Lee Rittenour
Saturday, May 25, 2024
7:00pm
Area : Stuart
Venue : The Lyric Theatre
59 SW Flagler Ave Stuart 34994
$70
Music
Lee Ritenour
(May 25, 2024 7:00pm)
For Lee Ritenour, love for the guitar began when he was 8. By 12, he was serious about playing
and his father, an amateur piano player, found him some of the best teachers around. It was
the mid-60s, and everybody’s number was in the phone book. “My dad, who was always very
supportive, called up Joe Pass and Barney Kessel and asked them to give me guitar lessons,” he
said. “Barney ended up recommending this incredible teacher, Duke Miller, and that was the
foundation of all my playing. The Lighthouse in L.A. was a very funky jazz club where I met Wes
Montgomery. By the age of 16, I’d take the car over there in the late afternoon and just watch
the bands’ soundchecks.”
The guitar scene at the time was a master class for the young musician. “In every field, there
were legends,” he said. “In jazz, you had Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessel, Howard
Roberts, Jim Hall, and Pat Martino. In blues there was B.B. King, Albert King, John Lee Hooker. In
rock, Jimi Hendrix was coming, Clapton and Beck were already there. In country, you had Chet
Atkins and then the all-time great classical masters Segovia and Sabicas and flamenco master
Paco de Lucia. Great guitar playing was everywhere you turned and I loved them all. How could
you not?”
Those eclectic early tastes served Ritenour well. From the day he lucked into his first session for
The Mamas and the Papas at 16, he had the widescreen mentality to forge a career as one of
L.A.’s busiest session men. “I remember John Phillips had this incredible studio in his Beverly
Hills mansion and I thought, ‘This is what I want,” he said. “I remember getting called by Bob
Ezrin to work on Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Incredible! Too many memories!”
In 1976, Ritenour launched a solo career and managed to follow his muse while finding
commercial success, especially in the 1980s. “On the West Coast, fusion was just starting,” he
said. “We were beginning to combine the melodies of pop music with the sophistication of jazz.
It was really a natural evolution for my own records to evolve out of that. When I finally did win
a Grammy in 1985 for “Early A.M. Attitude,” I think I was actually stuck on the freeway, but
awards aren’t the reason we’re making music.”
For Ritenour, those early days were only the beginning of a dazzling five-decade career that has
seen him as an enfant terrible of ‘70s fusion, a crossover star of the ‘80s pop chart, an honorary
exponent of Brazilian jazz, and the fingers behind the ‘90s supergroup, Fourplay. He’s a
Grammy Award winner with 16 nominations and a Jazz Society honoree. You’d think he’d be
content to rest on his laurels.
You’d be wrong.
“People have been telling me for years, ‘You gotta make a solo guitar record,” he said. “In the
past, I’ve always been the band guy, the ensemble guy, so this was one project I hadn’t done. I
knew it was time.” The result was 2020’s Dreamcatcher, an album that reflects a difficult time
in Ritenour’s life. “Our house and my studio in Malibu burned down in 2018,” he said. “About
100 of my guitars, amps, lots of music and the history of my career went up in smoke, pretty
much. A week after the fire, I went to the hospital, which I’d never had to do before, for surgery
to replace an aortic valve. Those incidents and the support of friends and family absolutely
went into this music. Making this record was a lifesaver for me.”
Then, of course, COVID and lockdown hit. Ritenour settled into the makeshift studio in his new
home, equipped with only seven guitars, a computer interface, and good intentions. He let the
context flood into the music he was making. “It was an important album for me, especially with
everything going on in the world,” he said.
Collaboration might be a constant in Lee Ritenour’s life, but in a career of left
turns, Dreamcatcher is another detour for him. Both by necessity and design, this album
represents music in its purest form: one man channeling his headspace and the history
unfolding around him, using the instrument that has sustained him all these years. “I’ve never
done anything like this before and it’s an important missing piece in my guitar history,” he said.
“It was inspiring and meant to happen in these times. After a lifetime of playing the guitar, this
project reaffirmed just how much I love the guitar.”