Ep. 56: John Medeski - The Magic of Improvisational Music

Imagine an episode of “60 Minutes” mixed with a Ram Dass lecture, but starring your favorite musicians…
John Medeski's latest musical venture is Saint Disruption with interviewee from last week's episode, Jeff "Firewalker" Schmitt. In this episode Medeski explains his distaste for the term "jamming," why he doesn't label music, and the memory of his first out of body experience while improvising.
Check out Saint Disruption here: www.saintdisruption.com/
Listen to last week's mindbending episode with Jeff "Firewalker" Schmitt: bit.ly/saintdisruption1-weird...
This is the Weird Music Podcast, where our host Cam Elkins explores the minds of the most creative and influential people involved in the music festival scene. We are very grateful for our generous listeners & sponsors that make this show possible. If you’d like to contribute, feel free to give a tip on Venmo - @Cam_Elkins
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[@trevorbsmith716]

Im so grateful I just stumbled across this! My brother and I have really been diving down the musical rabbit hole on Medeski (my brother and I both play keys) but also MMW lately and so far I haven't found anyone else musically that takes me quite as far as these guys take me with their imrov and fluidity/freedom or fearlessness to tear down all boundaries and let the music go where it's going to go. My Grandpa Ron Corsaro was a big jazz pianist and I've always had so much appreciation for letting loose in imrov, and I've always struggled with playing with people that want to make so many rules and basically tell you what to play/what not to play... it really puts a stopper in my creativity and I feel so trapped in those situations. Lately I've just been trying to finally really let myself learn to get over that fear of playing the wrong thing and holding myself back for whatever reason. This is the first interview I've watched with Medeski actually speaking about some of these things and I'd love to dig up a bunch more things on him to pick his brain a little... thank you for all involved making this one! Really enjoyed it 🙏🙏🙏

[@jdivita]

@15:44 My first time... I couldn't describe what I heard in his playing (or if it was even something that could be "heard") because it was completely supra-musical in nature. I just recognized it as truth and said "I wanna do that." That was almost 20 years ago. Last year we sat at my old BX-3 for two hours playing stridulations, improvising, talking about Phil Lesh. Thanks for the inspiration all these years John. And thank you for sharing this interview. I subscribed and will be watching

[@WeirdMusicPodcasts]

so glad you enjoyed this Jonathon! love the phrase “supra-musical”
cheers!

[@DefinitelyNot5Dogs]

Great convo with one of the best to ever do the thing! Thanks for putting these out!

[@WeirdMusicPodcasts]

Our pleasure! Thanks for tuning in!