Guitarist with Steely Dan since 2000, Jon Herington has played the game in both the rock and jazz idioms for over four decades. He earned his stripes on the same New Jersey Shore band circuit as Bruce Springsteen, studied jazz guitar, explored jazz with former bandmates of Wes Montgomery, and finally set up shop in New York City as a session and live musician, looking for a break. Seeing him play, which I did recently when Steely Dan swung through the Forum in Los Angeles, I instantly noticed how proficient and on the mark he was — right down to the rhythm, the leads, the whole damn presentation. The guy’s certainly paid his dues and he’s got the chops to prove it.
Previous Steely Dan guitarists like Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and Larry Carlton have nothing on Herington, who perfectly replicates the parts everyone wants to hear, and adds those extra little things of his own to spice it up. Maybe that’s why, in addition to touring with Steely Dan, he’s also been a featured player on their last two albums, 2003’s Everything Must Go and 2000’s Two Against Nature. He’s also played on both Donald Fagan and Walter Becker’s solo albums, along with making a slew of guest appearances on dozens of rock and jazz albums and videos. Oh, and let’s not forget the Dukes of September Rhythm Revue, featuring Fagen, Boz Scaggs, and Michael McDonald, another outfit Herington is part of.
All this and four solo albums, his latest being Time On My Hands, a catch-and-carry rock album with Herington on guitar and lead vocals, Dennis Espantman on bass and Frank Pagano on drums. In 2013, the album was nominated for Vintage Guitar Magazine’s Album of the Year. Even though Steely Dan takes up much of his time, Herington always looks forward to getting back to New York and laying down tracks with his band. At press time, he has a handful of East Coast live dates lined up for November. See Jon Herrington.com for updates.
The following interview took place just two days after Steely Dan’s Forum show. Herington was in Phoenix, after driving all night from San Diego and a gig at Humphrey’s By The Sea, a unique amphitheater right on the water. Herington told me Donald Fagan says it like playing a club outdoors. Having been there many times, I couldn’t agree more. From there, it continued….
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I would have loved to have seen you at Humphrey’s, but you were great at the Forum.
Thank you. I thought, for the most part, it was a good, strong show. Some nights, I just sort of feel like there’s an easier, more natural, spontaneous kind of flow. I felt like it was kind of pretty good up to a point, and I kind of started losing steam that way at the very last couple tunes. They asked a lot of me on that last little vamp toward the finale.
It was my first time seeing Steely Dan. I’ve been a big fan of the band for years, but I’ve never seen them.
Oh, really.
I was with people who had seen you before, and they thought you sounded a lot looser than ever on this tour.
Well, I hope you mean that in a good way (laughs).
They totally meant it in a good way.
It’s been the same personnel now — I guess there’s one slight change in the background vocals, but all of them have done it before at different times. But the rhythm section and the horns have been stable since maybe, 06 or 07, something like that. And it’s a super precise, fantastic rhythm section to play with. I mean, it came together really quickly this year because we played a lot last year, so it hadn’t been that long, and it’s all the same personnel. It feels like a great old custom shoe to put back on.
That’s a good way of putting it.
It’s familiar, too. I think everybody’s more confident, more relaxed. So I’m not surprised it shows up that way to your friends.
It seems like you and Walter Becker are dividing the solos up, although you seem to play a few more, and a lot more of the signature ones.
Typically, he’s playing the solos that he did on the recordings like “Josie,” for instance, and he’s kind of assumed the role over the years as the sort of guy who fills and just inserts little blues ideas behind the vocals and all that stuff. He’s not playing as many parts. I’m basically taking care of the part playing, as much as I can grab. When it’s one of the signature solos, where somebody else did the playing on the records, like when they hired the great players like Larry Carlton or if it’s something that Jeff Baxter did, they typically have me do it. And most of those — although there’s a few that Walter played, like “Josie,” which are pretty iconic — yeah, they certainly, like I said, they use me in the end there with “Peg,” “Reelin’ In The Years,” “My Old School.” There’s a lot of guitar in those, so they’ve got me working there.
You’ve been with Steely Dan since 1999 — a lot longer than most of the other musicians that had played with them. Did you ever envision it would go this long?
No. I don’t dare to sort of assume with these guys. When I first joined, I knew the history of the guitar chair in that band, since they begin working in 93 or 94. There really wasn’t a guitar player that lasted more than a tour or two. They averaged about a year or two with the band, the three guys that played the gig in the 90s. So I had no … there was no reason to think it would be any different for me when I started. But I think the interesting thing for me was when I started, I didn’t know how Don and Walter would be to work for. But basically they never have told me what to play. They’ve really left it completely up to me. I decided right away that there were two ways to go. I could try to second-guess and imagine what they might want, and try to play what I thought they might want and not be sure. Or I could just decide to really just do what I felt was the appropriate thing, and play what I wanted to play, what I thought would be best for the gig, and see what happened. And then I made the latter choice because I figured if I had made the former choice and tried to sort of guess what they wanted, and then they didn’t like it and then they fired me, then I would never forgive myself for not having tried to play it my own way. But I did play it my own way, and my own way happens to be — and I’m still here after 15 years, so I feel like I did the right thing. I’m trying to make the job fresh, interesting and fun to play for me. And to some degree, I would be happy to — if there was something about my playing that came across as me, you know — but most of all, I approached this job like I approach any job. I try to find out what the music wants from me, rather than come with the agenda of putting my signature on this music. I first start to say, “OK well, this music is great and it does this.” I love the records, so my question is, “How can I do the best I can to make this music sound great?” The first thing in my mind is not “How can I put my mark on it?,” it’s “How can I make this work as a whole?” And if there’s room for that personal thing, and indeed there has been, and I’ve found more and more of it as the years have gone by, but that sort of comes second for me. And it’s fun when it comes that way, and it’s not at the expense of the whole. And I think that’s the way I’ve approached it. My hope is that — they probably don’t talk about it in these terms, or maybe even think about it consciously in these terms — but my hope is that that’s what’s allowed me to stay on this job for this long. Because it’s not just about me, it’s about the whole.
That being said, did you have a bit of creative latitude on both Fagen and Becker’s solo records, as well as on Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go?
Absolutely. There were no solos on Walter’s record; there was just part playing. But even the part playing was stuff that I came up with. The songs are pretty loose, and with Walter’s record — and with the first of Donald’s two — we had the very unusual-these-days luxury of recording with the full rhythm section in the studio at the same time. And what’s great about that is you craft your part over time and over several takes of a rhythm track by listening and interacting with everybody else in real time. That’s when you can get great rhythm section results that are greater than the sum of its parts. Most records nowadays get made in a cheaper way, where I’ll go a session and I’m playing along with a track where everything has been recorded and they’re just adding guitar to an existing track. So there’s nothing about it that feels interactive; it feels like I have to accommodate all the choices that have been made before I get there. But when you record live with a rhythm section, especially if the parts aren’t scripted — and they never are on Walter’s rhythm stuff — there’s room to invent and craft your part with the other guys. There’s a give and take that’s going on. It’s a beautiful and almost lost art. It’s what a band does typically, when they play together. But to do it fresh in the studio when there’s a new piece of music to try to put down, it’s such a beautiful thing to do. And we got to do that on Walter’s record and also on Don’s. So yeah, I think there was a lot of creative room for all of us on those records. And you know, when I’ve overdubbed on Donald’s records, there have been many solos — especially on Sunken Condos, there’s a lot of them on that record — and more and more, because I think we’ve known each other for a long time now, there’s a kind of mutual trust about it. I remember years ago, I would get a little more reluctant to speak up if I felt like we weren’t headed the right direction or if I had a strong idea, like it should do something else. I’d be a little more reluctant in the old days. But nowadays, I’m both freer to speak up and suggest something and Donald’s freer to let go and trust that that’s going to be OK. He’s a hands-on producer and he has ideas, but he also will frequently step back and say, “Do what you want.” But he gets enthusiastic and excited; he’s a very creative guy and has lots of ideas. He can’t help asking for me to try things, but he also gives me plenty of room, especially on Sunken Condos — I felt like it was particularly fun and relaxed, and I think it came out sounding better as a result too.
That’s a great record. I was listening to that just recently. And of course, I did as you about Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go, so my last question about Steely Dan is, are there plans for another Steely Dan studio album that you know of?
No, not that I know of. My guess is that both of those guys have a lot of material and I think they probably don’t go for long without writing, because they’re both very facile that way. But no, I haven’t heard anything about that, although it would be a thrill to get to do more if that’s in the works. I would love it. But no, I don’t think so. But right now, this is a pretty green tour we’ve got going on, so I think it’s as much as anybody can do just to get through it and survive.
You have four solo albums of your own, the most recent being Time On My Hands. Listening to that record, I can certainly see why you’re part of Steely Dan. And yet, you do have this unique style of your own — a little edgier — but definitely you’re rocking out a little more. Is that kind of the way you look at it?
Yeah, I would say that. I don’t think I’m a writer that in any way resembles Steely Dan. But I do — especially when I have time on my hands — I worked hard to try to make sure that the kind of guitar playing I got to sort of work on over the years, many years, with Steely Dan, was documented and represented on a record of my own as well. That was one of the intentions of that record, because I hadn’t really done a record where there were extended guitar solos and rhythm guitar was really in the spotlight. The earlier records tended to have song structures that tended to have little short eight-bar guitar breaks, like a Beatles song would have or something. This one’s a little more blues-based, so it gave me the chance to stretch out a little more, which was really one of the big points of it for me.
I really like some of the songs on this record. “Shine Shine Shine” is definitely a great opener. You’ve got “Sweet Ginny Rose,” which is sort of like “Not Fade Away” with a sitar.
It’s kind of like a Bo Didley raga (laughs).
(Laughs) Exactly. I love the lyrics on the bluesy “I Ain’t Got You,” and, of course, you’ve got the computer jargon down on “eGirl.” Are you constantly writing? How did you get this record together? I mean, you’re a busy guy — is this something you kind of do between Steely Dan commitments?
The writing tends to get done at home. I don’t really do much writing on the road. It’s quite enough to get through this gig. The challenges of the road are many. I tend not to do much writing when I’m away. But when I’m home, I tend to get together with the bass player in my band, Dennis Espantman, and somehow we’ve managed to … a lot of those tunes were collaborations with him and another guy, Jim Farmer. But Dennis and I had managed to find quite a lot of time to get together, and it feels pretty effortless. When we get together, if we have a good idea, it usually gets finished pretty quickly. We’ve got 12 new songs that we both co-wrote for another record that I’m hoping to finish in the fall. We’ve got the basic tracks done for it and it’s very much like a few of the ones that you just mentioned in terms of the lyrics. We tried to make them funny and entertaining, stuff that will go over live, because that’s part of what my band is about. We’re trying to get out and work a little. It definitely is not meant to be taken too seriously. The music will be fun and a little different from Time On My Hands, it won’t be quite as much of a blues thing about them, and it won’t be quite as much guitar stretching. But there’s still going to be plenty of guitar on it. It’s a fun bunch of songs. Most of all, it’s going to be entertaining, I think. It’s been happening in the past year or two, pretty regularly when I’m home and able to get together with Dennis. I hope it will continue. He’ll send me another idea for a song, and I suppose we probably could get it down if I had a little more time on the road. But we’ll probably wait until I’m back at home. The priority’s going to be to finish the record, but then it’s pretty hard to resist writing. It’s one of the most fun things to do for me.
I listen to a song like “Running Out of Time,” and going back to your previous record Shine Shine Shine, the song “Fabulous,” I’m definitely hearing a strong Beatles influence.
Oh yeah, definitely (laughs). I was a big Beatles fan from the times they were on The Ed Sullivan Show and on the radio when I was a kid. I was hooked. It wasn’t just a kid infatuation, because it turned out their work really held up over time, as you know. It stuck with me, it’s kind of my first language of music. It’s what really drew me into playing the guitar. It was all the music of that era that really kind of formed me. I still think of it as a sort of center for where I come from and what I love. So it gets into the record-making sometimes — sometimes in the song form, sometimes in the overall sound of it. But also in the production sometimes. There are definitely some — like “Fabulous” had some backwards guitar like you would hear on some later Beatles stuff. There’s no question there’s a “Lucy In The Sky” kind of vibe to the guitar in the first guitar part. Those are unapologetic borrowings, you know, because I’m a fan.
It’s interesting because I read you had started out in rock; you had even played gigs opening for Springsteen. Then you got into jazz and you played with Wes Montgomery’s brother — and I love Wes Montgomery. And now you’re with Steely Dan, and what you’re doing on your own — you’re kind of doing a little of both, jazz and rock.
Yeah, there’s a little bit of a hybrid. And there’s no question the jazz stuff on the one hand informed me and kind of trained me to sort of deal with some of the trickier aspects of Steely Dan, because they’re definitely jazz-informed writhers. On the other hand, it’s seeped into my improvising as well, and I’m happy for that because it just feels natural to me now, that my playing, even though it’s mostly working with blues or rock guitar sound, there’s definitely elements of jazz that are all over the soloing, the improvising, the lines that I play. I worked so hard on that for so long and I love it so much that it feels like a natural thing to me. It would be hard for me to not have that come out because it’s very natural after all this time. Although I don’t really think of myself as a jazz player per se, because I don’t really work in a pure jazz context. But no question, it’s in my vocabulary and it definitely comes out.
Your first record, The Complete Rhyming Dictionary, which you reissued as Pulse And Cadence, is clearly the jazziest. Have you thought about going back and making a jazz record of that style?
I think about it once in a while. I’m not sure I would make it in that style. It certainly is something I wouldn’t rule out because it’s still something that attracts me. Once you’ve been bitten by that bug to sort of learn how to improvise in jazz, it’s the kind of thing you could work on the rest of your life and still find challenging. There’s no sort of finishing that work, that’s the beautiful thing about it. It really hasn’t gone away for me and I suppose if I found myself with the time and enough interest, I suppose that might happen again. But right now I’m still in the middle of these songs records, which are a lot of fun to make, and because I’m performing with my band, I’m kind of focused on the kind of stuff that seems to work for us when we play live. So that would have to wait if it happens. I wouldn’t rule it out, like I said. It could be fun.
It says in your bio there’s an “undeniable chemistry built on a lifetime of collaboration” with you and your band. Do you guys go back a long way?
We started playing in the late 80s. It could have been as early as 86, 87. We haven’t been active every year. In the beginning we did some blues gigs in bars, and a few years later we started writing and started doing little showcase jobs hoping to book the band, see if we could get a label interested in the music. None of that really panned out, but we’ve stuck together over the years and kept writing and kept playing. In the last four years or so, I decided to really revive it in a major way and try to book a lot more gigs. I hired an assistant, Susan, to help us book them. And so the pace of gigging and the pace of recording has really increased dramatically. So it’s been fun. We’ve got another record on the way, so the pace is really much quicker than it was. I was averaging maybe one every 10 years; now it’s one every year and a half or two. Considering all the touring I’m doing, that seems pretty good. I’m happy about it.
Now do Dennis (Espantman) and Frank (Pagano) work in other situations as well? Are they session players?
Frank does. Frank does a lot of freelancing and works with the progressive rock band Renaissance.
We just reviewed their latest record.
He might be on that record; I’m not sure. He does a lot for different jobs around. He does some Broadway show work; he does some other live work around New York City. Dennis doesn’t do much. He runs a furniture store and his one musical outlet is I think this band right now. He seems to like it that way.
I saw you have some East Coast gigs coming up in November. Are you working on other things after that or before that?
I’m mostly trying to leave space in the counter to finish the record. I agreed to do a handful of those shows in November, mostly at the urging of my assistant Susan. Her job is to keep the fans interested, and she thought we really could use it. Mostly, I want to work on the record, because that’s one of the most fun things to do. I don’t want it to drag on too long. It gets interrupted enough with these tours. If I’m home, I want to take advantage of that. And it’s been such a busy year. I traveled earlier in the year with Madeleine Peyroux, and this is a long tour with Steely Dan in the summer, so I’m really looking forward to just sitting still basically and recording when I get back.
So what’s the working title of the new record?
Well we have a working title, but I’m not sure it’s going to be the final choice. But it’s looking like the best candidate for the title so far, and it certainly fits a lot of lyrics — it’s Adult Entertainment.
That’s catchy. So are you looking at what — a fall release or next year?
I doubt that it will be done in the fall. I have a lot of time to work on it in October, and perhaps enough time to finish it in October. But then we’ll still have to mix it and master it, and that’s not only time-consuming but expensive, so we’ll have to see. I’m hoping by the beginning of the year sometime, but again, I’m going to try to take my time with it. I’m trying to enjoy it. Since there’s no real urgent deadline, there’s no need to impose one on myself now. I’m going to try to enjoy it because every other record I’ve done, I’ve been trying to finish in a hurry and I’ve always kind of regretted that, because, you know, it takes a little of the fun out of it. So I’m going to enjoy this one.
You’re also part of this group called the Dukes of September with Donald Fagan, Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald. Anything on the horizon with this project?
Nothing on the horizon. We did release a DVD pretty recently; I guess it was earlier this year that it came out. But no, there hasn’t been any talk about that. I think sometimes Boz and Michael do a co-bill. I’ve seen some of them since we’ve last worked. But no, there hasn’t been any word about that. I had a blast on that job; it was a fun one to do. I think everyone enjoyed it. So far I haven’t heard any buzz about it. I’m hoping we will, but no news right now.
