THIS is Talent!

Ah Via Musicom was the second solo release by Eric Johnson, now a 40-something guitarist from Austin, TX and in my opinion, his best work to date. He is a guitarist's guitarist showing exceptional virtuosity, compositional skills and an ear for great tone.

The track "Ah Via Musicom" is a brief instrumental of spacey guitar sounds that segues in to the rock guitar masterpiece, "Cliffs of Dover". Here Eric combines rock improvisation with an almost hummable melody. The string skips and leaps, and up-and-down fretboard work will amaze you. Although I've got the tablature to this song and have practiced it from time-to-time, I just don't have the talent to enable me to play it up to speed. I've only known of two other guitarists able to pull this off; a guy in a Top-40 band in Orlando back in '94 and Andy Timmons here in Dallas. Andy is another phenomenal player.

"Desert Rose" is my favorite track on the entire CD. It starts out with some nice staccato chords as Eric sings the opening lyrics, going into a nice pop-sounding chorus. The two lead breaks are blistering, no-holds-barred rock, recalling mostly Hendrix and Clapton, but interspersed with very classical-sounding violin-like scales. These soloes are very solidly composed and build to a righteous climax.

Also special is the Wes Montgomery ode, "East-Wes". Very jazzy, atmospheric and blue. Lots of octave chording, some nice false harmonics and fluid jazz single-string runs.

"Righteous" is a straight ahead, fast-tempoed rock/blues number.

"Forty Mile Town", the lone ballad is a soft, adult-contemporary-friendly song in which the clean tones just ring out.
"High Landrons" is definitely, unquestionably Hendrix- swirling distorted tones for the lead work, crystal-clean for the verses.

"Nothing Can Keep Me From You", softly played in a minor key in the verses with an almost pensive lyric attitude that evolves into major-key joyful-sounding choruses. The key changes back and forth from minor to major in the closing lead work with brutal string skips and fretboard gymnastics, which finally evolves by bringing Hendrix feedback and trills into the fold (think Voodo Chile/Are You Experienced).

"Trademark" is hard to label. Great chord work, very melodic and thematic. I don't really know how to describe this piece. The chords play the melody as if they were vocals.

The exception to the greatness of this CD is Steve's Boogie, which is a country piece ala Jerry Reed, that is played perfectly but really doesn't stand out. It's the kind of thing that Eric can do in his sleep. Also the acoustic steel-string piece, "Song for George", is just that. A pretty simple piece except for us mere mortals, it's basically a country-blues influenced piece and just like Steve's Boogie, doesn't really garner any attention.

Overall, the album must be considered a masterpiece despite the two songs that I'm not hip to. Eric utilizes a variety of equipment to paint this piece. His guitars and amps are vintage Fender Strats, a Gibson ES-335, vintage Marshall amps, vintage Blackface Fender Twins (see a common thread here?), and a Dumble Steel-String Singer (which he no longer uses). Some of his effects include a vintage Fuzz-Face, vintage Echoplex, Electro-harmonix Memory Man, B.K. Butler Tube Driver and a wah pedal (don't know which brand). He switches back and forth between most of this gear during single songs to get the sound that he needs for particular passages. He is truly a master and best seen live. Get this CD. You won't regret it.