Interview: Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats)
I have got to throw a lasso around the word “Americana” and hogtie it. The term has become such a catch-all and is so overused that it is like the junk-drawer in the kitchen, full of stuff we want to hang on to but were too lazy to find the right place for.
And I am among those guilty.
So when I was talking with Eric D. Johnson about the 25-year evolution of his band Fruit Bats and the word “Americana” burped out of my mouth, I knew even as it happened it wasn’t the term I was going for.
Yes, Johnson can dip into a stripped-down acoustic vibe, as he does on “We Used to Live Here,” the sixth track on the newly released album, A River Running to Your Heart. Yes, on “Humbug Mountain Song” from 2016’s Absolute Loser, he dropped a banjo and some Appalachian haunt into the mix and it became kind of a big deal. And yes, No Depression put his 2019 album Gold Past Life in its top 10 albums of the year (though without once using the word Americana).
Johnson admits that Fruit Bats gets that sometimes. And he does wade into traditional, folksier waters as one third of Bonny Light Horsemen. So maybe there’s something in the term “Americana-adjacent.” After all, Wilco has lived in that space for decades now, despite Jeff Tweedy’s long-ago turn to pop and rock. But the heart of Fruit Bats is in Johnson’s exquisitely crafted infectious songs that feel new but also somehow familiar, and once you’ve heard his voice, you’ll recognize it anywhere, like some newly-discovered ex-Beatle. So, organic? Sure. Lyrical? Absolutely. But Americana?
“I never feel the Americana thing,” Johnson says. “I've never been totally sure how we got that. I think there's maybe small aspects of that in the music. Yeah, I have influences in there that are sort of from that world a little. I also don't really care about labels as long as you like it. But sometimes when we’ve played the Americana festivals and stuff, I'm like, ‘Wow. We are the outlier here.’ Because I'm happy to sound like the Bee Gees or something.”
In that case, Johnson should be pretty happy with A River Running to Your Heart, where he takes a few Barry Gibb vocal flyers into falsetto territory right off the bat on the record’s second track, “Rushin’ River Valley.”
Fruit Bats is among a startlingly good lineup at the still relatively new Bear Shadow festival in Highlands, Friday April 28-Sunday, April 30. The event is now in its third year, and Fruit Bats are on stage the opening night, supporting indie rock headliner Spoon. With the likes of folk outfit The Head and The Heart, local treasures Woody Platt and Shannon Whitworth, and songwriting pacesetter Jason Isbell also on the weekend bill, there is plenty of Americana to go around without wrapping Fruit Bats’ indelible indie-pop sound into it.
“I should say quite plainly [that] I'm happy to be embraced by that world, too,” Johnson says. “But, for example, at Bear Shadow, we're not on the day with Jason Isbell. We're clearly slotted in at the big-sounding, indie rock day and I'm like, ‘That's cool too!’ That's kind of where I came from, and I played in The Shins for a time, so I sort of know that language a little bit, too.”
He continues, “But I definitely came from the background of indie rock, and I was a Grateful Dead fan before that, so like American Beauty and Workingman's Dead, but I'm not a country or folk traditionalist really. I've always loved the sort of California country rock sound, and that's maybe where that Americana stuff comes from. And I'm a real Anglophile — I sort of grew up on pop radio in the ’80s and stuff, too, so there are aspects of that in there. But yeah, at this point, I don't know — it kind of is what it is. I'm not really trying to sound like anything at this point besides myself.”
So, like I said, “Americana” wasn’t even what I meant to say. For Johnson and Fruit Bats, I think I was going for something more like “American” — not in some geopolitical or idealistic sense, but more in the sense of landscape. Johnson uses a lot of scenery and sense of travel across big spaces in his songs. There’s distance alongside attachment. Movement alongside rootedness. That kind of American-ness.
But what I said was “Americana.” And as gracious an interviewee as Johnson is (he really does seem into talking about this kind of stuff), he took the time to set the record straight.
Brian Postelle: Just to give you a heads up, I'm dog-sitting a couple of giant golden doodles who are just great big goofballs, so if you hear anything get knocked over, it's that.
Eric D. Johnson: I just did a podcast right before you called Rocker Dog and it's like a podcast about rock musicians and their dogs, and the guy started off by saying, “I have two dogs and they might be loud if someone comes in.” It's funny [because] it's my second interview in a row where that's the preface. My dog is an old guy and he's just conked out down the floor.
BP: That's amazing though! Rocker Dogs. I'll have to look that up.
EDJ: Yeah, it's a good one. I had seen them and was starting to see some people that I knew on there, and I was like, “I gotta do that one!” And then they actually oddly reached out to me before I could even track them down. So it was fun.
BP: The last time we talked with you at Asheville Stages, it was on the heels of you bringing Bonny Light Horseman here, and now you're coming to the Bear Shadow Festival with Fruit Bats. How do you prepare for those different iterations? Is there a different hat you wear when you're doing one thing or the other?
EDJ: There literally is! I played 113 shows last year with both bands, so I got good at it. There is not a literal hat, actually, but I do wear a different outfit. I have a different stage outfit now that I do [both]. There are probably aspects of me that are in both iterations. I think I’ve developed that. It's sort of hard to describe exactly how I do it but, 113 shows last year made me learn exactly which was which and how to adjust my tonality for things.
BP: So what do you bring? What are you putting out front in each different performance?
EDJ: Fruit Bats is me, very strongly. Not that Bonny Light Horseman isn't, but Fruit Bats is 100% me, coming straight from my heart and brain to you, the audience member. It's somewhat louder; it's a longer set and it's a deeper, just huge-r catalog, too. It's something that I've had a relationship with for a long time.
Bonny Light Horseman is a beautiful thing, and I can sort of tap into some of that energy exchange, but also I think I have these two sides of myself. One is I love being a front man, and I really like being a side man, too, and sort of stepping out of the spotlight a little bit. Bonny Light Horseman is sort of like these rolling waves, and I get to sing a couple of songs and then step back and let Anaïs [Mitchell] do something. Not that Fruit Bats isn’t a full band, too, but I have to be completely firing on all cylinders for 90 minutes, and Bonny Light Horseman is like I'm riding a gentle wave the whole time. So, both are exhilarating and exciting, too — but, yeah, just a little bit different.
BP: So by the time we run this interview, A River Running to Your Heart will be out. Can you tell me a little bit about what we should anticipate with that?
EDJ: It's funny, because it's my 10th, I think sort of 10th — well, it's hard to say whether it's the ninth, 10th, or 11th, but I'm just going to say the 10th — sort of official, fully-baked, Fruit Bats record. And at this point, we're coming to a point where it used to be you made a record and you're like, “This is the next version of myself,” and whatever. And 10 records in, I'm starting to think this is way bigger. It's like another chapter. This is my first truly self-produced record and, yeah, I think it's my most emotionally direct thing. Not that I haven't been in the past, but I'm doubling down on that with this one — hence the title of the album.
BP: It's been really interesting to be able to listen to you comment on your own personal evolution as a musician and as a writer throughout all of your albums and kind of how one album marks a different direction for you. Online, there's plenty of videos of you performing as Fruit Bats with just you and an acoustic guitar, and then there's plenty of stuff where it's a full-blown band. Do you write your stuff to be able to use either treatment?
EDJ: I've started to think about that more in the past few years. I learned at some point a while back that you can't play a full band song solo and just sort of pretend there's a band behind you. You have to sort of adjust the song and find a sort of side door into the song that speaks to that intimacy. But then also there's kind of intimate songs from my records that have become full blown jams with the full band. I write [using] the studio as a tool. I definitely write for a full band, I think, for the most part.
BP: I was listening to some older tracks and in the recording process for songs like “Hobo Girl” [from 2009’s The Ruminant Band], it had this sound like you've got all of your musician friends and all of your buddies and everybody in the studio with you. Is that something that you do, or are you pretty much a loner in the studio?
EDJ: That was kind of a band record, and I'll burst the bubble and say [on] that song, that's all overdubs. That's really only like four of us in the studio, even though it sounds like there's 20 people in there. But I really love that record, and, in a way, I always kind of say that's my first record of whatever the sort of new direction that I kind of started to take a little bit around then, and really kind of leaning into some definitely, probably, my most quote “Americana” record. Although I was really thinking about Led Zeppelin III when I was making that record. But it has the most kind of warm, organic, sound of any of my records and I think was a bit of a breakthrough for us.
But I am a loner for the most part when I make records. I come from kind of a Wormhole/4-track background, and record-making for me, writing songs and demoing songs and making records, are all part of the same process. So when I'm starting to write, I'm usually starting to demo, and that is usually laying the groundwork for the session that we're going to do too. So, working with Bonny Light Horseman has been a totally interesting experience, because that is Josh Kaufman producing. It's just this very organic — it has a very, like, “live on the floor” kind of aspect to it, and I come from this way more late-night tinkering kind of place in record making with Fruit Bats.
BP: Do you hit “record” and sit down in front of a mic and start writing, or are you a notebook scribbler? Are you walking around with your pen out all the time?
EDJ: I've got notebook stuff that is the seeds of things. And that's, like, [with] the Americana thing — it's funny because I'm certainly not starting with an acoustic guitar, ever. It's usually a drum machine and some kind of synth pad or something just to get the simplest kind of bed laid down. I think a lot about how singing relates to tempo — just making sure that I'm spitting the words out just right. That's really important for me. But all that said, I don't have a process, really. A lot of [songs] were written that way, but a good handful of them weren't, too.
BP: At times, the lyrics in your songs feel like snapshots of postcards or something that you've sort of observed. Has that always been part of your consciousness? You look out and you're looking over a meadow or you see a silo off on the horizon and mark that as something you want to use in a song?
EDJ: Sometimes, and I think [in] this new record, I really leaned into what I like to refer to as “emotional geography.” I sort of want there to be a cinematic sense of place, too, when I'm singing. I think that speaks to that a little bit. I definitely like a snapshot. I was interested in film and screenwriting when I was younger, before I became a singer/songwriter. So, I think there’s always a little bit of a scenic component to what I'm doing.
BP: Along with the sense of place that you talk about, I feel like in your albums there's also been this sense of both nostalgia and anticipation at the same time. I think you've mentioned sort of a hesitancy to leave or missing a place, and “We Used to Live Here” and “Waking Up in Los Angeles” still kind of echo that.
EDJ: Yeah. Gold Past Life was kind of a whole record about… I sort of referred to it as, like, “anti-nostalgia” or the sort of gilding of the past and sort of making fun of that. Not really making fun, but sort of taking the piss out of that a little bit, and sort of saying, “We are all idealizing the past.” It was sort of like a record about living in the present and looking for the future you know.
And then this [one] is about that emotional geography, so maybe it's kind of one thing. Clearly, nostalgia is a preoccupation of mine, songwriting-wise, and I have a weird relationship with [it], too. So, I'm never writing nostalgically in the sense of, “Wasn't everything great before?” or something like that. It's always — and this is a little bit more like I think the writing on this one is — almost like a dream state of nostalgia. I moved around a ton as a kid, so it's more me talking about what geography means to us, and if you constantly change your geography, does that change who you are or change who you feel — or something like that.
BP: What have you found? Does that change who you are and how you feel?
EDJ: I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure. Thereby, I have to put it in sort of [an] oblique songwriting form to reckon with it, but I may not have actually come up with an answer for that. I just wrote a bunch of songs about it, which is kind of what happens sometimes when you're a songwriter.
BP: I think it was interesting, too, when you mentioned the Beatles because they did have a tendency to be able to write a really catchy pop tune, but they were sometimes also sliding a little bit of a… I don't want to say “bitterness,” but a little bit of maybe a more somber message or a sadder message or something in there. Do you think consciously about juxtaposing themes against that sort of pop sound?
EDJ: Yeah, and maybe it's like I've kind of come to terms a little bit, too. But I clearly have a timbre in my voice and a way that I write in major keys that I think, for years, people [would] just sort of assume that this was very happy music. And then I would sort of take issue with that…like, it meant that it's empty or something. But honestly, my music is pretty sad a lot of times. I've always been fascinated by this sort of happy/sad dichotomy a little bit in writing, so I like to think that I'm actually writing sad music, or sad lyrics over happy music.
BP: Maybe the word I should have used is “introspection,” because introspection isn't necessarily sad, but it certainly isn't happy-go-lucky cheerful; it’s a bit more serious and honest.
EDJ: Yeah, my music is kind of therapy for me, and I think it [has become that] for others, too. Again, I don't care if people think my music is happy, either! If it makes them happy, that's really nice. I think that's what Fruit Bats’ music does for a lot of people, which I really like. I think in my younger days, I would have [said], “You're not getting it!” I have said this before, but I'll say it again — I am less interested in being understood now than I used to be, but I also think I'm probably better at making myself understood.
BP: In Fruit Bats performances, are you interested in playing across your whole catalog? Do you revisit it all the way through, or are you more excited about sharing any particular part?
EDJ: It's interesting, because [Fruit Bats’] music didn't become really popular until like 16 years in. It took a really long time to get people to come to these shows, so then a lot of these audiences [didn’t] know the old stuff very well. And then also, I'm disconnected from the old stuff. So, long story short, we play a lot of the newer stuff, at least from the past five or six years, and then some older ones, too. Some of the old records, it's just like I was a different “me” — it was kind of a different band. Every now and again, we'll dust off an oldie, but [it’s] mostly new stuff, because I think that's what people want to hear — which is a great thing. It's better than the, “I liked their old stuff better,” kind of thing.
BP: I think the thing that's interesting about that, too, is that there's nothing that some new fans like more than being able to dive in. You mentioned the Grateful Dead, and I think the thing that takes somebody who likes a Grateful Dead song or likes a particular album and transforms them into a real Grateful Dead fan is that they start diving into it and doing their homework and realizing there's this whole world that they can just dive into. And you've got plenty of material for people to go back and dig into. You did release some demos and things like that, too, so I'm hoping that people are finding that stuff.
EDJ: Yeah, I think they are. And we did a 20-year retrospective thing [Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001–2021)] with sort of whatever my version of the Greatest Hits is. And then, yeah, a bunch of demos and weird stuff. I don't know — I don't want to go off onto some big tangent, but it's like people's relationship to music and albums and catalogs — and I get this as a listener, too: you have access to literally the whole of recorded music now, but it's almost harder, though, in a way. I'm not sure if people are digging back as much maybe as they [were]. I don't know, but either way I'm not complaining, because I'm definitely a “happy to be here” kind of person.
BP: Are you a deep cuts listener for the bands you like? Do you go digging?
EDJ: Oh, 100%. And I was definitely from that era where you had to pay, I don't know, $14 or something for a CD or a tape or something, and then you were kind of stuck with that thing you had. You were forced to have a relationship with that band. Then, as a person who kind of came of age in the indie rock era of the late ’90s in Chicago, all the bands were interrelated and stuff, and you'd [say], “I like seeing Cake, and now I'm going to discover Shrimp Boat,” or something. Like, you sort of do the work, but you have to do that by looking at magazines, or maybe talking to slightly scary older record store clerk guys or something. And not to idealize it, either, because I think it's fun now to be able to just do anything.
But yeah, my love of the Grateful Dead, that sort of thing spun me out, and so did other kinds of country rock and sort of slightly more psychedelic country stuff and cosmic American music, and the stuff that sort of formed the bedrock of what I do now.
BP: That idea of growing up in a time where you would buy an album and that album would be sort of the sum total of what you had to be able to listen to, have you carried that sense of album structure with you? As in, what songs go where on the album and how to make the album into a complete piece?
EDJ: I'm obsessed with sequencing, so, yes. And also, it's kind of interesting because I feel like with streaming, we've actually gone back to a lot of things from the ’60s, which is, [for one thing], you release more records now. It used to be there was sort of a time where every two-four years or something, you'd release a record. That’s completely normal now, because of “content” or whatever. You're encouraged to do a lot more.
Then also because of streaming, bands are kind of top-loading their records with the jams, because if someone comes across your record, you want to really hook up with Track One. That's a very ’60's thing, too, to put your single up top. I kind of like that.
But all that said, I still [believe] in the album as a concept. In this new record, [it] has crossfades and things like that — we have to do radio edits so that it's not sounding like that. But yeah, I mean that's as album-oriented as you can get when you have songs that kind of melt into each other. It's certainly meant for a singular listening experience, but at the same time, I also get it: sometimes people send you their new record as one single MP3 because they [want you to listen to it] and it's like, “I might not have 45 minutes right now, man!” But yeah, I believe in the album as a structure.
BP: And then that kind of experience sort of translates also into putting together a live set list, right?
EDJ: Absolutely. It's the exact same principle. And also a weird art in and of itself. I'm the designated set list maker for Bonny Light Horsemen as well, and obviously for Fruit Bats. So, I put a lot of thought into that.
BP: So, are you going to be doing a lot of traveling in between now and the Bear Shadow festival? Or have you gotten a lot of that behind you this year?
EDJ: No, the Bear Shadow festival is kind of smack dab in the middle of a hell of a lot of touring for Fruit Bats. It's like a more or less a two-month tour, and that's sort of towards the end of the first leg of a pretty big tour. So, yeah, there will be a lot of traveling for me in April and May.
IF YOU GO
What: Bear Shadow festival
When: Friday, April 28-Sunday, April 30
Where: Highlands Plateau, bearshadownc.com
Tickets: $150-$775
(Photos by Chantal-Anderson)
