more scrittles

By some amazing coincidence, my three favorite guitarists happened to be playing at the same club in the Bay Area within two weeks of each other. Normally this would only cause great crying out and gnashing of teeth, as I live 4000 miles away, but by a true stroke of luck these performances happened to fall during a time when I needed to schedule a trip to San Francisco for my work. Amazing!

I've listened to each one of these fellas extensively for years. Nels Cline is, relatively, a newcomer, to whom I was first introduced less than five years ago. Bill Frisell is someone who I was first introduced to in the early 90's, in music school, but whose music didn't really excite me for another five years, when I managed to grow past my knee-jerk reaction to his use of the blues and classic song forms. And I've been a fan of Pat Metheny almost since I started playing guitar, though at first I couldn't understand what drew me back again and again to music that sounded most like background tunes in a dentist's office.

I was able to see each of these players multiple times the last two weeks; twice each for Nels and Metheny, and a luxurious six times for Frisell. It's been fascinating to compare their material, tone, performance styles, and the variation between their sets. I've also been finding what about them resonates with me, and what does not. I saw Nels first, with a group of Los Angeles-based regulars led by violinist Jeff Gauthier. The music grew very much out of the early-70's intersection of free-form jams (a la Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock) and the sometimes-tedious complexity of fusion's Return to Forever and the like. But the sound was very modern, too, with touches of sheer noise and high-tech spaciness.

These days, Nels seems to speak to me most directly out of these three men. He has a punk background, a lack of pretense, astounding technique and the drive to infuse every tune with a fervent, almost desperate spirit. Every gig seems to be a big deal to him, never seeming routine, which I really appreciate as a fan. This was a good night for him; both sets featured his solo voice heavily, and he didn't disappoint, bringing forth searing, chaotic improvisations that veered in and out of standard harmony, and providing surreal sonic backdrops with his array of pedals, even putting down the guitar for awhile to coax strange sounds out of a keyboard-less analog synthesizer.

Bill Frisell provided a sharp contrast to the evening with Nels. Perhaps in deference to a new, very rootsy bass player in David Piltch, he limited his material over the six sets I saw to a very select group of tunes, including three Dylan songs. I was disappointed that he didn't touch on any of his older compositions, which I think are incredibly strong pieces, preferring instead to tackle the three- or four-chord song forms of his last few studio albums. Still, I didn't find myself being bored; without a doubt, Bill has the most arresting, individualistic tone on the guitar of anyone I know. Each evening started with him alone, feeling out the corners of the dark club with tentative single notes which caused an instant hush among the 200 guests in the Yoshi's room. Sometimes he used a reverse delay, sometimes a deep reverb, sometimes just the gentle twang of his natural Telecaster, but each time it was as if a god was speaking, for the reverence he commanded. Nels and Pat fall far short of his unique tone; Nels has an amazing range of sounds under his command, and any of his distorted voices sing distinctly, but for clean work I find his guitar to be somewhat characterless. The digital delays (not his amazing looping, but the short Boss delays) and reverb he uses don't seem to add depth, just a shiny kind of shadow. And for clean, standard electric guitar, Pat relies always on the same setting, brutally mid-rangey with the chorus-he-insists-isn't-chorus, which fits well in many situations and hearkens to Jim Hall, but ultimately strikes me as a very flat kind of voice.

Bill and Nels are tremendously different in nearly every way, except for their harmonic bravery and ability to twist technology to very striking uses. The looping they do is not the sort built up over prolonged repetition, creating the illusion of massed guitars, but rather the kind that both stretches the range of the instrument and creates a sort of sinister alter ego that contrasts wonderfully with their melodic voice.

Pat also has found some unique ways of using technology, such as his distinctive synthesized Roland, but he's far less experimental. You'd never find him scraping a spring or egg whisk down the fretboard, as Nels is prone to do, and he doesn't venture into the microtonal washes that Bill frequently indulges in.

I'm finding how much I do value experimentation, in texture or in harmony. One disappointing thing about Bill was that his band seemed frequently at a loss when he ventured into unknown territory. Drummer Kenny Wolleson would fool around with the by-now-predictable cymbal scrapes or keening slides across the drumheads with a wet finger, slide guitarist Greg Leisz would turn up his echo and do a few fades with a volume pedal, and David Piltch would simply stand in silence until it was over and Bill steered back towards an actual song. Nels was in much better company in this regard, matched very well by each of the other players in willingness to explore. It was a treat to see him onstage with his (twin!) brother, Alex, an amazing drummer and percussionist with a full rack of gongs to complement his large kit.

As far as Pat, well, there was simply none of this foolishness. Perhaps the harshest criticism I'd have is that Pat's superstar companions of Gary Burton on vibes, Steve Swallow on bass, and newcomer Antonio Sanchez (from Pat's own Group) played top-notch Jazz, providing no challenges to the genre, and seemingly no surprises to each other. Solo spots are passed around in order, everyone takes a good turn with a round of applause at the end, and the tune ends in five or six minutes. I'd love to see one of them just turn a tune completely on its head, with some ridiculously distorted tone, or a numbingly repeated ostinato, or a few entire choruses played in a different key center before resolving.

All three players do have a very pronounced emotional touchstone, which I deeply appreciate. I was impressed here by Pat, even in the midst of this very "traditional" sort of Jazz Performance, who would work again and again at a clearly improvised, deeply moving melody, as opposed to just burning through changes to please the fans, as he certainly can do. I could really see his process of creating a completely understandable, plaintive song, even while tough changes fly by. Aside from his compositional voice, which didn't figure much into this situation, I think this is his greatest strength, creating wonderful, memorable, interesting melodies again and again even from dry material.

Bill also wears his heart on his sleeve, perhaps in a more obvious way, what with his sometimes sentimental or even sappy choice of songs ("What the World Needs Now", f'rinstance). Not that he leaves a saccharine taste; a review I read once mentioned his "seeming inability to produce a gratuitous note", and I think that's quite true. He simply plays beautifully, and if "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" has grown to have cheesy assocations from other performers, he'll probably make you re-appreciate it.

Nels is perhaps less obvious in his emotionality than the other two, as his love of oblique harmony and experimental textures can take precedence, but when he gets ahold of an extended solo flight, the old saw about playing each note as if it were his last starts to feel vividly real. He'll really get unhinged, more than anyone else, throwing all caution to the wind and really wringing everything he can out of the instrument dwarfed in his huge hands. I'll go to great lengths to see this music, again and again; it feels like soul food, straight nutrition. That's what I feel most drawn to convey. It's a fusion that hasn't been so successfully melded before, where the anarchic passion of punk rock fully infuses instrumental ability with deep purpose.

If nothing else, what I'm drawn to in jazz - which, no matter how differently, all three of these players fits into - is freshness, improvisation, and the testing of boundaries. I have to say that Metheny fell far short of the other two in regard to all three of these values, in these performances. And while Frisell was very inspiring in his idiosyncrasies, amazing tone and harmonies, his choice of material (and to some degree, his co-players) wasn't what I would have liked. But I feel extremely lucky to have been able to see all of these performances, especially in this short time frame.