Eric D. Johnson of the Fruit Bats has ended up carving out quite a nice little career. Yet at one point he almost threw it all away. Actually, he did throw it all away. He formed the band in 2000, but by 2013 he’d had enough.
“I had been wanting to change the name for a while or something, because I felt like those first few albums I was telling a different story, and I was eager to turn the page, and become a new persona. I realized after the fact that I was a little bit wrong on that. It all is the same story, it’s just like those are the early chapters of the story.
“I had gone through stuff in my life. The thing of growing up. And, of course, mainly I just I made the change, I changed the name, and then it completely killed my career. It was like it made you realize how just something as simple as it was going to be Fruit Bats, or it was going to be this guy, parentheses Fruit Bats, for the rest of the time, and make it so that I didn’t have an agent, I couldn’t get shows, I couldn’t do anything.
Confronting the reality of the situation there was really only one thing to do. “You have to decide what you want the direction of your life to be. I was just like, ‘I’ll just change the name back.’ And everything came back. But in a way, there was a certain way of it was like a BC and an AD, too, and I did reinvent for that, too, which was pretty cool.”
Johnson has also spent his share of time working for other bands like Vetiver and The Shins, which gave him a unique view of understanding how things work in other contexts. “Well, in Shins I was a hired gun touring with them for a few years. So yes, I was in that band, but it’s been a long time. If you have the ability to play in someone else’s band, and you’re a singer songwriter, and you can do it, there’s just a lot of good reasons to do it I think. It gives you perspective on other people. You can climb into someone else’s work a little bit, and it will affect yours. Hopefully in a good way. It’ll give you perspective on yours.
“Plus, it’s just fun. In the case of The Shins, it was not only getting to work with a brilliant songwriter, who’s a dear friend, just go around the world with your friends, it was also an incredibly life changing event for me, too, because it made me able to shift over to just playing music full time for a living, which was incredible. And just changed the course of my life.”
One of the things that really put Johnson over the top was his association with the other members of Bonny Light Horseman, so the obvious question was why have Josh Kaufman produce the new Fruit Bats album? “We’ve been friends for years. I adore the guy. And it was just as simple as we did the Bonny Light Horseman record, which was really a pretty magical experience for all of us, and very bonding, and I think that we were on the second to last day of the Bonny Light Horseman record, and I was like, ‘I would just love to see what he does with the Fruit Bats language’, which is totally different than the Bonny Light Horseman stuff. It’s as simple as that. It’s just I’ve worked with the same producer, Tom Monaghan, for many years. We’ll continue to work together, too. He’s one of my closest collaborators. But I was like, ‘If I’m going to mix it up …’ I just felt like Josh and I were riding a little bit of a wave together, and I just wanted to stay on that wave.”
One of the things that made the Bonny Light Horseman album so interesting, and so different from the other Fruit Bats disc is that it was totally made up of traditional folk songs. The question really was what drew Eric to the more traditional format? “I think I’ve wanted to do something different for a while, but you don’t want to just do something … I wanted to do something different, but that I understood, too. So, it wasn’t going to be … I wanted to branch out, but not in an incongruent way. Not into some different avenue that would just make no sense for me to do, or something that I didn’t understand how to do. I knew a few years ago I knew I wanted to do something collaborative. I knew I wanted to get back into something more folk-based. As the Fruit Bats we get a lot of folk-rock comparisons I think, but it’s never really been what I’m going for. But people are allowed call it whatever they want, too, and I’m happy for that, too.
“The Bonny Light Horseman thing was an opportunity to collaborate with two people that I am a huge fan of, that’s what it’s all about. That’s what it’s always been about for me is people I think are cool, thinking I’m cool, and wanted to do cool stuff with me is just so exciting. Sometimes you do these things, and you figure out in two hours that it doesn’t work. And this was the other way around, we figured out in two hours that it was going to be really, really cool.”
In talking about songwriting, and especially the songs on the new Fruit Bats album The Pet Parade (reviewed here) I found it interesting how his writing has changed over time. “I think my early writing, I was really trying to write … Universally is not the right word for it. I was really scared of being autobiographical early on. Everything was very oblique imagery, and I think I was just young, and a little immature. Didn’t really know how to express myself. I think just the state of the world on so many levels felt like I needed to start talking about we instead of I.”
One of the songs on The Pet Parade that resonated for me was “Discovering.” Certain lines just spoke to me, and I suspect they will speak to other listeners as well –
“If you’d seen the mountain top, and found it made no difference.
Just briefly blinded by the morning light.
No more than that.
But you should never be ashamed,
and try your best not to be too afraid.
Walking quiet on your way to making your own discoveries.
Making your own discoveries.
Out alone, discovering.”
“It’s a little bit about people I’ve known who have had great success, and even greater success than me. It’s a little bit like this modern internet notion that everyone is having a better time than you at any given moment. People have this notion that some kind of huge success is going to bring you inner peace or inner happiness in some way, and how that notion is a cliche anyway like, ‘Inner peace can only be reached through inner means.’ And I’m not purporting to be some kind of a self-help guru with that line. But yeah, it’s as simple as that. Just saying, ‘Hey man, I’m seeing people who …’ you would think would be, their lives are set, and they’re just not. Yeah. It’s not me saying I have the answer, it’s just an observation that I made.”
There’s also something quite amazing about the lyrics to Here for Now, For You –
“This world, it’s hard, because everybody’s going to leave you eventually.
But you know that I’m here for now for you.
Whether I’m a man or a whisper in the mist, I will always love you.”
Gosh, I think that’s beautiful. “Thank you. Yeah. That’s another sad one. It’s a little bit I think you’re also touching upon some of the same sentiments as I was talking about in “Discovering,” too, which is just this … And again, these are not lyrics where I’m trying to give you the answer, I’m just trying to ask the questions. But that’s again, just about another song about the simpler things in having love in our lives, that that is really the most important thing. And it’s a sad song, too, about some friends I had lost to suicide, and it’s definitely a little bit about the Buddhist notions of all life is suffering. Everybody’s going to leave you. Everyone you know is going to leave this Earth, either before you or after you, or something like that. Which is really a brutal thing to reckon with. We all come to that realization when we’re six years old or thereabouts, and it’s horrifying. But again, I don’t want to get too deep into spiritual cliches with it either, and dig too deep. I just wanted to just say some pretty words about living in the now.”
As our interview drew to a close one thing I asked Eric to do was to look back on his twenty years in the music business, has it been what he expected, or did he even know what to expect? “I got my first guitar from the Guitar Center in Arlington Heights, Illinois. And it was the Takamine acoustic guitar, which was very popular at the time because it was what Garth Brooks played. I didn’t get it because of Garth Brooks, but it was a very popular acoustic guitar made extra popular by the massive popularity of Garth Brooks at the time. So, that was what I got. But I was into all kinds of stuff. I like writing short stories and plays. And I thought maybe I would get into screenwriting, or go to film school, or something, but I was not a good student. I didn’t get into college. Music was just in there, and I loved singing. But it was all felt possible to me, or I wanted to do something like that.
“It probably wasn’t until I was in my late teens or early 20s, and living on my own, and starting to play in bands, and just starting to see how it works. But there was not a eureka moment, I guess you could say. And probably you could even say it probably wasn’t even a eureka moment until I really went on my first big tour in about 2000. Just really about when you see it working for someone else, and then you’re just like, “Well, I can do this.” But that probably could’ve happened with all kinds of stuff. Just bands were the thing that worked for me. And I’ve always been a bird in hand guy.
“I’ve dabbled in other things, and I’ve always just it seems like the band people are my people. And they always keep choosing me. Because you have to be chosen in this world a little bit. You can muscle your way into it a little bit, but you got to be invited in, too. So yeah, I would say there was no eureka moment, but it slowly built to finally going on a big tour in spring of 2000. And that would probably be the closest thing I had. I knew that there was no turning back by then.
“I was a pretty shy and not … I’ve used the term unambitious before, but I’m almost uncomfortable using that now. Because it’s one of those things when you think back to when you’re younger, and you think you were one way, but maybe you’ve always been the same, or maybe you’re just … Yeah. It’s hard to remember how I felt about things at the time. But I was definitely, long story short, I was not making the scene at all in Chicago. I was kind of a nerd. For the most part, I was at home working on stuff on four-tracks, and I was not the king of the indie rock scene or anything like that. I don’t know how you get invited. I think you need to just be willing to be in bands, for one thing, touring is a thing, and it’s not a thing for everybody. And I think if you’re willing to do that for long periods of time, and not make any money, and live this weird, uncomfortable lifestyle. Right there, if you can stomach that, that’s a good start right there. And I think I was good at that. I can sing harmonies, and I’m a relatively good hang in a band, so I think that’s why I got invited into the clubs.
“I’ve never even really gotten up to traveling on tour buses. I’m still in a 15-passenger van. I’m driving half the time, still after 20 years. So yeah, it depends on the people and the music. I’ve actually probably gained a lot more perspective on it coming into 20 years of it, or possibly lost perspective. I’m not sure. Lately, I just have had this really simple outlook on it, which is just that I am … And it’s like I’m also mortified to do the like, “I’m so blessed,” kind of bullshit that people do on the social media or whatever. But I do. Ultimately, I’m happy with what happened with me. It’s the one thing I could say after 20 years, it’s like it’s been a weird career. I didn’t have a huge thing happened to me, but I get paid to sing songs still, which is insane. And really not something I planned on. So yeah, it’s as simple as that for me where it’s just like I don’t care if it’s the private jet, or the van, or driving around in a Honda Civic really, but just that that’s a possibility is something that I’m not sure my younger self could’ve anticipated.”
Eric D. Johnson may not know what’s coming next, and that’s probably the best part of the journey. You never know what’s waiting just around the corner.
Read our review of The Pet Parade here, out now on Merge Records.
Order The Pet Parade here: https://smarturl.it/ThePetParade
Photo Credit: Annie Beedy