American Garage

PLAYERS: Pat Metheny (g), Lyle Mays (p, synth, autoharp), Mark Egan (b), Dan Gottlieb (d)

REFLECTIONS:

LYLE: I suggested the title American Garage. I had written the start of that piece (including the drum part) and Pat and I finished it. Our tour jackets for that tour were heavy duty mechanics work shirts with a bright red oval patch. Great fun.

DAN GOTTLIEB: We were out at Longview Farm in Worcester, Mass. for a week, recording and staying there. I remember it being fun staying on a farm. I remember taking the back cover picture playing “Louie, Louie” in the garage with Lyle hamming it up. It was really fun!

MARK EGAN: We had been touring constantly before the recording of American Garage. This recording was different in that we recorded in the USA rather than Oslo Norway at Talent studio and Pat was the producer rather than Manfred Eicher from ECM records.

It was recorded in the countryside in Massachusetts at Long View Farm studio that was a very beautiful and remote setting where we could focus on the recording without a lot of distractions. We had worked new songs into the bands touring repertoire previous to the recording and worked on the finer points of the arrangements in the studio.

I have favorite moments from all of the songs. I like the inspirational feeling of “The Search” and Lyle’s amazing solo as well as Pat’s guitar parts. I also like groove and arrangement of “Airstream” and the way that the song evolves. The title track has a great grungy attitude that brings back really fun memories in the studio. We performed most of these songs live and there are some really good recordings after the record was released that are on video from our Germany tour in Hamburg.

Lyle was always so dedicated to the music and always finding new and better ways to improve the arrangements even though we had been playing some of these songs live for a while before the recording. This studio recording had the same feeling as the White album recording. It was a serious adventure and focus in the studio and Lyle never ceased to amaze me with his musical offerings.