May 2, 2025 • 41 mins
Join @thebuzzknight for this classic "takin ' a walk" replay with guitar maestro Pat Metheny. In one of our most popular episodes, Pat shares his inside stories on creativity and how he works passionately at his craft. You'll absolutely love his insights and you'll learn what makes this master tick.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Taking a Walk.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
If you can speak two or three different languages and
you're thirsty, you're thirsty before you realize, Okay, I'm gonna
have to say this in Fringe because I'm in France,
or I'm gonna have to say this in Spanish because
I'm in Puerto Rico, or I'm gonna say this in
English because I'm in New York. Your thing is you're thirsty.
So to me, ideas and music are like that, there
(00:22):
before any instrument.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to the Taking a Walk Podcast, the show where
Buzz Knight speaks with musicians of all type about their music,
their influences, and their aspirations. Today, Buzz speaks with jazz
guitarist Pat Metheni. Pat is a twenty time Grammy winner
who literally reinvented the traditional jazz guitar for a new
(00:45):
generation of players. He released his first album, Bright Size
Life in nineteen seventy five, which is considered one of
the most quintessential jazz albums in history. Buzz Night is
joined by Pat Metheni now on Taking a Walk.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Well, thanks Pat for being on Taking a Walk. First
of all, what is a typical day for a lifelong
creator such as yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
In a lot of ways, my life is the same
as it's always been in that I have a real
deep interest in trying to understand music. And it's been
that way for me since I was I don't know,
eleven or twelve years old. And you know, to be
a good musician it sort of goes a little bit underreported.
It's hard. It's hard to be a good musician, and
(01:34):
it really does require a kind of intense dedication that
is kind of unlike anything else, and it kind of
never stops in a way. It's not like you wake
up one day and you go, Okay, I got it,
you know. In fact, it's the opposite. It's sort of
the better you get and the more you know and
(01:55):
the deeper you're understanding is the more you realize you
don't know anything and you're just beginning. And I still
feel like that. I feel like I'm just now starting
to get a sense of it all. And for that reason,
I tend to, you know, spend a lot of time
at it. If I'm not on the road, I often
(02:20):
get up very early, four or five in the morning
because I get three or four hours at that point
where nobody else is up and I can really focus
on whatever it is that I'm doing, and when I'm
on the road, I mean it's you know, the concerts
that I present are often two and a half three
hours long, and I have to prepare for two hours
(02:43):
or so before that, so that's you know, five or
six hours a day right there of working on music.
You know, people often ask about the physical thing of
playing an instrument. Honestly, that's not a huge part of
it for me. It's more about developing ideas and sort
of being able to execute those ideas, whether it's in
(03:05):
the form of writing or you know, you know, figuring
out how to how to get that sound whatever that
idea represents out into the world. And that could be
in many different ways, including you know, the whole thing
of composition, which for me is you know, not something
(03:25):
that initially I would have thought might have been the
main thing for me because I was so interested in
improvising and that tradition. But as it turned out, there
was a way I wanted to improvise that I was
having a hard time finding a way into. And I
realized at a certain point, if I wrote the music
(03:47):
and handed it to a bunch of other people, that
could set up an environment where I could get to
what I wanted to get to as an improviser. So
you know, the basic thing for me is when I
can be working on music, I am working on music,
and it could be anytime day or night. So there's
no one typical day for me. It's it's just kind
(04:12):
of constant. But I went also put an asterisk at
the end of that. I have three wonderful kids, a
great wife, really great family, two dogs, and all that
comes with that. And balance is the key thing for me,
not just in music but in everything else. So it's
not like I neglect the rest of my being to
(04:34):
be that kind of a musician. It you know, it's
it's all equal for me, and in fact, more and more,
it's sort of like the line between what it takes
to be a good musician and just to kind of
be in the world in a way that I think
represents what the best music represents to me. They kind
of blur together after a while. So, you know, I'm
(04:57):
always looking for balance in every way, and you know,
probably more balanced some periods than others, depending upon what's
going on. If I have a deadline or something, I
certainly you know, lean a little bit more to this
direction than I do in another direction. But you know,
(05:18):
if it's time for parent teacher conferences and all else
like that, I lean that way. So I think there's
a way to get everything in and you know, I
try to enjoy every bit of all of it.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
So, Pat, who were the players as a fifteen year
old wizard that impacted you to this very.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Day, Well, like everybody, I had my heroes. I mean,
my main hero probably wouldn't be a musician if it
wasn't for my older brother bringing home a Miles Davis
record when I was eleven or twelve. The record was
four and more And you know, that was just one
of those like life changing, you know, light bulb moments
(06:02):
for me, and that would be probably the most significant
thing I could say. The Miles Quintet of the sixties
was just the model of everything for me. And to
this day it's like that may be, you know, one
of the highest levels of human achievement that has occurred
(06:22):
so far in our species. You know, that band really
on all five fronts just got to it. But in
particular on my instrument was Wes Montgomery. It still is
Wes Montgomery. I mean there's other players I loved. Kinney
Burrell especially and Jim Hall were the other two big
ones for me, But it was mostly about Wes. And
(06:45):
there are many things about Wes as an improvisor that
I actually still feel are kind of under reported on
and underrecognized, particularly the melodic development aspect of it. And
you know, saxophone players Sonny Rollins of course, Charlie Parker,
John Coltrane, and trumpet players like Clifford Brown and Freddie
(07:06):
Ubbard in particular were also huge from me in very particular.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Kinds of ways.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
But my favorite band of that era was the Gary
Burton Quartet of the late sixties. I mean, that was
a band that from me just kind of represented a
major change in the culture in a lot of ways,
and the fact that I wound up joining that band
really just a couple of years later is something that
I still kind of have to pinch myself for. But
(07:34):
kind of having said all those famous dudes, the main
thing for me were the musicians in Kansas City that
started hiring me when I was fourteen fifteen, sixteen years old,
that I was able to play with for several years
before I even got out of high school, and I
really learned to play from being on the bandstand with
(07:56):
those musicians. There was a drummer in particular named Tommy Ruskin,
who to this day would be in the top five
drummers I've ever played with. And the fact that I
got to sit next to that guy for several years,
I mean I can trace almost everything about the way
that I think about time and groove and rhythm to
those moments being by his side. Often in his living room.
(08:18):
He would just invite me and Kevin, my good friend
who was a bass player, and we would just play
get the chance to play with him. But also two
other musicians, Gary Sibbles and Paul Smith, were great musicians
around Kansas City that gave me lots of chances to play.
And one of the greatest musicians I've ever been around
was an organ player named Russ Long, who was I
(08:41):
think the best organ player I've ever heard in terms
of just making stuff up. I mean, he was a
true improviser. And you know, I got to play with
all those guys you know, at you know, such a
formative stage, and that was huge for me.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
How did the skill set of you being a trumpet
player ultimately shape your style of guitar playing.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
It's interesting for me because I don't think about an
instrument too much. I think about music. And you know,
some people are often surprised to hear me say I
write almost everything on piano, and the reason for that
is because it's like fifty times easier than the guitar.
I mean, if you have a piano that's in tune,
(09:30):
it's just been tuned, and it's a really good piano
and you play a reasonably good voicing, people go, wow,
you're a genius, you know. I mean, it's not the thing.
It's that the piano itself is an amazing instrument, and
you know, it might take ten years to learn how
to play that same chord on a guitar and make
(09:52):
it have that same kind of an effect. And then also,
you know, the trump good thing for me was huge.
My older brother Mike great trumpet player. My dad was
an excellent trumpet player. My mom's dad was a professional
trumpet player. I started on trumpet, you know, very young.
(10:15):
By all accounts, I was terrible. I don't doubt that.
But one thing that is true is that even you know,
as I got into playing the guitar, for some reason,
I breathe as if I'm playing the trumpet, and I
think that helps, meaning like if I'm going to play
a phrase, I go and then I play what I'm
(10:35):
going to play, and then when I'm out of breath,
I take another little pause, take a breath, and then
play some more. And one thing I do notice about
guitar players, piano players, vibes players, bass players, drummers, if
they don't have that sense of breath somehow, I think
just our human reaction to that is that we need
(10:56):
those pauses, We need those breaths because it's it's like
in conversation if somebody just talks all the time into
one and then to ever take a you know, you
kind of tune out after a minute. And music is
a representation of the way we talk and the way
we communicate. So I would say the breath aspect of
being an early trumpet player really did affect me. And
(11:17):
it's interesting how many of my favorite musicians that are,
you know, non wind instrument musicians. I'm thinking of, like
Steve Swallow, the great bass player. I think even Gary
Burton started on trumpet or a wind instrument. So I
think that does inform the way you become a musician.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Later, Pat, when did you realize that you had this
other skill set, that of a teacher.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's kind of funny that you mentioned that, because I
did just make a visit out to my hometown out
in Missouri, and I was reminded of something that I
hadn't thought about too much, which is I actually started
teaching other kids about two months after I started playing,
because one of my mom's friends asked if I could teach,
(12:12):
you know, their six year old some guitar, and I
was like, yeah, I can teach them, you know, whatever
it is I know, And then that mom told another mom,
and the next thing I knew, you know, probably would
have been twelve or thirteen, you know, a couple of
days a week, I had four or five little kids
come over and I was teaching them E and a
minor and stuff, and so I guess from then. But
(12:37):
you know, for me, I'm not sure if I am
a good teacher or I was a good teacher, because
I do think that my teaching thing often was related
to whatever I was thinking about, or what I was
working on, or what I felt like I needed to
communicate to get a gig myself or something would be
(13:00):
kind of what I would emphasize to whoever happened to
be my students at the time. You know, maybe that's
not terrible because I was like then, like now, I
never was thinking about, oh, well, you want to be
better than the kid that's sitting next to you. My
sense always was like, well, you know, there was there
was Bach, and we all kind of are nowhere near that,
(13:25):
and there was Wes Montgomery, and there was even you know,
Jimmy Hendrix. I mean, it's sort of like I never
thought about it in terms of comparing anything to probably
an age appropriate connection to what a kid might be.
It would be like more, you know, have you listened
to Joe Henderson or you know whatever, because you know,
(13:47):
to me, that is kind of the standard. So I
always kind of maintained that standard.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
And what teachers in your life inspired the teaching bug.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Well, all of us and lisum at Missouri were very,
very lucky to have as the head of the band
music program in our little town a guy named Keith House,
who is a legendary educator in the state of Missouri
for thousands of people. How he happened to pick Lee
(14:19):
Summit and wind up in lie Summit. I don't know,
but men, all of us are really lucky. He was
not a jazz guy at all, but he was an
incredible musician who was one of those kind of tough
love kind of teachers who somehow would get you know,
a bunch of you know, a lot of farm kids
(14:39):
and rural kids playing you know, Wagner and you know,
like really hit music Mozart and you know, and that
we didn't even have an orchestra. This was all concert
band stuff, you know. They it was just you know,
wind instruments basically, and he was incredible, and you know,
(15:03):
in my case, he realized pretty early because I was
already into stuff that was not kind of in line
with Lisa of Missouri by being interested in the music
I was interested in and also, as noted, probably not
a very good trumpet player. So I switched to French hoorn,
where I was even worse. But still I was in
(15:25):
his bands. And he finally said to me, he said, okay,
you're going to write something for the band. And I
was probably fourteen, and I was like, oh, okay, you know,
and you know, he kind of, you know, almost insisted
that I developed that skill because I think he saw
in me that that was something that could happen, and
(15:46):
it was a great opportunity for me. There was no
jazz program at the school at that time because we
had no saxophone players. I don't know why, but that
wasn't an instrument that was in our realm. So I
had to write music for four frenchhorn, three trombones and
five trumpets and a rhythm of section and we would
play at the basketball games for the cheerleaders and stuff
(16:08):
like that. And then I eventually ended up writing a
pretty significant piece for trumpet and concert band, you know,
by the time I was a junior in high school,
you know, stuff that I would definitely not have done
had there not been a mister House there. So he
was a big one for me. And then I have
to then add, even though I was in his band
(16:29):
as a you know, side man and playing you know,
all over the world, just standing next to Gary Burton
night after night after night was probably the best possible
education I could ever have gotten, because in addition to
just being able to describe in detail music the way
he has, he has an incredibly thorough eloquent way of
(16:51):
you know, basically breaking down harmony for improvisers that is
just unbelievably efficient. He was also another kind of tough
band leader type person who because I was really young.
I mean when I started playing with Gary, I was
eighteen and you know, had only been playing for a
few years. Even though I had been playing a lot
(17:13):
in Kansas City, it wasn't the same kind of thing.
I mean, you know, Gary's thing was definitely at the
highest international level, and pretty much after every concert I
would get an hour or two talk about, you know,
on the D minor seven flat five going into the
third chorus, you played an a natural you know, that
(17:37):
didn't really fit, you know, I mean stuff like that,
And you know, maybe three years or so into the gig,
I was like, okay, I got it, you know. But man,
the first couple of years it was it was really
valuable for me. And you know, so I have to
always put Gary high up in there, and I have
(17:57):
to put Steve Swallow in there too, who is the
big player who in Gary's band, who was always very
giving in terms of advice and particularly in the in
the area of writing tunes. He had written the tune
Falling Grace, which for me defined a generation of harmony.
(18:18):
It just changed everything, and to that to this day,
I feel that tune sort of set the stage for
a whole new way of thinking about harmony. And to
be around Steve for a few years was incredible for me.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
We'll be right back with more of the Taking a
Walk Podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Pat, could you have imagined years later the respect that
people have for the album Bright Size Life. You're playing, certainly,
and your introduction in the world of Jaco Pastorius the
great bass player?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Honestly, not in a million years, because my sense of
that record for the first ten or twelve years after
it came out was that I had completely blown it.
That that band was so much better than what that
record seemed to represent. I could barely even listen to it,
because you know, it was a six hour session. We
(19:22):
came back the next day and I think did one
more little thing and then mixed it and that was that.
And Jocko had never been to Europe. He was jet
lagged out of his mind and kind of nuts at
that stage. Not the same version of nuts that he
became later, but the organic Jocko of that era was
a pretty intense person already. And you know, it was
(19:49):
quite a thing, I have to say. And then probably
fifteen years after it came out, I had an experience where,
and this happens every and then, where I hear something
from a distance, like in somebody's you know, car or
something like that, And I remember hearing that and thinking, Wow,
(20:11):
what's that? That sounds really good?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
What is that?
Speaker 2 (20:14):
And then I realized it was that record, So it
was kind of like the first time I'd ever really
heard it. But still it didn't really get to the
thing that it seems to have now until maybe twenty
twenty five years after it came out. Certainly within the
culture within even within the community of our thing, it
(20:35):
didn't really get much attention at the time, you know,
the Jocko's sort of emergence onto the scene on that
record than his debut record, the Joni Mitchell record, Juzira
and a couple tracks on an early Weather Report record.
That was the guy that I knew, you know, because
(20:58):
he and I already had been playing together for a
few years by that time down in Florida, both of
us completely unknown. And then I got the gig with
Gary a couple of years before he joined Weather Report,
and he started coming up to Boston and we would
do gigs, and of course everywhere he went around that time,
including when he was playing with Wayne Cochran, nobody had
(21:19):
ever heard anything like that. And at the same time,
you know, maybe even more than those other situations playing
with me, I've always joked that I was probably the
only person that ever said, you're playing too many notes,
it's too loud. I mean, I didn't really have the
(21:39):
awestruck response to his thing that I think everybody else
had not for any reason other than I was probably
the first person or one of the fearst people he'd
run into that was just as stubborn and sort of
whatever as he was, and that made a really interesting
(22:00):
between the two of us that continued actually across the years,
even as we went in very very different lifestyle directions.
He was the only person I had ever met who
was as straight as me, and that I at that
point it never had a drink or any drugs or
anything at all, and that's still true to this day.
When he joined Weather Report, he became a completely different
(22:22):
person and almost an unrecognizable person to me in many ways.
Yet at moments along the way when he needed something,
he would always call me and we would have talks
because he knew that I knew him from before. And
also I was probably the person closest to the level
(22:44):
of sudden attention that he had been getting too. So
we had a real special thing. And I realize, of
course now that record captures many things about what our
relationship was like, and Moses too. I mean, that was
a real band. We did a lot of gigs together,
had a real band dynamic, and so I'm glad that
(23:08):
record does exist.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
When did you develop your innovation skills that led to
the invention of some really unique guitars And is there
anything new that you can share that you might be
dreaming up?
Speaker 2 (23:23):
In many ways, my early years were very conventional. You know.
It was a hollow body Gibson guitar and an amp
and that was it, because that was the realm of
that era. Somewhere in there I found a guitar that
was a nylon string guitar that had a pick up
on it that I brought to a Russ long organ
(23:46):
trio gig, and suddenly there was this other kind of
sense of orchestration in that band, and you know, I thought, oh, well,
guitar is interesting because it can be all these different things.
And I started to embrace that more and more, and
then I realized that, you know, it's an instrument that
is utterly undefined even at this point, and you can
(24:08):
really make it be anything. And that led to me
led me to first, you know, restringing instruments or getting
a twelve string and doing some wacky stuff to it.
You know, they weren't infinitely malleable because they would just
kind of do one thing. But I started to think
(24:30):
of the guitar as being just this paint box, and
that led me to then getting people to make special
instruments to be able to get to an idea that
I had. But it was always led by the idea that,
to me is something that I try to describe to
people too. That because I know I'm a guitar player,
people think of me as a guitar player and all that.
(24:52):
But if I have an idea of like if I
imagine in my brain, I'm going to improvise a chorus
on my funny Valentine right now, I'm doing that, and
I could pick up a trumpet and I would attempt
to play that idea that and it would sound terrible,
but that's what I would go for. Or I could
(25:14):
go over to the piano and I would play that
same idea, and then I would pick up the guitar
and I would also play that same idea much better
than in the other two cases. But it's the idea
that's before any of that stuff, and the way I
describe it to people, it's sort of like if you
can speak two or three different languages and you're thirsty,
You're thirsty before you realize, Okay, I'm going to have
(25:37):
to say this in French because I'm in France, or
I'm gonna have to say this in Spanish because I'm
in Puerto Rico, or I'm going to say this in
English because I'm in New York. You know, your thing
is you're thirsty. So to me, ideas and music are
like that, there before any instrument. But sometimes I need
to develop a language to express those ideas. And it's
(25:58):
pretty abstract in that analogy that I s gave breaks
down very quickly. But I have found that sometimes an
instrument can lead you to places you know based on
you know, something that is instigated by an idea that
you might have that finally, with an instrument in hand
takes you someplace that you might not have expected.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Well, what do you think your secret X factor is
behind your collaboration skills.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
It's funny because I know that I've done a lot
of things with a lot of people, but I'm also
really picky about what I do. And I mean by that,
I mean I have said no to way more things
than I've said yes to, including things that would shock
(26:50):
people along the way and even me when I think
back on it. I mean there was a period I
just said no to everything. When I started my band,
I decided I'm not going to do anything except my
own thing, and from the years between nineteen seventy seven
and nineteen eighty seven, which is when Mike Brecker asked
(27:10):
me to be on his first record, I literally did
not do anything. I think maybe there's one little thing
I did, but I only did my own thing, and
maybe there were some benefits to that. I think there
probably were, actually, but man, when I think it's some
of the stuff I could have done in there, it
kind of blows my mind. But basically, to me, there's
(27:33):
two things that happened. One is I'm going to either
have to go play in somebody else's yard, which is
mostly what it is, and I do enjoy that. I mean,
the period from nineteen eighty seven to maybe around the
year two thousand, I did a lot of stuff with
some great musicians like Kenny Garrett or Mike Brecker, who
(27:54):
I mentioned. You know, I had a great collaborative band
with Herbie Hancock and Acti Janet and Dave Holland, and
you know, lots of things. And you know, for me,
it's it's when I'm going to go play in somebody
else's yard, I want that yard to be like a
(28:15):
place where I'm going to come back from that with
a whole new perspective. And maybe the ultimate example of
that would have been the collaboration with Ornette Holman, who
had been a hero for me and became a very
good friend, and as much as I love his music
to this day, is one of the greatest human beings
(28:36):
I've ever had the opportunity to be around. But it's
always a thing where either I know right away, oh
that's a good idea, or I don't, and if I
have to think about it, I usually don't do it.
And it's kind of simple in that respect. But the
(28:57):
favorite thing for me is somebody who I don't necessarily
have to go play in their yard, and they are
capable of coming and playing in my yard, which does require,
you know, some skills that are unique in the sense
that you've got to be able to really hang with
harmony as an improviser, and that is not always the
(29:18):
case even with advanced players. And there are some particular
things about my stuff in particular that are often even
befuddling to the very best you know, improvisers in this
general community, and that there's times when it's like, you know,
very simple, and it's not hard at all for me
(29:40):
to find people who can play really complicated. It's very
difficult for me even now to find people who can
play very complicated but can also play very simple. And
in fact, I would say it's much harder to play
something that's effective at a very simple level of harmony
or Melow and have it do what it needs to
(30:02):
do than the guys who I can find all over
the place who can play their cool little arrangement of
I hear Rhapsody in fifteen eight backwards with every substitute question.
I mean, there's lots of that, but there's you know,
it's hard for me to find somebody who can play
the melody of Farmers trust you know, it's a ballad
of mine, you know, and make it do what it's
(30:23):
supposed to do. So yeah, it's kind of like that.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
How did the David Bowie collaboration come about? And what
was that experience like?
Speaker 2 (30:32):
In the midst of all this, somewhere in my mind
I had always thought, well, you know, I love films,
I love film music. I wonder if I could do that,
And over the years I did, I don't know, ten
or twelve films, different levels, different budgets, different you know,
kinds of things. And one of them in there was
(30:54):
a movie called The Falcon and the Snowman with one
of my favorite directors, John Slessinger, the guy who done
The Midnight Cowboy, who was a very musical person too.
He also conducted or was the director of operas and
just really had had a very evolved sense of music.
And it was very a great film, true story that
(31:21):
starred Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton. And I went down
to Mexico where they were filming, and watched a day
or so of filming and went back to the hotel
room and wrote that the tune that is the basically
the theme of the movie, which is the song this
(31:42):
is Not America. And as we were working on you know,
the score and everything about it, John Slessenger said we
should get somebody to sing this song for the end credits.
And I was like, okay, you know, sure, and he
mentioned David Bowie, who I was not that familiar with.
That's not a statement of anything that me.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
But I got to go to the store and got
a couple of records and I was like, oh, this
guy's the perfect I mean, this is the perfect kind
of voice to sing this song, for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
And so he was invited to a screening David Bowie
whiz and I sat next to him and hung out
with him and was kind of extremely aware of being
in the presence of a super evolved human being. I mean,
I have to say he's one of the most intelligent,
just bright people I think I have ever had the
(32:37):
good fortune to be around. And so he liked the
whole idea. I send him, you know, four or five
versions of my tune. He was living in Switzerland at
that time and did some stuff with my versions. He
added kind of a bass drum part, and then he
(33:00):
sang kind of a demo oh for the tune that
was kind of not exactly what I had written. It
was sort of almost like a counterline that was really cool.
But the main thing was the words were amazing, incredible words.
So my band at the time that was working on
this score with me, we all flew to Switzerland jet
(33:22):
lagged out of our minds because of the way the
scoring had gone. Had to do like the last seventy
two hours of the scoring sessions, we were awake the
entire time. Everything had run late. So then flew to
this studio in Montro, the famous it was owned i
think by Queen, the band Queen in Montro And you know,
(33:45):
we spent two days in the studio with him and
did that track, which was very interesting, and you know,
it was sort of like being around you know, Sonny
Rollins there somethime. It was like this guy is a
master and it was a incredible experience.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Tell us about the creative process behind your newest album,
Moon Dial.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
The latest record I have out is called moon Dial,
which is kind of the third in a series of
really purely solo guitar records that I've done on baritone guitar,
and most people don't know what a baritone guitar is.
It's just what you would think halfway between a regular
guitar and a bass guitar. And a gentleman in Missouri
(34:31):
when I was growing up showed me a cool way
of using a baritone guitar was to tune the middle
two strings up in octave, so you get this sort
of bass realm, but you also get this sort of
middle zone that's almost like a violin, and then the
lead sound on top is like a viola, and it's
a really cool thing. And the first time I addressed
(34:53):
that was a record called One Quiet Night. Then I
kind of learned it, like in detail from playing it
night after night, and I don't know, a number of
years later did a record What's It All About, which
was the first time I'd ever done a record where
I play only other people's music, including you know, a
lot of pop tunes that I used to like drive
(35:17):
into gigs in high school and stuff, some seventies kind
of tunes. And then this one is different in the
sense that both those records were done on steel string
baritone guitars. I had always wanted to get a nylon
string baritone guitar going, but could never find the strings.
I put out another a different kind of solo record
(35:38):
last year called dream Box that's all on electric guitar,
overdubbed like two electric guitars, but still just me, and
it went off on a long tour for in support
of that record, where just as that tour is beginning,
I found a way of stringing up a nylon string
baritone guitar for the first time that was effective, started
(36:02):
playing it on the first night of that tour and
kind of fell in love with it and found a
whole new world in there. On the first break of
the tour, after about fifty five sixty gigs, while it
was still fresh for me, I took that baritone nolin
string guitar off into a little room with a good
mic and recorded that whole record across a week or so.
(36:25):
And it's a really special record. It's got a very
different sound than the other two. But I think the
fact that it was new to me and a new
sound brings something novel to it all too. And it's
off to a great start at this point. You know,
people seem to really like it's a record that has
(36:45):
that quality that I always hope for where you can
just kind of have it on and it's fine, or
you can turn it up as loud as you can
turn it up and really listen to the details. And
there's other stuff in there too that I think will
reveal itself to people over the time they spend with it.
So I'm pretty happy with that one, and I'm you know,
(37:08):
continuing on a tour that's including it and many other
things about what I have done over the years as
a solo guy making records. So there's quite a variety
in the evening of things that happen, you know. I
did a record some years back called Zero Tolerance for
(37:29):
Silence that it was a very different approach to playing solo.
There was a record New Chautauqua early on that had
strumming and almost like a kind of country feeling and
other things along the way too. So I've been kind
of looking at all those in this tour and it's
really been fun for me.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Can you talk about the work that the Metheni Music
Foundation does.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
This was a project that was started by my older
brother Mike in Missouri to you know, help young musicians
in our hometown of Lease. Summit, go to study at
summer camps, and each year there's kind of a I
don't want to say a competition, but people send in
tapes of their playing, and you know, we were a
(38:16):
committee of people pick the person who seems to deserve,
you know, a little support. And it's been going on
now for a while and it's a not for profit
thing out in the state of Missouri, so it's cool
to be a part of that. Well.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Patent closing anybody on your dream list that you'd like
to work with in the future, you.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Know, that's an interesting one. There are many people I've
already worked with that I look forward to working with again.
I mean, you know, Brad Meldow and I did a
set of recordings that were kind of okay. I mean,
you know, they were kind of documentations of our very
first meeting, which happened in a studio. Then we went
(39:05):
out and toured a lot across a number of months
and that's where it really got good. And you know,
at some point we do have a lot of recordings
of live gigs. It'd be great to put those out
and then maybe do some more playing together. Kenny Garrett
is one of my favorite musicians of all time. And
(39:26):
I would love to play with Kenny Moore, but I
mean pretty much everybody I've ever played with, I would
love to play with all of them more, you know.
I mean, right now, my focus has been playing with
younger musicians that are just starting out, because I had
that opportunity myself, and I feel like that's a great
thing to be able to share with people. Is this
(39:47):
ongoing thing. So I do hire a lot of you know,
twenty something guys now. And Joe Dyson is a drummer
that's been kind of in my various things these last
couple of years, who is one of the greatest dru
I've ever been around, and I just love him. Chris
Fishman has been playing with me in the side I
thing also just an amazing musician and the perfect fit
(40:11):
for what I'm up to in that realm. And we
have a new record, the three of us, with a
bunch of other musicians joining us that's going to come
out that I'm unbelievably excited about. And then Joe Dyson
and I just were in Japan for a week playing
trio with one of our main heroes, the Great Ron Carter,
(40:32):
And you know, I'm hoping that maybe some of that
will come out at some point, and you know, who
knows what else is going to happen. I've always got
lots of ideas of things, and.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
So yeah, thanks so much to Pat Metheny for being
on the Taking a Walk podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a
Walk Podcast. Share this and other episode It's with your friends,
and follow us so you never miss an episode. Taking
a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
and wherever you get your podcasts
Taking a Walk.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
If you can speak two or three different languages and
you're thirsty, you're thirsty before you realize, Okay, I'm gonna
have to say this in Fringe because I'm in France,
or I'm gonna have to say this in Spanish because
I'm in Puerto Rico, or I'm gonna say this in
English because I'm in New York. Your thing is you're thirsty.
So to me, ideas and music are like that, there
(00:22):
before any instrument.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to the Taking a Walk Podcast, the show where
Buzz Knight speaks with musicians of all type about their music,
their influences, and their aspirations. Today, Buzz speaks with jazz
guitarist Pat Metheni. Pat is a twenty time Grammy winner
who literally reinvented the traditional jazz guitar for a new
(00:45):
generation of players. He released his first album, Bright Size
Life in nineteen seventy five, which is considered one of
the most quintessential jazz albums in history. Buzz Night is
joined by Pat Metheni now on Taking a Walk.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Well, thanks Pat for being on Taking a Walk. First
of all, what is a typical day for a lifelong
creator such as yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
In a lot of ways, my life is the same
as it's always been in that I have a real
deep interest in trying to understand music. And it's been
that way for me since I was I don't know,
eleven or twelve years old. And you know, to be
a good musician it sort of goes a little bit underreported.
It's hard. It's hard to be a good musician, and
(01:34):
it really does require a kind of intense dedication that
is kind of unlike anything else, and it kind of
never stops in a way. It's not like you wake
up one day and you go, Okay, I got it,
you know. In fact, it's the opposite. It's sort of
the better you get and the more you know and
(01:55):
the deeper you're understanding is the more you realize you
don't know anything and you're just beginning. And I still
feel like that. I feel like I'm just now starting
to get a sense of it all. And for that reason,
I tend to, you know, spend a lot of time
at it. If I'm not on the road, I often
(02:20):
get up very early, four or five in the morning
because I get three or four hours at that point
where nobody else is up and I can really focus
on whatever it is that I'm doing, and when I'm
on the road, I mean it's you know, the concerts
that I present are often two and a half three
hours long, and I have to prepare for two hours
(02:43):
or so before that, so that's you know, five or
six hours a day right there of working on music.
You know, people often ask about the physical thing of
playing an instrument. Honestly, that's not a huge part of
it for me. It's more about developing ideas and sort
of being able to execute those ideas, whether it's in
(03:05):
the form of writing or you know, you know, figuring
out how to how to get that sound whatever that
idea represents out into the world. And that could be
in many different ways, including you know, the whole thing
of composition, which for me is you know, not something
(03:25):
that initially I would have thought might have been the
main thing for me because I was so interested in
improvising and that tradition. But as it turned out, there
was a way I wanted to improvise that I was
having a hard time finding a way into. And I
realized at a certain point, if I wrote the music
(03:47):
and handed it to a bunch of other people, that
could set up an environment where I could get to
what I wanted to get to as an improviser. So
you know, the basic thing for me is when I
can be working on music, I am working on music,
and it could be anytime day or night. So there's
no one typical day for me. It's it's just kind
(04:12):
of constant. But I went also put an asterisk at
the end of that. I have three wonderful kids, a
great wife, really great family, two dogs, and all that
comes with that. And balance is the key thing for me,
not just in music but in everything else. So it's
not like I neglect the rest of my being to
(04:34):
be that kind of a musician. It you know, it's
it's all equal for me, and in fact, more and more,
it's sort of like the line between what it takes
to be a good musician and just to kind of
be in the world in a way that I think
represents what the best music represents to me. They kind
of blur together after a while. So, you know, I'm
(04:57):
always looking for balance in every way, and you know,
probably more balanced some periods than others, depending upon what's
going on. If I have a deadline or something, I
certainly you know, lean a little bit more to this
direction than I do in another direction. But you know,
(05:18):
if it's time for parent teacher conferences and all else
like that, I lean that way. So I think there's
a way to get everything in and you know, I
try to enjoy every bit of all of it.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
So, Pat, who were the players as a fifteen year
old wizard that impacted you to this very.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Day, Well, like everybody, I had my heroes. I mean,
my main hero probably wouldn't be a musician if it
wasn't for my older brother bringing home a Miles Davis
record when I was eleven or twelve. The record was
four and more And you know, that was just one
of those like life changing, you know, light bulb moments
(06:02):
for me, and that would be probably the most significant
thing I could say. The Miles Quintet of the sixties
was just the model of everything for me. And to
this day it's like that may be, you know, one
of the highest levels of human achievement that has occurred
(06:22):
so far in our species. You know, that band really
on all five fronts just got to it. But in
particular on my instrument was Wes Montgomery. It still is
Wes Montgomery. I mean there's other players I loved. Kinney
Burrell especially and Jim Hall were the other two big
ones for me, But it was mostly about Wes. And
(06:45):
there are many things about Wes as an improvisor that
I actually still feel are kind of under reported on
and underrecognized, particularly the melodic development aspect of it. And
you know, saxophone players Sonny Rollins of course, Charlie Parker,
John Coltrane, and trumpet players like Clifford Brown and Freddie
(07:06):
Ubbard in particular were also huge from me in very particular.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Kinds of ways.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
But my favorite band of that era was the Gary
Burton Quartet of the late sixties. I mean, that was
a band that from me just kind of represented a
major change in the culture in a lot of ways,
and the fact that I wound up joining that band
really just a couple of years later is something that
I still kind of have to pinch myself for. But
(07:34):
kind of having said all those famous dudes, the main
thing for me were the musicians in Kansas City that
started hiring me when I was fourteen fifteen, sixteen years old,
that I was able to play with for several years
before I even got out of high school, and I
really learned to play from being on the bandstand with
(07:56):
those musicians. There was a drummer in particular named Tommy Ruskin,
who to this day would be in the top five
drummers I've ever played with. And the fact that I
got to sit next to that guy for several years,
I mean I can trace almost everything about the way
that I think about time and groove and rhythm to
those moments being by his side. Often in his living room.
(08:18):
He would just invite me and Kevin, my good friend
who was a bass player, and we would just play
get the chance to play with him. But also two
other musicians, Gary Sibbles and Paul Smith, were great musicians
around Kansas City that gave me lots of chances to play.
And one of the greatest musicians I've ever been around
was an organ player named Russ Long, who was I
(08:41):
think the best organ player I've ever heard in terms
of just making stuff up. I mean, he was a
true improviser. And you know, I got to play with
all those guys you know, at you know, such a
formative stage, and that was huge for me.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
How did the skill set of you being a trumpet
player ultimately shape your style of guitar playing.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
It's interesting for me because I don't think about an
instrument too much. I think about music. And you know,
some people are often surprised to hear me say I
write almost everything on piano, and the reason for that
is because it's like fifty times easier than the guitar.
I mean, if you have a piano that's in tune,
(09:30):
it's just been tuned, and it's a really good piano
and you play a reasonably good voicing, people go, wow,
you're a genius, you know. I mean, it's not the thing.
It's that the piano itself is an amazing instrument, and
you know, it might take ten years to learn how
to play that same chord on a guitar and make
(09:52):
it have that same kind of an effect. And then also,
you know, the trump good thing for me was huge.
My older brother Mike great trumpet player. My dad was
an excellent trumpet player. My mom's dad was a professional
trumpet player. I started on trumpet, you know, very young.
(10:15):
By all accounts, I was terrible. I don't doubt that.
But one thing that is true is that even you know,
as I got into playing the guitar, for some reason,
I breathe as if I'm playing the trumpet, and I
think that helps, meaning like if I'm going to play
a phrase, I go and then I play what I'm
(10:35):
going to play, and then when I'm out of breath,
I take another little pause, take a breath, and then
play some more. And one thing I do notice about
guitar players, piano players, vibes players, bass players, drummers, if
they don't have that sense of breath somehow, I think
just our human reaction to that is that we need
(10:56):
those pauses, We need those breaths because it's it's like
in conversation if somebody just talks all the time into
one and then to ever take a you know, you
kind of tune out after a minute. And music is
a representation of the way we talk and the way
we communicate. So I would say the breath aspect of
being an early trumpet player really did affect me. And
(11:17):
it's interesting how many of my favorite musicians that are,
you know, non wind instrument musicians. I'm thinking of, like
Steve Swallow, the great bass player. I think even Gary
Burton started on trumpet or a wind instrument. So I
think that does inform the way you become a musician.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Later, Pat, when did you realize that you had this
other skill set, that of a teacher.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's kind of funny that you mentioned that, because I
did just make a visit out to my hometown out
in Missouri, and I was reminded of something that I
hadn't thought about too much, which is I actually started
teaching other kids about two months after I started playing,
because one of my mom's friends asked if I could teach,
(12:12):
you know, their six year old some guitar, and I
was like, yeah, I can teach them, you know, whatever
it is I know, And then that mom told another mom,
and the next thing I knew, you know, probably would
have been twelve or thirteen, you know, a couple of
days a week, I had four or five little kids
come over and I was teaching them E and a
minor and stuff, and so I guess from then. But
(12:37):
you know, for me, I'm not sure if I am
a good teacher or I was a good teacher, because
I do think that my teaching thing often was related
to whatever I was thinking about, or what I was
working on, or what I felt like I needed to
communicate to get a gig myself or something would be
(13:00):
kind of what I would emphasize to whoever happened to
be my students at the time. You know, maybe that's
not terrible because I was like then, like now, I
never was thinking about, oh, well, you want to be
better than the kid that's sitting next to you. My
sense always was like, well, you know, there was there
was Bach, and we all kind of are nowhere near that,
(13:25):
and there was Wes Montgomery, and there was even you know,
Jimmy Hendrix. I mean, it's sort of like I never
thought about it in terms of comparing anything to probably
an age appropriate connection to what a kid might be.
It would be like more, you know, have you listened
to Joe Henderson or you know whatever, because you know,
(13:47):
to me, that is kind of the standard. So I
always kind of maintained that standard.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
And what teachers in your life inspired the teaching bug.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Well, all of us and lisum at Missouri were very,
very lucky to have as the head of the band
music program in our little town a guy named Keith House,
who is a legendary educator in the state of Missouri
for thousands of people. How he happened to pick Lee
(14:19):
Summit and wind up in lie Summit. I don't know,
but men, all of us are really lucky. He was
not a jazz guy at all, but he was an
incredible musician who was one of those kind of tough
love kind of teachers who somehow would get you know,
a bunch of you know, a lot of farm kids
(14:39):
and rural kids playing you know, Wagner and you know,
like really hit music Mozart and you know, and that
we didn't even have an orchestra. This was all concert
band stuff, you know. They it was just you know,
wind instruments basically, and he was incredible, and you know,
(15:03):
in my case, he realized pretty early because I was
already into stuff that was not kind of in line
with Lisa of Missouri by being interested in the music
I was interested in and also, as noted, probably not
a very good trumpet player. So I switched to French hoorn,
where I was even worse. But still I was in
(15:25):
his bands. And he finally said to me, he said, okay,
you're going to write something for the band. And I
was probably fourteen, and I was like, oh, okay, you know,
and you know, he kind of, you know, almost insisted
that I developed that skill because I think he saw
in me that that was something that could happen, and
(15:46):
it was a great opportunity for me. There was no
jazz program at the school at that time because we
had no saxophone players. I don't know why, but that
wasn't an instrument that was in our realm. So I
had to write music for four frenchhorn, three trombones and
five trumpets and a rhythm of section and we would
play at the basketball games for the cheerleaders and stuff
(16:08):
like that. And then I eventually ended up writing a
pretty significant piece for trumpet and concert band, you know,
by the time I was a junior in high school,
you know, stuff that I would definitely not have done
had there not been a mister House there. So he
was a big one for me. And then I have
to then add, even though I was in his band
(16:29):
as a you know, side man and playing you know,
all over the world, just standing next to Gary Burton
night after night after night was probably the best possible
education I could ever have gotten, because in addition to
just being able to describe in detail music the way
he has, he has an incredibly thorough eloquent way of
(16:51):
you know, basically breaking down harmony for improvisers that is
just unbelievably efficient. He was also another kind of tough
band leader type person who because I was really young.
I mean when I started playing with Gary, I was
eighteen and you know, had only been playing for a
few years. Even though I had been playing a lot
(17:13):
in Kansas City, it wasn't the same kind of thing.
I mean, you know, Gary's thing was definitely at the
highest international level, and pretty much after every concert I
would get an hour or two talk about, you know,
on the D minor seven flat five going into the
third chorus, you played an a natural you know, that
(17:37):
didn't really fit, you know, I mean stuff like that,
And you know, maybe three years or so into the gig,
I was like, okay, I got it, you know. But man,
the first couple of years it was it was really
valuable for me. And you know, so I have to
always put Gary high up in there, and I have
(17:57):
to put Steve Swallow in there too, who is the
big player who in Gary's band, who was always very
giving in terms of advice and particularly in the in
the area of writing tunes. He had written the tune
Falling Grace, which for me defined a generation of harmony.
(18:18):
It just changed everything, and to that to this day,
I feel that tune sort of set the stage for
a whole new way of thinking about harmony. And to
be around Steve for a few years was incredible for me.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
We'll be right back with more of the Taking a
Walk Podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Pat, could you have imagined years later the respect that
people have for the album Bright Size Life. You're playing, certainly,
and your introduction in the world of Jaco Pastorius the
great bass player?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Honestly, not in a million years, because my sense of
that record for the first ten or twelve years after
it came out was that I had completely blown it.
That that band was so much better than what that
record seemed to represent. I could barely even listen to it,
because you know, it was a six hour session. We
(19:22):
came back the next day and I think did one
more little thing and then mixed it and that was that.
And Jocko had never been to Europe. He was jet
lagged out of his mind and kind of nuts at
that stage. Not the same version of nuts that he
became later, but the organic Jocko of that era was
a pretty intense person already. And you know, it was
(19:49):
quite a thing, I have to say. And then probably
fifteen years after it came out, I had an experience where,
and this happens every and then, where I hear something
from a distance, like in somebody's you know, car or
something like that, And I remember hearing that and thinking, Wow,
(20:11):
what's that? That sounds really good?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
What is that?
Speaker 2 (20:14):
And then I realized it was that record, So it
was kind of like the first time I'd ever really
heard it. But still it didn't really get to the
thing that it seems to have now until maybe twenty
twenty five years after it came out. Certainly within the
culture within even within the community of our thing, it
(20:35):
didn't really get much attention at the time, you know,
the Jocko's sort of emergence onto the scene on that
record than his debut record, the Joni Mitchell record, Juzira
and a couple tracks on an early Weather Report record.
That was the guy that I knew, you know, because
(20:58):
he and I already had been playing together for a
few years by that time down in Florida, both of
us completely unknown. And then I got the gig with
Gary a couple of years before he joined Weather Report,
and he started coming up to Boston and we would
do gigs, and of course everywhere he went around that time,
including when he was playing with Wayne Cochran, nobody had
(21:19):
ever heard anything like that. And at the same time,
you know, maybe even more than those other situations playing
with me, I've always joked that I was probably the
only person that ever said, you're playing too many notes,
it's too loud. I mean, I didn't really have the
(21:39):
awestruck response to his thing that I think everybody else
had not for any reason other than I was probably
the first person or one of the fearst people he'd
run into that was just as stubborn and sort of
whatever as he was, and that made a really interesting
(22:00):
between the two of us that continued actually across the years,
even as we went in very very different lifestyle directions.
He was the only person I had ever met who
was as straight as me, and that I at that
point it never had a drink or any drugs or
anything at all, and that's still true to this day.
When he joined Weather Report, he became a completely different
(22:22):
person and almost an unrecognizable person to me in many ways.
Yet at moments along the way when he needed something,
he would always call me and we would have talks
because he knew that I knew him from before. And
also I was probably the person closest to the level
(22:44):
of sudden attention that he had been getting too. So
we had a real special thing. And I realize, of
course now that record captures many things about what our
relationship was like, and Moses too. I mean, that was
a real band. We did a lot of gigs together,
had a real band dynamic, and so I'm glad that
(23:08):
record does exist.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
When did you develop your innovation skills that led to
the invention of some really unique guitars And is there
anything new that you can share that you might be
dreaming up?
Speaker 2 (23:23):
In many ways, my early years were very conventional. You know.
It was a hollow body Gibson guitar and an amp
and that was it, because that was the realm of
that era. Somewhere in there I found a guitar that
was a nylon string guitar that had a pick up
on it that I brought to a Russ long organ
(23:46):
trio gig, and suddenly there was this other kind of
sense of orchestration in that band, and you know, I thought, oh, well,
guitar is interesting because it can be all these different things.
And I started to embrace that more and more, and
then I realized that, you know, it's an instrument that
is utterly undefined even at this point, and you can
(24:08):
really make it be anything. And that led to me
led me to first, you know, restringing instruments or getting
a twelve string and doing some wacky stuff to it.
You know, they weren't infinitely malleable because they would just
kind of do one thing. But I started to think
(24:30):
of the guitar as being just this paint box, and
that led me to then getting people to make special
instruments to be able to get to an idea that
I had. But it was always led by the idea that,
to me is something that I try to describe to
people too. That because I know I'm a guitar player,
people think of me as a guitar player and all that.
(24:52):
But if I have an idea of like if I
imagine in my brain, I'm going to improvise a chorus
on my funny Valentine right now, I'm doing that, and
I could pick up a trumpet and I would attempt
to play that idea that and it would sound terrible,
but that's what I would go for. Or I could
(25:14):
go over to the piano and I would play that
same idea, and then I would pick up the guitar
and I would also play that same idea much better
than in the other two cases. But it's the idea
that's before any of that stuff, and the way I
describe it to people, it's sort of like if you
can speak two or three different languages and you're thirsty,
You're thirsty before you realize, Okay, I'm going to have
(25:37):
to say this in French because I'm in France, or
I'm gonna have to say this in Spanish because I'm
in Puerto Rico, or I'm going to say this in
English because I'm in New York. You know, your thing
is you're thirsty. So to me, ideas and music are
like that, there before any instrument. But sometimes I need
to develop a language to express those ideas. And it's
(25:58):
pretty abstract in that analogy that I s gave breaks
down very quickly. But I have found that sometimes an
instrument can lead you to places you know based on
you know, something that is instigated by an idea that
you might have that finally, with an instrument in hand
takes you someplace that you might not have expected.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Well, what do you think your secret X factor is
behind your collaboration skills.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
It's funny because I know that I've done a lot
of things with a lot of people, but I'm also
really picky about what I do. And I mean by that,
I mean I have said no to way more things
than I've said yes to, including things that would shock
(26:50):
people along the way and even me when I think
back on it. I mean there was a period I
just said no to everything. When I started my band,
I decided I'm not going to do anything except my
own thing, and from the years between nineteen seventy seven
and nineteen eighty seven, which is when Mike Brecker asked
(27:10):
me to be on his first record, I literally did
not do anything. I think maybe there's one little thing
I did, but I only did my own thing, and
maybe there were some benefits to that. I think there
probably were, actually, but man, when I think it's some
of the stuff I could have done in there, it
kind of blows my mind. But basically, to me, there's
(27:33):
two things that happened. One is I'm going to either
have to go play in somebody else's yard, which is
mostly what it is, and I do enjoy that. I mean,
the period from nineteen eighty seven to maybe around the
year two thousand, I did a lot of stuff with
some great musicians like Kenny Garrett or Mike Brecker, who
(27:54):
I mentioned. You know, I had a great collaborative band
with Herbie Hancock and Acti Janet and Dave Holland, and
you know, lots of things. And you know, for me,
it's it's when I'm going to go play in somebody
else's yard, I want that yard to be like a
(28:15):
place where I'm going to come back from that with
a whole new perspective. And maybe the ultimate example of
that would have been the collaboration with Ornette Holman, who
had been a hero for me and became a very
good friend, and as much as I love his music
to this day, is one of the greatest human beings
(28:36):
I've ever had the opportunity to be around. But it's
always a thing where either I know right away, oh
that's a good idea, or I don't, and if I
have to think about it, I usually don't do it.
And it's kind of simple in that respect. But the
(28:57):
favorite thing for me is somebody who I don't necessarily
have to go play in their yard, and they are
capable of coming and playing in my yard, which does require,
you know, some skills that are unique in the sense
that you've got to be able to really hang with
harmony as an improviser, and that is not always the
(29:18):
case even with advanced players. And there are some particular
things about my stuff in particular that are often even
befuddling to the very best you know, improvisers in this
general community, and that there's times when it's like, you know,
very simple, and it's not hard at all for me
(29:40):
to find people who can play really complicated. It's very
difficult for me even now to find people who can
play very complicated but can also play very simple. And
in fact, I would say it's much harder to play
something that's effective at a very simple level of harmony
or Melow and have it do what it needs to
(30:02):
do than the guys who I can find all over
the place who can play their cool little arrangement of
I hear Rhapsody in fifteen eight backwards with every substitute question.
I mean, there's lots of that, but there's you know,
it's hard for me to find somebody who can play
the melody of Farmers trust you know, it's a ballad
of mine, you know, and make it do what it's
(30:23):
supposed to do. So yeah, it's kind of like that.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
How did the David Bowie collaboration come about? And what
was that experience like?
Speaker 2 (30:32):
In the midst of all this, somewhere in my mind
I had always thought, well, you know, I love films,
I love film music. I wonder if I could do that,
And over the years I did, I don't know, ten
or twelve films, different levels, different budgets, different you know,
kinds of things. And one of them in there was
(30:54):
a movie called The Falcon and the Snowman with one
of my favorite directors, John Slessinger, the guy who done
The Midnight Cowboy, who was a very musical person too.
He also conducted or was the director of operas and
just really had had a very evolved sense of music.
And it was very a great film, true story that
(31:21):
starred Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton. And I went down
to Mexico where they were filming, and watched a day
or so of filming and went back to the hotel
room and wrote that the tune that is the basically
the theme of the movie, which is the song this
(31:42):
is Not America. And as we were working on you know,
the score and everything about it, John Slessenger said we
should get somebody to sing this song for the end credits.
And I was like, okay, you know, sure, and he
mentioned David Bowie, who I was not that familiar with.
That's not a statement of anything that me.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
But I got to go to the store and got
a couple of records and I was like, oh, this
guy's the perfect I mean, this is the perfect kind
of voice to sing this song, for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
And so he was invited to a screening David Bowie
whiz and I sat next to him and hung out
with him and was kind of extremely aware of being
in the presence of a super evolved human being. I mean,
I have to say he's one of the most intelligent,
just bright people I think I have ever had the
(32:37):
good fortune to be around. And so he liked the
whole idea. I send him, you know, four or five
versions of my tune. He was living in Switzerland at
that time and did some stuff with my versions. He
added kind of a bass drum part, and then he
(33:00):
sang kind of a demo oh for the tune that
was kind of not exactly what I had written. It
was sort of almost like a counterline that was really cool.
But the main thing was the words were amazing, incredible words.
So my band at the time that was working on
this score with me, we all flew to Switzerland jet
(33:22):
lagged out of our minds because of the way the
scoring had gone. Had to do like the last seventy
two hours of the scoring sessions, we were awake the
entire time. Everything had run late. So then flew to
this studio in Montro, the famous it was owned i
think by Queen, the band Queen in Montro And you know,
(33:45):
we spent two days in the studio with him and
did that track, which was very interesting, and you know,
it was sort of like being around you know, Sonny
Rollins there somethime. It was like this guy is a
master and it was a incredible experience.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Tell us about the creative process behind your newest album,
Moon Dial.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
The latest record I have out is called moon Dial,
which is kind of the third in a series of
really purely solo guitar records that I've done on baritone guitar,
and most people don't know what a baritone guitar is.
It's just what you would think halfway between a regular
guitar and a bass guitar. And a gentleman in Missouri
(34:31):
when I was growing up showed me a cool way
of using a baritone guitar was to tune the middle
two strings up in octave, so you get this sort
of bass realm, but you also get this sort of
middle zone that's almost like a violin, and then the
lead sound on top is like a viola, and it's
a really cool thing. And the first time I addressed
(34:53):
that was a record called One Quiet Night. Then I
kind of learned it, like in detail from playing it
night after night, and I don't know, a number of
years later did a record What's It All About, which
was the first time I'd ever done a record where
I play only other people's music, including you know, a
lot of pop tunes that I used to like drive
(35:17):
into gigs in high school and stuff, some seventies kind
of tunes. And then this one is different in the
sense that both those records were done on steel string
baritone guitars. I had always wanted to get a nylon
string baritone guitar going, but could never find the strings.
I put out another a different kind of solo record
(35:38):
last year called dream Box that's all on electric guitar,
overdubbed like two electric guitars, but still just me, and
it went off on a long tour for in support
of that record, where just as that tour is beginning,
I found a way of stringing up a nylon string
baritone guitar for the first time that was effective, started
(36:02):
playing it on the first night of that tour and
kind of fell in love with it and found a
whole new world in there. On the first break of
the tour, after about fifty five sixty gigs, while it
was still fresh for me, I took that baritone nolin
string guitar off into a little room with a good
mic and recorded that whole record across a week or so.
(36:25):
And it's a really special record. It's got a very
different sound than the other two. But I think the
fact that it was new to me and a new
sound brings something novel to it all too. And it's
off to a great start at this point. You know,
people seem to really like it's a record that has
(36:45):
that quality that I always hope for where you can
just kind of have it on and it's fine, or
you can turn it up as loud as you can
turn it up and really listen to the details. And
there's other stuff in there too that I think will
reveal itself to people over the time they spend with it.
So I'm pretty happy with that one, and I'm you know,
(37:08):
continuing on a tour that's including it and many other
things about what I have done over the years as
a solo guy making records. So there's quite a variety
in the evening of things that happen, you know. I
did a record some years back called Zero Tolerance for
(37:29):
Silence that it was a very different approach to playing solo.
There was a record New Chautauqua early on that had
strumming and almost like a kind of country feeling and
other things along the way too. So I've been kind
of looking at all those in this tour and it's
really been fun for me.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Can you talk about the work that the Metheni Music
Foundation does.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
This was a project that was started by my older
brother Mike in Missouri to you know, help young musicians
in our hometown of Lease. Summit, go to study at
summer camps, and each year there's kind of a I
don't want to say a competition, but people send in
tapes of their playing, and you know, we were a
(38:16):
committee of people pick the person who seems to deserve,
you know, a little support. And it's been going on
now for a while and it's a not for profit
thing out in the state of Missouri, so it's cool
to be a part of that. Well.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Patent closing anybody on your dream list that you'd like
to work with in the future, you.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Know, that's an interesting one. There are many people I've
already worked with that I look forward to working with again.
I mean, you know, Brad Meldow and I did a
set of recordings that were kind of okay. I mean,
you know, they were kind of documentations of our very
first meeting, which happened in a studio. Then we went
(39:05):
out and toured a lot across a number of months
and that's where it really got good. And you know,
at some point we do have a lot of recordings
of live gigs. It'd be great to put those out
and then maybe do some more playing together. Kenny Garrett
is one of my favorite musicians of all time. And
(39:26):
I would love to play with Kenny Moore, but I
mean pretty much everybody I've ever played with, I would
love to play with all of them more, you know.
I mean, right now, my focus has been playing with
younger musicians that are just starting out, because I had
that opportunity myself, and I feel like that's a great
thing to be able to share with people. Is this
(39:47):
ongoing thing. So I do hire a lot of you know,
twenty something guys now. And Joe Dyson is a drummer
that's been kind of in my various things these last
couple of years, who is one of the greatest dru
I've ever been around, and I just love him. Chris
Fishman has been playing with me in the side I
thing also just an amazing musician and the perfect fit
(40:11):
for what I'm up to in that realm. And we
have a new record, the three of us, with a
bunch of other musicians joining us that's going to come
out that I'm unbelievably excited about. And then Joe Dyson
and I just were in Japan for a week playing
trio with one of our main heroes, the Great Ron Carter,
(40:32):
And you know, I'm hoping that maybe some of that
will come out at some point, and you know, who
knows what else is going to happen. I've always got
lots of ideas of things, and.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
So yeah, thanks so much to Pat Metheny for being
on the Taking a Walk podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a
Walk Podcast. Share this and other episode It's with your friends,
and follow us so you never miss an episode. Taking
a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
and wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Lynn Hoffman
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