 String-driven thing - Johnny A. Great guitar players don't need fingerprints. They can be identified by their tone -- the distinctive qualities of the sounds they pick, pluck, pull, and push from their instruments. The most dedicated players spend their musical lives looking for a tone, a voice within their guitar that's truly their own. Some find it and stop searching; others never do. For Malden-raised guitarist Johnny A., the hunt began in his teens, when he switched from drums to six-string and a steady diet of the recordings of masters from George Harrison to Chet Atkins, Johnny Rivers, Eric Clapton, Kenny Burrell, Joe Satriani, and Wes Montgomery. And, of course, Jimi Hendrix, whom his mom took him to see. "I've always been attracted to guitarists who play around a song," he relates over a plate of barbecue at Redbones in Somerville. "I like technique, but not at the expense of what a song's about, or of soul or street vibe." A., whose earliest musical memories are of the dancing Middle Eastern melodies of artists like El Bakkar and Barsamian, artists whose records were played alongside Little Willie John by his parents, came up playing at church and high-school dances in the North Shore 'burbs. Then he graduated to the Boston rock scene, where he led the bands Johnny A.'s Hidden Secret and Hearts on Fire, among others. He also moved to San Francisco for a time, where he played in a short-lived outfit with R&B organist Bobby Whitlock and Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer Doug Clifford. He rejoined Whitlock in the early '90s; then in '93 he became part of Peter Wolf's Houseparty Five. "Playing with Pete was a buzz," he says. "I learned a lot. And that band gave 150 percent every night, whether we were at Great Woods or playing in a club in Cleveland. It was a total challenge. I'm a songwriter, and I didn't write any music for Pete. My job as a sideman was making him sound his best. And he was into guys like Bobby Womack, Steve Cropper, Curtis Mayfield -- these R&B guitar players who I didn't have in my bag. He gave me their stuff to study and wanted me to play more like them, which -- hopefully -- I did. But that wasn't really me, you understand?" Yes, but those who attended A.'s performances with the J. Geils Band frontman over the years heard something that perhaps A. himself didn't: a guitarist whose tone was taking on richness and size. It seems now, with the release of A.'s all-instrumental solo debut, Sometime Tuesday Morning, that the process of examining unfamiliar styles with Wolf helped bring his own playing into focus. Of course, it wasn't that simple. After the 1996 release of Wolf's Long Line (Reprise), which A. and bassist Stu Kimball produced with the soulified vocalist, and a stretch of touring that included an acoustic version of Wolf's band, Wolf disbanded the Houseparty Five. A. took a job in an audio store, which then went out of business. "So I was at home, just playing my guitar. I'm not a schooled player; I play by ear. But I always admired seeing a guy in a lounge with a piano or guitar who could play by himself, without vocals, and convey a complete sense of what a song is about. So I took out some music books, staring with The Complete Beatles, and started teaching myself how to read. I wanted to learn how to play the guitar alone in a way that incorporated the melody and arrangement details like the violin parts and the rhythmic feel -- to capture the sense of a song. "It started with 'Till There Was You,' my breakthrough, from The Music Man. And we still do it live." We, for the record, is A., bassist Ed Spargo, and drummer Craig MacIntyre, who collectively call themselves the Bam-Boom Ensemble. Live, they offer the grit that name conjures, biting into their tunes with all the "soul" and "street" it takes to keep A. content. But they do much more. A's new group is a singular presence on the Boston rock and pop scene, winding jazz, blues, popular tunes, rock, and flourishes of psychedelic improvisation into a tight, passionate ball. Think Blow by Blow-era Jeff Beck, with the volume turned down, and you're on the right track. Yeah, in a sense it's lounge music. But when A. and crew tackle the R&B standard "You Don't Love Me," it's hairy as Hendrix -- a near-cousin of "Who Knows" from Jimi's Band of Gypsys. And A.'s straight-for-the-heart performance of "Wichita Lineman" captures all the fragile poetry of Jimmy Webb's graceful arrangement. These tunes and a dozen more made it on to Sometime Tuesday Morning, an album that almost didn't happen when the tiny label that originally sent A.'s Ensemble into Blue Jay Studios in Carlisle folded in the middle of the mixing process. A. had to secure financing to complete mixing and put out the album, which he's now taken to Tower Records, Newbury Comics, and the Internet (CD Baby and his own JohnnyA.com), and which he gigs himself while he tries to find a label or distributor to run with it. It's certainly one of last year's best local CDs, full of generous melodies. Not only do the delicately pointillistic title track, the riff-driven "Two Wheel Horse," the country-pickin' "Tex Critter," the lovely Kenny-Burrell-meets- "If you play someone `Sometime Tuesday Morning' or `Tex Critter' separately, it doesn't sound like the same player," A. offers. "But as an album, the guitar tone is the glue. I have a very light picking hand. I use it for dynamics, which you can hear jump out a lot. And I have this Marshall amplifier that I got new in '93 with Peter. I tried recording the album with vintage amps, but they just didn't sound like me." A. also favors Gibson guitars, which are all over the CD, from his vintage ES-295 to new Les Pauls. But it's not the gear that makes Sometime Tuesday Morning a gem. It's him. |
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