Stowell’s Detours Make the Journey Delightful

Sometimes a label like “jazz guitarist” doesn’t tell the whole story.

When Portland-based guitarist John Stowell played Restaurant Kikuya in Huntington Beach on Wednesday with bassist Luther Hughes and drummer Paul Kreibich, he transcended that job description with classical execution, involved harmonics and an alternative read on lyricism. The tunes, standards familiar to the crowd, came from a somewhat different place than the jazz lineage that produced Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery.

Stowell has long traveled just outside the mainstream jazz world, having pioneered jazz and new-music niches with saxophonist Paul Horn and bassist David Friesen beginning in the ‘70s.

Both his technical ability and the way he cradles the guitar in a vertical, Eliot Fisk-like way, suggest a classical background. But Stowell, between sets, insisted he’s had “not a lick” of classical training.

A cult favorite since the ‘70s, especially in the Pacific Northwest, Stowell recorded for the respected Inner City label (in collaboration with Friesen) and other independents. More recently he’s made albums for German and Italian labels. In a show of admiration, guitarists Ron Eschete and Steve Cotter were in the audience, and one fan brought in a pair of weathered LP covers for the guitarist to sign.

Working with a rhythm section he wasn’t familiar with didn’t mask Stowell’s personality. He took liberties with the themes of “I Should Care,” and “How Deep Is the Ocean? (How High Is the Sky?)” adding variations to the familiar lines while delivering them at varied speeds.

His solos proceeded along lines that took unexpected leaps and turns. Lyrical, occasionally suggestive phrases bounced against offbeat chordal structures. Despite the strange chords and twisted narrative, it all made incredible sense.

Stowell picked his way between Kreibich’s gentle cymbal taps into “Yesterdays” as carefully as you’d pick a lock. Once inside, he used minor-key chords to give his melancholy lines extra gloomy airs.

On Dizzy Gillespie’s “Con Alma,” he rushed ahead, almost off-balance, like a tightrope walker making for safety. Stowell described his particularly electric reading of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Zingaro” as his “heavy-metal version.”

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Kreibich and Hughes, both eminently adaptable, showed extreme sensitivity to Stowell’s play. Kreibich was responsive to the guitarist’s frequent dynamic swings, picking up the tempo in smooth style as Stowell accelerated into the close of “Con Alma.” Hughes, playing acoustic bass, cut between the guitar lines with accents and echoes while keeping a blood-like pulse. Though difficult to hear at times, his play was markedly more ambitious than usual.

Sometimes the true measure of jazz musicians comes at song’s end when slight rhythm changes and theme variations provide extra opportunity for artful achievement or failure. To their credit, these three closed each number alert and of one mind, while adding smart touches on their individual instruments. In the case of “Con Alma,” which means “with soul,” the close was its most soulful moment.