The band members were introduced to each other by jazz drummer
Bob Moses, who had performed with Medeski and Wood, and was Martin's instructor. Medeski Martin & Wood's first performances together were at the
Village Gate, a popular New York jazz club. Though they started out with a more-or-less straightforward piano-bass-drums jazz setup, the threesome expanded their sound with unusual configurations. Their first album,
Notes from the Underground, is a record of their entirely-acoustic era, but Medeski soon added electric piano (outfitted with distortion pedals and other effects), and began switching back and forth among
Hammond organ,
Clavinet,
Mellotron and other keyboards. Wood alternated between
stand-up and
bass guitar, stuck paper behind his strings for a "snare" effect and occasionally employed a
drumstick as a slide. Wood entirely eschewed the electric bass for MMW's first three albums, and still relies heavily on the acoustic upright bass in recordings and during live performances. Their earlier albums reveal a
Hip Hop influenced updating of classic
soul jazz sounds, which is the primary theme of their well-known 1996 album,
Shack-man. The band received some of their first significant exposure outside of the
New York City jazz scene by performing with
Phish at their October 14, 1995 concert, which led to the association of the group as a
jam band. In addition, their performance on
John Scofield's 1997 album
A Go Go helped to further their exposure. The band collaborated further with Scofield again in 2006, releasing the album
Out Louder under the name Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood. This was the first album released on MMW's own
Indirecto Records. From 1998 to 2005, MMW were signed to jazz label
Blue Note Records, and showed them delving deeper into dense, electronic funk than their earlier albums, although the band continued to experiment with
free jazz and
free improvisation both on their albums and in concert. In 2001 MMW performed several songs for the
Red Hot Organization's compilation album
Red Hot + Indigo, a tribute to
Duke Ellington, which raised money for various charities devoted to increasing
AIDS awareness and fighting the disease. Medeski Martin & Wood's live performances are renowned for their exploratory nature. Their concerts usually involve extended improvisations, which may be both arrhythmic and
atonal, an aspect of their musicianship that is rarely documented in the studio. They occasionally tour using only acoustic instruments, reverting to the instrumentation that they began their career with. Their album
Tonic is an example of these more contemporary acoustic performances. They have also done short tours of entirely improvisatory performances. These shows usually consisted of two sets of improvisation, followed by an encore of a song from an album. ==Side projects==