Eric Johanson

Eric Johanson forged his identity as a bold blues-rooted guitarist by blending virtuosic six-string displays with a vivid retro sensibility and infusing his blues-rock approach with an inquisitive streak, a profile he established across multiple releases throughout the 2020s that reached its peak with The Deep and the Dirty in 2023.

Born in Alexandria, Louisiana, Johanson began studying guitar during childhood. Immersed in blues and jazz at home, he later leaned into metal and aggressive alt-rock as a teenager while maintaining his blues playing. In adulthood he routinely traveled to New Orleans and eventually enrolled at the University of New Orleans. During his college years he performed regularly in local clubs and secured a place within the city’s storied blues community. Hurricane Katrina halted those activities in 2005. After losing most of his possessions in the disaster, he left the United States for New Zealand in 2006, where he spent four years practicing intensively and performing live.

Upon returning to New Orleans in 2010, Johanson contributed to recording sessions for established Crescent City figures such as Cyril Neville and joined Terrance Simien’s band for a period. Toward the close of the decade he stepped forward as a solo artist. He signed with Tab Benoit’s Whiskey Bayou Records and issued Burn It Down in 2017. Two years afterward he collaborated with his cousin Tiffany Pollack on Blues in My Blood, which came out on Nola Blue Records; the same imprint later released his solo album Below Sea Level in 2020, produced by Luther Dickinson. That project marked his first appearance on the Billboard Blues Charts.

During the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic Johanson recorded and self-released multiple cover songs, beginning with acoustic live streams and later collected on the Covered Tracks albums in 2021. Another independent release, Live at DBA: New Orleans Bootleg, followed in 2022, after which he delivered The Deep and the Dirty in 2023, a large-scale studio effort helmed by Jesse Dayton.