Fingertip Ship
With all his incredible virtuosic technique, and a boatload of imaginative tunings and improvisational structures, Richard Leo Johnson falls squarely into the "where've they been all these years?" file. Johnson, a professional photographer whose interest in the acoustic guitar compelled him to practice and play constantly, has devised multiple unique tunings and fingerings, turning his double-neck acoustic into far more than the sum of its strings, chords, and customary harmonic possibilities. Where the lateMichael Hedgesonce walked, Johnson is now sprinting, playing at frantic speeds with pile-ups of notes and hard-strummed concatenations making the ear race to follow. For all the tunings and preparations, though, there are eminently warm moments, albeit ones that will fascinate the ears of the adventurous and the guitarophile equally: "Prometheus Meets the Digital Age" is full of middle-low register playing that invokes a Dobro before going into clipped repetitions that sound unreproducible. Johnson is a magical talent and perhaps the next in a short line of guitar greats--a line that includes Hedges,Derek Bailey,Pat Metheny,Sonny Sharrock, and precious few others.--Andrew Bartlett