After many years of featuring solo interludes in concerts and on record augmented by the occasional entirely solo performance, John Etheridge has made an album of guitar pieces – some formal, some less structured, using a variety of guitars especially fretless and a six string guitar with lowered bass strings, as well as the conventional instrument.
Etheridge has produced a varied and engrossing CD which has already been described by Charles Alexander of Jazzwise as “a real winner of an album”.
The CD was officially released on June 14th and will be distributed by New Note.

John Etheridge - 'I Didn't Know' (Dyad DY024)
This is the kind of album to make you glad you're not a guitarist. How can anyone achieve this level, not just of skill but of musical inclusiveness? Nothing seems to be beyond Etheridge's grasp. He can spin a simple old spiritual, 'Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child', into four minutes of almost abstract melody, then follow it with an undeniably funky 'Mercy, Mercy, Mercy' and make both sound complete and perfect. Maybe that's why he hasn't yet been hailed as a superstar - there's just too much of him to fit into any known marketing category. This astonishing set of 16 numbers, solo apart from a few discreet overdubs, also exhibits Etheridge the composer, who turns out to be equally impressive. This is one not to miss.
The Observer