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Pat Metheny Group: Travels
Pat Metheny GroupTravels
ECM Records
1983
There are some records that cannot help but become etched in the memory as a reminder of times past... a happy circumstance, perhaps, or (though hopefully not) something less positive in one's life. Today's Rediscovery is an album that, no matter the time of year, brings back memories of warm summer evenings beneath a star-lit country sky. When Pat Metheny Group—the guitarist's then-six year-old group that had, by that time, been on the road ten months/year every year crisscrossing North America and Europe—hit the road in 1982 to play a collection of music from its first three studio recordings for ECM (1978's massively acclaimed Pat Metheny Group, 1979's American Garage and 1982's Offramp), as well as material from Metheny's duo album with PMG keyboardist
Lyle Mays
keyboards1953 - 2020
Nana Vasconcelos
percussion1944 - 2016
It was a warm and friendly summer's night, the hill packed with people who'd brought coolers filled with food and drink. When Metheny, Mays, Vasconcelos, drummer
Danny Gottlieb
drumsb.1953
Steve Rodby
bass, acousticb.1954
For over two and a half hours the group not only covered a broad cross- section of material from those four albums, it introduced no fewer than seven new songs. When you're on the road ten months a year, new material is often introduced and rehearsed, out of necessity, during sound checks; but based on these performances you'd never know it. With Travels—the resulting double-LP live album (Metheny's first)—and today's Rediscovery limited by the length of vinyl (though two of its four sides pushed that limit, exceeding the 25-minute mark)—many of the more familiar songs were left off in favor of these eight new compositions, which collectively represented more than a full album's worth of new material.
Travels was, in some ways, a culmination of the Midwestern Americana that had so imbued PMG (along with a young person's healthy dose of electricity and rock energy) up to that time; it also represented, however, a signpost of things to come with its next studio record, 1984's First Circle (its last for the label), as the band moved towards the Latin and, specifically Brazilian-inflected music that would also occupy the group's attention for subsequent albums including 1987's Still Life (Talking) and 1989's Letter From Home (both on the group's new label, Geffen Records), specifically with "Straight On Red."
Of the new compositions—one, "Farmer's Trust," going on to become true jazz standard performed by everyone from previous employer and subsequent re- collaborator
Gary Burton
vibraphoneb.1943
Charlie Haden
bass, acoustic1937 - 2014
Mike Metheny
flugelhornb.1949
Jack DeJohnette
drumsb.1942
Dewey Redman
saxophone, tenorb.1931
Michael Brecker
saxophone, tenor1949 - 2007
The incendiary "Song for Bilbao" was another Metheny composition from Travels that would become well-covered, showing up on albums including Brecker's Tales From the Hudson (Impulse!, 1996) (on which Metheny guested) and pianist Chris Parker's Chris Parker Trio (Naxos, 2013). Both "Bilbao" and "Farmer's Trust" would also find their way back into live sets by both PMG and Metheny alone in subsequent years, and remain two of the most memorable of the new compositions debuted on Travels. But all the new material, including the lovely Metheny/Mays ballad "Travels" and Metheny's bossa-informed "Extradition," were strong contributors to making Travels an album often cited by the guitarist's fans as one of their favorites—if not their absolute favorite.
By this time, Metheny had begun experimenting with guitar synths on Offramp, in particular, the horn-like Roland GR-300 tone that would become a signature from this point forward, heard during the guitarist's first solo of this set—a gradually building look at Offramp's "Are You Going With Me?," another song so popular that Metheny has continued to perform it, albeit in sometimes much- altered form, right through to his 2014 Unity Group world tour. But it was with Travels that he began to explore even more technology in what would become a lifelong pursuit of taking the guitar to places no-one had previously gone before. It was early days for the technology, however, and one of the instruments he used at the time—a synth driven by a controller that looked like a guitar except that instead of strings there were simply wires embedded into the neck, with a set of six tines (thin metal bars, where the strings should be, that the guitarist would strike with his pick)—would prove to be too cumbersome and too unwieldy that it was quickly retired.
Still, it's important to note that this was, indeed, the time where Metheny began to significantly augment his previous mix of acoustic guitar and a hollow body electric that was fed through two digital delays to create another signature tone that most guitarists tried to emulate with an inexpensive chorus foot pedal, but which was ultimately ineffective as Metheny's sound was simply a far more complex concoction.
The guitarist's mastery of the guitar was also growing in leaps and bounds, as his harmonic conception remained instantly identifiable even as it became increasingly sophisticated and his chops far more impressive. But a defining characteristic of the guitarist's approach at the time—one missed, to no small extent, by many fans who finds the greater complexities of his current work to have lost some of what made him famous in the first place—was an unrelenting lyricism and devotion to melody. Nowhere can this be heard to greater effect than on "Travels" and the folkloric "The Fields, The Sky," a song driven as much by Vasconcelos' berimbau as it is Gottlieb's drum work.
Mays, too, was evolving rapidly as a player. He'd built his own signature tones—most notably the wind-inflected Prophet 5 synth tone that can be heard in his supporting work on "Are You Going With Me," as well as on a live version of As Falls Wichita's side-long title track that, a true studio creation if ever there was one, manages to be different but equally effective in Travels' slightly abbreviated live version, segueing after Metheny's a cappella guitar solo, "Goin' Ahead."
It was an absolutely perfect show for an idyllic summer's eve: clear and warm, and taking place in the country where so much of this music belongs. Travels may be nostalgic for some, but across a career that now spans forty years, it remains a particular milestone in a career filled with high points that have come to define both Metheny's career and that of his then-flagship PMG. With Unity Group now on hiatus as some of its members return to their own solo careers—especially reed and woodwind multi-instrumentalist
Chris Potter
saxophone, tenorb.1971
So, what are your thoughts? Do you know this record, and if so, how do you feel about it?
[Note: You can read the genesis of this Rediscovery column here .]
Tags
Pat Metheny Group
Rediscovery
pat metheny
John Kelman
ECM Records
United States
New York
New York City
Lyle Mays
Nana Vasconcelos
Dan Gottlieb
Steve Rodby
Gary Burton
Charlie Haden
Mike Metheny
Jack DeJohnette
Dewey Redman
Michael Brecker
Chris Potter
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