Pat Metheny Group - American Garage (1979 Japanese ECM/Trio Records Vinyl LP)

Pat Metheny Group - American Garage | Vinyl LP - 1979 ECM Records / Trio Records Japan (PAP-9180, Trio Jazz Mania series)

• The second Pat Metheny Group album and the record that broke them wide open, hitting number one on the Billboard Jazz chart and crossing over to number 53 on the Pop albums chart. One of the most popular records in the entire ECM catalogue.
• Recorded in June 1979 at Long View Farm in rural Massachusetts, with the original quartet of Metheny on guitars, Lyle Mays on keyboards, Mark Egan on bass and Dan Gottlieb on drums. All five tracks co-written by Metheny and Mays.
• 1979 Japanese pressing on ECM via Trio Records, part of the Trio Jazz Mania series. Made by Trio-Kenwood Corporation.

The Pat Metheny Group’s debut had introduced the band. American Garage is where the sound crystallised. Metheny was twenty-five. Lyle Mays was twenty-six. They recorded the album in a converted farmhouse in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, a residential studio that typically hosted rock sessions and came with recording techniques to match. The production is cleaner and brighter than anything else on ECM at the time. “(Cross the) Heartland” opens with one of the most recognisable guitar melodies in fusion, a wide-open line on Metheny’s twelve-string that sounds like driving through the Midwest with the windows down. “Airstream” follows with Mays’s Oberheim synth and a more structured group interplay. “The Search” closes Side A. The title track on Side B has a story behind it: a reviewer had called the group “an extremely talented garage band” after a New York gig, and Mays suggested they use that as a title. “The Epic” fills the remaining thirteen minutes of Side B and hints at the longer, more compositionally ambitious direction the group would take on Offramp and beyond.

The lineup is the classic first edition of the group. Metheny plays six and twelve-string guitars, acoustic and electric. Mays handles piano, Oberheim synthesiser, autoharp and organ. Mark Egan’s bass is melodic and responsive, never just holding root notes. Dan Gottlieb’s drumming is tight and propulsive without being flashy. Kent Nebergall engineered. Manfred Eicher, ECM’s founder, took the executive producer credit but Metheny produced the sessions himself, one of the few artists on the label given that degree of control. The album reached number one on the Billboard Jazz chart, crossed into the Pop top sixty, and established the Pat Metheny Group as the rare jazz act with a genuine crossover audience. This is the 1979 Japanese pressing on Trio Records, part of the Trio Jazz Mania series, manufactured by Trio-Kenwood Corporation.