I wrote a lot of songs for this album whilst on tour recently down in the South West with my wife Nikki. I’ve also covered some classic western songs that have moved me since the first time I heard them, like Marty Robbins’ ‘El Paso,’ Roy Orbison’s ‘Pistolero,’ and Doc Watson’s ‘St. Again, that’s what I love about bands like Pink Floyd, who create a much larger musical experience with an album by weaving the entire storyline of an album into one cohesive artistic statement. The songs fuse together so that the emotional story of each song takes you through a storyline. I’ve been inspired by some of the concept albums from the likes of Pink Floyd and The White album by The Beatles for example, but Turquoise Trail isn’t just a collection of my songs, it takes you on a journey, the entire album was written so that it’s an immersive experience from start to finish. Whilst some will feature the vocals, bass or keys to the fore, it’s very guitar centric, so if you like guitars you are going to love this album. We’ve been working on Turquoise Trail here for several months now and about 80% deep into tracking 20 recorded songs. I like to crank up a small amp and saturate those tubes to get more sustain, but I’ll also turn the gain down to get more of a natural amp compression and more of a crunch. As you can see, we also have a lot of small amps lying around in here. Listen to the surf guitars from the 50’s and 60’s, they wouldn’t have sounded the same without it. This is the perfect place to record some of the vocals and guitar tracks, the natural reverb in here creates a big expansive ambient sound. The reverb in here is enormous, so we’ve set up mikes and amps everywhere. I’m a huge fan of all kinds of reverb and echo, I like a combination of spring and tape reverb and natural room reverb, come and see what we’ve done in the swimming pool room.

Chuck’s very creative having now turned the whole house into one instrument.

I’m working with Chuck Turner again who was the engineer and producer on my last two albums, Drivin’ It Down and Smoke & Mirrors. “Welcome, come in”, says Justin, “It’s a bit cluttered here at the moment as we’re in the middle of recording my fourth solo album called ‘Turquoise Trail’. Thanks to the wonders of Skype I get a tour of Justin’s house. This is home (when he’s not touring the globe) for Justin Johnson, leading emissary and scholar of blues and roots music, also known as ‘The Wizard’ and recognised as International Slide Guitar Champion. It’s the heart of Tennessee… picture the scene: The sun bleached porch with the creaky old rocking chair, the rusty old redundant tractor (now home for the farmyard rooster), chilled beers, an amp and the dilemma of which guitar to play.

Justin johnson cleverfiles