Vol. 1 no. 3

AW: Did you go to the Junos?

MM: No, they were in Vancouver that year. I found out from my answering machine. It helped my career a little, more tours started to happen.

AW: You've been in Toronto for a while now. What's your general feeling about being a musician there?

MM: I think it's probably as good a place to be in as you can find. There are quite a lot of good players on each instrument. In Europe and North America outside of New York that's not the case generally. New York is a whole other thing. Toronto's a big city; I miss the ocean every now and then, but aside from that it's fine.

AW: I wonder about your reaction to this argument. In the seventies, if you said the phrase, "Canadian jazz" to people, they would think of Don Thompson, Ed Bickert, Rob McConnell, Terry Clarke, etc. Now people would say Mike Murley, Barry Elmes, Time Warp. Do you think there is something inherently Canadian about your music, or is it just the result of being in that city with those great players?

MM: Would they? Canadians are more polite, and Toronto is a polite city, business-like. I hope we don't play like that. One thing that is different is that in most American cities there is a ghetto, and usually a blues thing of some sort, music associated with oppression and poverty. In Toronto that's not the case. There is an emphasis on original material in Time Warp, and the grant system ensures that. Composition helps you find what you're really into. That has definitely had an impression on all the younger players. The studio guys of the seventies were great craftsman; they could really play a standard tune. I think all the government grants have really helped; we are lucky to be able to tour, and go to Banff, and study abroad, and do recordings.

AW: What do listen to these days? What do you derive inspiration from?

MM: Lots of different things. When you are first starting to learn jazz, you are more closed. There's so much to check out that you don't have time to listen to stuff that you don't think is it! Now I'm a little more open to different kinds of music, getting broader. I like everything from Celtic music to good pop music and classical music.

I also go back to what I used to listen to and get more from it now. I've been listening to Keith Jarrett's band from the seventies; I had never really checked out that stuff. It's heavy.

Everything was Sonny for a while, then everything was Wayne, now it's Keith's seventies band.

AW: When you were on your Wayne and Sonny "kicks," did you find yourself doing more of their tunes?

MM: I didn't really play those tunes that much. I was always wary of trying not to imitate them too much on the gig. I would imitate them when I was practicing, but on the gig, whatever comes out, okay. Studying Wayne Shorter allowed me to break out of that, looking at different ways of playing chromatically. Certain tunes will lend themselves to showing more of an influence, and others allow you to be more original.

AW: You seem to be someone who studies the music pretty carefully. Does it worry you at times that your originality will be compromised?

MM: When you get on the gig, you try to be original, but there are always going to be influences. That's just the way it is. You hear Bird's influence on Sonny Rollins and Dexter's influence on John Coltrane. Different people have different ways of doing it. Somebody like Phil Dwyer can hear a guy on record, and then he can imitate the guy like that. I don't think he would do it the way I do it. He doesn't need to. Everybody's different. He's so quick. I can't do that, I have to study. Bird did it with Lester Young. Lee Konitz, he's such an individual, he's done tons of transcribing.

Another thing is that the people you hear live can affect you differently than those on recordings.

AW: Your present band has been together for about three years. Did you have a particular goal in mind when you formed it?

MM: It seemed like it was about time that I got comfortable playing with a piano player.(laughs) I was weaned on all these bands without piano. I think I'm used to it now. I'm a bass player too, and so I heard it in terms of root-melody-rhythm. I've found in my writing too that I'm hearing more piano-type stuff now. I love the Miles 60's band, Kenny Wheeler's stuff. You gotta have piano, especially for a gentler, lyrical thing. I played with Brian Dickenson for years, but it was almost like two extremes. That's why one of my albums is called Two Sides. It was like a split personality or something, I couldn't really put them both together. The third album was the end of the old band and beginning of the new band; it was kind of schizophrenic.