Jon Herington

Jon Herington (born Jonathan Reuel Herington on April 14, 1954 in Paterson, New Jersey) is an American guitarist, singer-songwriter, record producer, and session musician. He is Steely Dan's lead guitarist. He has been active on the New York City music scene since 1985.

Career

Herington was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and grew up in West Long Branch, New Jersey on the Jersey Shore. His first band (called Highway) opened for local Bruce Springsteen on several occasions. He started playing piano and then saxophone, but began playing guitar when his friends left their guitars at his house as a child. Herington studied guitar with Ted Dunbar while at Rutgers University and also studied privately with Harry Leahey and Dennis Sandole. In 1999, toward the end of the recording of their 2000 released album Two Against Nature, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan wanted to hire another rhythm guitar player for some tracks. Ted Baker, a close friend of Herington's, was playing keyboard for the band and Becker and Fagen asked for a recommendation for a guitarist. Baker provided Herington's 1992 album, The Complete Rhyming Dictionary, a collection of Herington original instrumentals, to Becker and Fagen. Soon after, Herington got a call to record "Janie Runaway" and toured with Steely Dan to promote the album. In 2000, Herington released a solo album, entitled Like So. In 2003, Steely Dan had him back to record their release, Everything Must Go, as well as to tour in promotion of the album. In 2006, Donald Fagen hired Herington to play on and tour for his solo album Morph the Cat. He appears on Walter Becker's latest solo album Circus Money. In 2010 and again in 2012, Jon joined the Dukes of September touring group which is composed of Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs. On June 14, 2012, the band performed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon to promote their 2012 summer concert tour.