Justin Johnson

International touring Nashville recording artist Justin Johnson has been hailed by Guitar World as a “must-see act”, dubbed “The Wizard” for his mastery of stringed instruments, and recognized as Slidestock International Slide Guitar Champion.

Here is what Justin writes about his playing on the fretless guitar in this song:

The cool thing about a fretless guitar, is that each of your fingertips turns into a guitar slide. You no longer have to feel the confines of the frets, and you can explore all of the musical space between each note.

The challenge is that you have to be much more accurate with all of your finger positions because if your fingertips are slightly off position, you will be out of tune, even if the guitar is in perfect tuning.

This Newcaster guitar has a stainless steel fretboard, so the tone of the strings vibrating off of the fretboard sounds very close to the tone you get from a metal fret. If it had been a hardwood fretboard, the tone would be noticeably more mellow. To accentuate the heavy swamp vibe, I ran through the DOUBLE CREAM pedal from Blackstar Amplification. I also used a very heavy dose of vibrato from the Fender Twin Reverb amp… but without any reverb, so the tone wouldn’t get too soupy. All cables were Mogami, which I absolutely love! Cables are frequently overlooked as far as guitar gear, but you can tell the quality of a Mogami cable just my picking one up. They are built like samurai swords.