Pat Metheny, a 20-time Grammy-winner, talks music, film and snafus: ‘Everything that could ever go wrong has’

Its title to the contrary, the music on guitar great Pat Metheny’s new album, “Dream Box,” did not come to him in a dream. But they did come out of the blue — in a manner — much to the surprise and delight of this 20-time Grammy Award-winner, whose fall solo tour includes a band-free concert Saturday night at The Magnolia in El Cajon..

Or, as Metheny writes in the liner notes to the nine-song album: “These are really moments in time, and — in fact — I have almost no memory of having recorded most of them. They just kind of showed up.”

This being the digital age, they showed up in a nearly forgotten folder in the Missouri-born guitarist’s laptop. Specifically, a folder that contained odds and ends he had recorded over a period of years — some just as snippets and ideas, some more fully articulated — but had subsequently forgotten about.

That changed when Metheny stumbled upon the folder while embarked on a 160 concert post-COVID-19 pandemic shutdown tour with his Side-Eye band.

With down time in hotels and while traveling between shows, he discovered the musical ideas he had recorded and stored in his laptop had the makings of a solo guitar album.

The result, “Dream Box,” is a gently absorbing collection of what Metheny calls “quiet electric guitar pieces.” Seven of them were written by him. The other two are classics — Sammy Cahn and Jules Stynes’ “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” and Luis Bonfa and Antonio Maria’s “Morning of the Carnival.” On “Dream Box,” all of the music comes alive with enchanting results.

“Although this tour is under the auspices of that release, really what it is is a chance for me to visit all the different ways I have played ‘solo’ across the years,” Metheny, 69, told the San Diego Union-Tribune last week. “There is quite a range of things in that zone to investigate.”

Over the course of his multifarious career, Metheny has led numerous bands, more than a few of whose members later became band leaders in their own right. He has also collaborated with a dizzying array of fellow legends, including Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Herbie Hancock, Ornette Coleman and Steve Reich.

Metheny discussed his new album, his career and much more last week in an email interview with the Union-Tribune.

Pat Metheny at his Oct. 6 Kentucky concert in Louisville.

Q: Let’s start with a left field opening question: In a 2018 interview, your friend and fellow guitarist John Scofield told me: “Pat was already really great at 19! I have always thought of Pat, in a way, as the Steven Spielberg of jazz. Because — as well as being a great jazz guitarist — he has made these incredible, hugely popular albums.” There is certainly a visual and sometimes cinematic feel to much of your music; I might call it painting sonic pictures. Who are some of your favorite film directors? Is there one — legendary or lesser known — you feel a kinship with, and why?

A: That is such a cool thing for John to say. One of my major heroes in these past years is Alejandro González Iñárritu. Starting with “Amoros Perros,” he revolutionized the idea of linear time in a way that inspires me, as well as his particular narrative and sonic and visions of what a film might be. We became friends years ago. I recommended that he use (Metheny band drummer) Antonio for “Birdman (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” with a solo drum score — like I had done with (esteemed drummer) Jack DeJohnette years before on a little known film (directed by Jan Egleson) called “Lemon Sky.” It worked great for both of them!

And in fact, Spielberg himself is pretty huge for me. But also, Werner Herzog. And I have to always note Giuseppe Tornatore — “Cinema Paradiso” is my favorite film of all time. There are many, many others.

Q: When you have been playing an instrument and making music for 50-plus years, how easy or difficult is it to surprise yourself, creatively speaking, and how important is it to be able to do so?

A: The main thing for me is that I have become much more capable as a musician as the years have gone by. I would say that the last 10 years or so have allowed me to get to places regularly that are far beyond anything I might have hoped to get to earlier, although I always had aspirations to achieve something like that. I can count on getting to what I think you are talking about, basically, all the time now. That did not used to be the case.

Q: This ties in with the surprise element. In the liner notes to “Dream Box,” you write: “I have almost no memory of having recorded most of them They just kind of showed up.” That brings up two questions:

What did you name the folder in your laptop where you found the music that became “Dream Box?”

A: It was called “Stuff”….lol!

Q: When running for president in 2012, Mitt Romney declared in a debate that he had “binders full of women!” How many as yet untapped folders of music might you have and what are your plans for them?

A: There are tons of things. Actually, it is only recently that I started listening to myself (in these folders) and it has been interesting. This really all began with the hours and hours I have of various jam sessions up at my house with lots of different drummers — just me and the drums. It was really the first time I kind of understood what other people were talking about when they were talking about my (musical) thing … I don’t know if anyone would want to hear that stuff, but it is a kind of playing that I don’t think I have ever captured on an official release.

Q: How many guitars are you using on this tour, and how often are you switching instruments? That is, after every song, or less often?

A: There is a bunch of stuff that happens. I always think of all the instruments as one instrument and it is a question of orchestration.

Q: If you write a song on a specific guitar, do you feel bound to perform it live on that instrument? Why, or why not? And for this tour featuring music from an album where you play more than one guitar on some songs, how much are you looping?

A: I rarely write on the guitar. It is almost always on piano or just direct to paper. It is often a challenge for me to find a guitar part, but since I am supposed to be known as a guitar player I have to figure out something for me to play.

And yes, there are a bunch of techniques that have developed in these years to do lots of things in the tech department. I believe you know I am often on the bleeding edge of a lot of that stuff.

A: Has this ever happened, perhaps on your Orchestrion (multi-instrument solo) tour, if not more recently? One of your guitars malfunctions or somehow gets misplaced, so you have to perform the next piece at a concert on a different guitar than you planned? Is that frustrating? Or does it open up new real-time possibilities because you have to adapt in the moment on an instrument that may have a different tone, timbre or action?

A: Oh yeah. I mean, I have done thousands of gigs now and just about everything that could ever go wrong has gone wrong — lots and lots of times! I wouldn’t say it is something I look forward to as an opportunity. It is more like, how would I have to adjust to that moment to keep the story going? If I can at all.

Q: Our first interview was back in 1984, when we were both wide-eyed kids and you were on tour with your first Pat Metheny Group. You told me then: “Basically, home for us is the Holiday Inns of the world. The whole reason we go out on the road and drag all this equipment around with us, and set up and do sound-checks and everything, is to express ourselves as improvisers. I think improvising is what I’m good at.” Presumably you have graduated from Holiday Inns. Otherwise, how (if at all) has the impetus for touring changed?

A: Well, on the leg of the tour I am on now, at least half of the hotels have been Holiday Inns — so that part is the same. As long as there is a bed and a working shower, I’m good.

Q: And how, 39 years later, has your approach to improvising changed, given how much more you have played, learned and evolved?

A: That is such a hard question. When I made (my 1976 debut album) “Bright Size Life,” I had only been playing for a few years. Now it is more than 50. People still talk about “BSL” a lot now, way more than they did in the 25 years or so after it came out. So, I am the wrong person to have any objective sense of things. But music is now the same as it was for me then — really kind of just between me and “it.” And that “it” has almost infinitely more possible destinations for me now than it did back in the period you mentioned.

Pat Metheny (third from left) with San Diego guitarist Peter Sprague (fourth from left)

Q: In March, 2022, you did a gig at a private concert in Newport Beach with an all-star San Diego band that featured Peter Sprague and his band with Leonard Patton on vocals. How did that go, and how unusual is it for you to do a gig like that, anywhere in the world, playing your music with a band that is not your band that you have never played with before?

A: I love Peter. He is one of my favorite people and one of my favorite musicians. It is so gratifying to me that he and the guys know the tunes and can play them so well. That gig was a blast and I knew it would be. And that is the only time I have ever done anything like that — a real first for me.

Q: Might there be an encore gig for you with Peter and his band or any of his band members sometime down the road?

A: Anytime!