Ryan Meagher’s Fevered Mind

By Robert Ham I Mar. 22, 2018

Guitarist Ryan Meagher seems to be settling into his adopted hometown, Portland, Oregon.
(Photo: Lynn Darroch)

Finding a few minutes in Ryan Meagher’s increasingly busy schedule to talk about his new album is a unique challenge. The Portland, Oregon-based guitarist is constantly on the move, squeezing in gigs and jam sessions among his work helping to run the Portland Jazz Composers’ Ensemble, a jazz chamber orchestra that commissions new work from its members and other composers. He also directs the jazz program at Lower Columbia College in nearby Longview, Washington.

The week he was able to carve out time to speak with DownBeat was somehow even busier than usual for Meagher, as he was rehearsing for sets at the Biamp PDX Jazz Festival—one with the PJCE, collaborating with contemporary mariachi singer Edna Vazquez, and another with the freewheeling combo Mostly Other People Do The Killing.

If all this activity is weighing on him, it doesn’t show. Over beers at a noisy pub in Northeast Portland, he’s affable, recounting the steady grind of a career that’s found him living and working in New York, Reno and, for the past eight years, in Portland, and creating his latest album, Lost Days (Fresh Sound New Talent).

This eclectic, playful new record bridges Meagher’s days on the West and East Coast by bringing in players that he got to know in New York (pianist George Colligan and tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry), in San Jose (drummer Mark Ferber) and in Portland (bassist Chris Higgins). Lost Days also revives some tunes that Meagher wrote many years ago, such as “South Slope,” a contrafact of Duke Ellington’s “Isfahan” marked by slowly cycling melodies, which is at least 15 years old.

“I work on tunes for a really long time sometimes,” Meagher said. “And sometimes it happens overnight. It’s pretty hit or miss. To be honest, with a tune like ‘South Slope,’ I never really had a reason to play that because it’s so closely related to the tradition. There isn’t really time to play a Duke Ellington tune. It didn’t really fit in with the modern vibe I’m doing. But playing with Bill, he’s such a strong improviser for this kind of song, I wanted to play something that was more closely connected to the tradition than previous records.”

By and large, Lost Days plays well within those traditional boundaries, but Meagher and his band often color outside the lines, as with the jagged and freewheeling “Meagher” and “Bayou Brasileira,” a tune that bookends that album. The opening version is a slinky modernized bossa nova, underpinned by Colligan’s organ, while the rendition that closes the album, subtitled “Surf Reprise,” feels like the soundtrack to a swinging Pulliam ’60s spy caper.

The new album feels like Meagher settling into his chosen hometown of Portland, while challenging himself as a player and writer. That might be a strange notion, considering he spent a decade in New York, where there are plentiful opportunities to perform and try out new ideas. But to hear him talk about his time in the Big Apple, it seems as if a lot of energy was expended simply on getting by.

“No one wants to struggle, but that’s what makes New York what it is,” Meagher said. “It drives people out early. I could have stayed there, but I wanted a certain lifestyle that would have been next to impossible for me to attain there. And I don’t want everything to be so hard all the time. I don’t miss having a trip to the grocery store be a super difficult process.”

His decade-long stint in New York came after spending most of his life in the Bay Area, growing up in San Jose and then moving south to study music at San Diego State University. Once he graduated, he immediately lit out for the East Coast, but found himself back in the West, earning a master’s degree at University of Nevada-Reno.

It wasn’t until about eight years ago that Meagher became a permanent resident of Portland, and he hit the ground running. He started a jazz composer’s jam session to help local artists work on their original material and was quickly brought into the PJCE as its guitarist and director of operations. Through that ensemble’s in-house label, he’s released a pair of albums—2013’s Tango In The City of Roses and 2016’s Mist. Moss. Home.—that are perfect showcases for his resonant electric playing and thoughtful compositions.

True to form, Meagher isn’t sitting still in the wake of Lost Days. He already has another album recorded (a session inspired by Paul Motian’s trio called Mirror Image that pits two three-piece ensembles against each other) and is looking to finish up a long-simmering project inspired by James Joyce’s The Dubliners that will blend jazz and traditional Irish music. That all sounds like the product of a fevered, somewhat unsettled mind. But for Meagher, it’s just “me trying to be me.”

“I don’t know where that comes from,” he said, wondering. “I like playing my own music or music that feels more like mine. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing traditional jazz and practice mainstream bop the most. I feel connected to that tradition and feel a part of it, but I also don’t think that’s what I’m best at. I’m best at doing my own thing, whatever that is.” DB