Background
Herington was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and grew up in West Long Branch, New Jersey on the Jersey Shore.
Herington was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and grew up in West Long Branch, New Jersey on the Jersey Shore.
Herington studied guitar with Ted Dunbar while at Rutgers University and also studied privately with Harry Leahey and Dennis Sandole.
He is Steely Dan"s lead guitarist. He has been active on the New York City music scene since 1985. 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.
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. 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 Southern
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.
Herington plays a Gibson CS-336 and a Fender Telecaster. He also has affiliation with Hamer, playing Artist Korina, Monaco Elite, Newport, and Talladega models.
He uses a Shure wireless transmitter to a Guytron GT100 amplifier with a Guytron speaker cabinet containing two unmatched Celestion 12 inch speakers. The Guytron is a 100 watt channel switching amp with an intermediate power amp stage with two EL-84 tubes used for overdrive tone, located in the circuit before the quartet of EL-34 power amp tubes.
He uses Ernie Ball Regular Slinky Nickel Wound electric guitar strings.