Jazz icon Pat Metheny goes full circle with his latest lineup, Side-Eye

Although guitarist-composer Pat Metheny has been recording and touring for a half-century, his current Side-Eye unit finds his music sounding fresh and renewed. It’s as if he has brought his career full circle, mentoring younger musicians, just as jazz veterans had mentored him when he was emerging as a prodigy. His exceptional talent was evident from his teens, when the Missouri native served as the youngest music teacher ever at the University of Miami and the prestigious Berklee College of Music.

After cutting his professional teeth with vibraphonist Gary Burton, he embarked on a recording career, leading his own bands and playing primarily his own music, refusing to be pigeonholed or to succumb to formula.  He has won 20 Grammy Awards in 12 different categories, attesting to the expansiveness of his artistic vision. He keeps things fresh for his audience by keeping things fresh for himself.

His current tour has the 71-year-old artist supporting "Side-Eye III+," his first major studio album since the COVID-19 shutdown, and one of the more ambitious of his career. Before his tour brings him to Chicago for an SCP Featured Concert on April 17, he responded to questions via email on where he has been and where he sees himself going.

You recently said, “In many ways, I feel like I am just beginning, and I expect the next period to represent the best of where music has led me so far.” Can you expand on that? You have covered so much musical ground in 50 years of your recording and performing career. What feels particularly fresh to you about your new album and the group of musicians making it?

Like all of us, my perspective on everything is very personal. For me, it has all been one long process unfolding over many years. What I’m always hoping to do is to get closer to a certain kind of understanding — something that I don’t think there is any shortcut to.

I do feel that I’ve made progress, but there’s also the eternal paradox that the further along you get on whatever your path is, the distance between where you are and where you hope to go seems to move farther away — sometimes even faster than the speed you’re traveling on that path. That has definitely been true for me.

Being in different situations throughout my life as a musician has always presented opportunities to pursue a certain kind of research or development of ideas — ways of approaching music that might help me evolve toward that understanding. Sometimes that has meant working with people much older than me, sometimes people my age, and sometimes people much younger.

What I look for are people who are curious and interested in understanding music in a way that’s similar to how I’m always searching. These guys definitely have that quality. Joe and Chris [drummer Dyson and keyboardist Fishman] in particular — I feel a real closeness with them. We’ve become such a unit from all the concerts we’ve played together, and I also just really think the world of both of them as people.

That has become more and more central for me. At this stage of life, I really want to be around people who are good people — nice, considerate, thoughtful — along with being excellent musicians.

Since you have done so much so well musically from such a young age, have you ever felt pressured to move in directions you didn’t want to go? Ever felt that your music has been mischaracterized?

I’ve never really worried too much about anything other than whatever my immediate sense of direction was, and the specifics of how to get to that next thing based strictly on musical requirements and impulses.

For better or worse — and I think most people who know me would say this — I don’t really care that much about what anybody else thinks about what I’m doing. I just kind of do my own thing. That’s what I’ve always done.

I presume largely because of COVID-19, it has been six years since the release of your last major studio album. You’re also launching your own recording imprint with this release and a new label partnership for both reissues and forthcoming releases. What does all this development signify for you?

It has been a strange time for all of us, that’s for sure. The last large-scale record I made unfortunately came out literally the day COVID was hitting. “From This Place” probably didn’t get the platform it might have had if that hadn’t happened.

I was overseas with that group when it happened, with a whole series of concerts canceled or postponed. That had a big impact. And then, maybe even more importantly, I was living with my family in New York City as the worst of it was happening. We had three school-age kids at home doing school on iPads and all of that. It was a strange time, no question.

The way it affected my life as a recording and touring musician was basically the same as it was for everyone else. For a while, it really felt like maybe concerts were never going to happen again.

During that period, I also realized it was time to move in some different directions regarding the recording world, which had changed a lot. I’ve been very fortunate to have great people around me. When I left ECM in 1984, that’s when I started my own company and began owning my recordings. Since then I’ve simply licensed them to various record companies — Warner Brothers, Nonesuch and others — with the agreement that I would eventually get them back.

That’s what has just happened. Now I have my own official place for all the previous recordings, along with everything I’ll do going forward, all under one umbrella, which is the Uniquity Music thing.

How does the live performance of this album’s music differ from the recording?

I’ve often joked that I make two kinds of records. One kind is what I call documentary records — where you go into the studio, play each tune a couple of times, pick the best take, move on to the next one, and the whole thing might be finished in a day or two.

Then there are what I jokingly call my “Steven Spielberg IMAX” records — records where the studio itself is like an instrument with lots of elements involved. And there are some records that fall somewhere in between those two approaches.

This record is somewhere in the middle. I had this fantastic band with Chris and Joe that I wrote the music for, but as I worked on it, I realized there were other possibilities in the material.

Now I think about recordings as something that stands apart from everything else. They’re going to stick around in a way that’s unique. In the early going and for many years, I kind of thought of records almost like as an advertisement for the live performance — something to get people to come to the gig. I guess they really are both.

So, live, it will be something related to the new record, but also something different. Usually the live thing is better.

What inspired you to bring a vocal chorus into the dynamic?

I originally conceived the music as a trio record. But as I worked on it, it became impossible to deny that some of the pieces seemed to want something more.

No one was more surprised than me when I kept waking up in the middle of the night, hearing a vocal sound in a couple of the pieces. It was a kind of vocal sound I hadn’t really explored before.

I’ve known the Take 6 guys for a long time, and Mark Kibble, in particular. I wrote to Mark and asked him to listen to a demo I had made and tell me if what I was hearing made sense. He immediately said it did and offered to help. [Kibble leads the vocal ensemble assembled for the album.]

That started the whole process, and it unfolded very naturally. Now it’s hard for me to imagine the record without those voices.

Was all of this album’s material composed with this project and these musicians in mind? Is there any unifying theme or spirit that pervades the album?

Yes, the music was designed around the Side-Eye trio concept with Chris and Joe. But I’ve learned to trust my instincts even when I don’t fully understand them at first, and that led me to revise the material several times.

One of the biggest changes involved adding a dedicated bass player. Chris has an incredible left hand and a deep understanding of bass playing via keyboard bass, but when I made the call to bring in a bassist, it opened the music up in new ways and changed the direction of the sessions. [For the tour, the Side-Eye trio is augmented with Jermaine Paul on bass and Leonard Patton on percussion and vocals.]

What other guitarists have inspired and influenced you most? How about other musicians, composers and creative artists?

Wes Montgomery is it for me. Kenny Burrell also is huge, and later Jim Hall and Joe Pass.

Outside of guitar, the visual artist Paul Klee has been very important to me.  [Filmmaker] Alejandro González Iñárritu is a major hero for me these days. Musically, Bach stands as an incredible pillar. Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, and Clifford Brown are all major influences. And, of course, the Beatles.

It has now been a decade since you formed Side-Eye in 2016. How has this musical unit evolved?

The idea behind Side-Eye was to create opportunities to play with younger musicians I admire. At this point almost everyone is younger than me (laughs), but the principle is the same. I benefitted from older musicians hiring me when I was young, and I want to do the same to keep that thing going as best I can.

What can fans who have heard the album anticipate from the Chicago concert?

I never presume anything about an audience. I try to remember that everyone in the room has gone through a lot just to get there. My responsibility is to be ready for that unique moment that we will all share — to do my part to have the music together and the band in a good space so that we can really play.

Once the music starts, though, everything becomes about getting to the thing. The set might include music from the new record, along with pieces from across the repertoire, but ultimately it’s about creating a narrative over the course of the evening and continuing the collective search to understand the music better.