Johnny Winter Teams with Ben Harper, Eric Clapton, Dr. John & More for New Album ‘Step Back’

Johnny Winter, legendary blues musician, is proud to announce the worldwide release of his new studio album Step Back (September 2 / Megaforce), a celebration of the traditional blues music and early rock n roll that Johnny was raised on, performed with a star-studded list of musical guests.

The follow up to 2011’s acclaimed Roots, Step Back pays tribute to music mostly from the 50s and takes Johnny back to a more aggressive style of the blues…one that helped shaped the musical icon.

One of the last living links to the origins of the blues, Johnny garners the respect of traditional blues artists and contemporary musicians.  The album features a cast of Winter’s friends and torchbearers, Eric Clapton, Ben Harper, Billy Gibbons, Joe Perry, Dr. John, Leslie West, Brian Setzer and Joe Bonnamassa.

“If there’s good people, other good musicians, people enjoy it. I just love it,” says Johnny.  “[Step Back] is just to bring it to the people of today who haven’t listened to the old music. It’s better than anything they hear today.”

Produced by Johnny’s ace guitarist Paul Nelson, Step Back opens “Unchain My Heart” by Johnny and his renowned band joined by the Blues Brothers horns.  Texas bluesman Billy Gibbons, an early fan of Johnny’s, is featured on “Where Can You Be.”  “I never had the opportunity to jam with him [in the 60s and 70s],” says Gibbons. “I was content to remain in awe and admiration.”  “If it was not for Johnny Winter, I would have never picked up the guitar,” adds Joe Perry, who joins Winter on Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Mojo Hand.”

Other highlights include Johnny’s guitar and vocal trade-offs with Ben Harper on Willie Dixon’s “Can’t Hold Out (Talk to Me Baby),” Winter and Eric Clapton’s rendition of Bobby Bland’s “Don’t Want No Woman” and Johnny and Dr. John honoring Fats Domino with “Blue Monday.”  “When you hear that sound come out of that Firebird guitar, you know it can be the one and only Johnny Winter,” adds Brian Setzer, featured on Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown’s “Okie Dokie Stomp.”

“As the great blues historian Robert Palmer once bluntly stated, ‘Texas’s blues pedigree is unsurpassed,” writes Brad Tolinski, in the liner notes for the recent career-retrospective boxed set, Johnny Winter:  True to the Blues.  “But of all of these bright lights, perhaps the most electrifying, exotic and resilient Texas export is a snowy white guitarist from Beaumont, whose truth-is-stranger-than-fiction given name is Winter. For well over five decades, John Dawson “Johnny” Winter III has produced and played on some of the most exciting blues and rock recordings in the history of both genres. His absolute command of traditional music has earned him the respect of serious musicologists, while his tremendous agility, wicked speed and full-tilt aggression on the electric guitar and acoustic bottleneck has won over several generations of younger rock players looking to cop some the fastest and hottest licks ever committed to tape.”