Tom Johnston grew up listening to blues and early rock & roll and began playing guitar at age 12. “My early musical influences were wide and varied,” Johnston recalls. “[I listened to] Little Richard, Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed. That morphed into the ‘three Kings’: Freddie, B.B. and Albert [and] eventually … Hendrix and Clapton and Cream, Paul Butterfield, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, etc.” Johnston first used this guitar during early Doobies jam sessions in a house in San Jose, California and during the group’s gigs as the house band at the Chateau Liberte, a rowdy biker bar in the Santa Cruz mountains. The last time he regularly played it was on the 1972 tour in support of the Toulouse Street album.