In 2023, I went to the first hololive English concert, Connect the World. In my review, I ended off with some idle thoughts:

And now that I’ve gone to a concert for virtual idols, who knows what’s next? Maybe I’ll attend some concerts by 100% flesh-and-blood musicians as well. Ironically, the VTuber rabbit hole might just lead me back to the real world.

Two years later, I finally made good on this by seeing Pat Metheny at Carnegie Hall on his Dream Box/MoonDial Tour. Given how more and more of my favorite creators and artists have been shuffling off this mortal coil, I considered him a top priority, and I’m glad I finally got the chance.

While Metheny does have a connection to anime thanks to “Last Train Home” being used as a JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure ending theme, my fondness for his music goes all the way back to my early childhood, when I first heard in a commercial what I would later learn was “It’s For You.” I watched the film Fandango earlier this year specifically because I knew that song was featured in it.

I’m the definition of casual fan—I didn’t even realize quite how much music Metheny has made, or that he’s a 20-time Grammy winner, or that he still puts out songs on a fairly regular basis. I knew he was a beloved musician, but not that he’s in the running for greatest jazz guitarist of all time. Though in hindsight, I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the live experience. 

Metheny just seems fundamentally different from most musicians I’m familiar with—he seems to be less focused on making individual songs and more about exploring music and sound itself. It might be because I’m not very familiar with his very extensive discography, but it felt like I never knew where he was going or what he was going to try next. At one point, he mentioned a guitar maker he works with often, and how she takes his ideas for instruments and makes them a reality. In fact, this entire concert was dedicated primarily to his recent decision to use the baritone guitar more, and this included his custom designs. In his last few songs, Metheny used a bunch of contraptions to record his own guitars on the spot and then played them back to become a kind of one-man band while colorful meters flashed and shined. It was an aural and visual cornucopia.

Helpfully for a newbie like myself, he actually took time to delve into his life and history. Metheny explained how he came from a family of trumpet players, but that he didn’t take to the instrument nearly as well. It was seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show that exposed him to electric guitars and changed his life forever, despite his family’s initial dislike of the newfangled instrument. At a young age, he started playing at famous spots in his home state of Missouri. Metheny mentioned that he rarely ever talks this much during concerts, so I consider myself fortunate in this regard.

This was both a culmination of a journey as a listener and the start of something new. I wonder where I might go next.