John Patitucci | Exceptional New Song Out Now
Maybe the best sound I've ever heard from JP... 🤷♀️
Shortly before my birthday last month, my wife knocked on the door to my office and asked “how do you feel about Jon Cowherd...?”
I’m a big fan of course, and I even got to play a show with Jon at the 55bar in maybe 2019? with Clarence Penn, Donny McCaslin and Adam Rogers which was a blast.
I told my wife I had been a fan since first hearing him in Brian Blade’s Fellowship band back in 1998. There followed a big smile from her as I had no idea Patitucci and Blade were the rhythm section, and she had won the good music award for the day by finding out about the show. Tickets were purchased as an early birthday gift, and off to Zipper Hall in downtown Los Angeles we went a few days later.
Despite not having an amp due to some unforeseen backline issues, the sound of John’s electric was incredible. And it just never gets old hearing this rhythm section interact. It’s communication from a different solar system.
It was great to hear John play live for the first time in a while, and then even better to rap on the phone the next day and hear about a new trio project that’s due out in early 2025 with Brian Blade and Chris Potter.
I was in the car this morning and Spotify served me up the first single “Think Fast” that was released a few days ago.
I think this might be the best sound I’ve ever heard from John on a record. I played the song on repeat during my drive and I kept coming back to this same feeling of really hearing the mic and the room in perfect balance, and then Potter and Blade being right there, almost sitting on top of each other, but somehow not getting in each other’s way and creating this amazing space.
The sound is obviously a combination of so many things, and one of the key elements of this recording is my good friend John Davis and his studio in Brooklyn The Bunker.
This isn’t the first Patitucci record he’s worked on, and it feels like together they are carving this new path forwards with John’s music, always finding an extra layer to peel back and explore, curious about what else there is to mine from the music, and never deviating from serving the song and the ensemble sound.
Hearing John Patitucci, Heart of the Bass, On The Corner, Sketchbook, and Another World were massive for me from the electric side of things. Especially as I knew I wanted to be a band leader and composer from the very beginning.
And before John’s upright stuff really kicked in for me (ironic, I know, as I’ve never actually played one outside of a few pop gigs) the most impactful electric bass solo, and still the only electric bass solo of any player I’ve ever transcribed, was from Bate Balaio on Mistura Fina.
When I think back to the 90’s and my first steps as a bass player, I started to become more aware of John’s upright playing through a small collection of albums that would go on to have a profound affect on my sense of melody, time, and sound.
In 1995 it was Chick Corea’s Time Warp that really started my transition from listening non-stop to Tribal Tech, Weather Report and The Elektric Band, and really exploring other elements each of those musicians had to offer.
Sadly this album isn’t on any streaming services, but there are some cuts on YouTube. I highly recommend purchasing any of the albums I reference here, and if you want to hear this one in its entirety, you actually HAVE to.
When it came to John’s solo albums, there are obviously plenty of elements of the upright on the earlier records I mentioned, but maybe it was the transition back to New York around 1996(?) that moved the upright bass more to the forefront when it came to his solo voice and solo records.
One More Angel is a core band of Paul Motion on drums and Allan Pasqua on piano with a 27 year old Chris Potter on tenor sounding just as incredible as he does now. I think you hear progress in John’s upright sound even from the Time Warp album just a couple of years earlier.
I know there are a lot of variables in recording, mixing, mastering, and the general minor inconsistencies we all suffer from one recording to the next, but I want to highlight a theme I’ve always felt with John’s music: I feel like it’s constantly curious and always looking for the next thing that is just out of reach or just out of sight.
Now is way more on the swinging end of things with Bill Stewart and John Scofield in 1998, and I hear yet more progress not only in sound but in composition, arrangement and choice of instrumentation. So many of the previous albums have featured piano and keyboards prominently, so this felt like an awesome change of direction with Sco.
Imprint was the recording that really taught me so much about producing a solo album and having more than one sound for the music, but still having it all make sense as a record. It doesn’t get much different from John Beasley and Danilo Perez on piano, and Horacio “El Negro” hernandez and Jack DeJohnette on drums, yet it’s all glued together in this incredible set of compositions.
Although not composition-heavy because the entire album was improvised, I definitely had Imprint in mind when I went into the Bunker to cut It Only Happens Once in 2012. I had Mark Guiliana and Jojo Mayer on drums, John Ellis and Justin Vasquez on saxes, and Tim Miller and myself kind of gluing the two tracking days together in the middle.
To say it was surreal to look through the glass of the control room at the Bunker in June of 2019 and see JP in there directing traffic and producing my record The Union is an understatement. But having listened so much to this music for over two and half decades at that point, it put us very much on the same page with each other’s strengths and led us to some very cool places in the music.
It was hearing John doubling melodies on electric on Imprint, having already tracked bass parts on upright, that gave me the confidence to try that for the first time on one of my own records.
This could be 40 more pages long if I said everything I wanted to about the storied career of one of my biggest heroes. But let’s save that for the podcast next month. I’m going to head to NYC in January and sit down with John to talk about the new album, and get some insight into the tens of thousands of hours that have gone into creating the sound you hear in his latest offering as an artist.
As John has taught me, and as I say to anyone who will listen: Time and Sound Over Everything.
Janek.
P.S. It’s the final day of our Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale. It all ends at midnight tonight, December 4th! All discounts are either added at checkout or shown on the product page
eBooks and eBook bundles are buy one, get 50% off another (up to four products per order)
The Complete Library is super discounted and includes the new scales book
Line6 HX Stomp Presets are 35% off
Physical books on Amazon are discounted 20%
Thanks for this newsletter, Janek. At 58, I remain inspired by JP's body of work since I first heard him perform with the Elektric Band in 1986 at SUNY Buffalo, where I was a business student. Coming out of the Jaco era, I was floored by this as yet unknown 20-something, playing bass in a fresh way on a bass with "too many" strings. I still have the signed copy of the first CCEB release I bought at that show, after which I ran back to my dorm and stayed up late to write out Got A Match. Even though you are ten years my junior, you have also been a tremendous inspiration for me, with your playing, instructional approach and materials, many of which I have purchased and use every day. I went to Berklee later, in my early 30s, where you and I were in the same class for one day with instructor Paul Del Nero. I'll never forget the first-day assessment, when he asked each student to blow on a blues. When it got to you, everyone's jaw hit the floor. Paul asked you to stay after the class, and that was the last time I saw you, LOL! Great to see you succeed in your well-deserved career! Cheers!
Thank you for your time Janek. I’m eagerly await your ii V I, Altered Scales and the new book you’ve written. I’ve been listening to JP for over 40 years and have always been fascinated by his evolution as a musician and composer, kind of scratching my head as I wonder how this comes about for you guys. I’m an anesthesiologist and thus I’ve always grabbed a text book and grinded away at assimilating technical details and skills. I’ve just started my bass playing journey with bassist/instructor Matthew Rubano, and I’m learning that becoming a musician bassist is anything but just picking up a book. Thanks for your books, and hopefully I’ll see you next week at the Baked Potato with Mike and Dennis. Cheers. Dwain