The life of a musician can go dozens of ways, and for guitarist Jon Herington he gets to do all of them at once. Though he's probably best known for being the touring and studio guitarist for classic rock band Steely Dan, the 60-year-old musician also bides his time as a studio artist, solo performer and as a member of The Jon Herington Band.
His fate as a musician was cast when the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and he had no real choice but to follow his passion. After playing around on the guitar, piano and saxophone throughout his childhood and teenage years, Herington locked down on the guitar in college and began to take his studying seriously.
Over the last 35 years, Herington has established a long and winding resume as a guitarist, joining the likes of Jack McDuff on stage, playing on Broadway and, of course, touring and recording with Steely Dan. His love for his instrument knows no bounds, and he's built his talents as a member of an assortment of groups, including his own trio, which has released four full-length albums (with a fifth in the works).
Recently, Herington sat down with Music Times to discuss his journey as a musician and life on the road.
It must be different playing in a studio, where you can do things over and over again, but when you're on the road, you only do it once...
Yeah you don't get the chance to do it over and over when you're doing a live show, you only get that chance in the studio. The great opportunity about touring is the repeated chance to play the same music for the same guys, night after night for a respected packed house of fans. Like when you do a freelance thing, it's like recording sessions. You get called one day to do nylon stringed guitar, one day to do some Brazilian new jazz playing. Like another day, they expect you to come in and play rockabilly.
Another day you play some sort of hard rock thing with heavy with a wailing bass, another day it's a jingle for some sports channel. You're doing something different every time you go, and there's almost never any consistency. And yeah, that can be very interesting, the more people that are selecting you, the more you're developing a knack to play a lot of stuff.
The one thing you don't get is sort of the chance to develop in one area, and to get more expertise in that one area; it doesn't do that for you. It sharpens your skills, you can be a great reader, you get quick at reacting, quick at sort of figuring out what you need to do, and getting the job done.
But the opportunity you get with a touring band is that you get to refine a very personal approach over time, and I didn't realize how much I was missing until I got that chance year after year. And it's been the single most important factor in my show, that chance of progress and sort of developing a personal voice.
Would you prefer being in the studio or on the road at this point?
It's hard to say. I really do like both challenges, and they're so different. But I think I'd miss one if I only did the other. For me, they're so much about really able to play with the track, developing the craft and sort of take my time to build something. I find it significant. When you're playing live, as you go on the band gets more and more comfortable, so you don't get a lot of "try this or try this," but in the studio you get a lot of that.
I think I would miss either one if I only had to do the other. I'm lucky I get to do both.
That seems ideal, because once you get tired of one; you can go to the other.
Yeah, and it's the same thing with playing live. When I get done with the Steely Dan tour, which is 13 musicians on stage at the same time, it's refreshing to go on tour with my trio [The Jon Herington Band]. It's a breath of fresh air.
I was just going to ask, do you have anything planned coming up with The Jon Herington Band?
We just finished tracking a new record It's a long way from being done. I don't think I can begin finishing it until October or so.
How far along in the process are you for this new album?
So far, we've done the tracking, which we do at a place all the time in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and we have an old school thing, which is really fun. We use an old 16-track machine with a two inch tape, which gives you a whole kind of analog vibe and sound. We recorded 12 basic tracks with guitars and drums, and then we added a few, we did some background vocals. So that's where we are now. I took some of the stuff home, transferred it to ProTools and now I'm mixing, basically making tapes, and editing the basics, and deciding what we're going to do.
But the next big stage, is going to be opening up the vocals, and there will be a few keyboard adapts, and some background vocal adapts. It's got quite a lot of work to do, and I don't think I'm really going to have time until October. But it's a fun bunch of songs; I think it's going to be our most lighthearted album. The songs are sunny and entertaining. They're going to be a lot of fun to play to an audience.
Where did this pop direction come from?
There's a certain kind of approach that we have taken a few times on a few songs [such as "eGirl" from Time On My Hands], and were just having a little fun. And we found those songs went really well live.
So what I think mostly this seems to be about a bunch of genres that were popular when I was falling in love with pop music. I think all this leads back to the '60s and the Beatles, some Stones tunes and even The Monkees. The thing about that time was that it was okay for a band like the Stones to play blues, rock tunes, country tunes, even Motown tunes -- they did Smoky Robinson and the Miracles cover -- and they would do covers of a lot of great, great tunes.
Very different markets in the U.S., but somehow, it was all okay, and it all sounded great on the same record. So there's something about that, as a situation for this record, and there's something about this lighthearted lyrical approach that we've had fun with while writing in the past. So even though it might seem like its several genres represented, it's the way they can hang together. When we recorded it we were thinking about that magical time when you can do your thing.
Rock can go in so many different directions, and still be good...
I hope it will be good. We'll see.
