The Lobero Theatre is finally open again!
Even guitar icon Pat Metheny was celebrating returning to the famed venue, as he walked on stage and confessed “whenever I put together a new band or album, I ask myself how it will sound here!”
Well, the 2 hour gig sounded just fine, thank you.
In fact, if it’s true that Pat Metheny’s most inspiring guitar album is Wes Montgomery’s 1965 Smokin’ At The Half Note (which it is), I would venture to say that his most recent teaming with drummer Joe Dyson and pianist/keyboardist James Francies comes closest to capturing that freewheeling loose, spacious and swinging feel that first caught his ear.
The concert opened with a pair of duets, the first a deft and easy blues that had Metheny snapping his strings to Dyson’s deft support on “Turnaround”, followed by chirping guitar tones expressively improvised together by Francies’ intricate yet accessible piano work.
For the next part of the evening, Metheny kept to his Ibanez and glided along Dyson’s lithe cymbals work reminiscent of Jimmy Cobb, while the dual role of bass and piano was delivered by Francies. Francies had the bass work either stated on keyboards, programmed or implied on roller coaster rides of “Bright Size Life” and “Turnaround” while “Better Days Ahead” had a gentle and mystical feel, as Metheny’s chords hovered alongside Francies’ synthy and drapelike support. For “Timeline”, Francies tapped into his inner Jack McDuff, humming on the Hammond while Metheny and Dyson dug in deep like ditch diggers.
For the more acoustic pieces, Metheny did some gorgeous introductions to “Always and Forever” as Francies and Dyson created droplets of dew. His aria on his 42 string Manzer Picasso mixed sounds of the Midwest and the Orient, while a duet with Dyson with nylon strings was like a Jackson Pollock version of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. WHEW!
Closing out, Metheny unveiled his “Mini-Orchestron” to add extra textures of percussion. Armed with his Roland guitar synth, the human trio +1 closed out the evening with a rhapsodic “Zenith Blue” with Metheny long boarding over the tidal wave of rhythm and energy.
Throughout the evening, you can detect dashes of Metheny’s Wes Montgomery dna, with a chord here, riff there, but there is no doubt that the Midwestern guitarist is his own man, taking sounds that inspired him back in 1965 and still taking it into worlds unexplored.
Upcoming shows at The Lobero include Charles Lloyd 10/08, The Immediate Family 11/06, David Grisman 11/11 and Robert Cray 12/08