(Gibson) Grammy-winning guitarist Pat Metheny will release a new album of covers on June 14. The album, titled What's It All About, comprises the jazz great's personal interpretations of 10 classic songs, including tracks by The Beatles, Burt Bacharach, Simon & Garfunkel, The Carpenters and more. Guitar fans will find special interest in Metheny's sonic choices. He recorded most of the record using an acoustic baritone guitar, with a few notable exceptions. The surf classic, "Pipeline," is played on an acoustic six-string, and The Beatles' "And I Love Her" was recorded with a nylon six-string. More exotic, though, is Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence," which was played on a 42-string (yes, you read that correctly) custom-made "Pikasso" guitar.
"It is a song I have always loved," Metheny said in a press release. "I am a huge fan of Paul Simon, in general. I had been experimenting with a way to play this piece on the Pikasso for a while. The challenges of keeping everything going on that guitar are significant, and the material needs to lend itself to that axe to make it work. In fact, at the core of that instrument is a six-string guitar that, for years, I have had in the same baritone tuning that I used on One Quiet Night (that is where the bass notes come from). This is one of the few tunes on the record where I stay in one key for the whole tune and the way I have that instrument set up is ideal for that kind of an approach." more on this story
