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Guitar men
Johnny A. and Jeff Platz’s Skull Session, plus Bobby Keyes and Ray Mason
BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Ever since Les Paul designed the guitar that bears his autograph on its headstock in the ’50s, a mark of honor reserved for the finest rank of guitarist has been the signature-model six-string. Eric Clapton has a Stratocaster patterned on his famous "Blackie"; B.B. King’s name is on Gibson’s "Lucille." Jimmy Page and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry even have, uh, signature series Les Pauls. Now you can add to that list Salem’s Johnny A., whose just-released second album, Get Inside (Favored Nations), follows the debut of the Johnny A. model Gibson.

"That just blows my mind," he says. "Not just because it’s my signature guitar, but because it’s with Gibson. The heritage of that company with Les Paul, Chet Atkins, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, Johnny Smith, Kenny Burrell . . . It just blows my mind."

Johnny, who’ll be playing a release party tonight (February 26) at the Peabody Essex Museum, at became a Gibson endorsee when he started leading Peter Wolf’s band in 1994. Gibson’s custom shop began making guitars — hollow-body ES 295s, solid Les Pauls — to his specs. After his self-released instrumental debut, Sometime Tuesday Morning, was picked up by guitar guru Steve Vai’s Favored Nations label and Johnny’s trio became a national touring act with airplay on hundreds of radio stations, he got even closer to the luthiers at Gibson. And, as he says, "one thing led to another."

Johnny’s signature guitar is a hollow-bodied beauty with the resonance, big tone, and feedback resistance of a solid-body. "It has a double cutaway for easy access and style and a 25-1/2-inch scale neck, which is more of Gibson’s jazz-scaled neck," he explains when we meet for lunch at the Red Rock Bistro in Salem. "So far, Gibson’s sold over 100, and it’s not a cheap guitar."

Of course, even in the decades when Johnny led bands like his own Hearts on Fire and Hidden Secret through small Boston clubs, he never played his talent cheap. And when he decided he needed to step out as an instrumentalist with 2000’s Sometime Tuesday Morning, he recorded the disc at Blue Jay in Carlisle out of his own pocket, albeit at off-hours and between full-rate big-label sessions. For Get Inside, he had a larger budget and an entire month to work at Boston’s Skyline Studios. "I tried to bring more of an R&B feeling to this album, which wasn’t really apparent much on Sometime Tuesday Morning. The first single, ‘I Had To Laugh,’ has more of a horn-revue vibe to it. ‘Get Inside’ felt like Al Green to me where I’m trying to make an instrumental version of the sound Green had with the Memphis Horns."

"I Had To Laugh" does have a big horn-groove hook when Johnny’s guitar communes with Henley Douglas Jr.’s sax and Garret Savluk’s trumpet, but there’s a little Nashville in the mix, too. At least in the double-stop intro and the few other turns when his guitar relaxes its swinging and singing for more rhythmic phrases. "Get Inside" does capture the heavy soul groove that the original Reverend Al and his producer, Willie Mitchell, invented at Hi Records — with a little goosing from Johnny’s fat buttery tones, which like Green’s voice dance across the lines of sweetness and grit. But the sweetest track is his interpretation of the Johnny Rivers classic "Poor Side of Town." He lingers gently over each note, adding delicate filigrees that bring out the sensitivity and the heartbreak of Rivers’s lyrics — sans, of course, those lyrics.

"The R&B feel gave me more space for melodies. Sometime Tuesday Morning was more a collection of styles and influences and me finding my way through them. This time, I was more conscious of trying to feel like a singer, as opposed to a guitar player delivering a melody."

Not that Sometime Tuesday Morning scrimped on melodies. Johnny’s first batch of instrumentals was catchy enough to grab the ears of 75,000 CD buyers and win him tours with Jimmie Vaughan, George Thorogood, and Jonny Lang. With "I Had To Laugh" debuting on adult radio as the second-most-added song in the country in late January, his tunes should soon be making their way into even more heads.

GUITARIST JEFF PLATZ’S music might never burrow into the brains of many listeners, but anyone with a passion for the fiery spirit of ’50s/’60s free jazz will dig the debut from his group Skull Session, Rise Above (Skycap; available from www.jeffplatz.com). Along with horn men Timo Shanko and Scott Getchell, drummer Luther Gray, and the respected guitarist Joe Morris playing upright bass, Platz makes a statement that at times zeroes in on the incendiary heart of the jazz avant-garde.

"With Joe around, he does what he does so well that you just strap yourself in and go." Platz — who works by day as a piano technician at the New England Conservatory, and who’s also a founder of the entertaining lounge/R&B outfit Lars Vegas — is being modest. Rise Above proves he’s a formidable bandleader, composing heads for his numbers that give his dynamic cast of players plenty of melodic and harmonic raw material to work with.

Although Skull Session have been coloring their shades of Sonny Sharrock, Ornette Coleman, and Thelonious Monk on stage for five years, Skycap’s partners nudged Platz into putting more energy into the band. "Lars Vegas is popular enough that we can get good paying gigs in New York on weekends. I really appreciate that and want to keep it going. But I’ve been playing that music for a long time and have wanted to challenge myself with the music I really want to do. When the guys at Skycap heard the Skull Session stuff and said they’d want to put it out, I was really encouraged."

Now, as Platz scratches that itch, his clean but edgy blend of Gibson ES-175 and Fender amp is being heard in the company of such respected six-string explorers as Nels Cline and Thurston Moore, who are also on the German label. Platz is working on a follow-up to the elegant, contemplative, and skronking Rise Above, and he’s planning to take the group to Europe in the fall. "I feel like this is a starting point for me in getting my music out there, played by a group of people who share my energy and focus. I hate to say it, but this town does not lend itself to this type of music. There’s no support system for it here, and this is the environment I’ve been performing in for more than 10 years. So it’s crazy to see respected critics in major European newspapers saying good things about Skull Session."

THE NIGHT AFTER VALENTINE’S DAY, the instrumental trio Lucky Stereo, led by guitarist Bobby Keyes, were keeping the romance alive in the posh lounge of the Top of the Hub, at the apex of the Prudential Tower. Nestled into a tight corner, the band struck a delicate — they’re louder elsewhere — balance among classic jazz, pop tunes, and vintage rock, all played for melody and soul. Keyes came off like a blend of Charlie Christian and Dick Dale, especially on a slow, swinging version of "Walk Don’t Run" that began as "Fever" but morphed quickly into the Ventures classic. Bassist Marty Ballou took a graceful solo, but overall their first set of the night offered careful interplay that balanced text and improvisation. Keyes says Lucky Stereo have just completed the follow-up to their 1999 homonymous debut on the Thrillionaire label. And they’ve got more gigs coming up. They’ll return to the Top of the Hub on April 4 and 5; before that, on February 27 and March 12, they’ll be turning up the volume at the Dolphin Stryker in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Although he’s never without his trusty 1965 Silvertone guitar, Ray Mason has made a reputation over 22 years of club gigs as one of New England’s more durable and respected songwriters. His 14th solo album, Idiot Wisdom, on his own Captivating Music label (from www.raymason.com), finds him firmly in command of his style — a mix of Buddy Holly/Chuck Berry directness with the edge and clever wordplay he shares with other keen-eyed pop tunesmiths who emerged in the early ’80s, like Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey of the db’s. Numbers like the life’s-tough-but-we-all-get-by "Water off a Duck" and the sad-eyed "Life Is Full of Missing" brim with blunt honesty. That’s a quality Mason’s unvarnished everyman’s voice is perfect for expressing. And this dedicated road dog is likely to keep doing so for decades more.

Johnny A. will play a CD-release party tonight, February 26, from 7:30 to 10 p.m. at the Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square in Salem; call the museum box office at (978) 745-9500 extension 3040.


Issue Date: February 27 - March 4, 2004
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