Juber excels at ‘borderline everything’

Countless artists have been influenced by the Beatles, but few ever get to perform with an actual member of the Fab Four. Laurence Juber first picked up a guitar as a teenager in the early ’60s, right as Beatlemania was reaching fever pitch in his native England. Fifteen years later, he was playing guitar with Paul McCartney’s band Wings, a role he filled from 1978 to the band’s dissolution in 1981.

“It was a fantastic experience,” Juber said of his three-year stint in Wings. “It was also a fantastic education. I always refer to it as getting my masters from McCartney University. … It kind of unlocked my own ambitions to be an artist, as opposed to being a hired gun musician.”

Juber’s career as a journeyman guitarist began when he was 13, when he started landing live gigs with a local bandleader. He would later graduate from London University with a degree in music and begin working frequently as a session guitarist, a gig he picked up again after Wings split up.

“My career goal was to become a studio musician, because that was a way that I could play all different styles of music and make money doing it,” Juber said. “I turned down offers of being in bands post-Wings because I didn’t want to spend all my time on the road. So I got back into studio work, which was actually very productive.”

Most of Juber’s session work has been for film and television. He has played on the scores for movies including “Good Will Hunting” and “Dirty Dancing” and on the TV series “Home Improvement” and “7th Heaven.” But he’s also been regularly releasing albums since the early ’90s, including a couple of compilations of Beatles covers and an arrangement of Henry Mancini’s “Pink Panther” theme that won him a Grammy.

Juber’s newest LP, “Fingerboard Road,” features a handful of original compositions highlighting his complex fingerpicking playing style, as well as his instrumental variations on several well-known songs (Steely Dan’s “Peg,” the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Angela,” the theme song from the TV series “Taxi”). It’s indicative of Juber’s versatility, a result of years working as a hired gun, that the album hops between jazz, blues and folk songs.

“I describe what I do as ‘borderline everything,’ ” Juber said. “But it’s not dabbling in styles as much as applied musicianship. Playing the guitar is a physical skill. Being a musician is another dimension. There are aspects to music that are not instrument specific or style specific. A C-chord is a C-chord whether it’s in bluegrass, folk, jazz, whatever.”

Juber will be playing with other musicians at his show tonight at Eastern Washington University. He’ll be accompanied during one part by a string quartet and by the university’s big band during another. But for the most part, he’ll be onstage with only his guitar.

“The primary goal is to entertain the audience, and I keep it entertaining by mixing up the styles and by transitioning from an original tune to something quite familiar,” he said. “I’m not used to seeing a guitar player covering all the parts. I’m the bass player, I’m the lead guitarist, at times I’m the drummer. It’s a complete package.”