Pat Metheny Group

CD version. Travels is the live double album of the Pat Metheny Group, a set drawn from concerts across the United States in 1982. Released by ECM in May 1983, it won the Grammy for Best Jazz Fusion Performance and has kept a reputation as one of the best recorded live albums in jazz. It gathers pieces from the group's studio records alongside new material.

The line-up is Pat Metheny on guitar and guitar synthesizer, Lyle Mays on piano, synthesizers, organ, autoharp and Synclavier, Steve Rodby on acoustic and electric bass, Dan Gottlieb on drums, and Naná Vasconcelos on percussion, voice and berimbau. The Brazilian percussionist had joined Metheny and Mays on As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, and here he adds new shades and depth to the group's sound. The tapes come from shows in Dallas, Philadelphia, Hartford, Sacramento and Nacogdoches in July, October and November 1982. Randy Ezratty recorded them, Jan Erik Kongshaug mixed, and Metheny produced with Manfred Eicher.

The first disc opens with Are You Going With Me?, which builds over nine minutes to a long solo by Metheny. The Fields, The Sky sets Metheny's slow line against the berimbau, and in Goodbye Vasconcelos sings. Phase Dance and Straight On Red bring back the faster, brighter side of the group, while Farmer's Trust is slow and open, with ambient textures around the melody. On the second disc, Goin' Ahead leads into a sixteen-minute version of As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, and the set ends with Song for Bilbao and a thirteen-minute San Lorenzo.

The Wire called the album "remarkable" and "superbly recorded". In 1995 Gramophone wrote that "Travels has it all", praising the Brazilian's "rhythmic vitality and textural earthiness". At ECM Reviews, Tyran Grillo preferred the live Are You Going With Me? to the studio original and called its guitar solo "perhaps Metheny's best solo on record". The Grammy came at the 26th awards ceremony, in 1984.

This is the 2CD edition on ECM Records, catalogue number ECM 1252/53, reissued in 2022, of an album first released as a double LP in 1983. The first disc holds six pieces, from Are You Going With Me? to Farmer's Trust, the second five more, from Extradition to San Lorenzo.