'd go to Miami or we'd play whatever, any parties in New Yorkork city and back then it was you know a lot of gigs to you know just show up and play you know play a samba party so that was kind of the scene so i you know um i fell in love with that scene uh where's that taking us now uh where so you're back oh so you're back in your garage or your your place you guys are vibing. Yeah. You get Chris. Yeah. So Modesti calls Chris like, hey, let's do this shit.

Yeah. Was it like that or was it kind of like, did it sympathically? Like, how'd you meet Chris? Actually, yeah. So first what happened was John told me about Chris, that he was coming down from, he was dropping out from the New England Conservatory. John dropped out. Chris dropped out.

They came to New York and John said, hey, I'm going to bring this bass player over and let's just, you know, let's just jam, let's just play. I'm like, great, come on over. And, you know, the first notes we played were like this tune called Chub Sub was like on our first record. It was like that was just a spontaneous thing. I set up a groove chris started playing a bass line john started playing and then he basically transcribed what

we did and added horns and then we recorded this on this record notes from the underground so like the first fucking notes we played were like was a song we knew yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it was pretty pretty amazing so when you felt that magic you knew like like, this is it. We're going to try to do this. Oh, I knew it. Yeah, definitely. Because I was already playing. I was playing like in the Lounge Lizards. I was in the downtown scene playing with Zorn,

that whole family and community of musicians that were experimenting with so many different forms. And I already was feeling like that music was special. But most of my gigs, you know, I was a sideman, you know. And in this situation, I felt like this is a band, a real band, that's just magically forming right now, this second. And we all had the same feeling that we don't want to play. We don't want to be sidemen.

But we don't want to be leaders either. So we all had created this idea that it's just three guys. There's no leader. And we just figure it out democratically what it is we're going to do, usually just through playing and jamming. So when did the band start taking off like when did you like oh shit this has really happened do we guys doing like residency gigs in new york or just regional stuff or like who told like what was that moment like

wow this is it it's a good question man i don't know i don't know they were at stages you know i think when we first started gigging it was just in New York City. And we used to play the Knitting Factory or CBGB's Gallery or the Bell Cafe. They were like these little weird places that we would play. And what years were this? 91, 92? Yeah, 91, 92. And then, you know, I said, let's get in my van and let's hit this. Let's play these places that I had been already with the knitting factory, had these tours. And I played

with these other bands like chunk and, um, you know, uh, these, these experimental bands and we hit these college towns. And then I, I kind of like just made note, like we could play these places, man. We just got to get there. They're like alternative. They're more like rock clubs, but like, you know, the knitting factory bands played there so i know we can and and we started to do that and i already had a van got my van and did that for like two years in a van it was a club wagon you know just called it the you know big brown booger was like all dented up and you rip the seats out of the back and so how was that like for Madansky and Chris? Like, you come here, rock and roll as fuck.

Here, we're jumping in my fucking van. You know, these guys are all like professionally. Were they cool with it? Yeah, they were cool with it. I mean, they weren't like suit-wearing jazz dudes. They were not like that at all. They definitely had a down home kind of fuck the establishment kind of like attitude in their own way so it wasn't they was like

for them it was cool and like you know we used to talk john used to talk about art blakey and all these bands they used to get in these buses and they would you know they were gonna fucking hit the road for months at a time and it it was hard living on the road, especially back then. Oh, my God. Not knowing no social media or anything? How did you know if the shows were even promoted or not? Well, we barely showed up in time. So we would show up like 10 minutes before the set late because we got lost or whatever.

Was that just part of the scene that's how it worked yeah the thing is like we didn't have much to lose but it was sort of like these places

didn't know what they were getting either so they were kind of like I don't know this band from New York is coming down from the knitting factory scene

could be cool and then we'd play for like five or ten people that were regulars in the bar and then they'd tell their friends we keep coming back

and two years later the places were full how many shows a year were regulars in the bar. And then they'd tell their friends, we keep coming back. And two years later, the places were full. How many shows a year were you doing in 91 through 93? Maybe 100, 150. And then it got up to about 200, I think at one point after that. So when you start packing out places, you're like, okay, now we got, probably get a manager, get an agent, yada, yada.

Yeah, we bought an RV down in Florida, and then we got a trailer. So we were living in an RV for a couple of years. And so you just took it on the road and just lived on the road. Yeah, we lived on the road. Were you all single at that? Yeah. How hard was that? It was not hard.

No, because you guys were free. Yeah, it was just like, it wasn't hard. It was exciting, you know. And what was cool about it was that we were, figured out a way to save money not having to have hotel rooms, feeding ourselves because, you know, John was really, it was really important to him to have like good food. We couldn't get that on the road.

You know, so much has changed now. There's a lot of great food movements in this country. But back then it was nothing. It was like KFC and Popeye's or Waffle House. You know, it was like, and that was the good stuff. Yeah. And then maybe some down home cooking that every once in a while you would get. And that would be amazing.

Yeah. Southern cooking somewhere like, you know, but it was hard. It was usually just like, man, we didn't know where to go, where to eat, where to sleep. So when were you start really popping off? Well, I mean, I think, you know, I think we felt like we were getting somewhere when we started doing the Horde tour. Like someone asked us to go on the road. Yeah, yeah, with Widespread and Blues Traveler.

Yeah, Blues Traveler. And it was like, man, it was, oh man, there was so many, Neil Young and like, Neil Young was on the Horde tour? Yeah, Taj Mahal. They all traveled together? I heard that was a traveling tour. Yeah, it was like the Lollapalooza of whatever.

Yeah, schools would tell me about that. Yeah. So that was when we needed a tour bus. Nice. And we needed to have a trailer. And we needed to put things in the trailer. Well, we had a trailer with our RV. Were you selling records?

We were selling CDs and making t-shirts uh on our own but it was still like do-it-yourself style or did you have like marketing campaign i think we signed uh we had a deal with this uh this independent label called gramavision which was more of a jazz label out of new york and then ryco disc bought them and then suddenly we were part of ryco disc and then ryco disc had a much better distribution system. And they were sort of eating up a lot of these other labels. So they had a really strong, stronger distribution system. But we had our following.

And then we had a manager, Liz P penta who was you know she was booking cbgb's gallery when we played that the first time we played there she left us a note you know like i love you guys i want to work with you guys again and and then we quickly over the next couple of months we played more gigs there and became good friends with her and then we ended up taking her on the road and she kind of had her time with cbs and hilly and that whole thing my wife worked there too wasn't my wife at the time yeah and it was it was a beautiful little scene you know but you can get stuck you can get yeah explain that cbgb scene like what was it like was it mostly all i know from it from the punk rock

scene there was a jazz scene and there was an experimental scene at CBGB's too? There wasn't yet. I mean, CBGB's first, you know, was really known for like, yeah, Blondie Talking Heads and Ramones and all that. That's like the famous, you know, 70s, 80s period. But in the mid 80s, late 80s into the 90s, they a place called the can't cbgb's canteen and then that turned into cbgb's gallery which became like a singer-songwriter little art gallery kind of like yeah is it bigger uh no it wasn't that big it wasn't that big um but they had a stage they had a bar and they would have like you know some art hanging on the walls and it was a little bit of a like you know kind of a hangout like almost like a coffee house vibe but still a bar and that's where where the downtown scene moved in

because the knitting factory kind of sold out and they opened up this place in tribeca and it became a little it was too too corporate you know and we you know the And Zorn and Mark Rebo and those musicians were like, they were pretty much boycotting the New Knitting Factory because it was becoming like a frat house. It was becoming too commercial. We had a very precious experimental scene that was really hardcore. It was uncompromising. It was like this Knitting Factory moved

and they basically got sponsorships and all those things and and i you know we didn't know we were so that's smart we were still just play we'll play anywhere yeah but we followed that movement and cbgb's became our part of our one of the clubs in new york that was sort of the the home for experimental music and singer-songwriting too yeah i mean chris Whitley would sing, play there and all kinds of different singer-songwriters and, you know, John Zorn and like, you know, it would be a mix. But CBGB's Next Door, which is the same, no, it's Hilly's place, both of them were joined together.

I mean, they were like, you could walk into one and the other like through a door, but it was still different. Like CBGB's was still that like more hardcore rock and roll, you could walk into one and the other like through a door. But it was still different. Like CBG's was still that like more hardcore rock and roll, you know, thing. And CB's was a place where, you know, it was a neighborhood hangout on the Bowery. You know, it was like you'd go there in midday and have a beer and hang out and then check out music at night. And, you know, it was a little more chill at the gallery. Yeah. It was a little more like you could hang out and it wasn't music at night. And, you know, it was a little more chill at the gallery. Yeah.

It was a little more like you could hang out and it wasn't like too intense. It started to get intense, though, towards the end. There was a lot of action there. A lot of record companies, labels came. So that was like the industry showcase type of thing? Yeah, it started to become an industry showcase kind of place. And that's when Blue Note came around. Yeah.

They would come and check us out at CB's. Oh, really? So Blue Note, when did Blue Note open? Oh, Blue Note and check us out at CB's. Oh, really? So Blue Note, when did Blue Note open? Oh, Blue Note Records. Yeah, Blue Note Records. Oh, nice. So that's kind of where they'd come there. They would come down to New Orleans.

Our first gig in New Orleans was at Margaritaville. What the fuck? Tell me about this. Tell me about this. I mean, you know, flying hamburgers, cheeseburgers. Yeah, that's so funny, dude. It was weird, man. It was weird because we were like, this is, flying hamburgers, cheeseburgers. Yeah, that's so funny, dude. It was weird, man. It was weird because we were like, this is, it seemed like Disneyland to us.

Did they accept New York musicians in New Orleans? Because they're very like locally homegrown, you know, music scene. Like when new guys come into the town, sometimes it's like, all right, who are you? Some fucking guys from new york was it growing the scene like what were like the top spots for experimental music there weren't as far as i know we didn't like new york where else no it's like you know we just had we had a gig booked we had some booking agent and it was maybe through the record label i don't even know it was like we were just still kind of oblivious to like how we got there i mean mean, I used to book a lot of the gigs myself, make the calls.

But this was a, we're at this point now where it was like towards the end of our rope with Gravavision, Ryko Disc and Blue Note was courting us. So we happened to be playing at Margaritaville. I don't know how. And it just felt like we were so excited to be in New Orleans because so much history there. But we didn't really know anybody down there then. So after playing there a couple of different times, we started to play Tipitinas.

And then these young guys, Superfly Productions, these guys started booking us during Jazz Fest. So Superfly booked you. Yeah, Superfly, not at the beginning, but they started... When they were peaking, though. I mean, were they just a new company at that time, or were they...

Yeah, we were part of their... Growth. Yeah, definitely. Wow. Yeah, like, they did some of their biggest shows with us, you know, and then that turned into, you know, that grew and grew and grew into much you know we play the state theater wherever that was there and like opening for fish and stuff

like that it is halftime at the endy fresco interview hour hey yo this is chad kakooza and this is his brother mac kakooza of the Spoonfed Tribe. And this is You Remember That One Time with Matty and Chatty. Chad, do you remember that fucking one time the brakes went out going in a steamboat? Matt, how could I ever forget that? We're going from fucking Fort Collins to Steamboat.

We're going down the last little stretch up the Poudre Canyon here. All of a sudden we're like, guys, guys, guys, guess what happened? The brakes are going out. The buzzard's going off, everything like that. People are like, man, I'm sorry. Fuck your wife, bro. I'm gay.

We was going in oncoming traffic just to make the turns. We had just passed one of them fucking runaway truck stops. Would have saved our life, but no, we had just passed it. It's a good thing for that condo we got to turn in there with eggs driving skills and all that everything eggs driving skills saved their lives all of a sudden everything was all good we went up there i never had this most dead feeling in my legs before i got out kissed the ground and had a chocolate pudding this is you remember that one time with maddie and chatty you want to talk to me about the Creative Music Studio?

Oh, yes, I do. Yeah, let's talk about that and the workshops. Tell me all about it, man. This is so cool. Creative Music Studio is a foundation, a nonprofit foundation that was started in 1971 with this German vibraphone player, Karl Berger, and his wife, Ingrid Sertso,

who played with Don Cherry and Steve Lacey in Germany. And they were huge Ornette Coleman fans. And it was started also with Ornette. So Ornette Coleman, Carl, and Ingrid started the Creative Music Foundation, which was basically a foundation organization that would present, teach people to improvise. They would conduct workshops and those workshops led eventually became um their home to teach uh workshops was on their property up in woodstock and the mount tremper and these places in the catskill area

do you ever hang out with like leave on and on any of those cats i did hang out with leave on like when when we played his barn you know but i only met leave on a couple of times but i wasn't around that scene at all up in woodstock in the 70s i was a kid but i was inspired by some of that music that came out of there which was like this great brazilian percussionist none of us can sell us don cherry colin walcott had a band called codona and it was really like world music and jazz and folk music all mixed in it was extremely unusual it still is today when you listen to it and that came out of the creative music studio so creative music studio was just a word for their organization that teaches people to improvise from all backgrounds. I mean, the first advisory board was John Cage, Buckminster Fuller. You know, it was really an incredible mix of really incredible minds.

So what is like a retreat? Is it like kind of like you go there, you write some music, you focus in? It's a workshop. It's basically a workshop place. You go there, you know, if you play an instrument or you sing, you go there and you hang out and there are

different people that will lead the workshops and they're usually like, you know, legendary people. You know, back in the day it was like, it would be Ola Tunji or it would be Don Cherry or it would be Pat Matheny or it would be Jack DeJeanette or Trilak Gurtu or Anthony Braxton.

So how'd you get involved? I got involved. I met Carl about six years ago. He came to one of the – no, eight years ago. He came to one of the Mendesky Martin Wood camps that we had upstate at the Full Moon Resort up in Big Indian, New York. And for five years, Mendesky Mart would have this summer camp. It was just a week. And people would come up and we would get them to play, you know, the same ideas.

Like, let's talk to them about how we make music, the different ways to make music, how to improvise together and give people this safe place to kind of experiment, you know. And Carl came to one of those because he doesn't live that far away and he taught a masterclass. That's when I met him. And then I went, then I went to Ornette, went to Ornette Coleman's birthday parties. Um, and, uh, I was just hanging out there with my wife and Carl came up to me and introduced himself again.

And then I'm just like, who is this guy? You know, and then after, then eventually they asked me to teach a masterclass up at their workshop. And then I saw what they were doing and I was like, this is the shit. This is, this is what it's about. If you're going to educate people, like if you're going to teach people to improvise, this is the way to do it. There's so many interesting people who have different ways to get people to play and to find their own way of communicating through their instruments or singing. And that's the tradition of CMS is this really different philosophies about

how to make music. And they're all different and they're all have give people a lot of insight and the people that come to these workshops usually you know they appreciate a lot of different music they appreciate classical they appreciate folk jazz you know you could be a punk rocker you can come there and like just you don't have to have uh we don't have to know much about music at all yeah as long as you can play a couple of notes. Yeah. We'll get you playing. Yeah.

And it'll open you up big time. That's what I need to do something like that. Because like, you know, it's like people like, how do you teach a kid or a student between like, you know, fulfillment between musically and finance? Like,

and like thinking instead of thinking finance, like how to stay in the music industry instead of like, how do you grow your art? Like how, is that how hard is that to like what do you teach like what how do you teach that to well uh well i mean you know it's a good question like how do you teach people to improvise and how do you teach people to like make a living yeah improvise i would say you know that it's a bigger there's a bigger scope here of like what you learn from improvising. It's not just about music. It's about how you live your life. And like, you know, if, you know, Lester Bowie has this great quote, it's like artists teach people how to live. You know, Carl Berger has a great quote. It's like, it's not what you play, it's how you play. So it's getting people to sort of figure out their own strategy, their own way to create something that is theirs, you know?

So you get a lot of insight from these people who have been successful in their own way. Some of them are like MacArthur genius. They get awards, you know? Some people struggle their whole life, you of them are like MacArthur genius. They get awards. You know, some people struggle in their whole life, you know, and they get some award. So it's not like they were like financially successful for most of their life. Other people, you know, end up teaching. Other people end up, you know, running businesses. Like some people don't even, you know, some people who came to CMS left with this idea of how to figure out, to carve their own path and their own meaning in life, not just through music. It's interesting.

But how do we teach the kids? It's really just you start making sound. And you tell them, play any note. Every note is okay okay it's how you express it you know and we just get people to start playing like just choose a note it's there's no paper in front of you and then we work with sound and then we try to figure out a way how to make us all sound as one to sound like let's get this whole group sounding and i'm just talking about playing one note everybody plays a different note and playing that together and it sounds like you just

work on the sound of that then you start working on rhythm and there's all these different basic you know basic practice uh different methods you know that people bring in carl berger who founded this thing has his gama lat, which is sort of like a rhythmic training. What do you have? My thing is rhythmic harmony, stridulations. These are the terms that I use. Explain that to the people who don't really know music that much. Well, basically, my concept of rhythmic harmony is two or more rhythms, playing two or more rhythms together. Not different than you know traditional harmony we know in in western music which is like you play two notes that vibrate

together and it creates a an interval it's like you know it could be a major or minor whatever that whatever the things the words they put on it but it's like it has a sound and when you change those when you change one of those notes and you hold one of these keep the other it's going to feel different same thing with the rhythm if you have like of those notes and you hold one of these, keep the other, it's going to feel different. Same thing with the rhythm. If you have like some pulse going and then you play some clave pattern or some rhythm together and then you switch one of those up, you start to change the feeling. But basically what I do is I get people to kind of play, just give them a very simple set of rhythms to play. And we just sit around and we we make them fit and then we we basically improvise with these sort of given patterns and we start to connect in that way

uh stridulations is a term that's you know what crickets do crickets stridulate so i have two ways of creating rhythmic harmony which one is what we really are connected with a groove the groove we're all like we have a same pulse that we play off of and we really are connected with a groove the groove we're all like we have a same pulse that we play off of and we create this groove often a lot of west and central african rhythms and brazilian rhythms is the basic vocabulary and rhythmic vocabulary the other way is to just play a pattern in your own time in your own space and everybody's playing their own pattern their own time in their own space a simple one is that chaos and it creates it creates a what i call rhythmic landscape and uh well some people's

noise is other people's music so some people may think it's chaotic and other people may hear the beauty in it when you hear the rain or you go out in a field and you hear crickets or birds is that chaos to you i mean mean, they're all communicating different things, different times. It totally makes sense. Yeah, I mean, so it's sort of, you know, there's a lot, I have a lot of different philosophies about, I teach people about listening, about listening is more important than playing.

To be a good musician, listening is more important than actually playing anything. You gotta listen to what's going on first. So we teach, we talk to people about strategies and how to approach improvising. You know, listen, have a conversation. It's a conversation. Maybe you play something and then I play something.

What's the most rewarding? Like what's been the most rewarding teaching, mentoring experiences? Oh my God. I mean, it's every time I do these workshops, I feel like I'm bringing people into a community. It's growing this family of like-minded people who really want to find their own way of making music and sort of, you know, getting them feeling good about themselves. So it's almost every time I work with an individual or with a group, we have an incredible, we create this really beautiful music and have this great chemistry

and we learn how to work together. It's like a community thing. That's, I think, what's really important, what we all get out of it. It's not just music, but it's like working together as people, how to work together, how to make shit work,

how to be okay with that person has their style, I have mine. And we can make those styles work together it doesn't matter where you come from yeah we can communicate we can make it work what about um like oh man i got so many questions for you you ever did you think this helped you become a visual artist uh well i mean were you always a visual artist well we all are yeah you know when we're kids we're drawing you know my dad had me drawing, like making little Christmas cards and stuff like that. And then when I got older, I started like experimenting with like colored pencils.

And then I met musicians like Bob Moses and John Lurie from Lounge Lizards. They were drawing. John was hanging out with Basquiat. That stuff rubbed off on me. All of a sudden, I'm like a musician who also does my own album covers you know and that grew and grew into this more serious kind of like wow i got to keep developing this thing the same way i'm developing my sound and so as composing too all these things are composing and developing a vocabulary and a way in which to express yourself and some of these things become

just part of you. There's some things that you try and you fuck them up and you fail and you know, okay, that's not for me or that's not the kind of musician that I'm going to play with next time. I'm not the kind of musician, but that, I'm not, okay, I played with those cats. That's not my thing.

I did this Broadway show. That's not my thing anymore. I don't even want to read music anymore you know and it's okay to like to not be comfortable right oh yeah that's the most important thing about music is the minute you're i think in anything in life the minute that you're comfortable it's like you feel like you lose that je ne sais quoi yeah or you can't, there's no, I mean, basically, what are you learning if you don't fall on your face or make a mistake?

You have to try, you know, you have to try something new. You're not going to really grow or evolve if you don't do that. And there's always struggle involved in that. I mean, you know, some of the most beautiful music to me comes from people who really have had some really hard struggles. And it just doesn't come easy you

know uh things in life there's you know i don't care where you come from and what level or you know class you're from it's still hard you know it's still hard to to develop your own thing and to become part of this world so i i really believe in a discipline when it comes to experimenting and being an artist. There's a discipline. That's hard work. And I think that's, if there's one thing I have to say about Mendeska Martin Wood, it's like we all have a really strong work ethic. And I think that that, you know, that is why we're successful in how we seem to be successful

in this way. Hell yeah, you are. Because we hit the road hard like you guys do. We show up at the gig we give it all we got because we know this may be you know the last time and then you keep doing it and you keep trying to trying to express yourself and reach people but you got to get up in the morning you got to show up and you know no matter if you're sick or you're not feeling good you got to do it same thing with improvising and just experimenting.

Like, you know, I get on the piano now. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what it is. I just put my hands down and I start making noise. And then eventually, the more I do it, the more I spend time with it, I'm figuring out my own way around this thing. You know, I have ears. Well, that's how you did with drums too.

Yeah, right. That's how you did with visual. If I didn't do it with drums, if I didn't work hard and realize I was getting somewhere by the practice and the discipline of like, you know, letting myself grow and having a hard time doing it and pushing through and not giving up, then I wouldn't have probably done all these other things that I'm doing now, which is like teaching, running a nonprofit, you know, having art exhibits, making experimental films, all these things, even writing. You're a fucking artist, dude. Sick as fuck, dude. What's the deal with this turntable sessions in Boulder?

You know anything about this? No. You did? Oh, I did. I did, yeah. Oh, I thought you meant like coming up. No, no, no. Like in Boulder.

What was that all about? Yeah. Well, that was just, you know, I released the record. I did a series called Turntable Sessions at this gallery called Exit Art. In Boulder? No. This was in the city, in New York City. In Tribeca, there was this gallery called Ex art and they had this lp exhibit and it was just like the whole gallery was like collections it was like thirsted

moore's uh lp collection and john zorn's collection and all these like just album cover and and so the curator asked me to like put together like a weekly session where i would bring in turntable lists and live musicians something i was already kind of doing yeah so they thought maybe i'm i could do it they asked me and i definitely and i did a series of like four or five in a row every every you know once a week and i brought together you toured it no i didn't tour it no i just did that and then i ended up recording and releasing one of those on my label, Amulet Records. It's called Turntables Sessions Volume 1. And then Boulder Theater hit me up and they said, would you want to bring that out here?

And I said, sure. Yeah, my buddy Kirk books that. Yeah, yeah. Kirk, yeah. He's here now, right? He's at Broken Bowl. Yeah, in Lock-In. Yeah, he's a good guy.

I never see him. Yeah. I saw him more in Boulder. Oh, really? Yeah's at Broken Bowl. Yeah, in Lockton. Yeah, he's a good guy. I never see him. Yeah. I saw him more in Boulder. Oh, really? Yeah, it's funny how that happens. But he was always open to more experimental stuff and always kind of had the way of trying to balance it out, you know? And so that was an opportunity that he gave me. And so I ended up, you know, having all these different musicians come out.

And actually, so that was, what did I have? DJ Olive, probably, and DJ Logic. Yeah, they're called that, boy. Scotty Hart. Oh, so that was, what did I have? DJ Olive probably and DJ Logic. Yeah, they're Colorado boys. Scotty Hart. Logic's a New York guy, right? Logic's from the Bronx, man. Yeah, he dated, I feel like he's like Colorado is like his second home. Oh yeah, definitely.

No, he loves it out there and he's done a lot, a lot out there. But, you know, Logic, you know, I feel like Modestyara wood really introduced him to that to that world and so he he kind of created a whole he had a whole path that he went on and i think a lot of it was playing in colorado but other all over with different bands you know travel with blues traveler and all these different guys did you enjoy doing that turntable session? Oh, yeah. I loved it. So there was a packed house, and there were people who were booing at certain points. You know, I mentioned my friend from Sweet Lizard Altet, Mike Ilk.

I had him come out because he's like a singer-songwriter, and he was actually singing some country song to some beats. And I don't know what it was. People just, some people didn't like it. And the thing is, is like, I'm always open to very experimental moments. So there's times when there's no beat or no, you know, no song. And people get uptight. And there's a whole people drinking and, you know. Yeah, get rowdy.

But I don't care. It's like, you know, so. But the turntable sessions was. You're really flippant. I love you, Phil. The turntable, thank you. I mean, look, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to give it everything that I believe in, you know.

I'm not going to doctor it up and make it some smooth jazz bullshit. Yeah. Fuck. You're like punk rock, dude. up and make it some smooth jazz bullshit yeah so so yeah so the turntable sessions was was was basically like a version of delivering a kind of hardcore kind of you know thing like yeah you're gonna hear djs but they're gonna also be making noise and they're gonna be people who are gonna be experimenting with their instruments there's gonna be hip-hop beats thrown out it's all gonna be in there it's all gonna be mixed in there. It's all going to be mixed in.

I don't know. The Turntable Sessions was just bringing live musicians together with the... It seems like such a cool concept. Yeah. Any regrets in life? Like you're on the road for a long time and you got a call from a musician you truly

admire and you couldn't do the shows. Any of that type of things? Well, I mean, those are all sacrifices we have to call from a musician you truly admire and you couldn't do the couldn't do the shows like any any of that type of things well i mean those are all sacrifices we have to deal with all the time i mean i you know uh i don't regret anything i don't think i would change anything i mean i've had some really hard times i've been through some rough patches in my life and uh and i survived and i think just surviving what kind of rough patches? Well, depression, you know, like. Over what? Self-doubt or like, you know, separation anxiety from, you know, my wife or my kids.

How'd you get out of that? Got off the road. Yeah. Well, no, you know what it is? I had to deal with it. So I did. It wasn't getting off the road, really. It was just realizing that I have to keep doing this because this is what I'm doing right now.

And I committed to doing it, playing with a band, playing for these fans, and also doing what I love. But I was afraid of burning out. And I was also just, you know, didn't want to get sick and tired of it. So I kind of had to pull back. So during that time where I felt like I couldn't change anything, that I was stuck on this train that was going away from my kids and my wife and my family, on this train that was going away from my kids and my wife and my family became very challenging and you get depressed or you lose yourself with drugs and alcohol or whatever else, which is, you know, the famous rocker, sex drugs and rock and roll. I mean, that's for a reason because people cannot handle being separated from their community or their life at home. Some people,

their community or their life at home. Some people, their life and their family is the road and it works really well for them. So I'm not saying one way or the other. No, no, just personality. But we all have to make sacrifices. So I realized, how did I deal with it? I realized, this is your sacrifice, man. You've got to deal with the pain of being out here every day and not being able to share all this with your family. you know and then and then just come home and you know that they're you're taking care of them you're paying the bills and they're taken care of and everything's cool but at a certain point i i was hurting deeper because there were other things that i wanted to do i did want to kind of get more in education. I wanted to get more into visual art. I wanted to collaborate with more people.

And I couldn't. I was stuck. In the MMW bubble. Yeah. And as great as anything is, too much of anything can be bad. Yeah, totally. So you have to keep growing together, which we did as a band. That was the number one thing is that if we're not growing, if we're not evolving

as a band, as a family, even in our relationships, then it's over. So guys, let's keep each other in check here. I don't want to be repeating this thing, the same situation every day. We got to keep it fresh. I want to inspire you. You inspire me. Is that why you brought Schofield in? To freshen it up a little bit? Or how did that happen? Schofield, Nels Klein, Mark Rebo, those guitarists like Aerto. I mean, all these musicians that we brought in

were DJ Logic, DJ Olive, Stephen Bernstein, Horn Section. To freshen it up? Yeah. Well, to have a different role. I mean, I think when you take Modesto Martin Wood, the trio is like a full list. We don't need anything else. Some people will say different, like, yeah, your guitarist is great. But it changes the dynamic. And it's good. But that's not why we brought him in.

He brought us in, really, into his world at first. Because he called us up as a fan. And said, hey guys, I really like your stuff, man. I'd love to play with you. And you're like, that's not John Scofield. He left a message. And we actually thought it was a joke. Who did he send a voicemail?

John and Chris. We spent a bunch of time in Florida. Your fucking life, dude. No. We lived in Hawaii in January and sometimes January, February. we were in we spent a bunch of time in Florida your fucking life no yeah we played in we lived in in Hawaii in January

and sometimes January February every year for like I don't know how many six years who you guys yeah

like we had a friend that had this like cabin this shack in the big island on the big island and in the jungle and it was like

that was kind of like our our hang the winter hang we would go there and there were instruments there and we'd play and it was like that was kind of like our our hang the winter hang we would go there and there were instruments there we play and we just like you know just had your wife not parents wife and kids there wasn't that wasn't then that wasn't then actually she was my girlfriend she came out one year uh but uh we would we would kind of go to this remote place and just kind of like hang out together and decompress from the road and

also play yeah and um scofia at the time we had uh there wasn't really internet there was uh an answering machine that the band had a fan number that fans could leave messages for us or business or whatever and so here is this and this was in probably in the mid 90s and late 90s uh and so you know we have to drive like seven miles through the jungle up into this little town pahoa and uh check the messages and they check the messages hey this is john scofield i really like you guys i'm a big fan fan. You know? So, so, uh, John and Chris came back, you know, and they were like,

some fucking asshole said that they were John Schofield and he wanted to play with us. You know, I wonder which one of our friends are like, you know, making some, uh, some,

uh, you know, crank call. And then it turned out it was him and they checked it again or whatever. They call back. And it was like, Oh my God, it is John Schofield.

He wants us to play with him. So, so we ended up making, yeah, so we ended up making a go-go, you know, and Schofield was like, basically like, look, I, I've just, I'll write with you guys, whatever you want. I just want to do something. So, and we were like, you write, we'll play your, we'll arrange, derange your music. And that was a go-go. And that was the beginning of a relationship that was like on and off till this very day he's just a good good friend that we play with yeah it was so cool

seeing skullfield i've never seen him in person he had a bodyguard with him or like some security jam cruiser he always had like a someone with him yeah well i think that was just the promoters just wanted maybe to make yeah he's a legend man yeah well he played with miles you know he's one of these guys that play with miles davis so it's always like anybody who plays with miles is sort of like all of a sudden they're royalty because you know it's like why is that well i think because miles really did have a magic touch like anybody that he he used at his band were really great but didn't he see a lot of musicians from monk he's he's stealing he was yeah steal or just pay him more just just he just you know get people to play with him you know and but he had a knack for putting people together and creating these great bands he's another true artist in that he was always evolving

if you look at you know every decade it's like extremely different music like you know it's like in the 50s he had his you know quartet and then then he all the way up to like playing sly stone like you know jams like you know inspired by hendrix and all that and do you ever meet him i never met miles no i never met him um but uh played with you know a handful of musicians that played with him you ever got starstruck by a musician like well like Ornette or somebody or, you know, just being around people

like Lou Reed or stuff, just being kind of like, whoa, yeah, of course. Iggy Pop. We played with Iggy Pop. What? Yeah. Eskimo Art Wood. We were going to finish it, but tell me about Iggy, dude. What's he like well we got a call from um don was who you know you know don was producer and

which is crazy ironic he's like running blue note records now oh well not he wasn't there no no no no and so again he produced rolling Stones and all this stuff. So he called us up somehow, reached our management, and was just like, you know, I just heard Mendez Marwood on the radio, and I had to pull over on the side of the road, he said, because I just felt like, you know, this is the perfect band for this project I'm working on with Iggy Pop. And we're like, what?

So like, how is that possible? He's like, well, Iggy's doing this record. It's kind of like a poetry spoken word thing, but there are some tunes. So I know you guys can rock it out. And you can also just kind of have this sort of way of playing that Iggy could sort of like, you know, tell a story over. So that was a record called Avenue B.

He lived on Avenue B in the East Village for a period of time. I don't know if he still has that place. So he was recording, was recording literally in some old Jewish theater in the East Village. It was like abandoned, but there was a recording studio in there. I forget the name of the place. And we met him and we played a few tunes. Don was there and he just basically, we learned this stuff and then we a few tunes. Don was there, and we learned this stuff. And then we developed something else.

He came to our place in Dumbo once. So you've had this place for a while, Dumbo? You had that Dumbo spot for a while? Yeah, well, I lived in Dumbo from 85 to 91, but when I left that place, I hooked the band up with this other space because I knew the landlord, and I asked him, have a place that you know I can rent for the band and then so that kind of went on into 2000 and so that was our rehearsal

recording space and Iggy came and he loved the name he was like man this is cool because it was just like still kind of funky and abandoned you know and we recorded some something with him down there on my four track tape recorder that's crazy man so so anyway he's great man he's really intelligent funny incredible like storyteller yeah he's very present when you're with him? Totally. He's not in his head? No. No, he's a totally super sweet guy, sincere. And just, it was really a pleasure working with him. Wow. And we ended up playing, we ended up doing a gig with him in Paris.

Where at? It was on a television show. It was in some TV station, but it was a theater. And it was, we were his rhythm section. And then they had sort of a little orchestra behind him. And we did like these tunes. We did like Frank Sinatra. He did a duet with Chrissy Hind, Vanessa Paradis,

and Johnny Depp sat in with us. We did nightclubbing, you know. And it was just like this holiday show that we filmed for Canal Plus, this station in Europe and Paris. And, yeah. And so that was Iggy Pop. And I starstruck through the whole thing.

Totally. Oh, my God. Billy. Yeah. We got to do this once a year. Yeah, definitely. We should do it. Love you, buddy.

Thanks for being on the show. And I'm glad we're going to be friends. Let's do this. Definitely. Yeah, you're stuck with me. Thank you much man later buddy later now a message from the un Shadows are falling and I'm running out of breath Keep me in your heart for a while If I leave you it doesn't mean that I love you any less

Keep me in your heart for a while When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun, keep me in your heart for a while. There's a train leaving lightly cold when it's all said and done.

Keep me in your heart for a while. La la la la la la la la la la lo Keep me in your heart for a while Sometimes when you're doing simple things around the house Maybe you will think of me and smile Baby, you will think of me and smile You know that I am tied to you like the buttons on your blouse Keep me in your heart for a while

Keep me in your heart for a while Be in your heart for a while Be in your heart for a while And there you got it. Billy fucking Martin. The guy. Pretty dope. Great dude. You have a Billy Martin story?

I do have a a Billy Martin story? I do have a good Billy Martin story. Shouts to MMW. We've played at Blue Note Jazz Club with them and played all over. But long before that, we were playing a show out in Brooklyn, and we went out to dinner beforehand, and our drummer, Emmanuel, looks in the window of a restaurant that we're walking by, and he says, that's Billy Martin in

there. So I'm like, oh, that's cool. He's like, I'm going to go in and say, what's up? Introduce myself. I'm like, no, man, don't do it, dude. He's eating. Like, you know, I had had a story. My dad loved Mel Brooks and he was in a restaurant and he saw Mel Brooks eating. And he said that Mel Brooks looks so peaceful and happy that he said, you know what? I'm just going to let this man eat. I'm not going to mess with him. You know, I'm going to say hello. That's the same situation with Woody Allen. So that being said, yeah, two hopeless Laker fans over here.

All right, continue the story, Jack. So anyway, he's like, you know what? I'm running in there, and I'm going to do it. And he goes in, and Billy's sitting there eating dinner with two guys. And he's like, hey, man, you're Billy Martin. And he's like, yeah, yeah. You know, he's like, I'm a huge fan. I'm an up-and-coming musician.

I love, you know, I just look up to you. And it was real nice and shook his hand and left and came out with us. And we were hanging out in Brooklyn. So anyway, fast forward three years later, Medesky Martin and Wood is playing at the Westcott Theater in Syracuse. Shouts to the westcott street and and we end up um going there before the show and they're setting up and sound checking and e-man walks up to him and he's like hey man i just want to tell you you know a couple years ago i came into a restaurant and i said hello to you and he's like oh oh yeah, I remember. So E-Man's intrigued.

He goes, yeah, actually, I was out to dinner with two guys who were prospective investors in this project. They were going to put out these DVD tutorials about drumming. And they were thinking about investing in me and starting this whole project. And he's like, right when we're talking about it, you walked in. We're like, hey, man, I'm a huge fan.

And it made me look like such a fucking G that these guys ended up wanting to work with me. And I've been doing it for years ever since. And you never know what point of the life or point of perspective everyone's in. He's like, thanks, man. You really helped me that moment. So like, you know, you, you never know out there. If you want to meet a celebrity or somebody famous,

everything you're going through is in your own head about them. If that same person went to Burger King, if it was Nas or, you know what I mean, and he walked in and someone was like, hey, what's your order? A Whopper. I'd be like, what did you do on Illmatic? You know what I mean? Like, that's all in my own head. So when somebody comes up to you and they go, you're going to make it.

It's like, no, man. I already just made it because I made it in your head. That's all it is. That's our reality right there. That is making it. Fucking. Shouts to everyone out there. Jack Brown in the building.

Jack, we got to do this next week. Mic drop. All right. I'll be back. I'll drive back down for you. Subscribe to our podcast. Thank you, doggy. Subscribe to our podcast. Andy Frasco, bro. Thank you, doggy. Peace out. Subscribe to our podcast.

Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast with Yeti. Go give us some ratings. We need to get those ratings up, and we need to get those comments up. Bad ratings. Poor ratings. That's what really drives the market. We've got a couple zeros, and one guy's saying, you guys suck nut. I'm like, all right, thanks, guy.

Yeah, we need more of that. A lot more of that. No, no, no. Give me all good ratings. I've got to all right, thanks, Yeah, we need more of that. A lot more of that. No, no, no, give me all good ratings. You know, I got to feel good

about myself these days. And, you know, thank you for being part of our show. This is a social experiment for me and this is therapy

for me and to bring my friends in to basically have a conversation about therapy with an audience is just very opening for me, and it helps me out a lot.

And thanks, Jack, for being on the show. And Arno, give me some sweet music. Guys, comb your hair, love life, and enjoy the seconds you have with your friends. Watch down below. Enjoy the seconds you have with your friends. Watch down below. Well, thank you for listening to episode 27 of Andy Fresco's World Saving Podcast with Yeti.

Produced by Andy Fresco, Yeti, Joe Angelow and Piers Lawrence. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and Spotify so we can make this a worldwide phenomenon. For info on the show, please head to our Instagram at Fresco and Yeti. For more info on the blog and tour dates, head to andyfresco.com. For more information on our guest, Billy Martin, please head to medeskimartinandwood.com This week's special guests are Sean Eccles, Matt and Chad Kakuza from Spoonfed Tribe and Jack Brown from Sophistify. Performance?

Yes, there is a performance by Sean Eccles. A song from Warren Zeven. Keep me in your heart. May your heart be so full this week it feels like it's about to burst. For me, I am counting the days until the Andy Fresco European Tour starts and I can hug and squeeze

and sit on every single one of these beautiful individuals. Now squeeze, everyone!