Pat Metheny at The Parker
By Ray Anton | Photos: Chris Schmitt
One of the most highly acclaimed and influential jazz guitarists, born in Missouri in 1954, Pat Metheny started playing guitar as a child and was such a prodigy he was performing with big names as a teenager. He received a scholarship to the University of Miami in 1972 where he wound up with a teaching role at the university, and at just 18 years old, became UM’s youngest faculty member ever. It was there in South Florida during the seventies that Metheny would meet and bond with legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius and keyboardist Lyle Mays. Together, they formed one of the greatest jazz movements of all time in the Pat Metheny Group.
Over the next several decades, Pat Metheny would be involved in over fifty albums, including forty studio albums of his own, that would see him win twenty Grammy awards across ten distinct categories, making him one of the most honored artists in Grammy history.
He has been working on his “Side-Eye” Project now for ten years. It is a concept of rotating musicians showcasing emerging talent. The first album, while recorded in September 2019, was not released until September 2021. The most recent album, “Side-Eye III+” was released this past February and the supporting tour started in March. South Florida was fortunate to have two shows at The Parker in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, March 12 and Friday the 13th.
After arriving late to the original Side-Eye show at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami back in 2022, causing me to watch part of the show on lobby monitors, I made sure to arrive for this show extra early to not miss a moment of the excitement.The lights went down ten minutes after the scheduled start time of 7:30. As the audience was focusing on a dark stage, two 
doors opened towards the back of the crowd, one on each side. Emerging from each door were two band members, playing drums, marching drum line style, walking in and up to the stage. They put down their drums, then went over to their instruments waiting for them on stage. Pat Metheny appeared from backstage with an acoustic guitar around his neck as the quintet kicked off the show with “I’m on it”. Pat switched to his trademark Ibanez semi-hollow body electric guitar as the band broke into “Bright Size Life”. A few songs later, Metheny switched to his Roland synth guitar, and he would switch guitars several times throughout the night, exploring the different tonal capabilities of each instrument. The crowd was asked not to take pictures or video, and to my amazement, I did not see a single cell phone out the entire night, quite a testament to the group keeping everybody captivated by their superb musicianship. Throughout the evening, the members would take solos and really made the most of the time they were given to express themselves. Pat Metheny waited until just after the midway part of the show to say hello to the audience and introduce his fellow musicians. On keyboards and piano was Chris Fishman, on upright bass was Jermaine Paul, on drums was Joe Dyson, and on percussion/vocals was Leonard Patton. From there, several duets would emanate: “Phase Dance” featuring Pat with Chris, then “How Insensitive” with Pat and Jermaine, to “Trigonometry” with Pat and Joe.
The set ended two hours later with the entire group reemerging for “Last Train Home”. The ensemble put down their instruments, came to the front of the stage, bowed and walked off. Moments later, Pat came back out by himself with an acoustic guitar, sat down, and started playing a few bars of “America the Beautiful” that lead into “Are you Going with Me?” The quintet came back out and they finished the evening with “Song for Bilbao”.
A standing ovation sent the amazing musicians off into the wings.
It is refreshing to see that in this time of synthetic sounds, sterile processed compositions and AI derived nonsense, that real top-tiered musicianship can bring a warmth and energy that cannot be duplicated by computers. Pat Metheny and his musicians are true gems, and I highly recommend catching them while real live music is still available!
