Peter Sprague & Leonard Patton, with the Mission Bay High School Preservationists
San Diegans have long known how richly talented Leonard Patton is as a percussion-playing singer who knows few stylistic limits. Now, listeners in the rest of the country and across much of Europe are going to find out exactly what they’ve been missing.
From March through September, Patton will be on the road for a six-month world tour with guitarist, composer and band leader Pat Metheny. A 20-time Grammy Award-winner, Metheny is a longtime fan of Patton, who earned his master’s in music from SDSU in 2010 and is the owner and operator of the five-year-old Jazz Lounge music and supper club.
Patton, Metheny said in a January press release, “is a musician I have wanted to include in my thing for years.” Patton and top San Diego guitarist Peter Sprague and his band accompanied Metheny at a private concert in Orange County in 2022.
In a 2021 San Diego Union-Tribune interview, Metheny was effusive about Patton and Sprague, saying: “The (2015) duo album Peter and Leonard made, ‘Dream Walkin’,” is staggering! It’s on a level of musicianship that is in the top .00001 percent of what it is to be a musician.”
An understandably excited Patton phoned me last month to share the news of his new gig, which is being billed as Pat Metheny Side-Eye+ and whose upcoming tour includes a May 8 San Diego date at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay.
The tour will feature the guitar great with an expanded edition of his Side-Eye Trio, which delivered an often stunning performance here at Shell in 2021. The group teams Metheny and Sie-Eye veterans Joe Dyson on drums and Chris Fishman on keyboards with two new additions — the “+” members of the group — Patton and 24-year-old Los Angeles bassist Jermaine Paul.
Patton will be flying to New York soon for intensive rehearsals with Metheny and Side-Eye. But before he does, Patton and Sprague will perform a Feb. 12 duo concert with Sprague that will feature several Metheny classics, including “Travels” and “Song for Bilbao.”
The show kicks off the third annual Maraki Concert Series, which is produced by the Mission Bay High School Music Business program to raise funds for the school’s music department.
6 p.m. next Thursday, Feb. 12. Meraki, 1648 30th Street, South Park. $25 (general admission), $70 and up (dinner package; must be reserved by Sunday, Feb. 8). missionbaymusic.com
Grammy Award-winner Dom Flemons will perform Wednesday at UC San Diego on a double-bill with Western-swing mainstays Hot Club Of Cowtown. (Courtesy Grand Annex)
Dom Flemons and Hot Club of Cowtown
It’s been 21 years since Dom Flemons co-founded the Grammy Award-winning trio Carolina Chocolate Drops with Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson.
In the 13 years since he left the group to launch his solo career, this Phoenix native has distinguished himself as a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumental champion of American roots music who often bills himself as the American Songster.
Whether playing banjo, guitar or the percussion instrument known as bones, Flemons is a walking encyclopedia of pre-war African-American string-band styles, blues, country and Black cowboy folk songs whose performances are wonderfully down-to-earth.
His concert here teams him with the terrific Western-swing-championing trio Hot Club of Cowtown, which is now based in Texas but got its start playing here in Ocean Beach bars back in 1997.
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 11. UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium, 3500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla. $42. 858-534-8497; artpower.ucsd.edu.
The American-British vocal trio Say She She is now on tour in support if its third album and headed to the Music Box in San Diego. (Courtesy Belly Up Entertainment)
Say She She, with Katsu Ozo
Is there an undercurrent of proud feminist subversion in the music of the self-described “discodelic soul” trio Say She She?
On the surface, this American-British group’s music seems geared mostly to dance floors with its inviting mix of R&B, funk and vocal harmonies that nod to The Supremes and other classic 1960s artists and such 1970s favorites as Chic and Sister Sledge, by way of Destiny’s Child.
For good measure, Say She She’s moniker is a sly reference to the title of Chic’s classic 1978 song, “C’est Chic.”
But the lyrics to some of Say She She’s best songs tell a different story, such as this line from, “Reeling,” a standout number from the group’s 2022 sophomore album: “Kick the door down, smash the ceiling, leave them reeling.”
Say Say She’s song “Norma” is a pointed response to the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, while “Forget Me Not” is inspired by the feminist activists Guerrilla Girls and “She Who Dares” paints a grim picture of a society in which women’s rights have been obliterated.
Exactly how this plays out at Say She She’s concert here remains to be seen. But expect London-born Piya Malik and Americans Sabrina Cunningham and Nya Parker Gazelle — who are all classically trained singers — to make a very sound impression.
9 p.m., Friday, Feb. 6. The Music Box, 1337 India Street, downtown. $36.30 – $119.70 (must be 21 or older to attend). ticketweb.com