medeski martin and me

On Sunday, I had backstage passes to the Medeski, Martin and Wood show at the Greek Theater. They were playing as a part of this tour with the Roots and 311. My friend Cheryl’s old roommate works for MMW and so Cheryl has known these guys for awhile, but this was my first time meeting them. Being that they are easily in my top 25 favorite bands, I felt at first like a 15 year old on his best behavior. After they played, we went backstage and Cheryl introduced me to Chris Wood. So, we’re standing there talking as one of the Roots walks by and says, “what up?”.

Turns out Chris and John (Medeski) are just the coolest, down-to-earth guys. Billy (Martin) is great, too, but wasn’t around as much since he some friends in the area that he went to visit. John is a huge wine conneseur and had some vineyard friends up from Monterey with loads of different wines and fine cheeses so we just hung out backstage trying different wines talking about this and that and then went out to watch the Roots.

Later, they hopped on the bus and we met them down at the Berkeley marina where we chilled, prepared a lot of food and drank a lot more wine!! All in all it was an excellent day and I owe it all to my friend Cheryl (thanks Cheryl!). It’s not everyday that you just get to chill with some of your musical idols as if you’d known them all along.