Soloist, Sideman & Steely Dan’s Guitarist of Choice
One unexpected pleasure of my recent Marianne Faithful mini-tour was getting to hear guitarist Jon Herington at the Kate Wolf Music Festival.
![Jon Herington with his Gibson ES-336. [Photo: Tony Kukulich.]](https://tonefiend.com/wp-content/uploads/AMK001-199x300.jpg)
Since 1999, Herington has been best known to audiences as Steely Dan’s touring and recording guitarist. He also performs with The Dukes of September Rhythm Review, an all-star band featuring Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald, and Boz Scaggs. And when he’s home in New York, he sings and plays with his trio, the Jon Herington Band, whose material blend bluesy raunch with sly, jazz-informed harmonies in a way that Steely Dan fans are likely to love. (Their latest release is Time on My Hands.) He’s also worked with many other jazz and pop luminaries (partial discography here).
Angel-voiced Madeleine Peyroux was onstage when out van pulled up at the festival. She was performing a set of intimate chamber jazz, complete with strings and a whisper-quiet rhythm section. We couldn’t see the band, but man, could we hear them! When the guitarist took flight with a ravishingly lyrical slide solo — in standard tuning, no less — my bandmate Rob Burger and I turned to each other. “Who is that?” I mouthed. More lovely guitar work wafted from the stage: a fluent bop solo. Sublimely understated rhythm guitar work straight out of a 1940s session. “Seriously,” I muttered. “Who is that?”
It was Jon, of course. As he left the stage, I plied him with as many questions as the quick set change permitted. How did he get those tones? How did he wring such a great slide sound from that Gibson ES-336 using conventional tuning and a standard setup? I was also curious about the demands of the Steely Dan gig, and not merely the challenge of performing a vast catalog of complex guitar parts for the notoriously demanding duo of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. How, I wondered, would a player approach those oh-so-varied riffs and solos? How would a guitarist honor those beloved solos without making them sound canned?
I didn’t have time to ask half those questions. But Jon, a charming, articulate fellow, agreed to an email interrogation upon his return home, even though he’s busy with Steely Dan rehearsals in advance of the band’s summer tour.