Review: PAT METHENY at Riffe Center

Had it not been for four Englishmen, Pat Metheny might have gone into the family business of playing the trumpet instead of winning 20 Grammys for his guitar playing. During his stop on the Dream Box Tour, Metheny displayed his prolific prowess to a crowd of 900 people March 9 at the Speaker Jo Ann Davidson Theatre in the Riffe Center (77 S. High Street in downtown Columbus).

“I’m one of the shrinking circle of people who watched the Beatles live on the Ed Sullivan Show,” Metheny said. “And that was it. My parents thought the guitar represented all that was evil during that time, and they were probably right.

“They didn’t give me a guitar for Christmas, but they gave me permission to buy a guitar … with my own money.”

Metheny’s older brother Michael, a jazz trumpeter and musical journalist, has no doubt his parents made the right call.
“He said when I played the trumpet, birds would fall from the sky,” Metheny said with a laugh.

“You say the word ‘guitar’ and it can mean many different things to many different people. Some think of Megadeath, others picture (Spanish guitarist Andres) Segovia, and to others it could be Chet Atkins. And all of them would be right.”

 And chances are Metheny, 69, could imitate all of them. In his two hour set, Metheny, the only artist to win Grammys in 10 different categories, was like a magician as he revealed the skills that garnered him gold records for Still Life (Talking), Letter from Home, and Secret Story.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening was that the normally reticent performer was quite the storyteller.

Metheny opened the evening with a cavalcade of different tunes from his solo works and the Pat Metheny Group including snippets from “This Is Not America” (a song he recorded with David Bowie for the 1985 movie “The Falcon And The Snowman”).

Metheny then asked the audience how many people had seen him before. “Okay, so you know that this is probably the most I have ever talked during a show,” he added with a laugh.

Most of the evening Metheny offered up smooth, soothing samplings from his vast, 53-album career, including a suite from the “Beyond The Missouri Sky” album he recorded with fellow Missourian Charlie Haden and “Song for the Boys.”

Mid-show, however, the guitarist offered up something from his experimental “Zero Tolerance for Silence” phase to test the pulse of the audience. The song, which sounded like the Battle of Britain as channeled through a baritone guitar, leaned more toward the Megadeath category than say the Atkins or Segovia genre.

Now imagine switching gears from that to a buffet of acoustical versions of Burt Bacharach’s “Alfie,” the Carpenters’ “Rainy Days and Mondays,” Carole King’s “That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be,” andAntonio Carlos Jobin’s “The Girl from Ipanema” before closing out the sampler with his own song, “Last Train Home.”

The variety of styles of music matched the variety of guitars Metheny cavorted with throughout the evening. Reviewer Niki Kaos said of an earlier Dream Box tour concert: “Metheny changes guitars like Beyonce changes outfits.” Metheny switched guitars at least eight times, focusing mostly on the Linda Manzer created baritone guitars because of their deep, lush sounds.

“Every time I go to Linda, I ask her ‘How hard would it be….’” Metheny said.

At one point, Metheny asked Manser to make him an instrument with as many strings as possible.  Months later, she presented him with a Pikasso, a 42-string guitar, essentially a portable harp. It is a ridiculous-looking, three-headed beast of an instrument, which Metheny tamed and used to create some unbelievably crisp sounds on his Imaginary Day CD.

That was one of two extraordinary devices the guitarist used in his concert. Although Metheny was alone on stage, it sounded like there was at least one bassist backing him. As he came on stage for his encore, the guitarist revealed to the audience the wizard behind the dark blue curtain: an Orchestrion, which can be programed to sound like a full band even when one is not on stage.

The Dream Box CD, from which the tour derives its name, came from a forgotten file Metheny had on his computer containing pieces of unfinished work. The nine songs that he chose to finish ended up being nominated for a Grammy.

It's amazing to think what other tricks Metheny might have up his sleeve.

Photo: Jimmy Katz

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