Spokane Native Enjoys Life On Road With Tesh

Since he left Spokane as a young man, Wayne Johnson’s career has taken him to the world’s best stages.

That’s what happens when you’re Manhattan Transfer’s guitar player-of-choice, as he has been since 1977, or when Ricki Lee Jones hires you for her much-touted Flying Cowboys tour.

High-profile jobs like those “have been good for me,” avers the quiet-spoken Johnson, who left town in 1972 to study at Boston’s Berklee School of Music.

“There have been times when reviewers have really focused on my playing.”

Small wonder. Johnson, who learned from the best at Berklee, has a knack for crafting sparkling parts that add character to a song without turning the affair into a guitar showcase.

And, since one thing leads to another when you travel in high-flying circles, Johnson has come into yet another premium gig, the one that will bring him to the Spokane Opera House on Friday.

These days, Johnson gets his paycheck from John Tesh, whose melodic New Age music is about the hottest thing going. It’s a job he almost didn’t take because of other commitments, but when Tesh sweetened the pot with a record deal on his GTSP Records, Johnson jumped.

And when Tesh sold half his label to Polygram, the artists on his label, including Johnson, gained worldwide distribution. Not half bad for a guy who has released his solo and trio material on small independents.

“It’s a deal that is good as long as it is good,” said Johnson. “I could put out as many as six CDs.”

Last year, Johnson opened Tesh’s show; this year, he plays lead in Tesh’s band. Watch for him to stretch out, Pat Metheny-style, during a second-set song, “Polar Express.”

“Kindred Spirits,” Johnson’s first record for GTSP, shows off another recent career development - he’s added acoustic guitar to his arsenal.

“I love playing acoustic, just the sense of the organic quality of it. I’ve taken an electric approach to playing the acoustic guitar, coming up with my own right-hand technique based on all the dabbling on bluegrass and whatever else I did before.”

He’s been listening to flamenco players, too, and realizing “you have to be born with that, to start playing when you’re a kid.”

Since he can’t be a flamenco king, Johnson has set his sights on developing his own jazz-based trio. “I’ve been working on the trio thing for so many years; I want to keep going and hope that it will click on some level so we can do some touring.”

In the meantime, he’ll finish up this tour with Tesh, perform a handful of benefits lined up in Montana and maybe squeeze in a late-summer tour of Europe with Manhattan Transfer.

In any case, it seems a certain thing that Johnson’s tour of great stages will continue apace.

, DataTimes MEMO: See related story under the headline: Tesh pages offer sites for sore eyes