Eric Johnson returns to UK for nationwide tour

Eric Johnson’s stature as one of the
premier guitar players in contemporary music is his artistic trump
card, backed by a Grammy Award and five nominations, platinum album,
Top 10 hits like Cliffs of Dover, praise from critics
and the esteem of his peers. The full range of his talents marks him as
a gifted songwriter, dynamic live performer, singer, pianist, and song
interpreter.

His myriad and distinctive musical gifts are vividly evident on Johnson’s current studio album, Up Close,
released on his own Vortexan Music label. The 15-track disc finds the
noted master craftsman cutting loose, roaming through variations on the
rock, blues, pop, country and jazz genres,  pushing the dynamic range
of his artistry, and mixing it up with such friends and peers as
guitarists Jimmie Vaughan and Sonny Landreth, plus guest vocalists Steve
Miller, Johnny Lang and Malford Milligan.

“I decided to let go a bit and allow things to happen and just go
with the flow,” explains Johnson about his approach to the album.
“That’s a direction that works better for any artist, and especially
for me. I like my work to have a high proficiency, but I also want to
go for the energy and magic of the performances.”

That vitality and vivid musicality brims from such hook-filled numbers as the hard-rocking instrumentals Fat Daddy and Vortexan and the driving vocal song Brilliant Room (sung by Milligan). Gem is splashed with bright and painterly six-string colors, Soul Surprise finds Johnson weaving a picturesque tapestry of both his guitar and piano gifts, and Arithmetic summons up a swirling and spectral kaleidoscope of guitars, keyboards and Johnson’s singing.

His early years and influences are explored on the Mike Bloomfield/Buddy Miles-composed blues song Texas (from the 1968 Electric Flag album A Long Time Comin’) on which Miller sings and Johnson’s and Vaughan’s guitars engage in stirring interplay, and Austin
(sung by Lang), which looks back to his teens in his hometown as a
budding player and avid music fan who would be allowed to slip
under-aged into music nightclubs and “go sit in the back and listen to
bands.”

On The Way is a delightful Texas meets Tennessee twang romp, and A Change Has Come To Me
opens with a six-string nod to Jimi Hendrix (a prime Johnson
influence) that carries through the track as it burgeons into a
celebration of the pleasures of the deep and soulful groove.
Interstitial instrumental snippets like the spellbinding Indian
music-flavored opener Awaken and the dreamlike Traverse and The Sea and the Mountain plus Change (Revisited) weave the collection together. Johnson caps the CD with the uplifting grace note of  Your Book on which he and Landreth interweave their playing (including Johnson’s stately piano work) with emotive elegance.

The lyrical themes of reflection, emotional revelations, personal
growth and fulfillment are underscored on the album by Johnson’s most
daring, urgent, progressive and at times raw and fervent guitar work to
date. With its sonic immediacy (thanks to a mix by engineering legend
Andy Johns) and openhearted musicality and songwriting, Up Close truly lives up to its name as Johnson continues to forge fresh and compelling new dimensions of his artistry.

Johnson leapt to the forefront of contemporary music some 20 years
ago as “an extraordinary guitar player accessible to ordinary music
fans,” as the Memphis Commercial Appeal hails him, with his landmark million selling 1990 album Ah Via Musicom.
Hailed as a record that reached near-classic proportions within the
guitar community, it was preceded by dedicated groundwork as a live
performer that marked him as a talent bound for great things. And it’s
been followed by a diverse and fascinating musical journey that
inspired The New Age Music Guide to rave that “Eric Johnson
plays guitar the way Michelangelo painted ceilings: with a colorful
vibrancy that’s more real than life.”

His achievements include being enshrined in Guitar Player’s Gallery of Greats and named one of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of the 20th Century by Musician magazine
amongst numerous other awards. He enjoys the admiration of many of his
fellow players and has performed/ recorded with such notables as Chet
Atkins, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and others.

He was tapped by Eric Clapton to appear at the 2004 Crossroads
Guitar Festival and plays his second stint of the Experience Hendrix
tour in fall 2010. He has paid homage in song to such players as Jerry
Reed (“Tribute to Jerry Reed” on his album Bloom), fellow Texan Stevie Ray Vaughan (the Grammy-nominated track “SRV”) and Wes Montgomery (who Johnson saluted in his Ah Via Musicom
song “East Wes”), and boasts both a signature Fender Stratocaster
electric and Martin MC-40 acoustic guitar. “Cliffs of Dover” is
featured in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock as the final winning challenge.
And in addition to his recordings, tours and DVDs under his own name,
Johnson also plays with his side project Alien Love Child, which
released an in concert album in 2000, Live and Beyond, that earned an instrumental Grammy nomination for the song “Rain.”

Even before his breakthrough with Ah Via Musicom, Johnson made his indelible mark with his 1986 first album release Tones. It landed him on the cover of Guitar Player
magazine, which hailed the album as “a majestic debut,” and earned him
his first Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance with
the track “Zap.” Ah Via Musicom won Johnson a Grammy for Cliffs of Dover, which was one of his record three Top 10 instrumental hits from a single album alongside Trademark and Righteous.
Following three years of concerted touring that established him as a
continuing popular concert attraction, Johnson recorded Venus Isle,
which on its release in 1996 garnered him another Grammy nomination.
In 1998, his previously unreleased first album recording from 1976, Seven Worlds, was finally issued. A limited-release collection of demos, outtakes and live tracks, Souvenir, hit the streets in 2002. His most recent studio album, 2005’s Bloom, yielded a fifth Grammy nomination.

Johnson’s success over the last 20 years was presaged by a
grassroots rise in which he made his bones and burgeoning reputation as
a formidable musical talent and player since he first became a local
sensation in the Austin clubs as a teen with the psychedelic rock band
Mariani.

Trained on classical piano as a youth, he switched to the guitar
after the stateside arrival of the Beatles in 1964. As a young player
he delved deeply into blues, jazz, country and other styles that inform
his music. By the mid-1970s, Johnson began touring and sparking a buzz
about his astonishing talents in the jazz-rock outfit Electromagnets,
whose recordings and a live TV performance from that era were released
in the 1990s to critical acclaim. He cut his teeth in the studio on
sessions for Cat Stevens, Christopher Cross and Carole King, and by
1984 his stature in Texas and beyond was so strong that the unsigned
artist was tapped to make his first appearance on the prestigious PBS
concert show “Austin City Limits.” At the urging of such stars as Cross
and Prince, Johnson was signed to a major label deal with Reprise
Records and emerged onto the international recording scene.

His dynamism as a performer is captured on the 2008 DVD Anaheim and the 2005 DVD/CD release of his second “Austin City Limits” show in 1994, Live From Austin, Texas. His 1996 G3 tour with guitarists Joe Satriani and Steve Vai yielded a best-selling album and platinum DVD, G3: Live in Concert.

Johnson’s eminence as an artist goes beyond just his stunning guitar
mastery. His keen compositional sense and lyrical playing create
instrumentals that speak to listeners and convey thoughts, emotions and
imagery, and Up Close also spotlights his singing and sure
way with words.“It really boils down to the music and the song at the
end of the day,” he explains. “If it doesn’t have that it gets boring
for me.”

On his current album release, “I wanted to bare myself a little
further and show myself more,” says Johnson. “As you evolve as a person
and artist, you reach forks in the road where you look at what it is
you really want in life and to bring out in yourself and thereby affect
other people. What’s most important to me is to grow as a person, and
because of that, I want my music to also grow and have more of a
profound meaning and impact.” And Up Close finds Eric Johnson continuing to expand his artistry with compelling and enriching results.