Tone Chasers and True Believers: Eric Johnson at Islington Assembly Hall
- Alan Bryce
- Aug 4
- 3 min read
Islington Assembly Hall – 25th July 2026
WORDS / IMAGES ALAN BRYCE
Every so often you find yourself standing in a room full of middle-aged men staring at a guitarist with the expression medieval peasants probably reserved for sightings of saints. That's an Eric Johnson gig. The faithful don't cheer so much as nod knowingly, the way wine collectors discuss tannins or audiophiles discuss speaker cables that cost more than a family hatchback.
On paper, Johnson should be impossible to enjoy. Nobody should be allowed that much control over a guitar tone. Every note arrives polished, waxed, buffed and airbrushed until it gleams like a classic Corvette parked under museum lighting. Yet there I was in Islington Assembly Hall watching him launch from "Righteous" into the S.R.V. tribute and being completely unable to resist it. The man doesn't play notes; he releases endangered species into the atmosphere. Half the audience spent the evening trying to figure out how he was producing those sounds. The other half stopped trying years ago and simply accepted that he made some deal with forces unknown.
Before all that celestial guitar wizardry came Tom Moriarty, who had the unenviable task of opening for a player many in the room regard less as a musician than a highly specialised religious experience. Moriarty wisely avoided trying to compete on those terms. Instead of attempting to out-shred the headliner, he delivered a set rooted in songs, groove and actual human concerns. It was refreshing. While Johnson often sounds like he's transmitting directly from a cloud made of vintage amplifiers, Moriarty sounded like someone who still occasionally has to buy groceries.
There's also something wonderfully stubborn about him. No grandstanding, no desperate attempts to hijack the crowd's attention, no endless displays of technical gymnastics. Just a songwriter confidently doing his thing in front of an audience that had largely arrived to witness guitar archaeology. By the end of his set he'd won them over the old-fashioned way: actually being good.
Johnson's setlist itself was a wonderfully eccentric act of defiance. Any sensible legacy artist would lean heavily on the handful of crowd-pleasers everybody knows. Johnson instead spent much of the evening wandering through instrumentals, jazz standards, blues excursions and deep cuts as if commercial considerations had been locked in a cupboard sometime around 1987. "Forty Mile Town," "Friends," "Resolution," "Abelia," and "Chester" unfolded with dreamlike patience. A swinging run through Duke Ellington's "Caravan" reminded everyone that Johnson's musical universe extends well beyond guitar-hero clichés, while "Stella By Starlight" floated through the hall like smoke from an expensive cigar nobody can actually afford.
The blues section—"Eb Blues," "Trueheart Blues," and the mysteriously titled "No Name" jam—provided a welcome reminder that beneath all the crystalline perfection lurks somebody who can still get dirty when he feels like it. Meanwhile, the bass solo and drum features somehow avoided feeling like convenient opportunities for audience members to visit the bar, which may be the most impressive achievement of the entire evening.
Then came the inevitable approach toward "Cliffs of Dover." The preceding "Desert Rose" and extended guitar solo functioned like the slow opening of massive cathedral doors. Everybody knew what was coming. Everybody pretended not to. Then the familiar theme arrived and the room collectively lost what remained of its composure.
And here's the annoying thing: after decades of reputation, myth-building and endless YouTube clips, "Cliffs of Dover" still just destroys people. It remains one of those rare instrumentals that somehow feels bigger than the instrument. Watching Johnson glide through it was like watching somebody casually solve equations the rest of us can't even read.
The encore of "Zap" delivered one final blast of fusion insanity before Johnson closed with Hendrix's "Bold As Love." It was a fitting ending. Not because Johnson sounds like Hendrix—he doesn't—but because both men share that rare ability to make the guitar feel less like a tool and more like a portal into a different reality.
Leaving Islington Assembly Hall afterwards, London seemed duller, noisier and considerably less in tune. Eric Johnson had spent two hours demonstrating what happens when obsessive perfectionism somehow mutates into art. Against all logic, against all probability, and against everything punk rock ever taught me to believe, it was magnificent.
SETLIST
Righteous
S.R.V
Forty Mile Town
Caravan (Duke Ellington and His Orchestra cover)
Friends
Resolution
Abelia
Chester
Bass Solo
Once Upon A Time In Texas
Song For George
Stella By Starlight (Victor Young cover)
Eb Blues
Trueheart Blues
Blues Jam (On set list as ‘No Name’)
Steve’s Boogie
On Green Dolphin Street (Bronislaw Kaper cover)(with drum solo)
Desert Rose
Guitar Solo (extends into ‘Cliffs of Dover’)
Cliffs of Dover
ENCORE
Zap
ENCORE 2
Bold As Love (The Jimi Hendrix Experience cover
FOLLOW ERIC JOHNSON
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