American Garage

1979 studio album by the Pat Metheny Group

American Garage

Studio album by

the Pat Metheny Group

Released| November 1979
Recorded| June 1979
Studio| Long View Farm,
North Brookfield, MA
Genre| Jazz fusion
Length| 35:21
Label| ECM
Producer| Pat Metheny
Pat Metheny chronology
| New Chautauqua
(1979)  | American Garage
(1979)  | 80/81
(1980)

|
|

Professional ratingsReview scores

Source| Rating
AllMusic| [1]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music| [3]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings| [4]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide| [2]

American Garage is the second studio album by the Pat Metheny Group, recorded in June 1979 and released on ECM in November 1979. The quartet features rhythm section Lyle Mays, Mark Egan and Dan Gottlieb.[5]

## Background

[edit]

The album represented the most collaborative writing session between Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays up to that point in the band's history. According to Metheny, this yielded mixed results. He has said that the album's second track, "Airstream," is a favorite from this period. But both he and Mays have expressed less praise for the fifth and final track, "The Epic", which Metheny has claimed, "is all over the map."[6]

## Track listing

[edit]

All tracks are written by Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays.

Side INo.| Title| Length

|
|

1.| "(Cross the) Heartland"| 6:55
2.| "Airstream"| 6:20
3.| "The Search"| 4:54

Side IINo.| Title| Length

|
|

4.| "American Garage"| 4:13
5.| "The Epic"| 12:59

## Personnel

[edit]

### Pat Metheny Group

[edit]

* Pat Metheny – 6-and 12-string electric and acoustic guitars
* Lyle Mays – piano, Oberheim synthesizer, autoharp, electric organ
* Mark Egan – bass
* Dan Gottlieb – drums

### Technical personnel

[edit]

* Pat Metheny – producer
* Manfred Eicher – executive producer
* Kent Nebergall – recording engineer, mixing engineer
* Jesse Henderson – assistant engineer
* Bill Kipper – mastering at Masterdisk, NYC, USA
* Basil Pao – design
* Joel Meyerowitz – cover photography
* Rob Van Petten – photography

## Charts

[edit]

Chart (1980)  | Peak
position

|

Canada Top Albums/CDs (RPM)[7] | 88
US Billboard 200[8] | 53

## See also

[edit]

* 1979 in jazz

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Ginell, Richard S. (2011). "American Garage - Pat Metheny Group | AllMusic". allmusic.com. Retrieved July 19, 2011.
2. ^ Swenson, J., ed. (1985). The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. USA: Random House/Rolling Stone. p. 139\. ISBN 0-394-72643-X.
3. ^ Larkin, Colin (2007). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195313734.
4. ^ Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 993\. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.
5. ^ "American Garage". ECM.
6. ^ Cooke, Mervyn (2017). Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1975–1984. Oxford University Press. pp. 137–140.
7. ^ "Top RPM Albums: Issue 9481b". RPM. Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved April 10, 2025.
8. ^ "Pat Metheny Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved April 10, 2025.

* v
* t
* e

Pat Metheny

Discography

Group albums|

| As leader|

| Pat Metheny Group|

* Pat Metheny Group (1978)
* American Garage (1979)
* Offramp (1982)
* Travels (1983)
* First Circle (1984)
* The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
* Still Life (Talking) (1987)
* Letter from Home (1989)
* The Road to You (1993)
* We Live Here (1995)
* Quartet (1996)
* Imaginary Day (1997)
* Speaking of Now (2002)
* The Way Up (2005)

|

Others|

* Bright Size Life (1976)
* Watercolors (1977)
* 80/81 (1980)
* Rejoicing (1984)
* Question and Answer (1990)
* Secret Story (1992)
* Flower Hour (1992)
* Trio 99 → 00 (2000)
* Trio → Live (2000)
* Day Trip (2008)
* Tokyo Day Trip (2008)
* Unity Band (2012)
* Kin (←→) (2014)
* The Unity Sessions (2016)
* From This Place (2020)

As group member/side man|

* Jaco (1974)
* Ring (1974)
* Dreams So Real - Music of Carla Bley (1975)
* Passengers (1976)
* Shadows and Light (1980)
* Michael Brecker (1987)
* Parallel Realities (1990)
* Reunion (1990)
* Till We Have Faces (1992)
* Wish (1993)
* Blues for Pat: Live in San Francisco (1995)
* Tales from the Hudson (1996)
* Like Minds (1998)
* The Sound of Summer Running (1998)
* Time Is of the Essence (1999)
* Nearness of You: The Ballad Book (2001)
* Upojenie (2002)
* Portrait of Jaco: The Early Years, 1968–1978 (2003)
* Pilgrimage (2007)
* Quartet Live (2009)
* Hommage à Eberhard Weber (2015)

Solo albums|

* New Chautauqua (1979)
* Zero Tolerance for Silence (1994)
* A Map of the World (1999)
* One Quiet Night (2003)
* Orchestrion (2010)
* What's It All About (2011)
* The Orchestrion Project (2013)
* Road to the Sun (2021)
* Dream Box (2023)
* MoonDial (2024)

Collaborations|

* As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (1981, Mays)
* Song X (1986, Coleman)
* Electric Counterpoint (1989)
* I Can See Your House from Here (1994, Scofield)
* Beyond the Missouri Sky (Short Stories) (1997, Haden)
* Jim Hall & Pat Metheny (1999, Hall)
* Upojenie (2002, Jopek)
* Metheny Mehldau (2006, Mehldau)
* Metheny Mehldau Quartet (2007, Mehldau)
* Tap:John Zorn's Book of Angels Vol. 20 (2013, Zorn)
* Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny (2016, Vu)

Authority control databases |

* MusicBrainz release group

|

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