According to his official bio, Johnson – who came of age in a small town in Arkansas – first became intrigued with the outer limits of his instrument, when he happened to stumble upon a home-made cassette tape containing two stellar albums featuring extraordinary guitarwork: 1972’s Greenhouse by Leo Kottke, and 1971’s The Inner Mounting Flame by John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Innocently assuming that both sides (and thus both albums) of the unmarked tape had been made by the same artist, Johnson was floored by what he termed the possibility that one could “make something happen that fused the linear liquidity of McLaughlin and the dense harmonic structure and drive of Kottke.”
He immediately began to practice in earnest (“I closed myself in my room and made my own rules,” he says), and in doing so, developed an original approach combining plucking, strumming, and even the percussive striking of his instrument.
Richard Leo also moved up from standard 6-string guitars to 12-string, and ultimately, custom-made dual-necked, 18-string models.
As if that weren’t enough to satisfy his curiosity and desire for experimentation, he went on to develop as many as 30 different alternate tuning structures, which allowed him to coax harmonics and chords from his instruments that were simply unattainable to other players, no matter how disciplined or inventive.
One can only wonder how long it took before this string music prodigy realized that his fateful cassette tape actually compiled the work of a British jazz wizard who’d apprenticed under Miles Davis, and a half-deaf Athens, Georgia, boy who was raised on rural country blues...
Regardless, by the time that information drifted his way, Johnson was deep into a a mindset of exploration and discovery that would continue to fuel his creative drive for decades to come. More Article>>>