ERIC Johnson's arrival in Edinburgh for the first time had guitar-music aficionados buzzing in anticipation and while the Texan certainly delivered some mighty picking, both on electric and acoustic instruments, his trio's performance overall was a mixed success.
The sound quality didn't flatter Johnson's singing and his songs were better viewed as vehicles for his six-string dynamics than as entities in themselves.
As a guitarist Johnson sits stylistically somewhere between Jeff Beck, Pat Metheny and Allan Holdsworth, without achieving the kind of individualism those three can produce. Items such as Fatdaddy and Zap wore a marked Beck influence compositionally and Johnson's affection for jazz emerged with a racing interpretation of John Coltrane's Mr P.C., written for Coltrane's bass player Paul Chambers and here featuring an accomplished drum solo.
The acoustic section that followed highlighted Johnson's impressionistic side, especially in the fine Once Upon A Time In Texas, which had a similar filmic quality to its near namesake by Ennio Morricone. Johnson's home state clearly inspires him as among other stand-outs were Austin, with its almost classical-style, catchy arpeggios, and by contrast, the dirty-riffing Last House On The Block, which had a strong strain of Texan blues in the shape of Johnny Winter, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Z Z Top running through it.
Johnson's singing leans more towards Canadian Bruce Cockburn in tone than the rough-edged characteristics of Winter et al and while he struggled to be heard, and at one point appeared to have had his mic turned off completely, his devotees seemed more than pleased with his guitar heroics, which finished with a suitably high-tensile reading of Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced?
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