Eric Johnson Interview: Austin, Strats and Standel Amps

By: Rick Landers

Here’s a classic Guitar International interview from May 25, 2010.

Photo Credits: Michael G. Stewart

A stampede of both music legends and one hit wonders have risen from Austin’s music clubs and corner bars to reach national fame and stardom. This long list of pickers, singers and others includes Janis Joplin, the 13th Floor Elevators, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Fred and His Playboy Band, as well as Texas blues brothers Edgar and Johnny Winter, just to name a few.

Born in 1954, Austin bred guitarist extraordinaire Eric Johnson first emerged as a player to watch in the late ’60s with a group called Mariani. The band released a psychedelic record with only a limited run of one-hundred copies. Today, a single copy can fetch up to $3,000 from devoted Johnson fans and are extremely hard to find even if one has that kind of money to spend on such a prized catch.

By the time he turned sixteen, barely old enough to drive a car, Johnson had already developed a vast repertoire of mature blues licks; well before he gained world-wide recognition as the guitar virtuoso we all know him as today. As well, by 1974 he had hitched a ride with the band the Electromagnets, pumping out riffs with his Gibson Les Paul that were reminiscent of the classic Hendrix and Clapton recordings, that is until the group broke up a short three years later.

His first solo album, Seven Worlds, was cut in 1978 but wasn’t released until 1998, a full two decades later. Eight years after recording Seven Worlds, Eric released the highly acclaimed album, Tones, (1986) with nine tracks of blistering solo work bringing him to the attention of guitarists around the globe.

His genius was fully expressed in his breakthrough album Ah Via Musicom (1990). Guitarists still can’t help but listen to every note of “Trademark” and his Grammy award winning instrumental “Cliffs of Dover” when they come on the radio. Far from being a one-trick pony, Johnson also proved on this album that he was a vocalist of the highest caliber by singing on a couple of tracks, including a sweetly plaintive, “Desert Rose.”

Live and Beyond was released in 2001 with the tune “Rain” nominated for a 2002 Grammy as Best Pop Instrumental Performance. While in 2002, Johnson fully embrace the virtual world when he limited the distribution of his album Souvenir to internet downloads. Though he later decided to offer fans a hard copy version to satiate their requests to hold a physical copy of the work in their hands.

Ranked as Guitar Player magazine’s Best Overall Player five times in a row and the Austin Chronicle‘s Guitar Player of the Decade in 2000, in April, 2005, Johnson walked off the Austin Music Awards stage with the following: the Austin Musician of the Year Award; Best Electric Guitarist Award; and, Best Acoustic Guitarist Award.

Stepping up to the mic at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, with the Eric Johnson Band featuring bassist Chris Maresh and drummer Tommy Taylor, Johnson kicked off the show with cuts from Ah Via Musicom, and his new CD, Bloom. Song after song, Johnson pulled out the stops, keeping the audience corralled by holding off friendly banter until everyone was deep within the inner circle of his musical realm.

Rick Landers: Tell us about growing up in Austin, Texas, and the music scene that was happening around you at the time.

Eric Johnson: There’s always been great rock, and of course the blues and blues rock, but there’s also jazz, classical and all sorts of stuff going on in Austin all the time. There have always been a lot of great pop bands as well.

It was the same when I was a kid, which is one of the things that got me into playing guitar in the first place. I’d go out and hear this great music going on everywhere. There were a lot of good bands that I’d see like the Georgetown Medical Band, Lavender Hill Express, and Shepherd’s Bush. There were a lot of really good bands.

I remember seeing Johnny Winter at the old Vulcan Gas Company. I paid fifty cents to get in. Oh, man you’d go in and it was this pre-Armadillo place. I’d go in and sit down on the floor like it was the Fillmore or something. It was really great!

I think that was in ’69, or maybe ’68, I was still really young, like twelve or thirteen. I heard Johnny play even before he had made any records, he was real bluesy and there was no commercialism to it. And his brother Edgar was awesome too.

Eric Johnson – photo credit: Michael G. Stewart

Rick: I understand you enjoyed the Austin Music Awards (South by Southwest Music Festival).

Eric Johnson: Yeah, there was one this last March. We all went out and listened to a bunch of bands every night. I think we got best band and I got best electric guitarist. Tommy got best drums and Chris got top honors for best bass guitarist. It was really nice. We didn’t play, just collected our loot and enjoyed the music.

Rick: Bloom offers some great Eric Johnson trademark guitar licks, but it also includes some jazz, some claw pickin’ and even a Dylan track. How did you decide on the mix of songs that I understand fall into three sections: Prelude; Courante; and Allemande?

Eric Johnson: There were twenty-three songs, and six or seven didn’t quite make the final cut. The sixteen that did, I tried to put together like a regular album, but that didn’t work and someone recommended that I split them up.

Rick: How involved did you get in the engineering and production of Bloom?

Eric Johnson: Yeah, invariably I do a little bit of that and end up doing some of the engineering myself. But for the most part it’s mostly Richard Mullen doing everything. We also had some different mixers mix the record as well. It was an interesting process. We actually sent the tapes off to different mixers to put their own thing to it without me being there.

Rick: Did you record Bloomat your own studio?

Eric Johnson: Yes. I started building my own studio about ten years ago and I add to it each year. Bloom is the first record I’ve ever done completely out of my studio.

Rick: What do you and your band do to prepare for touring?

Eric Johnson: Well, we find somebody to water the plants, that’s for sure! [Laughs] We rehearse and get together with the crew and have production meetings. We’re starting rehearsals in just a few days.

Rick: Is this pretty much an all-electric tour or are you going to pepper it with some acoustic work?

Eric Johnson: I’ll probably play a couple acoustic pieces.

Rick: What guitars, amps and gear are you using?

Eric Johnson: For electric, I’ll use my same old stuff. A couple of Marshalls and a couple of Fender Twins. And I’ll probably bring my new Signature Strat, as well as a couple of vintage Strats. I have a fuzz face and a tube driver and a DC stereo chorus.

Acoustic? I’ll probably bring my Signature Martin.

Rick: Buddy Guy, Kaki King and Johnny A are joining you on this tour?

Eric Johnson: Yes. Kaki’s a really fine solo acoustic guitar player. She has a new record out that’s doing really well. And Johnny A’s an instrumental electric guitarist who does some really interesting eclectic music.

I met Johnny on the East Coast a couple of years ago. He came out to one of my shows and we talked. Later, he ended up signing with Favorite Nations. Kaki and I have the same distribution company, Red Ink, who suggested that she get with us while we were on tour.

I don’t know Buddy really well, but I jammed with him a few times and did a tour with him and B.B. King about ten years ago. I’m glad to open a few shows for him.

Rick: We all know about your quest for tone and your attention to detail. What did you do with Fender to make certain that the new Eric Johnson Signature Stratocaster is exactly to the specs you want in a guitar?

Eric Johnson: Well, I have a couple of old Strats that I’ve kept over the years that to me have the best tone. So, when we decided to do the Signature thing, Michael Braun from Fender came out to Austin and really studied the instruments that I particularly liked. He found some unifying things about them that weren’t on the re-issue Fenders.

So we basically tried to make an old Fender that had some of the appointments that had been thrown away during the early ’70s. We brought those things back and tried to get as close as we could to the original guitar with the playability you get with some of the new improvements.

Rick: And the pickups?

Eric Johnson: I have some ’61 pickups in one of my guitars and that’s kind of the idea that we used. We went with a different copper wire and the way it’s wound, it’s a little bit more like the old style.

Rick: How about the celestial inlaid Eric Johnson Martin MC-40?

Eric Johnson: I worked with Dick Boak and others. I had always thought that if I ever had a handmade acoustic I’d have the planets on the fretboard and an angel at the top. I think I talked to a Martin guy, not Dick, when I was doing a Steve Miller tour and Martin was working with Steve on a Martin guitar for him. They said they might be interested in doing one with me. I didn’t do anything about that for a couple of years, then one day I decided to call Martin to see if they were interested and they were. It took about a year to pull it together.

Eric Johnson – photo credit: Michael G. Stewart

Rick: Do you have any projects that you’ve dreamed of doing, but have just haven’t got around to yet?

Eric Johnson: I’d like to work with an orchestra some day. That would be a lot of fun! And I would like to learn more about music and cut some records that are different styles.

Rick: Are there any guitarists that you always go back and listen to for inspiration?

Eric Johnson: Wes Montgomery!

Rick: Wes used Standel amps. They’re making them again.

Eric Johnson: They’re making them again? Wow! I’ve been trying to find an original amp. I wonder if they’re any good.

******

An Interesting Sidenote

At this point the interview took a detour and digressed into a discussion that led to Eric eventually acquiring my vintage Standel amp.

After Eric’s triple encore show at the Birchmere, we met and Eric pulled out a Schaefer jazz guitar, plugged it into my 1964 Standel Artist XV amp and played some sweet sounding jazz. His road crew and tour manager came around noting how impressive the old amp sounded, urging Eric to buy it and threatening that one of them would buy it if he didn’t.

After some more playing, Eric’s tour bus driver and owner of the bus company pulled out some cash and handed it to me making a gift of the amp to his long-time guitarist friend. Eric threw in a polka dot guitar strap previously owned by Buddy Guy that Eric autographed, a red Dunlop Jazz III guitar pick he used and a Bloom T-Shirt Eric designed for the tour.