Pat Metheny - Watercolors (1977 Japanese ECM Vinyl LP)

Pat Metheny - Watercolors | Vinyl LP, 1977 Japanese ECM (PAP-9069 / ECM 1097)

• The first recording to feature Lyle Mays, who became Metheny’s primary musical partner for over thirty years in the Pat Metheny Group, with Eberhard Weber on bass and Danny Gottlieb on drums
• All compositions by Metheny, including the ten-minute closing “Sea Song” and a two-part suite, recorded in February 1977 at Talent Studios in Oslo by Jan Erik Kongshaug
• Japanese pressing on ECM Records, produced by Manfred Eicher, lacquer cut at Tonstudio Bauer

Metheny’s debut, Bright Size Life (1976), had featured Jaco Pastorius on bass. This second album replaces Pastorius with Eberhard Weber and introduces two musicians who would define the Pat Metheny Group for decades: pianist Lyle Mays and drummer Danny Gottlieb. It was Mays’s first major recording. He had met Metheny at the Wichita Jazz Festival in 1975, and their rapport was immediate, though Metheny later recalled that Mays was “understandably a bit nervous” in the studio: the jetlag from the flight to Oslo and the weight of recording for ECM, a label with considerable prestige among jazz musicians, were both factors. The first time Mays and Weber met was in the studio itself. They had two days to record and a day to mix.

What came out of those sessions is the real birth of the 'Metheny sound'. The compositions move through open, lyrical melodies carried by Metheny’s guitar (six-string, twelve-string, and a fifteen-string harp guitar, which adds unstopped bass and drone strings to the standard instrument), with Mays providing harmonic texture on acoustic piano and occasional synthesiser washes. Weber’s bass and Gottlieb’s drums keep the rhythmic framework flexible without losing shape. “River Quay” takes its name from the entertainment district in Kansas City, where Metheny grew up. “Sea Song” closes the album at ten minutes and is the most expansive piece. In this album you hear them reaching toward the sound that would burst forth a year later on the Pat Metheny Group album. Three quarters of that group are already here. Recorded at Talent Studios, Oslo, by Jan Erik Kongshaug. Produced by Manfred Eicher. Lacquer cut by Henry Riedel at Tonstudio Bauer. Japanese pressing, catalogue number PAP-9069.