Published: April 2001

In pursuing his radical approach to fingerstyle guitar, Richard Leo Johnson has developed a wholly unique musical language that defies convention. Johnson's intuitive system of "found tunings" combined with a lexicon of extended techniques (tapping and slapping the body, playing behind the nut, pulling bell-like harmonics out of the instrument for koto-like textures, creating shimmering arpeggios, and combining forceful left-hand hammer-ons with right-hand strumming, spanking, and string muting) has produced some of the most audacious acoustic guitar music since Michael Hedges' inspired output from the '90s. Though his second Blue Note CD, Language, was released just last summer, the 44-year-old Arkansas native says he has been playing this way since high school. "I was introduced to Ralph Towner's music in high school," he says, "and I attribute a lot of the more experimental stuff I do to him. But Leo Kottke and John McLaughlin remain my ultimate inspirations."
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