Medeski Martin & Wood are not your grandaddy’s big-band, and they certainly ain’t your hippie roommate’s jam-band. Keyboardist John Medeski, drummer Billy Martin and bassist Chris Wood are, quite simply, whatever you want them to be.

For over a decade the trio has been combining elements from genres ranging from hip-hop to swing and seamlessly coalescing them into a unique concoction of free-form jazz. Equal parts avant-garde and head-nodding funk, MMW bring great musical craftsmanship to their live shows and are reputed for their improvisational digressions.

Wood recently chatted with The Badger Herald about capturing live energy in album form, jazz’s place in today’s pop clime and his interpretation of buzz-words like “jam-band.”

The Badger Herald: Do you prefer performing live or being in the studio?

Chris Wood: Being in the studio is nice because we can be home, being married and having a kid. That’s the hardest thing about being on the road is being away from the family. Being on the road is a very simple life, though. Everything in your day is about playing the gig. It’s a very focused reality.

BH: Your latest album, Uninvisible, differs greatly from your live, extended jams. Was making an album with three- to four-minute song lengths motivated by an effort to put out something that was a little more commercially palatable?

CW: As far as albums are concerned, that’s not a new thing for us. Ever since Shackman we’ve had pretty concise songs, although we always include some longer, extended stuff too. Compared to our last record, The Dropper, I think it is (more commercial). We’d really like to do a live record, because the way things translate on a record is a lot different than it is live.

BH: Do you guys find yourselves having to consciously condense your sound in the studio?

CW: In a certain sense, it happens naturally. It depends on the kind of record you’re making. With our earlier records, we recorded them the way jazz artists would — we all played together live, did a few takes of a song. But with [Uninvisible] we were basically writing in the studio by improvising and rolling tape. We would play something, listen back to it and liked what it was, but it wasn’t finished yet. That’s when we go back and overdub, and edit by choosing tracks — we’re composing throughout the mixing process.

BH: What is your working relationship with producer/engineer Scotty Hard? Is a lot of the hip-hop influence in Uninvisible attributable to him?

CW: He had so much influence that we basically gave him the full producer’s credit, which is the first time we’ve ever done that. But we as musicians are very influenced by hip-hop, by the rhythms and beats. Scotty definitely comes from that world and has that style in his mixing.

BH: What kind of hip-hop are you listening to right now?

CW: I love old stuff from A Tribe Called Quest, the Pharcyde, De La Soul. But I’ll also get down with some Lil’ Kim; Busta Rhymes is an amazing rapper.

BH: How do you collaborate with DJs on your records?

CW: With DJ Logic, he has a really open, organic style. He’s not all about scratching, but he can fly in some very otherworldly textures. It allows us to do what we do without him getting in the way. He adds something in between the cracks of what we do. DJ P Love is more of an incredible technician. He was basically playing percussion parts on Uninvisible, but scratching and playing along.

BH: If you had to describe your sound with one generic term, would it be “jazz?”

CW: I would describe it that way to myself, but not to anybody else. To anybody else, they’re gonna hear the word “jazz” and associate with other things that we don’t sound like. But in the real spirit of jazz, of an improvising jazz trio, yes.

BH: What do you think people’s perception of jazz music is nowadays?

CW: The word is completely meaningless now because it means completely different things to different people. Some people think of it as smooth jazz, some people think of it as Wynton Marsalis, some people think of it as nothing past 1960s Miles Davis. It’s a useless term at this point.

BH: A New York Times article attributed your entrance onto the jam-band scene to Phish having played your tapes during their intermissions.

CW: That’s true, but we never actually toured with Phish; we opened for them one time. People associate our music with them, I think, just because they played our CD, and a portion of their crowd got turned on to our music. It was a small portion, but to us it was huge.

BH: How do you feel about the label “jam-band,” and does it apply to Medeski Martin & Wood?

CW: They (labels) just come and go. In the early ’90s they were calling us “acid-jazz.” It’s whatever name becomes popular for the moment; they just try to attach it to you because people don’t know what to call the music. They try things out, discard them, and the next one comes along. At the moment, it’s “jam-band.” You know, it’s just Medeski Martin & Wood music, that’s all.

Medeski Martin & Wood play the Barrymore Theater tonight at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25.