WHY DON’T I KNOW ABOUT THIS GUY? #1 – JOHNNY A

For many in the North East region Johnny A may be on your radar. The Boston based guitarist seems to play regionally regularly and by the look of his videos he’s been doing it for a while. I know I have seen his name listed in Philly etc. in ads and listings but never knew a thing about him. Many of you may have seen his video in my recent blog UNDENIABLY CLASSIC SONGS – WICHITA LINEMAN which features and incredible instrumental version of that song by Johnny. I included it her again for those who missed it (if you saw it move on down for more cool originals and hip covers by Johnny A).

Once I saw this clip, I wanted to check this guy out. Finding this has inspired me to start this regular feature WHY DON’T I KNOW ABOUT THIS GUY/GIRL? So if you know of someone regional or off the beaten track, whether currently performing or someone obscure that you think I should hear about keep me posted.

JOHNNY A PLAYS WICHITA LINEMAN
A fantastic guitar instrumental version of this great Jimmy Webb tune. Wonderfully tasteful and sultry version of this great tune for jazzy trio. Sticking to the melody without a lot of harmonic variance, Johnny A’s touch and tone bring a nice, shimmering quality to Webb’s gorgeous melody. This was the first time I’ve heard this guy while working on a piece on the song Wichita Lineman.


So I look further and it seems he was signed to Steve Vai’s label for a bit and was asked to play on the G3 tour by Joe Satriani. I guess I’m not really plugged into to the shredder scene these days. He is much more a Hendrix/Page/Beck influenced modernist than a lot of the post DiMeola/Vai/Satriani trick-bag guys. More bluesy based but not really a blues player like Stevie Ray was. Now granted, there’s a bit too much Jimi and not enough jazzy in some of the live cover stuff but then again, I’ve already lived through Randy Hansen and Frank Marino, Robin Trower, Billy Gibbons and Stevie Ray so I’ve seen some decent guys approximate some of what Jimi did. I’ve always been one for more individualistic sounding players’ takes on Hendrix. Like Frisell, or Scofield or Clapton among those who have covered Jimi tune interestingly while never copping too much of the original while keeping their own distinctive stuff in tact.

But the reason I decided to do this blog on Johnny A is two-fold. First, I dug the simplicity and taste of the WICHITA LINEMAN so much and I think this guy’s touch and tone is a nice find and I’d go see him for a night of bluesy shredding. Granted, the originality of a Derek Trucks or a Jim Hall or a Richard Thompson will get me back over and over again. I have a feeling I’d like this tons but perhaps not feel compelled to return every time out. I find in my older age I’m not so drawn to technique and volume as much as either experimentation and audacious originality (a la Nels Cline) or sublime harmonic and melodic invention and emotion (a la Kurt Rosenwinkel).

Then again there are a lot of young guitar slingers out there who will never see Jimi or SRV or Garcia or Albert King or Wes Montgomery or Danny Gatton or Tommy Bolin or any of the heavy guitar slingers who are no longer around. Not everyone wants to hear post-Eddie VH pyrotechnics all the time. And truly with Jeff Beck (who I still believe remains, note-for-note the most interesting and unique sounding player out there today) touring so seldom where can you get a full night of smokin’ instrumental guitar music on a regular basis these days. Still, I’d prefer an evening of Johnny’s original music with a couple of his tasty covers thrown in. The Johnny A original tunes are way cool. These Johnny A signature model Gibson guitars are also extremely gorgeous works of art.

Before we get into the crowd-pleasing covers, check out some of his original stuff…

HIP BONE


OH YEAH


SING SINGIN’


2 WHEEL HORSE



THE COVER TUNES:

THE WIND CRIES MARY & JIMI STORY
A long but amusing story about seeing Jimi live when he was 15. Followed by a funky version of “…Mary.” From Sellersville, PA 5/17/08.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQHyMfo0ey0

YOU DON’T LOVE ME
Yes, he covers the tune made famous by the Allman Brothers Band, here done up funky and with a taste of Wes-esque octave work and slithery wah work.


AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
Solo guitar rendition recorded right after 9/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aax-38C9LnY

JOHNNY A GUESTING WITH J.J. CALE ON GOIN’ DOWN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atzp9a9PFPc

RED HOUSE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOp_lbaEr64

JIMI JAM
Lots of Jimi riffs in here but he also quotes Beatles, Stones, Zep, etc. From King of Prussia, PA. 6/17/07
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PZA5aWJf9U

INTERVIEW FOOTAGE:
Check out the JOHNNY A. OPEN FORUM links on YouTube. There are five parts. Mostly of interest for tech heads and guitarists for the most part. Here’s the link for Pt. 1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNPdsj3imBc

Check out his website for tour dates…looks like his playing nationwide this spring so don’t miss him…

Johnny A's Website

For more on Johnny A:

Wikipedia

Johnny A on MySpace

MY FIRST ROCK CONCERT EVER!

So I'm not counting the concerts I was taken to by my parents in a justified but at the time, not truly appreciated, effort to add culture to my Leave It To Beaver life. My mom would always take us to see classical concerts like Peter and the Wolf and we'd go to special Christmas Concerts and Easter things. Not my cup of chowder.

Then Dad started hauling us to something called The Southern California Hot Jazz Society where we were more into getting all grunged up in the L.A. River chasing tadpoles than watching the killin' Dixieland bands he was hot on. But I will write about that experience at length some other time.

So let's define this question a bit narrower...how about the first show that I WANTED to go to without outside influence and was ALLOWED to...

Okay, so I wanted to see the Beatles in '66 when I was ten. After having her ears blasted by screaming girls when she took the four of us (my bro and two cousins) to see HARD DAY'S NIGHT at at he Century Theater in San Gabriel (with my grandma, Nana, whose only comment was, "They looked like the Marx Brothers with better hair"), my Mom wasn't about to deal with that in the flesh.

So I had to wait a few years until ...

#1 - STEPHEN STILLS & MANASSAS – Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood, CA. July 12 or 16, 1972.

I always thought it was the 12th but recently saw a poster that said the latter date. Perhaps they played two shows. I don’t recall and my ticket stub, I’ve yet to find amongst the boxes of same. The concert took place at the Hollywood Bowl.

I went with best friend and music buddy Kenny. We had really cemented our friendship a few years before while checking out a cassette from the “listening library” in 7th Grade at Oak Avenue Junior High. Scanning the lists we oddly both wanted to hear the same title, Buffalo Springfield’s Retrospective, a greatest hits compilation featuring Stills, Neil Young, and Richie Furay who, along with the Byrds prompted the L.A. singer/songwriter movement that caught fire in the early 70s. With just one copy of the tape, librarian Elmo Brigoli brainstormed a headphone splitter and two pairs of phones so we could listen to the music together. Reluctantly, we agreed and over those few minutes between classes became a lifelong friendship based on our love of music.

Within a year or two we were poised to hit our first live concert, if only our parents would agree to let us go. His were pretty easy. His older sisters had already been down that road. In fact, it was their record collection that we’d pick through listening to new things when they weren’t home. We had also started playing guitars and found that we could scratch together reasonable versions of Stills and Nash and Young’s three chord tunes. Other than “Long Time Gone”, Crosby’s complex tunings and chord changes would be beyond us for a couple of years still.

When we saw that MANASSAS was scheduled to play the Bowl, we put our plan into effect and after much cajoling convinced my folks to drop their guard long enough for us to trudge to the May Company and get tickets. The cost was $6.50 each and we somehow scraped up the fundage.

When the day arrived, my folks and brother dropped us off in the station wagon for I was still five months away from my driver’s license. Dad said, "We'll meet you at the gas station at the corner after the show." I’m sure my mother was worried senseless. They killed time at the Cinerama Dome a few blocks away on Hollywood Blvd. and saw Alfred Hitchcock's last movie FRENZY while we “ruined our lives” as Kenny likes to say.

As soon as we found our way up the long inclined drive and through the turnstiles, I was completely overwhelmed by how cool the Hollywood Bowl was. Granted, I'd been there for Easter Sunrise Services with my family many times before as a child which, of course, I hated because we had to get up before dawn, it was cold and early and I had to dress up in church clothes. No doubt some pastel blue Easter outfit. This was different. We were on our own and free in the adult world. The place was teeming with hippies and teenagers and cool people and girls! Wow!

As Kenny and I climbed to our wooden seats about half way up the sprawling Bowl, the anticipation was palpable. We’d heard about what went on at rock shows. We’d seen the Woodstock movie at the Alhambra Theatre. We’d heard about Altamont. The Beatles had played here and girls had leapt into the moat in front of the stage. And, yes, people got high at concerts. Now, we didn't smoke pot at the time. That was about a year away, I think. So I was a bit worried that the hippies would somehow force us to breath in that stuff and at the very least we’d succumb to the dreaded “contact high”. Little did I know we’d spend the next few years using that term to explain our funky smelling clothes, red eyes and voracious appetites to our parents.

If I recall, the guy next to Kenny looked a lot like a young Jerry Garcia and his "old lady" fit the bill too, all smiling in her granny dress and long ponytails with purple shades. Luckily, they were sitting next to Kenny and not me. To my left were a couple of older guys in varsity jackets from Bellflower or somewhere. I felt relatively safe.

Of course, as soon as the show started, the varsity guys lit up numerous joints and the hippies offered us some fried chicken from their picnic basket. Lessons in life were abundant before us.

The concert was great. Manassas was an album Stills had made in a break between CSNY business, the follow-up to his sophomore solo effort, STEPHEN STILLS 2. The band on the album featured Chris Hillman on mandolin, guitar and beautiful harmony & lead vocals from the Byrds and just a great band of stellar session guys. Paul Harris, the keyboardist, I knew from John Sebastian’s records had also backed B.B. King and Eric Anderson. The drummer Dallas Taylor and bassist Calvin “Fuzzy” Samuels had played with CSN (and Y). Pedal steel and slide player Al Perkins was a vet of Hillman’s previous band, The Flying Burrito Brothers and Mike Nesmith's proto-country rock group and would go on to join Emmylou Harris's band in later years. Joe Lala who came from the band Blues Image was ferocious on Latin percussion and added a whole other element to the show. Burrito alum and bluegrass fiddle master Byron Berline was on the LP and the gig during the country tinged numbers.

The band was extremely good, loose and well-oiled. They attempted most of the record and also some Stills solo stuff and couple of CSNY and even a Burritos song I think. Kenny and I were riveted and immediately hooked on the buzz that live music gave us.

Being my first rock concert, I wasn’t yet in the habit of writing down set lists or saving ticket stubs, a habit I would soon acquire. My recollection of the set list, other than the blanket generalities mentioned above, is sketchy. I do remember distinctly, at one point, Stills sitting center stage for a solo segment which featured him on acoustic guitar singing “Word Game” from STILLS 2 and “Black Queen” from his debut solo album.

I also recall the band playing “Sugar Babe” from STILLS 2 and Stills at the piano at one point alone playing “49 Bye-Byes/America’s Children” as on CSNY’s live Four-Way Street album which was a favorite of ours at the time. I believe the way the show was set up was that the band came out and did an electric segment featuring the entire first side of their debut LP. Followed by a Stills acoustic solo set. Then Hillman and Perkins (and Stills?) did a little bluegrass segment joined shortly by the full band (with Byron Berline on fiddle, I believe) for more rock and country tinged tunes before closing with a full band acoustic set. I THINK "The Treasure" was the encore. Love to find a list, or better yet a recording or some footage of this show. It ran about 3 hours.

THE TREASURE live on Euro TV Beat-Workshop from Bremen 1972



The self-titled debut record MANASSAS, was a double LP set made up of four distinctly themed sides - side A was called The Raven and featured bigger rock and Latin tinged tunes; side B was subtitled The Wilderness and was all country/rock and bluegrassy stuff which I loved and was just getting into at the time; side C, dubbed Consider was more acoustic based tunes, sort of like what CSNY called “wooden music” at Woodstock, singer/songwriter, folk/rock stuff, the forerunner of the AAA radio format; side D was titled Rock N Roll Is Here To Stay and was bluesy and rockin', big time and sonically Hendrix-esque in spots times with lots of texture. One of my favorite records of all-time. It is rumored that Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, who played on and co-wrote "Love Gangster" on the LP, was quoted as saying he'd leave the Stones if they let him play with Manassas.

This was a long show. Afterwards, Kenny and I farted around looking at souvenirs and girls and stuff and when we finally got back to my Dad's car he'd been sitting there for nearly 2 hours (the show being longer than the movie) and he was fuming. Partially because he was still a cop at the time and there was a VW bus parked next to him with kids smoking pot and “acting like idiots” and he couldn't do anything because he had his wife and kid with him. My mother said, "It smelled sickeningly sweet, like burnt rope."...Hahaha...Kenny and I still get a kick out of that. What a memorable night.

While one of the most critically acclaimed albums of Stills’ long and illustrious career, the band would be unfortunately short-lived, releasing just one more single LPs worth of material during their lifetime called Down The Road. The follow-up to their debut featured much more of the Latin flavor that Stills, who spent time as a young man in South America, and Joe Lala were so fond of. There were two tunes in Spanish heavily leaning on Latin percussion. Hillman, whose mainstream bluegrass roots (The Hillmen) and later country hitmaking skills (The Desert Rose Band) would inform the rest of his career, contributed a cool tune, "Lies" as well co-writing the folky acoustic number "So Many Times" with Stills. Stephen's best tunes on the record were “Do You Remember The Americans” and "Isn't It About Time" which he still occasionally performs to this day. There was also the blistering bluesy title track which highlighted Stills guitar playing. It was actually a really fine album but not up to the high standards set by the debut. Rumors of lots of substance abuse in the studio and difficult working conditions which found the Albert brothers, producers of both releases bolting from the session, did not bode well for the future of the band.

Shortly thereafter Stills met with Crosby, Nash and Young and tried to record an album in Hawaii to no avail. He returned and did another Manassas tour with bassist Kenny Passarelli in tow but the spark and drive wasn't there and this coulda-been-a-contender band was knocked out cold. Hillman, Harris, & Perkins went on to join David Geffen's "supergroup" the Souther Hillman Furay band. Taylor struggled with heroin and alcohol addiction and is now recovered and a counselor for recovery programs. Lala continued to play with Stills for many years. I'm not sure where Fuzzy Samuels wound up. Byron Berline continued on with the legendary bluegrass group, Seldom Scene and remaine done of the most in demand fiddlers in country music. Stills obviously has continued to tour with CSN and solo since then with occasion forays with Neil young addd to the gumbo.

Oddly, at the last solo gig I played in Delaware before I came out West this past January, I pulled out a tune from MANASSAS, “So Begins The Task” which I had never played before. I was no doubt inspired by a recent listen to the brand new 2009 Manassas CD entitled PIECES. Strangely enough and without much fanfare, Stills just released this, the first of supposedly many archival projects. It is a single CDs worth of outtakes from sessions for both Manassas albums. It is comprised of of some fantastic material including incredible versions of tunes from his second solo album, "Sugar Babe" and "Word Game" as well as some never before heard gems, both originals and covers. This is indeed what could have been. Not a mish-mosh of lesser tracks but a really great group of tunes often surpassing original versions of these tunes and new songs that stand up to the classics. Even Bill Monroe's "Uncle Pen" gets a wonderful work out as does the old tune covered by the Burritos, Joe Maphis' "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music)." Hillman's "High N Dry" which showed up on the SHF album is a real treat. Check this out to hear an amazing but under-appreciated band with these finally seeing the light of day after 38 years in the vaults.

Surprisingly, at my first gig back in Big Bear in February, our mandolinist, Roy Coulter started playing “Hide It So Deep” also from that 1st Manassas album. I followed with “It Doesn’t Matter” from side 3. These songs still resonate for me as standards of excellence and major fulcrums in my development as an appreciator of the music of my time.

HIDE IT SO DEEP live on Euro TV Beat-Workshop from Bremen 1972


IT DOESN’T MATTER live on Euro TV Beat-Workshop from Bremen 1972 the first single


All three albums are worth hearing and are available at iTunes and Amazon.com

During the next three years I’d see 90% of the live concerts I attended with my friend Ken. We’d continue to see shows together on occasion over the next three and a half decades but this one is one neither of us will likely forget anytime soon. The first cut is the deepest.

BOUND TO FALL live on Euro TV Beat-Workshop from Bremen 1972


SONG OF LOVE live on Euro TV Beat-Workshop from Bremen 1972


STILLS INTERVIEW
EntertainmentOnABC Australia
Interview with Stephen Stills and Manassas at Mascot Airport by Jeune Pritchard, Ep 467. Broadcast 12th April 1972