Published: April 2001

Johnson describes his freewheeling fretboard methodology this way: "It's like getting kidnapped and blindfolded and thrown in the back of a car in Mississippi and then being driven to someplace like North Dakota. You have to figure out your way home. That's what retuning the guitar is like to me."
A sample of his unorthodox tuning can be heard on "Hip Hop Zep," the steamrolling opener from Language, for which he tuned his 12-string ED AA DD GG CA ED. On "1-5-90," a duet with Paul McCandless, his 12-string is tuned CF GG CC DF FG B Bl.. "I don't believe in [electronic] tuners at all," says Johnson. "I leave it up to my ears."
Likening his approach to the Tibetan Buddhist philosophy of "crazy wisdom," Johnson literally lets his fingers do the walking on the fretboard before analyzing what they've done. "It's like getting a fuzzy fax and trying to figure out what it says," he explains.