At the kindly guitar legend Pat Metheny’s 2024 concert at the Lobero Theatre, one of countless visits to this hallowed hall over the decades, he was in something of an inward and backward-looking place. It was part of a solo guitar tour, with the guitarist taking a retrospective journey through his multi-chaptered career, in both musical and testimonial modes. As a seventy-something jazz icon,whose musical life has yielded many rewards since his emergence in the 1970s, Metheny has many stories to tell, in song and otherwise.
At his recent Lobero appearance last week, the context involved a different kind of story. This time, he was looking behind to some degree, but also in the present and future tense, joined by his nimble band of young players, Side-Eye III+. His new group, an update on the former Side-Eye ensemble, came bearing several new tunes from the fine new album, eponymously titled Side-Eye III+, representing the evolving, forward-momentum aspect of Metheny’s musical being.
As heard on record and onstage, there is clearly a strong, in-house empathy between the veteran, bushy-haired boss and the young charges — keyboardist Chris Fishman, drummer Joe Dyson, bassist Jermaine Paul, and Leonard Patton on percussion and vocals.
But there were links to the past as well, starting with this group’s sonic and structural echoes of the once-popular Pat Metheny Group (PMG), with partner Lyle Mays on keys and co-composition, from the ‘70s through the ‘90s. The band had a large enough operation — especially for a jazz group — that it performed at the Santa Barbara Bowl.
Especially on the longer and more structurally expansive new tunes “Don’t Look Down” and “Make a New World” — like mini-epics — echoes of the bygone PMG aesthetic resonated in the house. More direct links came through on their versions of old PMG classics “Phase Dance,” the slow-build and guitar synth-featuring “Are You Going with Me?,” and “The First Circle,” with its looping, hypnotic clapping rhythm kicking into its polyrhythmic gears.
The new book also takes a fairly new direction, as on the gospel-flavored “Urban and Western” (a ripe opportunity for Fishman to showcase his Hammond B-3 sound chops). The song has a looser feel than we expect from Metheny, something more akin to fellow guitar hero John Scofield’s world.
Last week, Metheny also dipped way back to the beginning, with the jigsaw melody of “Bright Size Life,” the title track of his ECM Records debut in 1975. Back then, Metheny was paving the way for his lofty status in the jazz guitar pantheon by bucking the trend of fusion guitar extroversion. His was a more ear-friendly blend of both chops and lyricism, a clean and lightly delay-dusted tone, with plenty of folk and Brazilian ingredients in his compositional mix.
The same essential musical voice prevails in the current Metheny sound, with his fluid lyricism and spidery fretwork prowess in check, and with twists gained along the way. Gloves were off when he and drummer Dyson exchanged feverish riffs on the snaky theme of “Trigonometry,” from the album Song X, featuring the guitarist with modern jazz visionary Ornette Coleman. From another corner of Metheny’s extended discography, he called up the cool and loopy-headed, organ-featuring Michael Brecker tune “Timeline,” from the 1999 Brecker album Time is of the Essence, which Metheny played on. (Time was of the essence for Brecker, who died young, eight years after this album was released).
Returning for encores, Metheny first took the stage with only his acoustic guitar, venturing into a medley of themes from the years, including the America-themed one-two of “America the Beautiful” and his David Bowie collaboration “This is Not America.” Just in time for the big 250 in July, but with political commentary ever-so-subtly implied.
The Lobero/Metheny love affair continues. Or is it a marriage by now?
You must be logged in to post a comment.