By: Debra Devi
The line of guitar fanatics waiting to enter The Bitter End on May 11 for the final show of Eric Johnson’s three-night stand stretched two blocks down Bleecker Street. As we filed in to the narrow, wood-paneled room billed as New York’s Oldest Rock Club, flashes popped while fans jostled to snap pics of Eric’s setup – a pair of Fender Vibroverbs, two Marshalls and a simple flat pedal board with a scratched-up Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man, a Boss digital delay, a Crybaby wah and amp switches.
I scored a seat a foot from the stage at a table of studio musicians, such as Shemekia Copeland/Coco Montoya bassist Jason Langley. Within minutes, drummer Anton Fig and bassist Will Lee kicked off the opening to “Vortexan” from Up Close, soon joined by a very slender Eric Johnson in a denim shirt and worn blue jeans, slinging an equally comfortably worn-in sunburst Strat.
Eric Johnson's Pedal Board
The trio segued into an up-tempo, sweetly melodic cover of “Dear Prudence,” during which Johnson using hybrid picking to switch smoothly between rapid, sweeping arpeggios and plucking three strings at a time. Next, he opened “Gem” with artificial harmonics while joking about “the amps I picked up at Home Depot,” after an audience member yelled “That was beautiful, man!”
After ripping through some Chet Atkins-style picking on the Les Paul standard “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise,” Johnson poked more fun at his perfectionist reputation by remarking that he had to tune again because “it was two and a half degrees cooler backstage than it is out here.”
Other highlights of a stunning set included the challenging Coltrane be-bop tune “Mr. PC,” which let Fig and Lee stretch out while Johnson gave Pat Metheny a serious run for his money. The trio also paid tribute to Bob Dylan, who got his start at The Bitter End, with a fuzzed-out, psychedelic “Like a Rolling Stone,” before revving up the crowd with faves like “Hard Times” from “an obscure record called Souvenir,” as Johnson noted with a grin.
Eric Johnson Live
They also debuted a new jazzy tune–“we haven’t named yet but we’ll just call it ‘Title’”–before Johnson switched to a sleek black Strat with a burled-maple neck for the uplifting “Anthem for Today.” He introduced “Anthem” with a nod to his long-time meditation practice, saying the song “is about finding the connectedness between all of us, because we’re all so similar but the mind says we’re separate.”
A trip to the Venus Isle vault returned “When the Sun Meets the Sky,” followed by sparkling solo guitar chord improvisation that eventually led into the set-closing anthem “Cliffs of Dover.” Near the end of “When the Sun Meets the Sky” Fig and Lee dropped out, leaving Johnson solo to explore some exquisite solo chordal improvisation and his famous koto tapping technique for a good five minutes before he moved seamlessly into the 1991 Grammy-winning hit single “Cliffs of Dover.” That is one tough song to play, even for Eric Johnson, who looked to be concentrating more fiercely during this tune than he had all night.
Following a standing ovation, the trio returned to the stage for a rousing cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?” And after this night’s musical experience, the crowd’s unanimous answer to that question was an emphatic “yes!”
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About the Author
Debra Devi is the lead singer/guitarist for rock power trio Devi. For a free download of the band’s Get Free album, visit www.devi-rock.com.
