Guitar guru rocks local venue
Tasha Fowler, guest writer

The audience of the Cactus Theater waits impatiently while Eric Johnson plays what he jokingly calls the "Tuning Song".

"It's not like this every night," he laughs into the microphone.

Johnson, named one of the 20th century's top 100 guitarists by Musicians Magazine and a self-proclaimed perfectionist, sits alone on the candle-lit stage, searching for just the right sound to carry the acoustic "Forever Yours" to the ears of his fans.

"All right, that's good enough," he says, giving in to the crowd's anxious applause. "Here we go."

The Texas-born artist, who's been playing guitar since age 11 and piano since age 5, has an ear for tone. After all, his piano teacher trained him on tone first rather than technique.

"I had a little trouble getting my guitar staying tuned tonight," Johnson admitted backstage after the performance. "I got kind of lost there a little bit about where the tuning was."

It was not obvious, however, to the hundreds of fans who ranged in age from early teens to late 60’s. In fact, Johnson could have tuned his guitar all night, and fans would have cheered his diligent plucking just the same.

Johnson's acoustic guitar and piano performance Oct. 28 presented both old and new songs as well as a piano cover of Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary". Earlier in the day, Johnson visited South Plains College’s Levelland campus to play a few of his songs and participated in a question-and-answer session with the students.

"I write on the piano, but as far as actually playing or performing on it, I've just started doing that within the last year," Johnson said. "When I got the rock and roll bug, I didn't want to play piano anymore."

The rock and roll bug actually hit Johnson when he was only three. However, his love of the guitar bloomed when he was loaned an Estella acoustic guitar by family friends.”

They let me take it home and borrow it for a couple of weeks," Johnson said. "I was so enamored with it that my dad finally went out and bought me a student guitar because I had to return the Estella."

At the age of 13, he was playing in one of his first bands, Sounds of Life, and teamed up later with fellow musician Vince Mariani. Johnson has since lended his talent to other bands, including the Electromagnets, Alien Love Child, and the G3 Tour with guitarists Joe Satriani and Steve Vai. He also has played with such legendary musicians as Carole King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and his life-long hero B. B. King.

"He's such a gentleman," Johnson recounted of King and his experience with the legend on King's Blues Music Festival Tour in 1993. "There were five or six bands on the tour, and he was really nice to everybody. He let us all come out and jam with him and stuff.

"He told me something really important that I've just recently taken to heart," Johnson said about King. "I was so caught up in trying to learn his style of music. He said, 'Man, when you play the way you play, you're really playing great. You need to just do what you do. Do what you do, and be strong in that.' Lately, I've been thinking about that, and it's made me have more fun playing.

"I can't try to be B. B. King or Eric Clapton," Johnson admitted. "First off, I'll never be them. And, second of all, it'll become so mental that it's going to make music have less value and less impact."

Value and impact should be the least of Johnson's worries. It's rumored that pop singer Prince persuaded Capitol Records to sign Johnson merely after seeing a performance on Austin City Limits, and the guitarist's musical accolades include four Grammy nominations, including the award-winning song "Cliffs of Dover".

Although he claims his music to be far from perfect, Johnson is praised by veterans and newbies alike. He poetically offers advice to those following in his footsteps.

"It's better to just be real honest and really put yourself up to the level that you need to and try to be unique and real contributive to something someone's going to want to listen to," Johnson said. "You've got to stay open-minded to that because, ultimately, they're the people you will be providing your service for. If you want to make a career of it, you've got to figure out a way to make it be the vehicle it's intended for, which is to turn people on and make them happy."

Johnson is entitled to dish out the advice, having seven records under his belt and his next, Bloom, scheduled for release early next year. He is currently touring and promoting his acoustic tour with a few more stops in Texas during the remaining year. For more information on Eric Johnson, please visit www.ericjohnson.com.