Mark Lettieri - Things of That Nature (2019)

Since diving headlong into the wonderland of Snarky Puppy, the powerhouse band with whom he has won multiple Grammys, along the way working with the likes of David Crosby, Erykah Badu, Kirk Franklin, and 50 Cent, Fort Worth-based guitarist Mark Lettieri has plumbed his deepest waters in a string of solo albums. Starting with Knows (2011) and Futurefun (2013), then moving on to the Billboard-charting Spark and Echo (2016) and, most recently, the appropriately titled Deep: The Baritone Sessions (2019), Lettieri returns with Things Of That Nature, his most personal effort to date. As a sonic experience, it’s both three-dimensional and metaphysical, and in that sense represents a giant leap of intuition. Joining him over the edge are Jason “JT” Thomas on drums and percussion, Wes Stephenson on electric bass, Justin Stanton on Moog and Fender Rhodes, Shaun Martin and Bobby Sparks on an even wider array of keyboards, and Bob Reynolds on tenor saxophone. As with each of Lettieri’s records, this one is a time capsule of life experiences shared with musicians he trusts to convey those experiences in photorealistic detail.

Listening to the emblematic Naptime, one gains keen insight into the mind of an artist who blurs lines in more ways than one. Not only because the song was hammered out between waking hours while his newborn daughter slept, but also because Lettieri is an idiomatic chameleon, jumping nimbly from one mood to another while the rest of the world slumbers. Like much of the set presented on this, his fifth album as leader, it grew out of seeds planted in Lettieri’s home studio, watered to fruition under sometimes-urgent circumstances.

Mark Lettieri: guitars
Jason "JT" Thomas: drums
Wes Stephenson: bass
Shaun Martin: keyboards