Doggedly Tasteful Guitar Hero’s Return

Great Genre-Stretching Guitarist Bill Frisell Makes a Long-Awaited Return to Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre, with ‘Good Dog’ Band

Bill Frisell band | Photo: Courtesy

Of the many artists whose music registers with a particular symbiotic and ambient resonance at the historic Lobero Theatre, gentle-spirited guitar hero Bill Frisell ranks high on the list. Frisell’s remarkable and genre-bounding career spans some 40 years and countless albums and projects. At the outset, he shook up the jazz guitar world with his welcome lyricism, subtle tone, and playful sense of adventure and evolved outward and upward into many different musical areas.

In whatever incarnation, those uniquely Frisellian qualities that always seem to come alive in the Lobero’s warm-hearted jumbo living-room atmosphere. Memorable evenings with Frisell included a duet with longtime ally drummer Joey Baron, a double-trio all-star night with his and John Scofield’s trio, and a band featuring Santa Barbara–based bassist David Piltch. Next Thursday, May 15, Frisell marks a too-long absence from the room with the group of friendly partners called the “Good Dog” band, a reference to his arty, rootsy 1999 album Good Dog, Happy Man. (Listen at spoti.fi/44D4lBp)

Frisell, who has also played the Lobero as a sideman with the worldly Montecitan Charles Lloyd, said about the venue, “A room like that would be more like something you’d see in Italy, just an old, really great theater. … I love playing in that room.”

Joining Frisell are pedal steel master Greg Liesz (a Hollister Ranch resident who also joins Frisell in Lloyd’s band The Marvels) and old Frisell familiars, bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen. Together, the band will revisit the Good Dog, Happy Man songbook at the Lobero, which included a popular version of the folk classic “Shenandoah” (dedicated to jazz guitarist Johnny Smith), and many examples of Frisell’s mastery of electro-acoustic touch and thinking. Included are the Frisell favorite “Monroe” (his dog’s name, perhaps) and the swampy cool and evocatively named “Cadillac 1959.”

But don’t expect this freedom-loving band to stick to a “play it like the record” straightness. As Frisell comments, “usually, people [listening] will say, ‘Oh, wow, that’s “Shenandoah,” I think … maybe.’ With the band and the audience, it’s a different connection. Even the way we play it, as a band, it’s not figured out. There are no arrangements or anything like that. We’re just playing the songs and everyone’s hearing that stuff going on in their own brains. They all have their own personal experiences. It’s really cool.”

Next week’s Good Dog show will appeal to diehard Frisell fans, hipsters, and others not even necessarily plugged into jazz, per se, in sync with the guitarist’s long-standing organic eclecticism as an artist. Other aspects of Frisell’s innate musical personae have emerged on distinctive and not-so-commercial projects he’s been involved in recently. This list includes a fascinating and experimental trio record with organist Kit Downes and legendary drummer Andrew Cyrille, 2024’s Breaking the Shell (listen at spoti.fi/3YrR1M7). He also shines, in a jazzier mode, on saxist Chris Cheek’s brand-new song “On a Clear Day.” Frisell goes in a very different, more impressionistic direction on Ambrose Akinmusire’s 2023 Owl Song, on which he says “I’m not thinking about the instruments. I’m thinking about each person, all of whom happen to be outrageous individuals. They happen to be trios with no bass, but the first thing that comes to my mind is the chemical reaction that’ll happen with the personalities.”

Expect chemistry to happen at the Lobero.

Bill Frisell performs at the Lobero Theatre (33 E. Canon Perdido St.) Thursday, May 15, 7:30 p.m. See lobero.org.