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It doesn’t matter what kind of guitar you put in the hands of Eric Johnson. If he’s holding his Ramirez nylon string, he’ll make the Flamenco sounds fly. If he grabs his Maton acoustic, there’ll be a burst of breakneck fingerpicking. Strap an Eric Johnson signature model Virginia Stratocaster on him, and he’ll show off some shredding. He’ll likely do all of the above, fronting a four-piece band, and featuring tunes from his new acoustic-electric album “EJ Vol II,” in shows this weekend at the Cabot in Beverly and the Center for Arts in Natick.
Though he garnered renown — and a best rock instrumental performance Grammy — for his soaring, melodic 1990 song “Cliffs of Dover,” Johnson has covered a wide swath of music. Growing up in Austin, Texas, he began classical piano lessons at 5 — he still sits down for a piano segment at some shows — but within a few years, was paying more attention to, and taking a deeper interest in, guitar. The piano lessons continued, and were complemented by a few months of guitar lessons, after which Johnson became a self-taught guitarist.
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“I learned music on piano,” he said. “Then I learned a little about guitar. . . . I sat at the piano and I’d transpose what I knew from piano onto guitar.”
His first guitar, which he got in 1965 at age 11, was a white Fender Musicmaster. His first guitar hero was Nokie Edwards of the Ventures. Maintaining that was about the time he knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, Johnson recently spoke by phone from his home in Austin about the musical path he’s been following.
Q. The Ventures is a good place to start if you’re into guitar. Where did you go from there?
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A. I’d buy their records, and I’d sit around and learn all the licks. Then I started listening to Jeff Beck and the Yardbirds. I was blown away by the way guitar was being used to kind of not sound like a guitar. Like in “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” or “The Nazz Are Blue” or “Heartful of Soul.” It was a guitar, but it sounded a little bit removed from normal guitar tone. And I really bought into that. After that I got the Eric Clapton and John Mayall record [“Blues Breakers”], and then a friend of mine, Jim Mings, who played jazz guitar but was really into the blues, turned me on to Freddie King, Albert King, and B.B. King. Any of the stuff where I could really delve into guitar was my initial impulse of where to go.
Q. Austin is a big music town. Were you getting to see people play live?
A. I used to go down to a club called the Jade Room on Tuesday evenings. There was a group called Georgetown Medical Band with a guitarist named Johnny Richardson, an awesome player. There was another great guitarist named John Staehely, who went on to play with Spirit and Jo Jo Gunne. I learned a whole lot from watching them. I was 13 or 14 at the time, and the lady at the Jade Room would let me come in as long as I would sit in the back and not order anything [laughs].
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Q. At what point did you start playing out?
A. When I was 13 I was in a Top 40 band called the Sounds of Life. We were playing “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” and “Mustang Sally.” When I was 14, I played original music in a heavy rock psychedelic band called Mariani, and the drummer, Vince Mariani, who was about five years older than the rest of us, turned me on to Wes Montgomery. I remember his sound being so pleasing, so inviting. The sound was like an introductory doorway, like somebody greeting you at the door and inviting you into the house, and there’s something there that makes you want to walk right in.
Q. But right after Mariani, you jumped into playing a completely different sound — jazz-rock fusion with the band Electromagnets. Was that a big challenge for you?
A. It was a gradual process. When I left Mariani, I started listening to different types of music. I heard Larry Coryell and some Miles Davis and I was listening to the Return to Forever record “Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy,” which had the guitarist Bill Connors. He had a cool tone and a blues influence underneath his playing, and he was the first guy that sold me on fusion. Then I met Steve Barber and Bill Maddox, who already had a band together. We became Electromagnets and we used the template of the “Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy” record.
Q. You’re in the middle of your “Classics: Present and Past” tour. Are you sticking to a specific setlist?
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A. We’re doing two 55-minute sets. We’ll do three or four things from the new record, and then a smattering of stuff from the earlier ones. The setlist is kind of all over the map stylistically. I want to keep pushing any envelope of the guitar that I can, and try to explore some new places to go in it. But at the same time, I want to strengthen the emotional thing of just being there to hear a song. So, there are songs, there’s an acoustic set, there are a couple of jazzier pieces, and then there’s the rock stuff. We’ll be doing “Desert Rose” and “Trademark” and, of course, “Cliffs of Dover.” I usually play in trio format, but we’re doing these shows as a four-piece: Roscoe Beck on bass, Tom Brechtlein on drums, and Dave Scher on keyboards and second guitar. Having that fourth member is allowing us to do different stuff. So, it’s not a constant two hours of guitar on 20.
Q. Since you started fronting your own bands, you’ve mixed hard-driving rock instrumentals with jazzy riffs and thrown in some laid-back acoustic songs with vocals. Where did all of that come from?
A. One of the reasons I’ve always loved music so much is that my dad was constantly playing all different styles of it at home, and he was always whistling. I saw how happy it made him, and that really helped me to be closer to music, to see the power of it. I’m really grateful for that because I’ve never felt that one sort of music was good and another wasn’t. It’s the spirit behind the music that really pronounces whether or not there’s a beauty to it.
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Interview has been edited and condensed. Ed Symkus can be reached at esymkus@rcn.com.
ERIC JOHNSON
At the Cabot, Beverly, Feb. 28 at 8 p.m. Tickets from $34.50, www.thecabot.org/events/category
At the Center for Arts in Natick, Feb. 29 at 8 p.m. Tickets $60, www.natickarts.org