← Takin' A Walk - Music History with Buzz Knight
Takin' A Walk - Music History with Buzz Knight
Classic Replay with One of the Great Musicians of our Generation-Pat Metheny
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- [00:00]
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- [02:36]
Buzz Knight
Taking a walk?
- [02:37]
Pat Metheny
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 to say this in French because I'm in France, or I'm going to 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, you're, your, your thing is you're thirsty. So to me, ideas and music are like that. They're before any instrument.
- [03:00]
Buzz Knight
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 Matheny. Pat is a 20 time Grammy winner who literally reinvented the traditional jazz guitar for a new generation of players. He released his first album, Bright size life in 1975, which is considered one of the most quintessential jazz albums in history. Buzz Knight is joined by Pat Matheny now on Taking a Walk.
- [03:38]
Interviewer
Well, thanks, Pat, for being on Taking a Walk. First of all, what is a typical day for a lifelong creator such as yourself?
- [03:48]
Pat Metheny
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, 11 or 12 years old. And, you know, to be a good musician, it sort of goes a little bit under reported. It's hard. It's hard to be a good musician. And 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, it. In fact, it's the opposite. It's sort of the better you get and the more, you know and the deeper your 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, if I'm not on the road, I often 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, 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 or so before that. So that's, you know, five or six hours a day right there of. 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 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 be in many different ways, including, you know, the whole thing of. Of composition, which for me is, you know, not something that initially I would have thought might have been the main thing for me because I was so interested in improvising in 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 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 of constant. But I want to also put an asterisk at the end of that. I have three wonderful kids, a great wife, a 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 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 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 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, 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. To get everything in and. And, you know, I try to enjoy every bit of all of it.
- [08:08]
Interviewer
So Pat, who were the players as a 15 year old wizard that impacted you to this very day?
- [08:17]
Pat Metheny
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 11 or 12, the record was four and more and you know, that was just a, one of those, like life changing, you know, light bulb moments for me. And that, that would be probably the most significant thing I could say. The Miles quintet of the 60s 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 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 love, Kenny Burrell especially and Jim hall were the other two big ones for me, but it was mostly about Wes. And there are many things about Wes as an improviser that I actually still feel are kind of under reported on and under recognized, particularly the melodic development aspect of it. And you know, saxophone players like Sonny Rollins, of course, Charlie Parker, John Col, and trumpet players like Clifford Brown and Freddie Hubbard in particular were also huge for me in very particular kinds of ways. But my favorite band of that era was the Gary Burton Quartet of the late 60s. I mean, that was, that was a band that for me just kind of represented a major change in, in the culture in a lot of ways. And the fact that I wound up joining that band really just a couple years later is something that I still kind of have to pinch myself for. But 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 14, 15, 16 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 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, 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 Civils 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 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.
- [11:35]
Interviewer
Pat, how did the. The skill set of you being a trumpet player ultimately shape your style of guitar playing?
- [11:45]
Pat Metheny
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 50 times easier than the guitar. I mean, if you have a piano that's in tune, has 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. It's not. It's not the thing. It's that the piano itself is an amazing instrument. And, you know, it might take 10 years to learn how to play that same chord on a guitar and make it have that same kind of an effect. And then also, you know, the trumpet 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. 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 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 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 those pauses, we need those breaths, because it's just like in conversation, if somebody just talks all the time and they never take a break, 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 it's interesting how many of my favorite musicians that are, you know, non wind instrument musicians, I'm thinking 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 later.
- [14:16]
Interviewer
Pat, when did you realize that you had this other skill set, that of a teacher?
- [14:23]
Pat Metheny
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 some. One of my mom's friends asked if I could teach, you know, their six year old some guitar. And I was like, yeah, I can teach him, 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 12 or 13, you know, couple 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, you know, for me, I. 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 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 a. There was Bach and we all kind of are nowhere near that. And there was Wes Montgomery and there was even, you know, Jimi 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, what, whatever. Because, you know, to me that is kind of the, the standard. So I always kind of maintained that standard.
- [16:29]
Interviewer
And what teachers in your life inspired the teaching bug?
- [16:34]
Pat Metheny
Well, all of us in Lee's Summit, 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 Summit and wind up in Lee Summit, I don't know, but, man, 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 and rural kids playing, playing, you know, Wagner and, you know, like really hip 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, in my case, he realized pretty early, because I was already into stuff that that was not kind of in line with Lee Summit, 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 horn, where I was even worse, but still I was in his bands. And he finally said to me, he said, okay, you're going to write something for the band. And I was probably 14, and I was like, oh, okay. You know. And, you know, he kind of, you know, almost insisted that I develop that skill because I think he saw in me that that was something that could happen. And 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 French horns, three trombones and five trumpets and a rhythm section, and we would play at the basketball games for the cheerleaders and stuff like that. And then I eventually ended up writing a. 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 Mr. House there. So he was a big one for me. And then I have to then add, even though I was in his band 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 got, because in addition to just being able to describe in detail music the way he has, he has an incredibly thorough, eloquent way of, 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 18 and, you know, had only been playing for a few years, even though had been playing a lot 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 7 flat 5 going into the third chorus you played an A natural. You know, that 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 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 to put Steve Swallow in there too, who is the bass 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. It, 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.
- [21:09]
Buzz Knight
We'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk podcast.
- [21:14]
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- [22:02]
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- [23:05]
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- [24:00]
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- [25:33]
Buzz Knight
Welcome back to the Taking a Walk podcast, Pat.
- [25:36]
Interviewer
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 Jocko Pastorius, the great bass player?
- [25:51]
Pat Metheny
Honestly, not in a million years. Because my sense of that record for the first 10 or 12 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 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 quite a thing, I have to say. And then probably 15 years after it came out, I. I had an experience where, and this happens every now 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, what's that? That sounds really good. What is that? 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 20, 25 years after it came out. Certainly within the culture within, even within the community of our thing, it didn't really get much attention at the time, you know, the Jocko's sort of emergence onto the scene on that record. Then his debut record, the Joni Mitchell record, his Jira, and a couple tracks on an early Weather Report record. That was the guy that I knew, you know, because 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 years before he joined Weather Report and he started coming up to Boston. We would do gigs. And of course, everywhere he went around that time, including when he was playing with Wayne Cochran, nobody had 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 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 first people he'd run into that was just as stubborn and sort of whatever as he was. And that made a really interesting dynamic between the two of us that continued actually across the years, even as we went in very, very different lifestyle directions. He was. He was the only person I'd ever met who was as straight as me and that I, at that point, had 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 person and almost an unrecognizable person to me in many ways. Yet at moments along the way, when he needed something, he. 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 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, you know, Bob Moses, too. I mean, that was a real band. We did a lot of gigs together, had a real band dynamic. And so it's. I'm glad that record does exist.
- [30:02]
Interviewer
When did you develop your. 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?
- [30:15]
Pat Metheny
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. Of that era. Somewhere in there, I found a guitar that was a nylon string guitar that had a pickup on it that I brought to a Russ Long 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 really make it be anything. And that led to me, led Me to first, you know, restringing instruments or getting a 12 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 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 that, to me is something that. 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. 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. 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 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. 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 to say this in French because I'm in France, or I'm going to 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, you're. Your. Your thing is you're thirsty. So to me, ideas in music are like that. They're before any instrument. But sometimes I need to develop a language to express those ideas. And it's pretty abstract in music that. That analogy that I escape 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.
- [33:13]
Advertiser 2
Well, what.
- [33:14]
Interviewer
What do you think your secret X factor is behind your collaboration skills?
- [33:21]
Pat Metheny
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 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 1977 and 1987, which is when Mike Bracker asked 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 of some of the stuff I could have done in there, it kind of blows my mind. But. But basically, to me, there's two things that happen. 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, there. The period from 1987 to maybe around the year 2000, I did a lot of stuff with some great musicians like Kenny Garrett or Mike Brer, who I mentioned I had a great collaborative band with Herbie Hancock and Jack DeJeanette and Dave Holland and, you know, lots of things. And, you know, for me, it's. It's when I'm gonna go play in somebody else's yard, I want that yard to be like a place where I'm gonna come back from that with a whole new perspective. And maybe the ultimate example of that would been the collaboration with Ornette Coleman, 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 I've ever had the opportunity to be around. But it's always a. 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 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. Are unique in the sense that you got to be able to really hang with harmony as an improviser. And that is not always the 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 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 effectively at a very simple level of harmony or melody and have it do what it needs to do than the guys who I can find all over the place who can play their cool little arrangement of I Hear a Rhapsody in 15, eight backwards with every substitute chord. 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 Farmer's Trust, you know, it's a ballad of mine, you know, and make it do what it's supposed to do. So, yeah, it's kind of like that.
- [37:19]
Interviewer
How did the David Bowie collaboration come about and what was that experience like.
- [37:24]
Pat Metheny
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, 10 or 12 films, different levels, different budgets, different, you know, kinds of things. And one of them in there was a movie called the Falcon and the Snowman with a. One of my favorite directors, John Schlesinger, the guy who had done the Midnight Cowboy, who was a very musical person too. He. 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 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 Is Not America. And as we were working on, you know, the score and everything about John Schlesinger 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 except me. But I got it to the store and got a couple 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. And so he was invited to a screening, David Bowie was. 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 good fortune to be around. And so he liked the. The whole idea. I sent 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 sang kind of a demo over the tune. That was kind of not exactly what I had written. It was sort of almost like a counter line 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 the score with me, we all flew to Switzerland, jet lagged out of our minds because of the way the scoring had gone. Had to do like the last 72 hours of the scoring sessions. We were awake the entire time. Everything had run late. So then flew to this studio in Montreux, the famous. It was run. Owned, I think, by Queen, the band Queen in. In Montreux. And, you know, 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 or something. He was like, this guy is a master. And it was a incredible experience.
- [40:54]
Interviewer
Tell us about the creative process behind your newest album, Moondial.
- [41:00]
Pat Metheny
The latest record I have out is called Moondial, which is kind of the third in a series of really, like, 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, when I was growing up, showed me a cool way of using a baritone guitar was to tune the middle two strings up an 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 that was a record called One Quiet Night. Then I kind of learned it. 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 into gigs in high school and stuff. Some 70s 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 last year called Dream Box. That's all on electric guitar overdub, like two electric guitars, but still just me. And did 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 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 55, 60 gigs, while it was still fresh for me, I took that baritone nylon string guitar off into a little room with a good mic and recorded that whole record across a week or so. 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, 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. It's a. It's a record that has 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 det 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, 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. I did a record some years back called Zero Tolerance for 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.
- [44:41]
Interviewer
Can you talk about the work that the Matheny Music foundation does Does.
- [44:46]
Pat Metheny
This was a project that was started by my older brother Mike in Missouri to, you know, help young musicians in our hometown of Lee 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, with a committee of, of people pick the person who, who seems to, 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.
- [45:27]
Interviewer
Well, Pat, in closing, anybody on your dream list that you'd like to work with in the future?
- [45:34]
Pat Metheny
You 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, they're, you know, you know, they were kind of documentations of our very first meeting which happened in a studio. Then we went out and toured a lot across a number of months and that's where it really got good. And you know, at some point I, 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 I would love to play with Kenny more. 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, I feel like that's a great thing to be able to, to share with, with people is this ongoing thing. So I do hire a lot of you guys now and Joe Dyson is a drummer that's been kind of in my various things these last couple years who is one of the greatest drummers I've ever been around and I just love him. Chris Fishman has been playing with me in the side eye thing also. Just an amazing musician and the perfect fit for what I'm, 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 unbelievably excited about. And then Joe Dyson and, and I just were in Japan for a week playing trio with our, one of our main heroes, the great Ron Carter. 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 um.
- [47:39]
Interviewer
So yeah, thanks so much to Pat Matheny for being on the Taking a Walk podcast.
- [47:46]
Buzz Knight
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a Walk podcast. Share this and other episodes 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.
- [48:50]
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