Robi Johns has played a role in Gibson’s acoustic operation since 1990, when he left teaching and running a music store to become the location’s in-house musician.
Bozeman is known as the Sweet Pea City, a reference to the prolific flower that put this colorful Montana burgh on the map in the early 1900s. But most of us know it as the home of the Gibson Acoustic Craftory, where the brand makes guitars ranging from historic models like the L-00, J-45, Hummingbird, Dove, and J-200 to signature guitars for Jerry Cantrell, Orianthi, and Keb’ Mo’ to the company’s budget-priced Generation Collection, which offers updates on Gibson’s slope-, broad-shouldered, and cutaway models, all with sound ports. Turns out the region’s stable, dry climate is good for building guitars as well as raising blossoms.
When Robi Johns arrived at Gibson’s Bozeman location in 1990, “it was a small cinder block building. It was relatively crowded, dusty, and noisy, but safe, and we had this little office area with one fax machine—the key communication tool back in the day. Now, I’m sitting in an office that’s quiet, clean, and well-lit. We have meeting areas and beautiful showroom and event areas. And the plant is spacious and quiet in most areas, and certainly very clean and very modern.”
How modern and spacious? Gibson unveiled an expansion at the facility in November, more than doubling its size from 21,000 to 48,000 square feet, updating and enlarging the machine shop, the Custom Shop, and overall guitar-building space. It’s a testament to both the durability of Gibson’s long-established models as well as the success of new instruments like the Generation Collection.
“We put the very lightest, thinnest neck on it possible—we couldn’t go any thinner, quite frankly. It’s thin as a Les Paul from the 1960s.”
Johns’ title is senior product development manager, Gibson acoustics, but he’s also one of the Craftory’s key guitar designers and an accomplished player. As a young man, he studied with classical-guitar virtuoso Christopher Parkening and became an adjunct professor in classical guitar at Montana State University, also in Bozeman. In addition to the aforementioned guitarists, he’s designed instruments for Sheryl Crow (a signature Southern Jumbo Supreme), Jackson Brown (a 10-year process that culminated in the Model 1 that bears Brown’s name), Slash, and Eric Church, among many others.
“If I had to summarize the qualities that each player desires,” he says of the artists he’s created instruments for, “number one is tone of the acoustic guitar, because that reflects the sound of the music that artist makes, and inspires them. They are looking for a response from the instrument—response and tone affects how you’re playing and causes a different emotional state. They are also searching for a certain look or design that reflects their persona and helps define how they look on stage. It’s a symbiotic relationship between the artist and model.”
A J-45 Deluxe Rosewood guitar gets its neck set with one of the company’s trademark dovetail neck-to-body joints.
Johns’ latest signature project is a collaboration for Americana/country darling Brandi Carlile, for release this year. “Brandi loves 1940s small-body LG-2s, so about three years ago she came to us and said, ‘Would you build me one of these ... like the one I use normally, but, you know, new?’ So, I had the honor of designing a historic-based LG-2 for her that she fell in love with. Recently, she asked us to do a model for her, so I was able to take the qualities of her LG-2 and put them into a guitar that would be suitable for consumers. In other words, we made it so it wasn’t so expensive to build, like her original, but I was able to include the sound and the feel of what she loved. I had to please the artist and people who love our guitars with the new Brandi Carlile LG-2 Custom.”
Johns was also involved in the creation of the Generation Collection, a new line of five acoustics—the G-Writer, the G-Bird, the G-45, G-200, and G-00—inspired by legacy designs but updated with sound ports and alternative neck woods, like utile (an African hardwood), and slim neck profiles, among other features. The idea was to create a fleet priced between $999 and $1,999 street—more easily affordable instruments targeted at less experienced players. For Johns, the project was both a strategic and a design challenge.
“The acoustic guitar is more introverted, and the electric guitar is more for an extroverted experience.”
“We thought about this for a couple years,” says Johns. “‘What do new guitarists, that aren’t necessarily Gibson fans, want?’ So, we gave them a guitar at a lower price point, relative to our other guitars, that is really easy to play. We put the very lightest, thinnest neck on it possible—we couldn’t go any thinner, quite frankly. It’s thin as a Les Paul from the 1960s. And we flattened out the fretboards so you can bend notes really easily. We also include all of the benefits of how we build guitars: a dovetail neck-to-body joint, a radius top or curved top with curved bracing, and a very light lacquer finish. We took the best of Gibson construction features and put them in this lower-price-point instrument.”
The Generation Collection are also the first Gibsons to feature a sound port, which the company calls a “Player Port,” following boutique builders and Taylor, Breedlove, and other well-respected acoustic guitar makers into this terrain.
“Response and tone affects how you’re playing and causes a different emotional state.”
Here’s an upper-deck view of the finishing area in Gibson’s Acoustic Craftory.
Besides its lovely climbing flowers and the Gibson Craftory, Bozeman is also known as a railroad town. A modest freight yard is nestled in its center, and there’s even an old beanery where railroad workers for the Northern Pacific grabbed a bite during that line’s heyday. Johns also comes from a place famous for the rails—Altoona, Pennsylvania. “It’s a very blue-collar coal mining and railroad town, so that kind of forced me into loving the expressive arts, in contrast. I became a lover of painting and music, so that led me into going to music school. I got a couple of degrees in guitar performance, and later became a recording artist, and I had interest in many diverse musical styles. I practiced, practiced, practiced the guitar, every day, to the Nth degree. So, I’ve spent all my life on a guitar.”
Johns was teaching and running a music store in Bozeman when he was invited to Gibson. “The president of this division called me up and said, ‘We need an artist here. We have everything but a real musician.’ So, I became the sales and marketing director for acoustic guitars in 1990 and have been here ever since. I had a lot to learn. Gibson was such a big brand, and initially, I was going all over the world promoting the guitars and helping with the marketing and sales of them. And then, I started working here with the best luthiers in the music industry, so that’s how it morphed into my work with designing guitars.”
An SJ-200 reaches the final stage of its building process—a meticulous setup.
Johns’ creative patch was interrupted, gravely, in 2012, when he suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. “I was told I was not going to live, I was not going to walk again, I was not going to use my arm again,” he recounts. “That is not what I decided was my fate. I had this strong wish to continue to use all that I’ve learned in my life’s experience—to contribute to what I love in music and arts and particularly the guitar. That kept me going and drove me to take on all these therapies. I still do therapy every day, because I want that quality of life back, and I’m enjoying doing what I’m doing with Gibson. It’s stopped me from being a player for a period of time, but it did not stop me from being a dreamer, or that I get to dream these guitars up with the artists and the great builders here.” Johns is working to reclaim his former playing prowess with the help of his current favorite guitars: a Gibson ES-175, which he praises for its acoustic-like tone—“I was a fan of Steve Howe in the ’70s”—and an acoustic Gibson Songwriter, along with a nylon-string instrument custom-built in Madrid.
If fate hadn’t lured Johns into the guitar life, he thinks that perhaps he might have chased his creative pursuits into film. “Sometimes I feel like a movie director,” he says. “I work with an artist and he or she creates a plot, and I get to direct the movie—analogous to designing the guitar, the most joyous part of my work. This is not just patronizing my own company, but I love Gibson. I get to work with the most absolutely brilliant people, highly skilled and inspiring, which nurtures me as a human being. I’m not playing guitar and being a performer anymore, but, metaphorically, I’m still reaching people all over the world—not with my music, but with the guitars that we build. And that fulfills me. That really is true.”
- First Look: Gibson G-Bird ›
- Gibson Launches the Jerry Cantrell Fire Devil and Atone Acoustic Guitars ›
- Gibson Unveils the Generation Collection of Acoustics ›
- Gibson G-Bird Review - Premier Guitar ›
On her new record with her trio, Molly Miller executes a live-feeling work of structural harmony that mirrors her busy life.
Miller has a lot on her plate. In addition to gigs leading the Molly Miller Trio, she also plays guitar in Jason Mraz’s band, and teaches at her alma mater, the University of Southern California (USC), where, after a nine-year stint, she earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate in music. In 2022, she became a professor of studio guitar at USC. Prior to that, she was the chair of the guitar department at the Los Angeles College of Music.
Molly Miller's Gear
Miller plays a fair bit of jazz, but considers herself simply a guitarist first: “Why do I love the guitar? Because I discovered Jimi Hendrix.”
Photo by Anna Azarov
Guitars
- 1978 Gibson ES-335
- Fender 1952 Telecaster reissue with a different neck and a bad relic job (purchased from Craigslist)
- Gibson Les Paul goldtop with P-90s
Amps
- Benson Nathan Junior
- Benson Monarch
- Fender Princeton Reverb Reissue (modified to “widen sound”)
Effects
- Chase Bliss Audio Dark World
- Chase Bliss Audio Warped Vinyl
- EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master
- EarthQuaker Devices Dunes
- EarthQuaker Devices Special Cranker
- JAM Pedals Wahcko
- JAM Pedals Ripply Fall
- Strymon Flint
- Fulltone Clyde Wah
- Line 6 Helix (for touring)
Strings & Picks
- Ernie Ball .011s for ES-335 and Les Paul
- Ernie Ball .0105s for Telecaster
- Fender Celluloid Confetti 351 Heavy Picks
To get things done, Miller has had to rely on a laser-focused approach to time management. “I’ve always kind of been juggling different aspects of my career. I was in grad school, getting a doctorate, TA-ing full time—so, teaching probably 20 hours a week, and then also doing probably four or five gigs a week, and getting a degree,” explains Miller. “I had to figure out how to create habits of, ‘I really want to play a lot of guitar, and gig a lot, but I also need to finish my degree and make extra money teaching, and I also want to practice.’ There’s a certain level of organization and thinking ahead that I always feel like I have to be doing.”
“The concept of the Molly Miller Trio—and also a part of my playing—is we are playing songs, we are bringing back the instrumental, we are thinking about the arrangement.”
The Molly Miller Trio’s latest release, The Battle of Hotspur, had its origins during the pandemic. Miller and bassist Jennifer Condos started writing the songs in March 2020, sending files back and forth to each other. They finally finished writing the album’s last song, “Head Out,” in December 2021, and four months later, recorded the album in just two days. The 12-song collection is subtle and cool, meandering like a warm, sparkling country river through a backwoods county. The arrangements feel spacious and distinctly Western—Miller’s guitar lines are clean and clear and dripped with just the right level of reverb, trem, and chorus, while Jay Bellerose’s brush-led percussion trots alongside like a trusty steed.
The Battle of Hotspur has a live feel, and that aspect was 100-percent deliberate. Miller says, “That’s the exact intention of our records—we want to create a record that we can play live. Jason Wormer, the recording and mixing engineer that did our record, came to a show of ours and was like, ‘This is incredible.’ He’s recorded so many records and was like, ‘This is the first time I’ve ever recorded a record that sounds the same live.’ And that was our exact intention. Because I feel like [the goal of] the trio itself was to be full. It’s not supposed to be like, ‘Oh, let’s put saxophone and let’s put keys and other guitars on it.’ The concept of the record is a full trio like the way Booker T. & the M.G.’s were. It’s not, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if you added another instrument?’ No, we’re an instrumental trio.”
Musicality is what separates Miller from the rest of the pack. She has prodigious chops but uses them appropriately, when it makes musical sense, and her ability to honor a song’s written melody and bring it to life is one of her strong suits. “That’s a huge part of what we do,” she says. “The concept of the Molly Miller Trio—and also a part of my playing—is we are playing songs, we are bringing back the instrumental, we are thinking about the arrangement. The solo is a vehicle to further the story, to further the song, not just for me to shred. So often, you play a song, and you could be playing the solo over any song. There’s not enough time spent talking about how to play a melody convincingly, and then play a solo that’s connected to the melody.... Whether it’s a pop song, an original, or a standard, how you’re playing it is everything, and not just how you’re shredding over it.”
Miller still gets pigeonholed by expectations in the music industry, including the assumption that she’s a singer-songwriter: “I don’t sing. I’m a fucking guitar player.”
Photo by Anna Azarov
Miller’s strong sense of melody can be traced to her diverse palette of influences. Even though she’s a “jazzer” by definition, she’ll cover pop songs like the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do is Dream” and the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Miller says, “I spent nine years in jazz school. I practice ‘Giant Steps’ still for fun because I think it’s good for my guitar playing. But it was a release to be like, ‘I am not just a jazz guitar player at all!’ Why do I love the guitar? Because I discovered Jimi Hendrix, right? What made me feel things in high school? Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and No Doubt. It’s like, Grant Green’s not why I play the guitar.
“I play jazz guitar, but I’m a guitar player that loves jazz. What do I put on my playlist? It’s not like I just listen to Wes Montgomery. I go from Wes Montgomery to the Beach Boys to freakin’ Big Thief to Bob Dylan to Dave Brubeck. The musicians I love are people who tell stories and have something to say—Brian Wilson, Cat Stevens.... They’re amazing songwriters.”
“Whether it’s a pop song, an original, or a standard, how you’re playing it is everything, and not just how you’re shredding over it.”
Despite a successful career, Miller continually faces sexism in the industry. “I went to a guitar hang two days ago. It was a big company, and they invited me to come and check out guitars. And I’m playing—I clearly know how to play the instrument—and this photographer there is like, ‘Oh, so are you a singer?’ And I’m just like, ‘No, I don’t sing. Fuck you,’” recalls Miller. “It’s such an internal struggle because of the interactions I have with the world. This kind of gets this thing in me where I feel like I need to prove to people, like, I am a guitar player. And at this point, I know I’m established enough. I play the guitar, and I know how to play it. I’m good, whatever. There still is this ego portion that I’m constantly fighting, and it comes from random people walking up to me and asking about me playing acoustic guitar and my singer-songwriter career or whatever. And I’m like, ‘I don’t sing. I’m a fucking guitar player.’”
YouTube It
Molly Miller gets to both tour with and open up for Jason Mraz’s band. Here’s a taste of Miller leading into Mraz’s set with some adeptly and intuitively performed riffs from a show in July 2022.
George Benson’s Dreams Do Come True: When George Benson Meets Robert Farnonwas recorded in 1989. The collaboration came about after Quincy Jones told the guitarist that Farnon was “the greatest arranger in all the world.”
On that recommendation,Benson tapped Farnon for a 1989 recording project encompassing the jazz standards “My Romance” and “At Last” next to mid-century pop chestnut “My Prayer,” the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” and Leon Russell’s “A Song for You,” among others.
Across the album, Benson’s voice is the main attraction, enveloped by Farnon’s luxuriant big-band and string arrangements that give each track a warm, velveteen sheen. His guitar playing is, of course, in top form, and often sounds as timeless as the tunes they undertake: On “Autumn Leaves,” you could pluck the stem of the guitar solo and seat it neatly into an organ-combo reading of the tune, harkening back to the guitarist’s earlier days. But as great as any George Benson solo is bound to be, on Dreams Do Come True, each is relatively short and supportive. At this phase of his career, as on 1989’s Tenderlyand 1990’s Count Basie Orchestra-backed Big Boss Band, Benson was going through a jazz-singer period. If there’s something that sets the ballad-centric Dreams Do Come Trueapart, it’s that those other records take a slightly more varied approach to material and arranging.
When it was finished, the Benson/Farnon collaboration was shelved, and it stayed that way for 35 years. Now released, it provides a deeper revelation into this brief phase of Benson’s career. In 1993, he followed up Big Boss Man with an updated take on the smooth, slick pop that brought him blockbuster fame in the previous two decades and delivered Love Remembers.
Love is Blue (feat. The Robert Farnon Orchestra)
This kind of stylistic jumping around, of musical discovery, is a thread through Benson’s legendary career. From his days as a young child busking in Pittsburgh, where his favorite song to play was “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” he evolved through backing Brother Jack McDuff and leading his own organ combo, into his soulful and funky CTI Records phase, where he proved himself one of the most agile and adroit players in the jazz-guitar game. He eventually did the most improbable—and in anyone else’s hands thus far, impossible—feat and launched into pop superstardom with 1976’s Breezin’ and stayed there for years to come, racking up No. 1 hits and a host of Grammy awards.
At this moment, deep into his career at 81 years old, Benson continues to dive into new settings. While anyone observing from the sidelines might conclude that Benson has already excelled in more varied musical situations than any other instrumentalist, he somehow continues to discover new sides to his musicality. In 2018, he joined the Gorillaz on their technicolor indie-pop single “Humility,” and in 2020 he tracked his guitar onBootsy Collins’ “The Power of the One.” Benson assures me that not only are there more recordings in the archive that he’s waiting to reveal, but there are more wide-ranging collaborations to come.
On Dreams Do Come True, Benson covers classic jazz repertoire, plus he revisits the Beatles—whose work he covered on 1970’s The Other Side of Abbey Road—and Leon Russell, whose “This Masquerade” brought Benson a 1976 Grammy award for Record of the Year.
PG: The range of songs that you’ve played throughout your career, from your jazz records to 1970’s The Other Side ofAbbey Road or 1972’s White Rabbit album to 2019’s Chuck Berry and Fats Domino tribute, Walking to New Orleans, is so broad. Of course, now I’m thinking about the songs on Dreams Do Come True. How do you know when a song is a good fit?
George Benson: Well, you can’t get rid of it. It stays with you all the time. They keep popping up in your memory.
All the stuff that Sinatra did, and Nat King Cole did, and Dean Martin, that’s the stuff I grew up on. I grew up in a multinational neighborhood. There were only 30 African Americans in my school, and they had 1,400 students, but it was a vocational school.
I remember all that stuff like yesterday because it’s essential to who I am today. I learned a lot from that. You would think that would be a super negative thing. Some things about it were negative—you know, the very fact that there were 1,400 students and only 30 African Americans. But what I learned in school was how to deal with people from all different parts of the world.
After my father made my first electric guitar. I made my second one….
You made your second guitar?
Benson: Yeah, I designed it. My school built it for me. I gave them the designs, sent it down to the shop, they cut it out, I sent it to the electric department, and then I had to put on the strings myself. I brought my amplifier to school and plugged it in. Nobody believed it would work, first of all. When I plugged it in, my whole class, they couldn’t believe that it actually worked. So, that became my thing, man. “Little Georgie Benson—you should hear that guitar he made.”“I can let my mind go free and play how I feel.”
George Benson's Gear
The Benson-designed Ibanez GB10 was first introduced in 1977.
Photo by Matt Furman
Strings & Picks
- Ibanez George Benson Signature pick
- Thomastik-Infeld George Benson Jazz Strings
Accessories
- Radial JDI Passive Direct Box
So, your environment informed the type of music you were listening to and playing from a young age.
Benson: No doubt about it, man. Because remember, rock ’n’ roll was not big. When the guitar started playing with the rock bands, if you didn’t have a guitar in your band, you weren’t really a rock band. But that was later, though. It started with those young groups and all that hip doo-wop music.
I was known in Pittsburgh as Little Georgie Benson, singer. Occasionally, I would have the ukulele or guitar when the guitar started to get popular.
What’s your playing routine like these days? Do you play the guitar every day, and what do you play?
Benson: Not like I used to. Out of seven days, I probably play it four or five days.
I used to play virtually every day. It was just a natural thing for me to pick up. I had guitars strategically placed all over my house. As soon as I see one, my brain said, “Pick that up.” So, I would pick it up and start playing with new ideas. I don’t like going over the same thing over and over again because it makes you boring. I would always try to find something fresh to play. That’s not easy to do, but it is possible.
I’m looking for harmony. I’m trying to connect things together. How do I take this sound or this set of chord changes and play it differently? I don’t want to play it so everybody knows where I’m going before I even get there, you know?
“I wasn’t trying to sound loud. I was trying to sound good.”
How did you develop your guitar tone, and what is important about a guitar tone?
Benson: Years ago, the guitar was an accompaniment or background instrument, usually accompanying somebody or even accompanying yourself. But it was not the lead instrument necessarily. If they gave you a solo, you got a chance to make some noise.
As it got serious later on, I started looking for a great sound. I thought it was in the size of the guitar. So, I went out and bought this tremendously expensive guitar, big instrument. And I found that, yeah, that had a big sound, but that was not it. I couldn’t make it do what I wanted it to do. I found that it comes from my phrasing, the way I phrase things and the way I set up my guitar, and how I work with the amplifier. I wasn’t trying to sound loud. I was trying to sound good.
George Benson at Carnegie Hall in New York City on September 23,1981. The previous year, he received Grammy awards for “Give Me the Night,” “Off Broadway,” and “Moody’s Mood.”
Photo by Ebet Roberts
When I think about your playing, I’m automatically thinking about your lead playing so much of the time. But I think that your rhythm playing is just as iconic. What do you think is the most important thing about rhythm guitar parts, comping, and grooving?
Benson: That word comp, I finally found out what it really represents. I worked with a man called Jack McDuff, who took me out of Pittsburgh when I was 19 years old. He used to get mad at me all the time. “Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? I can’t hear what you’re playing because you play so low”—because I used to be scared. I didn’t want people to hear what I was playing because then they would realize I didn’t know what I was doing, you know? I would play very mousy. He said, “Man, I don’t know if you play good or bad because I can’t hear you. Man, play out. People don’t know what you’re playing. They’ll accept whatever it is you do; they’ll think you meant to do it. Either it’s good or bad.”
So I started playing out and I found there’s a great truth in what he said. When you play out, you sound like you know what you’re doing. People say, “Oh wow, this cat is a monster.” It either feels good and sounds good or it doesn’t. So, I learned how to make those beeps and bops and things sound good and feel good.
The word comp comes from complementing. Whoever’s coming in to solo is out front. I gotta make them sound good. And that’s why people call me today. I had a record with a group called the Gorillaz. That’s the reason why they called me is because they realized that I knew what to do when I come to complement somebody. I did not have a lead role in that song. But I loved playing it once I found the space for me. I said, “Man, I don’t wanna just play it on an album. I wanna mean something.”
I did something with Bootsy Collins, who is a monster. I said, “Why is he calling me? I’m not a monster, man.” But he heard something in me he wanted on his record, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I said, “No, I don’t think I can do it, man. I don’t think I can do you any good.” He said, “Try something, man. Try anything.” So I did. I didn’t think I could do that, but it came out good. Now I’m getting calls from George Clinton.
You worked on something with George Clinton?
Benson: Not yet, but that’s what I’m working on now, because he called me and said, “Man, do something with me.”
That’s not going to be easy. You know, I gotta find something that fits his personality, and where I can enhance it, not just throw something together, because that wouldn’t be right for the public. We want something musical, something that lasts for a long time.
“I can let my mind go free and play how I feel.”
In the liner notes for Dreams Do Come True, you say that there’s always more to be discovered. You just mentioned the Gorillaz, then Bootsy Collins and George Clinton. You have such a wide, open exploration of music. How has discovery and exploration guided your career?
Benson: Well, this is the thing that we didn’t have available a few years ago. Now, we can play anything. You couldn’t cross over from one music to another without causing some damage to your career, causing an uproar in the industry.
When Wes Montgomery did “Going Out of My Head” and Jimmy Smith did “Walk on the Wild Side,” it caused waves in the music industry, because radio was not set up for that. You were either country or jazz or pop or blues or whatever it was. You weren’t crossing over because there was no way to get that played. Now there is.
Because I’ve had something to do with most of those things I just mentioned, my mind goes back to when I was thinking, “What if I played it like this? No, people won’t like that. What if I played it like this? Now, they won’t like that either.” Now, I can let my mind go free and play how I feel, and they will find some way to get it played on the air.
YouTube It
George Benson digs into the Dave Brubeck-penned standard “Take Five” at the height of the ’80s, showing his unique ability to turn any tune into a deeply grooving blaze-fest.
