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Jon Herington

Jon Herington is a longtime New York city based guitarist, singer/songwriter, producer, and bandleader. He is the leader of the Jon Herington Band and has been the guitarist of choice with the iconic band Steely Dan for both recording and touring since 1999. With the launch of Adult Entertainment, Jon now has five solo releases in his discography. His previous release, Time On My Hands, was nominated for Vintage Guitar Hall Of Fame Album of the Year.

In recent years Jon expanded into education and is currently offering instruction via TrueFire, the world's most comprehensive library of guitar instruction. The TrueFire EAR IQ series currently has two offerings, “Reactive Improvisation: Develop big ears and powerful improvisation skills” and “Soloing Strategies: Creative and harmonic approaches for crafting solos”. In 2015 Jon released “Arrangements For Guitar”, a collection of 18 songs arranged for solo guitar, presenting the unique “chord melody” style of solo jazz guitar that impressed him as a young player.

Jon's love for music surfaced early, and he studied piano, saxophone, and harmony in his grade school years. Just before his high school years, however, he developed a passion for pop music and the electric guitar, and soon was writing songs and performing with his own band near his New Jersey Shore home doing opening slots for local hero Bruce Springsteen, beginning a performing career that has continued ever since. College followed, with extensive musical studies in both classical and jazz composition and theory at Rutgers University, and private jazz guitar study, with the help of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, with the late, great jazz guitarist, Harry Leahey. Next came several years of study with the late Dennis Sandole, the acclaimed music teacher from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who once taught the late greats James Moody and John Coltrane.

Jon's gigging life took a detour for about three years when he moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, home to jazz guitar great Wes Montgomery. There Jon played jazz, with the many accomplished local players and former band-mates of Wes, including Wes's brother Buddy Montgomery, "Killer" Ray Appleton, "Pookie" Johnson, and organist and vocalist Terry Hayden, as well as the many talented young players who were students or residents in Indiana, including Jim Beard, Bob Hurst, Kenny Aronov, Chris Botti, and Shawn Pelton. Jon also began doing extensive session work at the time in several of the local studios, and played on dozens of jingles and albums.

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Jon Herington: City Of Lights

Read "Jon Herington: City Of Lights" reviewed by Mike Jacobs


"City of Lights" has a bit of lineage. From Jon Herington's Pulse And Cadence (ESC, 2008)--which itself is a reissue/repackage of his Japan-only debut album The Complete Rhyming Dictionary (Glass House, 1993)--the song was originally titled “Paris On Mine" and is a musical retort/homage to the John McLaughlin classic “New York On My Mind" [from Electric Guitarist (Columbia, 1978)]. Additionally, the track features the A-List support of Jim Beard, Victor Bailey and Peter Erskine and goes a long way to ...

5
Album Review

Jim Beard / Jon Herington: Chunks And Chairknobs

Read "Chunks And Chairknobs" reviewed by Mike Jacobs


The seeds for Chunks and Chairknobs were planted for guitarist Jon Herington and pianist Jim Beard a few years prior to its recording, while they were on a break from their touring duties with Steely Dan. The two took the opportunity to do something they had never done over the course of their 40 plus-year friendship—work up a duo set and mount a short tour together. The lion's share of those resulting arrangements— tackling a mix of Beard originals, Herington ...

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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Chunks And Chairknobs

Jazzline Records
2019

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Lost At The Carnival

Lipstick Records
1995

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