
Lionel Decoster, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Watson was a pivotal influence on Frank Zappa, Etta James, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others.
Chops: Intermediate Theory: Beginner Lesson Overview: • Learn essential blues licks. • Combine open position and higher positions. • Focus on the subtleties of bends and accents. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation. |
Houston native Johnny “Guitar" Watson might not be a household name, but he was a pivotal influence on Frank Zappa, Etta James, and Stevie Ray Vaughan among others. He's one of those figures that seems to lie just under the surface of pop culture. He invented the catchphrase “bow wow wow yippy-yo yippy-yay" and he isthe “gangster of love" that Steve Miller keeps talking about.
The thing that interests me about Johnny “Guitar" Watson is that despite his expansive explorations as an arranger, recording artist, and keyboard player, when it comes to guitar soloing, he really sticks to the blues. As a jazzy dude, I take this as a lesson in and of itself about how much can be said without using anything too fancy. We're going to explore some of Johnny's go-to licks and learn what his blues was all about.
Since Johnny often played with a capo, we'll be doing all of these licks in the key of E and taking advantage of open strings. You can easily move these licks up to any part of the fretboard, which he also did.
A big part of Johnny's sound comes from the fact that he played without a pick, just slapping and popping the strings super hard with his thumb and index finger. You can try this technique or pick it however you want. For these examples I'll be using a hard pick because I just can't play individual notes fast enough with my thumb like Johnny does. Either way, pay close attention to the notes that are marked with an accent and exaggerate the dynamics.
We'll start things off in Ex. 1 with probably the most essential guitar lick I know. Once you get this lick under your fingers you'll notice that just about every blues guitarist uses some version of it. You'll hear Johnny use it to build his phrases in every part of his career, no matter what style of music he's soloing on top of.
Click here for Ex. 1
Ex. 2 gives us pretty much the whole open position scale shape in a nice funky phrasing. You can hear something similar to this in “Base Station One." I like this lick a lot because of how easy it is. There's not really anything too flashy, and yet the rhythm is so satisfying. I especially love the emphasis on the A notes in the second measure, giving it the unresolved feeling of the “call" part of a “call and response" phrase.
Click here for Ex. 2
In Ex. 3 we're continuing to use every bit of the open position, but now it's getting a little fancier. This example shows the tendency Johnny has to hammer on the 3 on the 3rd string and slide up to the 3 on the 6th string. You can hear this lick on the opening of “A Real Mother For Ya." Try to get the bends nice and clean with a clear distinction between a full bend (whole-step) and a half bend. The last phrase (marked “piano") is deceptively hard and should be practiced on its own, slowly. It's almost like an afterthought but is still played very cleanly. You could pull-off from the B to the A, but Johnny tends to pick these kinds of quick, quiet phrases and it really adds a special quality to his playing.
Click here for Ex. 3
Ex. 4 explores the lower register of the open position. This lick can be heard in Watson's song “Tarzan." The dynamics are clutch here. Try to get the quiet, individually picked notes very clean. The distinction between those notes and the heavily accented hammer-ons at the beginning gives the phrase all of its feeling. The last two notes demonstrate Johnny's tendency to throw in a little afterthought sass in what I would call a very bebop style.
Click here for Ex. 4
Ex. 5 takes us to 3rd position. Johnny tends to spend a lot of time in this area, milking just these few notes infinitely with his feeling and phrasing. In the second measure we have an example of one of the ways he would typically bring it back down to open position with a super-fast and clean run. On the long G note just before that, wait until the very end to give it that slight quarter bend.
Click here for Ex. 5
Ex. 6 moves up to the 7th position where Johnny occasionally ventures. This particular lick is from “Do Me Bad So Good" (which bears a striking resemblance to “Billie Jean" five years before the MJ hit came out—but that's for another article). Play all the notes in the 10th fret with your 3rd finger (using 1st and 2nd to help bend) and the notes in the 8th fret with your 2nd finger, leaving your 3rd finger ready to play the last notes. This also gives the 8th fret bend an inexplicably different sound, which is one of those things that makes the guitar magical.
Click here for Ex. 6
A few moments later in the same solo we get Ex. 7. This is a personal favorite because this lick both anticipates a chord change and uses chromaticism (there's my jazziness coming into play). We also get a glimpse into how Johnny connects the areas of the fretboard together in his mind since we start in 5th position and end in the same 7th position that we used in the previous example. The bends are interesting as they basically overshoot the major 3rd of the chord, but it just doesn't sound right without them. As before, play the 8th fret notes with your 2nd finger.
Click here for Ex. 7
Ex. 8 brings us full circle to the simple lick we started with in the first example. This variation adds in a very cool F#. It's also flashier and more in the style of his pre-funk days. This is from “Three Hours Past Midnight," which apparently inspired Frank Zappa to play the guitar. Don't worry so much about the exact rhythm for this—it's really an approximation. The tempo is slow and the licks are fast. The important thing is getting the right notes on the downbeats.
Click here for Ex. 8
One final note: If you slow these recordings down (like I did) to learn them, you'll hear a distinct swing in his playing. It's subtle, but I tend to think it tells the listener a lot about what they're listening to. For a more in-depth explanation about the concept of swing, I have a couple of YouTube videos on the subject.
Of course as with all blues players, knowing the licks is only half the story. The real genius comes in the phrasing and timing of it all. Take this as your cue to start diving into the excellent recordings (and unfortunately sparse live videos) of Johnny “Guitar" Watson!
For a look at the life of Johnny “Guitar" Watson check out the “Forgotten Heroes" article by Michael Ross. In my research this was by far the most in-depth article I found, and it's right here at Premier Guitar.
Adding to the company’s line of premium guitar strapsand accessories, Fairfield Guitar Co. has introduced a new deluxe leather strapdesigned in collaboration with Angela Petrilli.
Based in Los Angeles, Petrilli is well-known to guitar enthusiasts around the world for her online videos. She is one of the video hosts at Norman’s Rare Guitars and has her own YouTube lesson series, the Riff Rundown. She also writes, records and performs with her original band, Angela Petrilli & The Players, and has worked with Gibson, Fender, Martin Guitars, Universal Audio, Guitar Center and Fishman Transducers.
Angela Petrilli's eye-grabbing signature strap is fully hand cut, four inches wide and lightly padded, so it evenly distributes the weight of the instrument on the shoulder and offers superb comfort during extended play. The front side features black "cracked" leather with turquoise triple stitching. The "cracked" treatment on the leather highlights the beautiful natural marks and grain pattern – and it only gets better with age and use.The strap’s back side is black suede for adhesion and added comfort, with the Fairfield Guitar Co. logo and Angela's name stamped in silver foil.
Features include:
- 100% made in the USA
- Hand cut 4” wide leather strap with light padding -- offering extra comfort for longgigs and rehearsals.
- Black suede back side avoids slipping, maintains guitar’s ideal playing position.
- Length is fully adjustable from 45” - 54” and the strap has two holes on thetailpiece for added versatility.
The Fairfield Guitar Co. Angela Petrilli signature strap is available for $150 online at fairfieldguitarco.com.
This legendary vintage rack unit will inspire you to think about effects with a new perspective.
When guitarists think of effects, we usually jump straight to stompboxes—they’re part of the culture! And besides, footswitches have real benefits when your hands are otherwise occupied. But real-time toggling isn’t always important. In the recording studio, where we’re often crafting sounds for each section of a song individually, there’s little reason to avoid rack gear and its possibilities. Enter the iconic Eventide H3000 (and its massive creative potential).
When it debuted in 1987, the H3000 was marketed as an “intelligent pitch-changer” that could generate stereo harmonies in a user-specified key. This was heady stuff in the ’80s! But while diatonic harmonizing grabbed the headlines, subtler uses of this pitch-shifter cemented its legacy. Patch 231 MICROPITCHSHIFT, for example, is a big reason the H3000 persists in racks everywhere. It’s essentially a pair of very short, single-repeat delays: The left side is pitched slightly up while the right side is pitched slightly down (default is ±9 cents). The resulting tripling/thickening effect has long been a mix-engineer staple for pop vocals, and it’s also my first call when I want a stereo chorus for guitar.
The second-gen H3000S, introduced the following year, cemented the device’s guitar bona fides. Early-adopter Steve Vai was such a proponent of the first edition that Eventide asked him to contribute 48 signature sounds for the new model (patches 700-747). Still-later revisions like the H3000B and H3000D/SE added even more functionality, but these days it’s not too important which model you have. Comprehensive EPROM chips containing every patch from all generations of H3000 (plus the later H3500) are readily available for a modest cost, and are a fairly straightforward install.
In addition to pitch-shifting, there are excellent modulation effects and reverbs (like patch 211 CANYON), plus presets inspired by other classic Eventide boxes, like the patch 513 INSTANT PHASER. A comprehensive accounting of the H3000’s capabilities would be tedious, but suffice to say that even the stock presets get deliciously far afield. There are pitch-shifting reverbs that sound like fever-dream ancestors of Strymon’s “shimmer” effect. There are backwards-guitar simulators, multiple extraterrestrial voices, peculiar foreshadows of the EarthQuaker Devices Arpanoid and Rainbow Machine (check out patch 208 BIZARRMONIZER), and even button-triggered Foley effects that require no input signal (including a siren, helicopter, tank, submarine, ocean waves, thunder, and wind). If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute. (Spin the big wheel and find out what you’ve won!)
“If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute.”
But there’s another, more pedestrian reason I tend to reach for the H3000 and its rackmount relatives in the studio: I like to do certain types of processing after the mic. It’s easy to overlook, but guitar speakers are signal processors in their own right. They roll off high and low end, they distort when pushed, and the cabinets in which they’re mounted introduce resonances. While this type of de facto processing often flatters the guitar itself, it isn’t always advantageous for effects.
Effects loops allow time-based effects to be placed after preamp distortion, but I like to go one further. By miking the amp first and then sending signal to effects in parallel, I can get full bandwidth from the airy reverbs and radical pitched-up effects the H3000 can offer—and I can get it in stereo, printed to its own track, allowing the wet/dry balance to be revisited later, if needed. If a sound needs to be reproduced live, that’s a problem for later. (Something evocative enough can usually be extracted from a pedal-form descendant like the Eventide H90.)
Like most vintage gear, the H3000 has some endearing quirks. Even as it knowingly preserves glitches from earlier Eventide harmonizers (patch 217 DUAL H910s), it betrays its age with a few idiosyncrasies of its own. Extreme pitch-shifting exhibits a lot of aliasing (think: bit-crusher sounds), and the analog Murata filter modules impart a hint of warmth that many plug-in versions don’t quite capture. (They also have a habit of leaking black goo all over the motherboard!) It’s all part of the charm of the unit, beloved by its adherents. (Well, maybe not the leaking goo!)
In 2025, many guitarists won’t be eager to care for what is essentially an expensive, cranky, decades-old computer. Even the excitement of occasional tantalum capacitor explosions is unlikely to win them over! Fortunately, some great software emulations exist—Eventide’s own plugin even models the behavior of the Murata filters. But hardware offers the full hands-on experience, so next time you spot an old H3000 in a rack somewhere—and you’ve got the time—fire it up, wait for the distinctive “click” of its relays, spin the knob, and start digging.
A live editor and browser for customizing Tone Models and presets.
IK Multimedia is pleased to release the TONEX Editor, a free update for TONEX Pedal and TONEX ONE users, available today through the IK Product Manager. This standalone application organizes the hardware library and enables real-time edits to Tone Models and presets with a connected TONEX pedal.
You can access your complete TONEX library, including Tone Models, presets and ToneNET, quickly load favorites to audition, and save to a designated hardware slot on IK hardware pedals. This easy-to-use application simplifies workflow, providing a streamlined experience for preparing TONEX pedals for the stage.
Fine-tune and organize your pedal presets in real time for playing live. Fully compatible with all your previous TONEX library settings and presets. Complete control over all pedal preset parameters, including Global setups. Access all Tone Models/IRs in the hardware memory, computer library, and ToneNET Export/Import entire libraries at once to back up and prepare for gigs Redesigned GUI with adaptive resize saves time and screen space Instantly audition any computer Tone Model or preset through the pedal.
Studio to Stage
Edit any onboard Tone Model or preset while hearing changes instantly through the pedal. Save new settings directly to the pedal, including global setup and performance modes (TONEX ONE), making it easy to fine-tune and customize your sound. The updated editor features a new floating window design for better screen organization and seamless browsing of Tone Models, amps, cabs, custom IRs and VIR. You can directly access Tone Models and IRs stored in the hardware memory and computer library, streamlining workflow.
A straightforward drop-down menu provides quick access to hardware-stored Tone Models conveniently sorted by type and character. Additionally, the editor offers complete control over all key parameters, including FX, Tone Model Amps, Tone Model Cabs/IR/VIR, and tempo and global setup options, delivering comprehensive, real-time control over all settings.
A Seamless Ecosystem of Tones
TONEX Editor automatically syncs with the entire TONEX user library within the Librarian tab. It provides quick access to all Tone Models, presets and ToneNET, with advanced filtering and folder organization for easy navigation. At the same time, a dedicated auto-load button lets you preview any Tone Model or preset in a designated hardware slot before committing changes.This streamlined workflow ensures quick edits, precise adjustments and the ultimate flexibility in sculpting your tone.
Get Started Today
TONEX Editor is included with TONEX 1.9.0, which was released today. Download or update the TONEX Mac/PC software from the IK Product Manager to install it. Then, launch TONEX Editor from your applications folder or Explorer.
For more information and videos about TONEX Editor, TONEX Pedal, TONEX ONE, and TONEX Cab, visit:
www.ikmultimedia.com/tonexeditor
Valerie June’s songs, thanks to her distinctive vocal timbre and phrasing, and the cosmology of her lyrics, are part of her desire to “co-create a beautiful life” with the world at large.
The world-traveling cosmic roots rocker calls herself a homebody, but her open-hearted singing and songwriting––in rich display on her new album Owls, Omens, and Oracles––welcomes and embraces inspiration from everything … including the muskrat in her yard.
I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun in an interview as I did speaking with roots-rock artist Valerie June about her new release, Owls, Omens, and Oracles. At the end of our conversation, after going over schedule by about 15 minutes, her publicist curbed us with a gentle reminder. In fairness, maybe we did spend a bit too much time talking about non-musical things, such as Seinfeld, spirituality, and the fauna around her home in Humboldt, Tennessee.
YouTube
If you’re familiar with June’s sound, you know how effortlessly she stands out from the singer-songwriter pack. Her equal-parts warm, reedy, softly Macy Gray-tinged singing voice imprints on her as many facets as a radiant-cut emerald—and it possesses the trademark sincerity heard in the most distinctive of singer/songwriters. Her music, overall, brilliantly shines with a spirited, contagiously uplifting glow.
Owls, Omens, and Oracles opens with “Joy, Joy!” with producer M. Ward rocking lead guitar over strings (June plays acoustic on nearly all of the tracks and banjo on one). It then recurringly dips into ’50s doo-wop chord changes, blends chugging, at times funky rock rhythms with saxophones and horns, bursts with New Orleans-style brass on “Changed” (which features gospel legends the Blind Boys of Alabama), and explores a slow soul groove with electronic guest DJ Cavem Moetavation on “Superpower.” Bright Eyes’ multi-instrumentalist Nate Walcott helmed the arrangements with guidance from Ward and June, and frequently appears on piano and Hammond organ, while Norah Jones supports with backing vocals on the folk lullaby “Sweet Things Just for You.” The entire album was recorded live to tape, which was a new experience for June.
June shares her perspective on the album and her work, overall. “It’s not ever complete or finished, your study of art,” she offers. “It’s an adventure, and it keeps getting prettier as you walk through the meadow of creating or learning new things. Every artist that you bring in has a different way of performing with you, or the audience might be really talkative or super quiet. And all of that shapes the art—so it’s ever-expansive. It’s pretty infinite [laughs], where art can take you and where it goes.... I kinda got lost there a little bit,” she muses, laughing.June’s favored acoustic guitar is this Martin 000-15M, with mahogany top, back, and sides.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
June didn’t connect with guitar in the beginning, but discovered her passion for it later, when the instrument became a vehicle for her self-empowerment. She took lessons as a teenager but was a distracted student, preferring to listen to her teacher share the history of blues guitarists like Big Bill Broonzy and Mississippi John Hurt. “I didn’t pick it up again until I was in my early 20s, and my band that I was in with my ex fell apart,” she says. “I still was singing and I still was hearing these beautiful voices sing me these songs, and I didn’t want to never be able to perform them. It was a terrible feeling, to be … musically stranded.
“And I was like, ‘Now, I could go get a new band and get some more accompaniment, but how ’bout I get my tail in there and keep my promise to my granddad who gave me that first guitar and actually learn how to play it, so I’ll never feel like this again.’ The goal was that I would never be musically stranded again.”
She became a solo performer, learning lap steel and banjo along with guitar, and called her style “organic moonshine roots music.” Today, she eschews picks for fingers, even when strumming chords, and is a vital blues-and-folk based stylist when she lays into her playing–especially in a live,solo setting. After two self-released albums, 2006’s The Way of the Weeping Willow and 2008’s Mountain of Rose Quartz, she connected with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, who recorded and produced her 2013 album, Pushin’ Against Stone, at Nashville’s Easy Eye Sound, which helped launch her now-flourishing career.
Valerie June’s Gear
Guitars
Amps
- Fender Deluxe Reverb
Effects
- TC Electronic Hall of Fame
- MXR X Third Man Hardware Double Down booster
- J. Rockett Audio Archer boost/overdrive
Strings
- D’Addario XL Nickel Regular Light (.010–.046)
- Martin Marquis Silked Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054
Photo by Travys Owen
As we talk about art being a shared experience, June says she can be a bit of a hermit at times, but “when it’s time to share the art, then there you are. Even if you’re a painter and you just put your painting on a wall and walk away, that’s an interaction that brings you out of your studio or your bedroom to understand this whole act of co-creating—which to me is a spiritual act anyway. That’s why we’re here, to really understand those rules and layers to life. How do we co-create together?
“And I think it’s so fun,” she enthuses. “I enjoy learning, even when it’s hard. I’m like, ‘Okay, this chord is killing me right now, or this phrase.... but I’ma stick with it. And then that likens to something that I might face when I go out into the world. I’m like, ‘All right, I can get through this.’”
I suggest, “When you say ‘co-creating,’ it sounds like you mean something bigger.”
“Both in the creation of our art, but also in the creation of a life,” June replies. “’Cause how can a life be something this artistic? You get to the end of it and you’re like, ‘Wow, look at what I co-created! With all these other people, with animals, with nature, with sound that’s all around....‘ All of my life has been a piece of art or a collective creation. I imagine them like books: different lives on a shelf. And you go pick one—‘Whoa! I created a pretty fun one there!’ or, ‘Oh, man, I had no hand in that....’ Close the book, next one!” she concludes, laughing as she illustrates the metaphor with her hands.
“So does that make all of your inspirations your co-creators?” I ask.
Valerie June at one of her several Newport Folk Festival appearances, with her trusty Gold Tone banjo
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
“Yeah! Even if they’ve gone before,” says June. “I was listening to some beautiful classical music the other day, and I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know who any of these artists are; they’re all dead and gone, but I’m just enjoying it and it’s putting me in a zone that I need to be in right now.‘ So, we’re always leaving these little seeds for even those who are coming after us to be inspired by.”
Some of her current non-musical co-creators are poets and authors, such as the poet Hafez, the philosopher Audre Lorde, poet Mary Oliver, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist whose works include Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses.
“It’s not ever complete or finished, your study of art. It’s an adventure, and it keeps getting prettier as you walk through the meadow of creating or learning new things.”
“These books are so beautiful and show the relationship of humanity with nature and the way trees speak with each other; the way moss communicates to itself,” June explains. “Those ways of being can help humans, who always think we know so much, to learn how to work together better.”
As she’s sharing, I see her glance out her window. “Right now, I just saw a muskrat go across the pond,” she continues. “It’s about this big [holds hands about three feet apart] and it digs holes in the yard. It’s having such a great time and I’m just like, ‘Okay, you are huge, and I’m walking through the yard and falling in holes because of you [laughs]. I’m just watching you live your best life!’ And then there was a blue heron that came yesterday, and I watched it eat fish.... They’re my friends!” she exclaims, with more laughter.
Valerie June believes in the power of flowers–and all living thing–as her creative collaborators.
It might seem like we’re getting a bit off subject, but it’s residents of nature like these who are important in her creative process.
I share how, in my own approach to art, I feel as though we can always access creativity and our ideals, as long as we stay receptive to experiencing and sharing in them. June agrees, but comments that sometimes her best self only wants to sit and focus: “No more information; no more downloads, please.”
An encounter with Memphis-based blues guitarist Robert Belfour, who June frequently saw perform, expanded that perspective for her. She shares about a time she went up to him after a show: “I was like, ‘Hey, I would love to work with you on some music and maybe we could co-write a song or something.’ He was like, ‘Nope! I don’t wanna do it.’ And I said, ‘Whaaat?’ And he’s like, ‘No. I do what I do, and I do not do what anybody else does; I just do what I do.’”
Sometimes, she says, “I think that’s just as much of an outlook to have with creating as anything. It’s like, ‘Okay, I’m there, I’m where I wanna be. I don’t want to be anywhere else.’”
“That’s why we’re here, to really understand those rules and layers to life. How do we co-create together?”
Part of what’s so enjoyable about speaking with June is realizing that she truly exists on her own plane. She has no pretense, and in that, doesn’t hide some of the fears that weigh on her mind at times. But she doesn’t let those define her. It’s her easy, exuberant optimism that sparks a feeling of friendship between us, without having known each other before that afternoon. What are some of her guiding principles as an artist, I wonder?
“I sit with the idea of, ‘Who am I creating this for?’” she says, “and returning to the fact that I’m doing this for me, and, as Gillian Welch said, ‘I’m gonna do it anyway even if it doesn’t pay.’ This is what I wanna do. And reflecting on that and letting that kind of be my guiding force. It’s just something that I enjoy, that I really wanna do.”
YouTube It
From there, the conversation meanders in other directions, and June even generously asks me a few questions about my own artistic beliefs. We share about trusting your gut instinct, and walking away from situations and people who don’t serve us. This reminds her of a bigger feeling.
“With everything that these times hold for us as humans,” she shares, “from the inequality that we face to the environmental change, the political climate, and all the things that could lead us to fear or negativity.... I started to think about it, and I’m like, ‘Okay, well, maybe we are fucked! Maybe the planet is going to eject us and all of the other things are gonna come true! Well, if that’s what’s gonna happen, who do I wanna be?’
“I want to go out in a way that’s sweet or kind to other people, enjoying this experience, these last moments, and building togetherness through music. I want to co-create a beautiful life even in the face of all of that. That’s what I want to do.”