Guitar Man - Johnny A.
By TED DROZDOWSKI
The Boston Phoenix/Cellars by Starlight - 2/26/04

AUTOGRAPH MAN: Johnny A. now has his own signature Gibson and a new
R&B-flavored CD.

Ever since Les Paul designed the guitar that bears his autograph on its headstock in the ’50s, a mark of honor reserved for the finest rank of guitarist has been the signature-model six-string. Eric Clapton has a Stratocaster patterned on his famous "Blackie"; B.B. King’s name is on Gibson’s "Lucille." Jimmy Page and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry even have, uh, signature series Les Pauls. Now you can add to that list Salem’s Johnny A., whose just-released second album, Get Inside (Favored Nations), follows the debut of the Johnny A. model Gibson.

"That just blows my mind," he says. "Not just because it’s my signature guitar, but because it’s with Gibson. The heritage of that company with Les Paul, Chet Atkins, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, Johnny Smith, Kenny Burrell . . . It just blows my mind."

Johnny, who’ll be playing a release party tonight (February 26) at the Peabody Essex Museum, at became a Gibson endorsee when he started leading Peter Wolf’s band in 1994. Gibson’s custom shop began making guitars -- hollow-body ES 295s, solid Les Pauls -- to his specs. After his self-released instrumental debut, Sometime Tuesday Morning, was picked up by guitar guru Steve Vai’s Favored Nations label and Johnny’s trio became a national touring act with airplay on hundreds of radio stations, he got even closer to the luthiers at Gibson. And, as he says, "one thing led to another."

Johnny’s signature guitar is a hollow-bodied beauty with the resonance, big tone, and feedback resistance of a solid-body. "It has a double cutaway for easy access and style and a 25-1/2-inch scale neck, which is more of Gibson’s jazz-scaled neck," he explains when we meet for lunch at the Red Rock Bistro in Salem. "So far, Gibson’s sold over 100, and it’s not a cheap guitar."

Of course, even in the decades when Johnny led bands like his own Hearts on Fire and Hidden Secret through small Boston clubs, he never played his talent cheap. And when he decided he needed to step out as an instrumentalist with 2000’s Sometime Tuesday Morning, he recorded the disc at Blue Jay in Carlisle out of his own pocket, albeit at off-hours and between full-rate big-label sessions. For Get Inside, he had a larger budget and an entire month to work at Boston’s Skyline Studios. "I tried to bring more of an R&B feeling to this album, which wasn’t really apparent much on Sometime Tuesday Morning. The first single, ‘I Had To Laugh,’ has more of a horn-revue vibe to it. ‘Get Inside’ felt like Al Green to me where I’m trying to make an instrumental version of the sound Green had with the Memphis Horns."

"I Had To Laugh" does have a big horn-groove hook when Johnny’s guitar
communes with Henley Douglas Jr.’s sax and Garret Savluk’s trumpet, but there’s a little Nashville in the mix, too. At least in the double-stop intro and the few other turns when his guitar relaxes its swinging and singing for more rhythmic phrases. "Get Inside" does capture the heavy soul groove that the original Reverend Al and his producer, Willie Mitchell, invented at Hi Records -- with a little goosing from Johnny’s fat buttery tones, which like Green’s voice dance across the lines of sweetness and grit. But the sweetest track is his interpretation of the Johnny Rivers classic "Poor Side of Town." He lingers gently over each note, adding delicate filigrees that bring out the sensitivity and the heartbreak of Rivers’s lyrics -- sans, of course, those lyrics.

"The R&B feel gave me more space for melodies. Sometime Tuesday Morning was more a collection of styles and influences and me finding my way through them. This time, I was more conscious of trying to feel like a singer, as opposed to a guitar player delivering a melody." Not that Sometime Tuesday Morning scrimped on melodies. Johnny’s first batch of instrumentals was catchy enough to grab the ears of 75,000 CD buyers and win him tours with Jimmie Vaughan, George Thorogood, and Jonny Lang. With "I Had To Laugh" debuting on adult radio as the second-most-added song in the country in late January, his tunes should soon be making their way into even more heads.

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