Guitar Instrumentalist Johnny A. Expressing Moods and Style on His Gibson Signature Model

By: Brian Holland

This interview was previously published in Modern Guitars magazine.

Johnny A. - photo credit: Michael Sparks Keegan

Some musicians develop a plan while on the road to success, one that involves taking chances and making changes. Amid this strategy there’s a burning desire to perform and the ambition to hone a craft to its perfection with respect to both tone and technique. Instrumental musicians especially, know that they have to possess something diverse, a sound that differentiates them from the rest, one that sustains interest and curiosity. Without a vocalist, the lead instrument must have a voice of its own, one that speaks to the listener with a personality, resplendent with passion and emotion.

Johnny A. falls into this category. The Massachusetts native has chosen to let his guitar sing, almost in a way that replaces the actual human voice. It doesn’t stop there, though. Johnny’s electric voice sings in numerous styles, expressing different moods and personas. Dynamic voicing is significant in his songs.

Johnny was a drummer by choice when very young, but eventually found the guitar to be his ‘natural’ instrument. Following a short stint at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, Johnny started a fusion band called Squanty Roo. With numerous influences lighting the path, including the progressiveness of John McLaughlin, King Crimson, and Chick Corea’s Return To Forever, gigs with jazz percussionist Mingo Lewis occurred next. Eventually setting his sights on a more vocal and contemporary direction, he started a rock band called The Streets. With his Beatles and the Stones inspirations in mind, mixed with the liveliness of local favorites, Aerosmith, the band experienced initial local success with their hit ‘What Gives’. Johnny, forever the leader in his own right, went on to form other bands until finally deciding on a change.

He eventually hooked up with keyboardist and vocalist Bobby Whitlock of Derek and the Dominos notoriety. Peter Wolf, of J. Geils Band fame, was his next stop. He was Peter’s guitarist onstage and in the studio for seven years, sometimes producing as well. Meanwhile, in 1994, after becoming aware of Johnny’s amazing talent, the Gibson Guitar Company decided to endorse him, eventually honoring him with his own signature Johnny A. guitar. This exquisite instrument is as unique to Johnny A. as his playing style is to the music world.

His amazing sound, which often evokes reflections of Jeff Beck, Wes Montgomery, Danny Gatton, and many others, developed into a more melodic and fine-tuned vocal instrument as time went on. The melodies in his mind and the voicing within his fingertips easily depicted a solo direction. What happened next was what promising young artists often dream about, a fantastic story for those who have CDs for sale on sites such as CDBaby and the like. Johnny recorded his first solo recording, Sometime Tuesday Morning, releasing it independently on his own label.

Through extensive gigging of the material and smart marketing skills on his behalf, the recognition it received eventually resulted in its re-release on Steve Vai’s Favored Nations label. Though now it seems like an introduction to the fine-textured guitar tones and wonderful melodies Johnny A. is known for today, Sometime Tuesday Morning is regarded by many as one of the greatest instrumental guitar records of all time. Its follow up, Get Inside, was critically acclaimed as well, and delved even deeper into his melodic playing style and diverse tonal qualities.

******

Brian Holland: Johnny, you were in many vocally driven bands before your solo career got going and played many venues around greater Boston.

Johnny A: Yes. I’ve played rooms of all levels and capacity, everywhere from 100-seat rooms all the way up to the Tweeter Center, the Fleet, and places like that. I played the Tweeter Center a couple of times with Peter Wolf [J. Geils Band].

Brian: How did that lead to a career in instrumental guitar?

Johnny A: Basically, just like any musician coming up, I had different kinds of bands and I was always a songwriter. I was a bandleader most of the time throughout my career. Most of my bands were vocally driven, whether I was singing or someone else was. It led up to the time where I was trying to get record deals, throughout the ’70s and the ’80s, even part of the ’90s. I came close a couple of times but never got too lucky with that. So I became more of a sideman, figuring I’d use whatever talent I had to get a gig with someone else of higher stature.

So, I kind of resigned myself to the sideman thing, and that’s when I started playing with people like Mingo Lewis, Bobby Whitlock, and Peter Wolf. I played with Peter for a long time, six or seven years. I played in his acoustic ensemble and also his electric band, The House Party Five. I co-produced an album with him for Warner Brothers in 1996, the Long Line album. We did some touring, not so much in big blocks of time, but we worked pretty much every week. We’d go out for these power weekends where we’d fly out on a Thursday and come back on a Sunday. We did that a lot. At one point, I think Peter just wanted to kind of re-evaluate where he was at. I can’t speak for him, but I think he may have just wanted to spread out a bit and kind of put an end to the touring thing.

I found myself out of work, so at that point I wanted to put the ball in my own hands again instead of somebody else’s. I had a great time working with all of those people, but it was time for me to go back and realize my own creativity for my own benefit. I just started toying with the idea of putting my own band together. I had been writing all along. But I also realized at that point that I didn’t want to sing, because I’m not really the world’s greatest singer. I don’t think you have to be, but the songs I wrote were pretty melodic. You needed a good voice with good tone to pull them off.

Johnny A. - photo credit: Michael Sparks Keegan

I didn’t want to get a singer either, because again, the person who delivers the melody, whether it be a vocalist or a musician, is the voice of the band. I didn’t want to bring in a singer because I knew that the singer would become the personality of my music. I didn’t want to do that anymore, realizing that after doing it for eighteen months or so, if a vocalist walked, I’d be out of luck. I then put all effort into developing my guitar voice, to get a unique sound going on. I tried to meld a lot of my influences and a lot of what I liked about other people’s music. I wanted to pay my respect to those influences, yet at the same time, develop something that was identifiably me. That was the whole crux of what I was doing.

I had the opportunity to make my first record, Sometime Tuesday Morning. I had wanted to make a record of the kind of music I liked, done the way I wanted to hear it, and in the way I wanted to record it. So I didn’t compromise at all. By doing that I was able to have a pretty versatile sounding album, which probably defied trends. You know, to hear a clean guitar approached that way and with that type of production was definitely not the norm of what was going on at the time. But it really wasn’t to consciously defy a trend or to consciously come up with something different in order to make an impression. It was really done because that was the way in which I wanted to do it. I was just following my own instincts. I wasn’t concerned with whether or not the record would sell. I didn’t think it would, to be honest. I never really expected it to do as well as it did. It ended up critically acclaimed, got good press, and it received good radio play and sold a lot of records.

Brian: I think it’s every musician’s dream, those on CDBaby and the like, to self-produce a record and see it do so well. And then to have a semi-major label like Steve Vai’s take it over.

Johnny A: Well, it’s funny, because that’s exactly what happened. I ended up getting a house gig in my hometown. We had a residency every other Monday night. I was just selling the CDs after the gig, out of the car and stuff like that. We had a little trio, and the goal was to get a few gigs locally on the off nights. The other guys in the band had other gigs with bigger bands on the weekends. We started to do pretty good, pretty much selling out every other Monday night.

Then I thought, let’s try and spread this out, maybe get into Boston to see if others dig it. We then got the opportunity to play the House Of Blues, opening for somebody, and it went over really good. They eventually offered us a residency every Tuesday night. They gave us four weeks in a row. The attendance started at like thirty or forty people, and ended up selling out Tuesday nights. They extended the residency and we became the headliner on weekends.

One thing led to another. We got a booking agency. This was all without a record deal. I was getting airplay on the River in Boston, and then some of the other radio stations around New England. WBOS, MVY on the Vineyard, NCS up in Vermont, they just all started playing the record. They were getting top phone requests for it. Then I started supplying the local independent record stores on consignment. The record started selling so well that after awhile they weren’t even on consignment anymore. They just bought them from me. Mike Dreese of Newbury Comics gave me a tremendous opportunity, putting my records into his store chain. I was very lucky to have someone like that give me a break.

Brian: Talk about playing with Bobby Whitlock.

Johnny A: I played with Bobby twice, actually. I played with him first around 1980 or so out in California. I was staying at the Record Plant House in LA, and I ran into Bobby and Doug Clifford, the drummer of Creedence Clearwater Revival. We were jamming down in the cellar, or the basement of this big house. They asked me if I’d consider coming out to San Francisco, where Doug is from, because they were putting a band together. Bobby had relocated out there.

I was playing with my band, The Streets, at the time. But I went out there and stayed for a couple of weeks. These guys are great musicians. I mean, Creedence, a ton of hits. And Bobby, Derek & the Dominos and Delaney and Bonnie. That was some of my favorite stuff all throughout high school. I played with them for a couple of weeks. I went out there just to see if it would gel or jive, but I felt like there was something scattered about it; it just wasn’t together. Even though I enjoyed the music part of it, I decided not to do the project and came back home.

But later on, I worked with Bobby again, closer to the ’90s. A friend of mine, who was kind of quasi-managing me at the time, started working with Bobby. He just wanted to get out and tour and possibly record. I ended up getting called to be the bandleader. We worked a couple of months in the New England area. It was a good band and it was fun because we actually got out and played. The first time I played with Bobby we were rehearsing in Cosmo’s Factory. Remember the album by Creedence Clearwater Revival? We were actually rehearsing in that place. But, the second time was rehearsals with a full band. We did a bunch of gigs, played The Bottom Line. We did a video for Japanese television. It was fun to hear that guy sing and play that Hammond organ every night.

Brian: You made an appearance at Clapton’s Crossroads Festival?

Johnny A: Yes. I was really sick with the flu that weekend. It was in Dallas. It was about 99 degrees with 110% humidity, and there I was with a temperature of 101. It was a tremendous event. It was a grand scope, with three stages, and everybody was there. I got to see and meet so many people who I respect as players.

Brian: And then came The James Burton and Friends Guitar Greats Concert.

Johnny A: Yeah. How I met James was, someone had an old Telecaster for sale. They had called me about it and said it had once belonged to James Burton. I had gotten James’ number from a friend of mine. I called and spoke with his wife, Louise. It turned out that a bunch of James’ guitars were stolen. Because of me they were able to track the guitars back, which was great. Since then, James and I have become friends and we’ve played together onstage. We got together at the Muriel Anderson All Star Guitar Night at the NAMM show. That night we kind of bonded as musicians and then he asked me to play his festival. That was fun; it was such a great vibe. James is so well liked and so influential to so many people.

Brian: ‘Get Inside’, your second release, delves even deeper into solo guitar music, in my opinion. I found the title song to be very interesting, because it’s comprised of so many different guitar tones. Did you spend a lot of time on the quest for tone?

Johnny A: Well, I spend a lot of time in formulating how I think the song should be. And again, it’s always about a vocal approach. Even though it’s done on guitar, it’s a vocal approach. I hear the guitar as the main voice and the background vocals. I’m hearing the difference between how a verse should sound and how a chorus should sound; or a “call and response” on a Motown record, where the lead singer sings something and the background singers say something back. That’s kind of how I approach my music.

I wasn’t the type of guy who grew up a guitar geek listening to guitar music. I had always listened to guitar-driven music; I was enticed by music driven by guitar. But they were always vocally based, whether it was the Beatles, the British invasion stuff, or the Everly Brothers. Yes, there were some instrumental guitar playing, like Chet Atkins, Les Paul, and Wes Montgomery. But most of the bands I listened to growing up weren’t instrumental bands. I’m into songwriting first. And if I could sing like Paul McCartney, I’d be a singer. I can’t, so I use my guitar to emulate, from a tone standpoint, what I want to hear.

Brian: That’s very interesting. You just described for me how you go about putting the cover songs together, such as ‘Wichita Lineman’, ‘Poor Side Of Town’, ‘Yes It Is’, and ‘The Wind Cries Mary’.

Johnny A: Yeah. I think you can tell by the cover songs I do, with the exception of ‘Walk, Don’t Run’, that they’re vocally based songs. ‘Walk, Don’t Run’ was a Johnny Smith instrumental, but the other cover songs on Sometime Tuesday Morning were vocally based. On the second CD, ‘Poor Side Of Town’ and ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ are both vocal songs. I don’t usually go for covering an instrumental guitar song.

Brian: Your tone is often on the edge – clear, yet with a distorted trace. I really like it.

Johnny A: Thanks. Again, it’s about expression and how I hear it. There are certain tones in certain songs that are very distorted and saturated and there are those that are very clean. There are those that are clean, yet do break up a little, like ‘Get Inside‘, for example. It’s all done with the dynamic pressure of my right hand. It’s not really unlike a singer, trying to enforce a note and the voice gets a little gruff.

Somebody like Paul Rogers can sing clean, and then when he sings harder it gets a little distorted. It’s really about expression, dynamics, and color. That’s what keeps things interesting to me. I have a disadvantage from an instrumental standpoint, as does any instrumentalist, in trying to be commercially acceptable. Most people are keyed into hearing a singer and the words. I need to try to be as lyrical as possible with my instrument, and mix the sounds up so the audience doesn’t get bored.

Brian: Have you got anything new in the making?

Johnny A: I’m in the process of trying to get this record budget together, and a time frame to record a third album. My DVD came out recently, before Christmas, which was a performance/instructional DVD. It had the band performing eight songs, and a song analysis of each. You can print out tablature of those songs from the disc. It has an explanation of gear, including my signature guitar.

Brian: You started out as a drummer?

Johnny A: Yes. I was a drummer when I was real young, age six or so. I listened to people like Sandy Nelson and those types of drummers of the day, instrumental bands like The Surfaris. But as soon as the British invasion came along, and all that melody, you know, like The Beatles, The Animals, The Stones, and even The Everly Brothers, I wanted to play guitar. I had a conflict in me for a couple of years, where I was playing drums and learning guitar. Then at one point I got the opportunity to play guitar with a band at a gig. The day I did that I never again went back to playing drums. I still own several drum sets, and I’ll still get up and play at a sound check once in awhile. But my natural ability was always guitar, not drums. I could play, but I never had the dexterity of a naturally great drummer. Guitar came very natural to me.

Brian: You had trouble with spinal curvature, or scoliosis, when you were young?

Johnny A: Yes. I was lucky because my mother detected it when I was young. They tried to fix it with therapy, exercise, and elevated shoes. Eventually I was in a full-body cast during high school, I think for thirteen or fourteen months. I wore a back brace for two years after that. So, it was a little over three years of protective procedures to attempt to correct it. It’s corrected to a point, but I still suffer every day with back pain.

Brian: Did it inhibit your guitar playing?

Johnny A: No. It probably made me a better player. I gigged with the body cast on. It was like wearing a turtleneck sweater, higher even. In keeping my spine and my neck straight, it forced my chin up. I had no way to move my head from left to right. I couldn’t see my left hand and I couldn’t look down to see my right hand. I was about thirteen when I went into the cast, so I had been playing guitar for a year-and-a-half or so. That whole formative time when I played in a band and I was learning to play all of the Jimi Hendrix, Clapton and Cream stuff, I couldn’t see the guitar. I was totally erect when sitting in a chair and I couldn’t see my hands. I glance at the neck when I play now, but I play pretty much with my eyes closed. I very rarely have my eyes open when I play. I never really learned by looking at the neck, so I rarely look at it now.

Brian: Who do you consider your main influences?

Johnny A: Influences from songwriters and music in general were people like a lot of the British invasion guys: The Beatles, Stones, Animals, Kinks, Yardbirds, and even Gerry Rafferty. Guitar playing influences early on were George Harrison, Chet Atkins, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and early Zeppelin. Later on, as I got older and started listening to other people, it was players like Steve Howe, Robert Fripp, John McLaughlin, Bill Connors with Return To Forever. I started getting into the jazz guys like Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Pat Martino, and a ton of other guys.

There were so many great ones to learn from. They don’t have to have great chops. If they have a voice and some kind of style in their playing, you can grab something. If they’re intriguing, like Jimmie Vaughan, I love listening to them play. Jimmie plays with kind of a primitive approach and seems to play with a limited vocabulary. But he’s so stylized that it’s very, very hard to emulate what he does. I’ve done a bunch of shows with Jimmie and I’ve had the occasion to jam with him twice. I just love his playing. And then there’s Brad Paisley. The guy’s a monster player. I’ve come to appreciate and enjoy players for different reasons.

Brian: Do you play with theory in mind?

Johnny A: No, I don’t. I play purely by instinct and ear.

Brian: Do you get into any alternate tunings?

Johnny A: Not with this instrumental stuff, though I have used alternate tunings when I worked with Peter Wolf. Everything you hear on both of my albums, or live, is in standard tuning.

Brian: Do you favor certain keys?

Johnny A: No, not necessarily. There are a lot of different keys that are nice for different things. F# is a nice key, and so is C#m. It depends upon the song. For example, ‘Two Wheel Horses’ is in A flat because it sounds right in A flat. ‘Get Inside’ is in F#m. But the chorus is in the relative major, which is A.

Brian: You’ve got the Gibson Johnny A Signature guitar.

Johnny A: Yeah, it’s pretty wild. And it’s a totally new design. They haven’t done that for an artist in forty years, since Barney Kessel. It’s a long-scale guitar, 25.5 inches, which is Gibson’s jazz scale. It has an ebony fingerboard with custom pearl inlays, unique to the guitar. It’s the first time those inlays have appeared on a Gibson guitar. It’s a full hollowbody; there’s no center block. The hollow body is about 14 and 1/8 inches wide. It joins at the eighteenth fret. It’s fully carved of solid woods with a maple top and there’s no plywood or laminate. The back and sides are one piece mahogany, totally carved out.

The inside of the back is carved flat, as opposed to mirroring the inside back of the arch in the top. That’s to get a quick reflective response off of the back. Basically, if you listen to an arch-top acoustic, and you listen to a flat-top acoustic, the flat-top seems louder and projects more. I wanted the sound to bounce back and hit the pickups fast. It kind of acts as a feedback buster too, probably because the back inside carve doesn’t match the back inside carve of the top, so there isn’t this mirror image thing going on, where the air kind of swirls around.

The feedback buster is a by-product of the carving. It works great, because I play at pretty impressive volumes live and all my sound is coming at me. I don’t use speakers behind me; I use monitors coming at me. There are no back line speakers for me. I record direct and I play direct into the PA. I don’t use speaker cabinets. So, the speakers I hear are the monitor cabinets in front of me. They’re pretty loud, yet I don’t have any kind of howling feedback. I get feedback, musical feedback, but not unwanted feedback.

The guitar is multi-bound. It has a Bigsby tremolo, or you can buy it with a stop tailpiece. It has a special neck carve that’s to my specs. It has two classic ’57 pickups in it. I think it’s an extremely versatile guitar. The idea of it came from wanting to have a guitar that I’d be able to come close to emulating or replicating the sounds of my albums.

The first album was done with an ES-295. Seventy to seventy-five percent of it was done with that gold guitar you see on the album cover. It’s a big hollow-body Scotty Moore-type guitar. There were others on that album as well, L-5s, Firebirds, 335s, Les Pauls, all kinds of stuff.

When I went out to play live with the 295 there was just way too much feedback, so I started using the 295 for some songs and the others for other songs. But obviously, the body size and location of the neck joints are totally different on all those instruments. So, I was basically in search of a guitar I could use all night, without changing.

I’ve been endorsed by Gibson since ’94. I started using just Les Pauls. Gibson started making me ’59 bursts with Bigsbys. I really liked them, but I was missing that hollow-body tone. So, when I started getting critically acclaimed and a lot of press, we started talking about the development of a unique, versatile guitar, one that could give me the hollow-body tone and percussive attack of a 295, yet have the ability to scream and rock out like a Les Paul.

That’s how this whole signature thing came about. They were fans of the albums and fans of how I was promoting Gibson guitars. I used them pretty exclusively since 1993. They liked the sound of my albums and the fact that I was using my guitar as my voice. I’m completely satisfied with it. If it wasn’t my signature, and I had just seen the guitar hanging on a rack, it would definitely be the guitar I’d buy. It offers a lot of versatility. It can sound like a jazz guitar; you can turn down the volumes and strum it like an acoustic; you can play chord melody on it, because the scale length allows the notes to have great clarity.

It’s a really balanced guitar. I have ten of them. I have the original prototype, and then serial numbers 1 thru 5. The others might be cosmetically different, or have a different wood top or something like that. Some are quilt maple, some flame. I take three on the road. I have a main guitar I use pretty much all night long, and I have a backup to that one in case I break a string or whatever. I don’t have a tech on the road with me. Originally, the third guitar was the same, except for flatwound strings. I used that for ballads. Whether it be ‘Wichita Lineman’, ‘Yes It Is’, Walk, Don’t Run’, or ‘Poor Side Of Time’, those songs were all recorded with flatwound strings. Basically, that guitar would get used twice a night, so I’ve since retired it.

Now I take my main guitar and another with a Bigsby for backup. There’s a couple of songs I’ve added that I wasn’t doing before, such as ‘Ignorance Is Bliss’, songs with more of the country steel bend to them. I had to string one with lighter strings to get that twangy effect. So I’m taking one with a stop tailpiece and lighter strings, for a couple songs a night. I’d take the one with the flatwound strings out, too, but I don’t want to carry four guitars around. It’s hard enough carrying three, but I need the three. We travel light. There’s only four of us, the rhythm section, guitar, drums, bass, and I have an engineer who sets up and breaks down my gear. He’s not a guitar tech. He mixes the band and helps out in other capacities.

I’ve been using Marshall amplifiers since 1992 or ’93, since the gig with Peter Wolf. I use a Marshall 30th Anniversary. I have several of them, in two different configurations. One is a 30th Anniversary 6100, which is basically the head and 4/12 cabinets. Those I used with Peter Wolf. I also record with them because they’re absolutely dead quiet out of the speaker emulation. There’s no hum, no buzz, no nothing. They’re just dead quiet. On the road I use the combo version of that amplifier, the 6101. I use them because they’re smaller. There is a bit of hum out of them, though, so I don’t record with them. I have something like nine of them.

A friend made special cabs for the combos, because I don’t use their speakers. They basically made me head cases for the combo size amplifiers. A mainframe Marshall is a long head. I don’t want to take up that much room. The combo version is shorter. So he built me heads to house the chassis of the combos. I carry a couple of those around, because I run in stereo. For a spare rig, I carry two Marshall JMP 1s, the rack version.

Plus, if I’m doing a festival or something, and I’ve got to get on and off the stage really quick, I’ll use the spare rig. I carry one combo that has a speaker with me, in case there’s a guest who wants to sit in. I play through the monitors. Most guitarists don’t like it that way. They want their amp behind them, and they want to hear it coming through a cabinet. My ear is tuned to playing direct and hearing the way it sounds through monitors. I prefer that for this gig.

For playing live, I have a pedal board that has a Dunlop 535Q Wah. I have an Aphex Punch Factory Compressor that I use occasionally. I have a Boss OC-2 Octave. I have two Line 6 pedals. One is a tremolo pan, the ToneCore series, that I use for tremolo or panning, depending on the song. I use the Line 6 ToneCore Echo Park pedal, which is a stereo echo unit. I use a Robotalk pedal made by Xotic. It’s basically an envelope filter, or a wah type of thing. I use it occasionally. A little reverb and that’s it.

I use D’Addario strings, the XL series. I use different gauges depending on the guitar; some are .11s, some are .10s, some .09s. I also use the D’Addario Chromes, which are flatwound. My picks are Planet Waves.

******