Eric Johnson, from a recent conversation with Music Radar about his upcoming album, discussing why it takes him so long to complete an album:

“In the end, though, the finished product is what matters, and I just can’t lower my standards. I can’t go, ‘Oh well, I’m not in tune – whatever.’ That isn’t what turns me on. What turns me on is hearing a guitar with a great sound and played really, really great. That’s what gets me up in the morning.”

Johnson says he has about 12 songs completed for the album, which he expects to release soon. The album is being mixed by Andy Johns and is tentatively titled Up Close. Special guests on the album include Jimmie Vaughan, Jonny Lang, and Steve Miller.

(Thanks to GL reader Darren M. for the tip about the interview.)

In 2007, Eric Johnson participated in a concert called Love-In: A Musical Celebration, which was a celebration of the music of the ’60s. In addition to Johnson, the concert featured Buddy Miles of Jimi Hendrix and Electric Flag fame, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Jesse Colin Young of the Youngbloods, Vince Martell of Vanilla Fudge, among others.

For his part of the show, Johnson played songs by Cream and Jimi Hendrix. The video below features Johnson playing Politician by Cream as well as Johnson discussing how he felt when hearing the music of the 60s:

I can’t remember how I came across this article, but I recently found a classic article about Eric Johnson from 1986. The article was written around the time of the release of Johnson’s album Tones. Several of Johnson’s contemporaries are quoted in the article, including Steve Morse, Billy Gibbons, Johnny Winter, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, who had this to say about Johnson:

“Few people understand that when the guy was 15, he was playing Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery stuff, and he was doing it right–that’s pretty cool! If the record that he made years ago, The Seven Worlds, had come out at the time it was ready, instead of being held back for the reason of dollars and pennies–someone besides Eric was holding out for too much money for a deal–he would have been as big as Jeff Beck. He would have been very much in the public eye for modern jazz, rock, and fusion. The guy deserves a lot more recognition than he’s ever gotten. Eric is an honest human being, and he cares about everything. Just listen to him and learn.”

I didn’t realize that Johnson’s first album was stalled for so long by management issues. However, it’s good to know that after those early struggles, Johnson finally started to get the recognition he deserved. Of course, now he’s very well known as one of the greatest guitarists playing today, but it’s interesting to read about him at a time when he wasn’t nearly as well known.

Eric Johnson used to write a column called “Wild Stringdom” for Guitar World magazine. I saw a recent post on his forums linking to an archive of one of Johnson’s old articles, in which he discusses his approach to soloing and shifting positions.

I always want to squeeze the optimum tone out of each note. Guitarists often say that your sound comes from your technique, your guitar or your rig. That’s true to a certain degree, but in my opinion, the finger you fret with and the string you use will also drastically affect your tone. I like all the notes in my lines to have a certain cohesiveness of texture. To that extent, I constantly work out my fingerings, using any and all permutations I can to play my lines. If necessary, I will skip around the strings in order for a passage to maintain tonal consistency; that’s why I might make some fingering choices that seem odd, illogical or simply more difficult to the average guitarist.

The article provides some insight into Johnson’s approach to fret fingering with some nice examples.

Below are a couple of videos of Eric Johnson discussing his amp setup. In the videos, he explains the types of amps he’s running and how he uses them. He also discusses the effects he’s using with the amps.

Here’s part 1:

And, here’s part 2:

The winter NAMM show was a little over a week ago, and some great videos are coming out from the show. Rich Murray over at The Guitar Channel has rounded up quite a few good ones. Thanks to Rich, one of the best I’ve seen so far is this one of Eric Johnson playing his new signature Stratocaster, featuring a bound Rosewood neck, which looks great. In my opinion, the neck binding really enhances the look of the guitar and makes it stand out from other Fenders. Check out Eric playing the guitar:

Guitar Messenger recently posted a nice interview with Eric Johnson taken while Johnson was on the Experience Hendrix tour. There’s both video and a transcript of the interview that you can read. In the interview, Johnson gives some good advice to aspiring musicians:

I think just have fun with the instrument. I think maybe the most important thing is to play what really gives you joy on the guitar, and couple that with pushing yourself. You have to be discriminate, and you have to push yourself, I think, and that’s not always going to feel comfortable. In fact, most of the time it’ll be uncomfortable. But it’s a sweet kind of pain, and I think you have to make peace with that sweet pain, and realize that’s actually sweeter than it is painful, you know what I mean?

TheGearPage.net forums have a nice collection of photographs of the gear that the guitarists on the Experience Hendrix tour were using. For example, there are photos of Eric Johnson’s rig, Brad Whitford’s rig, Mato Nanji’s rig, Bernard Allison’s rig, Eric Gales’s rig, Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s rig, Jonny Lang’s rig, Buddy Guy’s rig, and there are also pictures of some of the artists’ pedalboards.

Interestingly, the guitar techs were asked to tape over the Fender logos on the Fender amps because Gibson was sponsoring the show. Seems like a silly move to me. I’m sure that most people in the audience knew what kind of amps they were.

Check out the gear photos here.

Primal Twang: The Legacy of the Guitar is a DVD of performances from September 2006 in San Diego featuring some great guitarists. From the Primal Twang Web site:

The story of the “instrument of the gods” was told through a combination of onstage narration, video projections of rare historical footage and electrifying live performances by world music legend, Dan Crary and an all-star ensemble of international guitar greats, including Grammy-winners Eric Johnson, Albert Lee, Andrew York, Mason Williams and Doc Watson. Together, in person, for the first time on any stage!

This looks like a great DVD for guitar lovers! You can purchase the DVD on the Primal Twang Web site. Check out a preview below:

I was browsing YouTube the other day and noticed this early performance of Eric Johnson playing Song for George. You may be familiar with the version that appears on Johnson’s album Ah Via Musicom. However, in early performances, he played the song on a Dobro, as shown in the following video. I like the Dobro version even better than the recorded version!