Rock and Roll is Kids' Stuff: Medeski, Martin and Wood release album for children

Sunday News
Published: Jun 15, 2008
By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent

Grown-up pop musicians making albums for children is a time-honored tradition going back to when Carole King put Maurice Sendak's stories to music in "Really Rosie." But unlike that classic, many such albums are thinly veiled career moves — artists looking to get another buy out of aging fans who all of a sudden have made raising a family a greater priority than going to concerts or buying CDs."Let's Go Everywhere," the 17th album from jazz-fusion trio Medeski Martin and Wood, is different.

Considering how the group normally makes music, this children's album seems to be a natural extension, something that was almost bound to happen. MMW fans have probably been playing albums like "The Dropper," "Combustication" and the live "Tonic" for their kids anyway. The band's jazz/rock/funk/free-form sound has always been experimental, noisy, somewhat whimsical, almost always intense and never self-serious.

Onstage, the trio often veers into on-the-spot composition, trading licks like kids on a playground saying "Watch what I can do!" or combining sounds like some kind of science experiment ready to bubble up and explode.

John Medeski plays his hot-rodded Hammond B3 with the dizzying skill of Jimmy Smith, but with the same enthusiasm as a toddler who figures out how to open up grandma's old Baldwin upright. Bassist Chris Wood is a testament to Jaco Pastorius and James Jamerson, yet possesses the spirit of a child who tries to play the vacuum cleaner like a bagpipe. Drummer Billy Martin is as apt to play like a kid banging spoons in the kitchen sink as he is to channel Bernard Purdie. Somehow their music always smiles, and swings.

All three band members sing, as do their children, on just about every track of "Lets Go Everywhere," which is new territory for the instrumental trio. The title track is a funky electric-piano-driven rewrite of that cool Johnny Cash tune "I've Been Everywhere" that quickly develops into a perfect in-the-car singalong. Classics such as "Pat a Cake" and "Hickory Dickory Dock" are turned into exciting drum and voice workouts that would impress any student of polyrhythms.

Tunes such as "Pirates Don't Take Baths" and "The Train" are downright fun, while "All Around the Kitchen" pairs a klezmer-sounding riff with kids shouting out the names of their favorite foods. It's about the closest thing to educational material on the album. "Let's Go Everywhere" makes a strong case that children's music need not be dumbed-down, simplified, insipid or unsophisticated, and shows grown-ups that serious music doesn't always have to be serious. You can sing about broccoli without having to keep a straight face. It's okay.