Lawrence musician John Lomas estimates he has been in about 40 bands in his musical career. He has been playing in and around Lawrence since the early '70s.

Rolling Stone magazine brought John Lomas to town in the early ’70s.

In those days, the publication offered musicians free classified ads, he said.

“I put an ad in there, said ‘I’m in Chicago, play guitar, want to relocate,'” Lomas said. “I got a reply from a band in Lawrence. They said ‘we’ve got a band, we’ve got gigs and we’ve got a place for you to stay.'”

Lomas blew into town with everything he owned thrown in his 1964 Chevy Impala.

The band, whose “awful” name Lomas preferred not to share in an interview last week, only lasted a few years. He quickly split off to start new groups with the bass player and make a name for himself in Lawrence’s music scene.

Lawrence musician John Lomas estimates he has been in about 40 bands in his musical career. He has been playing in and around Lawrence since the early '70s.

“John’s the guy,” said Johnson Shockley, Lomas’ bandmate in Borderline Country for more than 35 years. “I remember when big name people would come to town, they’d look up John to back them up when they didn’t have their own bands.”

Said Eric Mardis, one of Lomas’ former students: “He can flip it all kinds of different ways. … He’s a great musician besides just a great guitarist. He thinks about it on a whole other level.”

And said Jazzhaus owner Rick McNeely: “Any time you need a really, really good jazz guitarist he’s the first call. … He knows a million songs and he doesn’t have any bad habits except he loves good music.”

A Detroit native, Lomas said he was raised in a family of violin players. He began learning the instrument when he was four. Playing guitar hadn’t occurred to him until his adolescence, when he, like so many others of his generation, first heard The Beatles.

Stealing away with his sister’s $13 Silvertone guitar, Lomas began teaching himself to play by ear. Soon he played his first gig, a single set of Bob Dylan covers, and joined his first band, The Fabulous Shags.

After school, Lomas said he spent a two-year stint in the Navy before moving to Chicago, trying to survive on $30 a week, which was split among whichever bandmates he happened to be playing with at the time.

“I was knocking around, must have lived in eight different places. I even slept in my Volkswagen bus a few times,” he said. “When you’re young you don’t know any better. You roll with what comes.”

After the move to Lawrence, however, Lomas began to flourish. He’s played in rock, country and pop bands — probably more than 40 in the past five decades, he said.

“This is what the inside of my lungs must look like from playing in all those smoky bars for so many years,” he said, tapping a finger on the now-yellow pick guard of his 1961 Fender Stratocaster.

The instrument’s original sunburst color is faded and chipped, the rosewood fingerboard dark and well worn.

Lomas said there was never a light bulb moment when he realized he’d be staying in Lawrence. All the same, he found a connection with the town.

“In the ’70s it was just a big musical town,” he said. “There were lots of good musicians around, lots of good players around. It’s a small, easy-going place. It suited me.”

In 1982, Lomas said he met his wife, Susan, at a show at Liberty Hall, 644 Massachusetts St. The two were married later that year and had a daughter, Alison, in 1985.

Around the time his daughter entered grade school, Lomas said he felt the need to find a more stable source of income. He enrolled at Kansas University and graduated with a degree in geography. He now works for the university, creating weekly vegetation maps of the country, which are then used by larger companies nationwide.

Although he found stability with his university job, Lomas said his musical career is still going strong. Jazz is a passion. Over the years Lomas said he’s shared the stage with legends Red Rodney, Charlie Parker and Eddie Harris. He even met Dizzy Gillespie twice, although the two never had a chance to play together.

Marvis, who took lessons from Lomas in the late ’80s, said he’s learned a lot from him. The two have even shared the stage once or twice over the years.

Back in those days everything was about speed, sweep picking and distortion, Mardis said. Through all that, Lomas was able to share his love of jazz with the budding musician.

“When you’re getting going the whole jazz thing seems like a far-out-of-reach magic trick. And he made it easy to grasp,” Marvis said. “He taught me not to try to spit notes everywhere. It’s the spaces between the notes more than the notes themselves.”

Beside the jazz scene, however, many are quick to mention Lomas’ musical arrangement with the late Bill Crahan, who died last December.

Since the late ’80s, Lomas and Crahan played acoustic sets all around Lawrence, at concerts, festivals, on the radio and at restaurants. For years, the pair played near-weekly sets each summer on top of the Oread Hotel, 1200 Oread Ave., Lomas said.

These days Lomas plays regular gigs with Borderline Country and The Crumpletons, which play ’60s tunes in the vein of The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and others.

“I love the crowd he brings in here with The Crumpletons,” said Tanya McNeely, who owns the Jazzhaus along with her husband, Rick. “They’re an amazing group of people. They’re always happy and dancing.”

There never was a master plan, Lomas said. Had he been wiser, he might have moved to New York or Los Angeles to try to “make it.” But the thought never crossed his mind.

“You go with the flow. I’m from the old hippie times, so I’ve got that philosophy going,” he said. “It’s all been good luck and good fortune.”