Today, Eric D. Johnson of Fruit Bats shares three performance videos from Icehouse in Minneapolis, fittingly dubbed “Icehouse Sessions.” All three songs can be found on The Pet Parade, Fruit Bats’ latest album from March 2021 which we reviewed here and which Uncut hailed as “a deeply humane record, perhaps the most vivid in Johnson’s long career”.
Fruit Bats have have also announced support for their 2022 tour dates, including Esther Rose, Vetiver, Johanna Samuels, Scott Hirsch, and more. A full list of shows can be found below. When Folk Radio’s Bob Fish spoke with Johnson about the album (interview here), they also talked about touring and Johnson said “I’ve never even really gotten up to buses. I’m still in a 15-passenger van. I’m driving half the time still after 20 years.” Bob’s response was prophetic: “I hope he doesn’t get too comfortable with that, because with The Pet Parade, Fruit Bats may just find the kind of audience Eric D. Johnson has only imagined.”
Check out full-band Fruit Bats performing “Eagles Below Us,” “On the Avalon Stairs,” and “Complete” now.
Pick up The Pet Parade on CD and LP in the Merge store, and while you’re there, pre-order the recently announced Fruit Bats 2-LP compilation Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001–2021), due January 28, 2022!
Following our album review of The Pet Parade, Bob Fish interviewed Johnson about his last twenty years in music from working with The Shins to Bonny Light Horseman, as well as Fruit Bats and his new album The Pet Parade. Johnson was very forthcoming in his answers and offered quite an insight into the journey he’d been on:
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.”
Fruit Bats have announced support for their 2022 tour dates, including Esther Rose, Vetiver, Johanna Samuels, Scott Hirsch, and more. A full list of shows can be found below.
Fruit Bats on tour:
Mar 02–05 Cancún, MX – My Morning Jacket’s One Big Holiday
Mar 09 Santa Barbara, CA – SOhO Music Club *
Mar 10 Los Angeles, CA – The Lodge Room *
Mar 11 San Francisco, CA – The Chapel *
Mar 12 San Francisco, CA – The Chapel *
Mar 13 Sacramento, CA – Harlow’s *
Mar 17 Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom ^
Mar 18 Vancouver, BC – Hollywood Theatre ^
Mar 19 Seattle, WA – The Showbox ^
Mar 22 Missoula, MT – Wilma Theatre ^
Mar 23 Bozeman, MT – The Elm ^
Mar 24 Salt Lake City, UT – The Commonwealth Room ^
Mar 25-27 Boise, ID – Treefort Music Fest
Apr 07 Dallas, TX – The Kessler Theater ~
Apr 08 Austin, TX – 3TEN at ACL Live ~
Apr 09 Austin, TX – 3TEN at ACL Live ~
Apr 10 Houston, TX – The Heights Theater ~
Apr 12 New Orleans, LA – Tipitina’s ~
Apr 13 Birmingham, AL – Saturn ~
Apr 14 Nashville, TN – Basement East ~
Apr 15 Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse ~
Apr 16 Durham, NC – Motorco Music Hall ~
Apr 17 Richmond, VA – Richmond Music Hall ~
Apr 19 Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer ~
Apr 20 Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg ~
Apr 21 Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair ~
Apr 22 Woodstock, NY – Levon Helm Studios [SOLD OUT] ~
Apr 23 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club ~
Apr 26 Toronto, ON – Great Hall ~
Apr 27 Detroit, MI – El Club ~
Apr 28 Indianapolis, IN – HI-FI ~
Apr 29 Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall ~
Apr 30 Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue !
May 06 Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater @
May 07 Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater @
May 12 San Diego, CA – Music Box &
May 13 Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom &
May 14 Tucson, AZ – 191 Toole &
* Esther Rose supports
^ Vetiver supports
~ Johanna Samuels supports
! w/ Bonny Light Horseman, Johanna Samuels supports
@ TBA supports
& Scott Hirsch supports
Tickets via: http://www.fruitbatsmusic.com/tour
Photo Credit: Annie Beedy