Drummer Billy Martin is best known as the centerpiece of pioneering modern jazz trio Medeski Martin & Wood. But, like his partners in MMW, he is a prolific artist who is always in search of new ways to expand the scope of his sound. Martin will be at The Stone Church in Newmarket on Thursday, Dec. 6, accompanied by fellow percussionist Calvin Weston, a longtime collaborator.

“When you watch us play you’ll see it’s a special kind of chemistry we have. It’s wild. There’s funny stuff, there’s intense stuff, it grooves. It also gets into some really crazy moments where anything can happen,” Martin said during a recent phone interview with The Wire.

The son of a classical violinist and younger brother of a drummer, Martin became interested in music at a young age. After playing drums in high school and immersing himself in the New York jazz scene, he soon linked up with a pair of wildly talented and ambitious young artists—keyboardist John Medeski and bassist Chris Wood. MMW has released more than 10 full-length studio albums since 1991 and has attracted a following that includes fans of jazz, hip-hop, rock and jam bands. The group’s first ever children’s album, “Let’s Go Everywhere,” is due out early next year, and the band will record music written by saxophonist and composer John Zorn this winter. On top of all that, Martin is busy running his own record label, working on his visual artwork and touring with Weston. He has also recorded solo breakbeat albums and written a book about the art of drumming, “Riddim: Claves of African Origin.’ Martin talked to The Wire about his busy itinerary and the wide world of percussion.

How did your interest in drumming develop?
Well, you know, because my brother was playing the drums, there was a set in the house, and after he gave up on that, I inherited that set. We lived in New York City at the time that he was practicing. Then we moved to New Jersey in 1974, and all the stuff we had in storage was sort of unearthed. So, when we moved into this house, I set up the drums in the basement. I set up a stereo and started playing along with records, just for fun, you know, make believe you’re a drummer. That became a fun little hobby for me, and soon after that, my dad had another violinist friend over for dinner and he saw the set. He asked if I wanted to study with someone that he knew, and that’s really where it started. I started studying, and over the next few years things started to move in a positive direction, and I was just really learning a lot about drumming and getting into it, getting involved in school music and a jazz band in high school, orchestral music. Out of high school, I started getting into Brazilian Samba music, and that opened up my world really big. I opened my awareness to Brazilian music, African music, Afro-Cuban music. That’s really where I started growing stylistically, because all those influences had a big impression on me and became part of my musical language, and then I started getting gigs as a percussionist, as well as a drummer.

I’m sure there was a wealth of talent in New York when you started gigging there in the early 1980s. Did that period serve as an informal musical education for you?
Absolutely, yeah. All those gigs that I got, whether it was an off-Broadway show or a Broadway show or Samba night at Sounds of Brazil, which is a club, or a gig with (drummer) Bob Moses, all those different kinds of gigs were happening, and it was an incredible education. You can’t buy that in school, you gotta just do it.

How did you first start playing with John Medeski and Chris Wood?
I heard about John and Chris through Bob Moses. I played in his band and on some of his records in the ’80s. We shared the love for Brazilian music, and when I was a young guy, he took me under his wing. When he moved to Boston, he started teaching at the New England Conservatory, and I started to hear about John Medeski in the late ’80s through Moses. I finally got to meet him up in Boston when I was doing a gig with Moses. He introduced himself and we talked about getting together sometime when he came to New York. He did, and we actually had a two-hour jam session, just the two of us—just organ and drums. It was great, and that started our relationship. The next time we got together, he told me about this young bass player Chris Wood that was moving to New York. We had a session at my place in Brooklyn, the three of us, and that was the beginning of an obvious, strong feeling of, “This is amazing, this is great, this is what we want to do.”

Did you find that the type of music you guys were playing had a large audience right from the beginning?
No, it didn’t at all. We were side musicians with other bands. I was playing with The Lounge Lizards, which is a cult New York downtown band. John was playing with the Either/Orchestra. Chris was just coming into New York, so he was just starting out. He was doing duets with John at The Village Gate. So, when we formed the band, we had a very small group of friends who lived in New York that would come to our gigs. It grew little by little. It started with like five or 10 people at The Village Gate, and I was working on getting a gig at The Knitting Factory, which we did, and then we decided to play other places and get in my van and go down south. Over about a year or two, we started to get a following.

Jumping way ahead, after all your success with MMW, all three of you have really branched off to do lots of your own projects. How have you managed to be so prolific in your own rights and still work together as a band?
Well, I think it’s important that we were able to get away from each other to do those things. It’s a bit of work to make it happen, but you’ve got to look at those spaces in your schedule where you can work with other people. We’ve always encouraged doing that, because whatever we learn outside of the band we bring back into the band. And I think, more than ever, we need to do it, because we don’t want to burn out on Medeski Martin and Wood. We want to keep it fresh.

Over the years, you have collaborated with Chuck Mangione, John Scofield, John Zorn, Iggy Pop, DJ Logic, etc. How much does collaboration with other innovative musicians feed into your own artistic growth and creativity?
It has a profound effect on my playing and my creativity. All these individuals have their way of making music, and when I play with them it opens up another door in my perspective. It’s a chemical effect. With Calvin, I have to say, he’s one of the drummers that has influenced me probably more than any other drummer. He still has his own thing and I still have my own thing, but when we play together, I really learn. There are things that I do that I heard him do and a big light bulb went up in my head. It’s just infectious, you know? With DJ Logic, he has his way of doing things, and I totally relate to it. Zorn is incredibly inspiring because he’s so prolific and has so many ways of experimenting with music.

Has doing solo work enabled you to explore a lot of formats that you didn’t get to play as much with MMW?
Yeah, I mean, it’s just me out there, and the pressure is all on me. It straightens you right out. It’s very sobering, and it also feels really good when everything’s happening in a good way. It’s a real challenge, and I recommend it for any musician who’s serious about being creative and learning to improvise and write music.

Not only has MMW started its own record label, Indirecto, but you have had your own label, Amulet Records, for a long time now. What are your goals with the label?
My goals are to, number one, stick to the art of percussion. I really feel like I still haven’t gone beyond the solo or duet experimentation. I want to get more into the percussion ensemble, larger formats of using percussion. It’s such a wide open world of percussion, so I want to delve into that more. I’m also planning on expanding Amulet into an experimental film and video outlet, for myself, as well as maybe collaborating with other people. That’s the new direction. Working with experimental film, original film and avant-garde stuff, I think the music is also going to be a very integral part of that. And, I’m looking forward to more collaboration with people on that aspect.

You’ve been involved in some drumming workshops this year and written a book about drumming. Are you trying to spread your musical knowledge a bit and share it with aspiring drummers?
Yeah, definitely. I’m really into sharing my ideas, and the book is what it’s about as far as a strong concept method. I think it’s more of a universal approach as opposed to just a drum book. I think anybody could learn from this book, almost any age and almost any instrument. Any band can take this book and explore the rhythmic possibilities. So, I’m all about doing clinics, master classes and teaching privately, as I’m dong now. I want to help people find their own styles and become great drummers and do new things and break out of the molds and just blow people away. I really want to be part of helping people do that. 

I know you’re interested in a variety of percussion instruments and styles from Africa and Asia and South America. Does it help you continue to stretch out as a drummer to explore the music and instruments of other cultures?
Of course, yeah. It’s like having an orchestra at your fingertips. You have your woodwinds and your string section and your brass and your reeds and your percussion. For me, I have my metal section, I have my wood blocks, I have my bamboo, I have all of the skinned instruments. A percussionist can play just about anything and invent any instrument they want. Then you can get into playing strings, you can get into vibrating things. It’s endless, you know?

Tell me a bit about what’s going on with your visual arts career.
Well, in the past 15, 20 years, I have been doing a lot of smaller drawings with oil pastels, which is very colorful and painterly. Now I’m getting into large canvas and revisiting some creations, like certain kinds of birds and abstract stuff. The works are getting large, and part of that is because I’m gonna have a group show in January in Kent, Connecticut, at the Morrison Gallery, and then I’m gonna work up to a solo show. So, I’m doing more with oils and canvas now, which is really a breakthrough for me. I still love to do print work and collage and multimedia. And experimental film, working with real film, is part of that, too. So it’s just a really exciting time.

What was the inspiration behind the upcoming children’s album with MMW?
I think having kids, definitely. This is a chapter in our lives when we all have kids. I have two boys, they’re seven and four. It’s something we have talked about, and a little label approached us. We’re now independent, but just before we got it together to start our own label, this other label asked us to do a children’s record, so we sort of jumped at it. We came in with no music. We had four days in the studio, and we wrote together in the studio and created the music there. I think it’s really one of the best records we’ve done in a long time.

What sparked the upcoming tour with Calvin Weston?
It’s long overdue, because we’ve only done one or two other duet gigs in the past few years, because we’ve both been busy. Calvin called me up and said ‘Hey, what are you doing in the fall? Let’s try to do something together.’ It just turned out that Medeski Martin and Wood decided to work less so we could do other things, so it worked. I feel really close to Calvin in a lot of ways, and I want to share that with people, because I feel like it’s a real special collaboration that we do.