When Fruit Bats announced its new album and signing to Merge Records late last year, singer/songwriter Eric D. Johnson did so by “Getting in a Van Again.” The 15-minute mockumentary presented a surrealist view of the music industry, while teasing the very real themes explored on his album from last year “Gold Past Life” released in June 21, 2019.
“I know I said I’d be around this year, but here I am getting in a van again.”
According to Johnson, “Fruit Bats has been a cult band for a long time.” With Gold Past Life, he hopes to bring more immediacy to the music and share positivity, hope, and motivation to keep on keepin’ on with a wider audience.
“Fruit Bats makes existential make-out music,” he describes with a chuckle. “But you’re also welcome to dive into it deeper if you want. Good pop music should be sublime like that.”
If you listen to a band for 18 years, you’re bound to have more than “A Lingering Love” for them. With Gold Past Life, Fruit Bats reach new heights that have significantly increased not only their quiver of amazing songs, but also their fan base.
Chicago-based alt-folk band Fruit Bats released a case study in B-roll for their newest single, “Gold Past Life.” At the center of the bizarre music video stands the proud proprietor of a mail-order stock footage company, who is aiming to sell selections from his catalog by showing off his newest satisfied customers:
Fruit Bats (who else could it possibly be?). The proprietor’s Sunset at Beach (with Zoom), Seasonal Bird in Oven and Desperate Businessman Discovers Future clips, and other assorted footage are scored by the band’s easy, buoyant single, some of which include frontman Eric D. Johnson as The Drifter, Desperate Businessman and the Beach Bum.
All music and lyrics by Eric D. Johnson
Published by Furry Good Horns / BMI
Fruit Bats is Eric D. Johnson – words, vocals, various
with
Josh Adams – drums
David Dawda – bass
Josh Mease – guitar
Thom Monahan – sounds, percussion
and featuring
Trevor Beld Jimenez – drums
Neal Casal – guitar
Meg Duffy – guitar
Greta Morgan – vocals
Tim Ramsey – pedal steel
Bonny Light Horseman, the new folk supergroup consisting of singer/songwriters Anais Mitchell, Josh Kaufman, and Eric D. Johnson (of Fruit Bats). Their self-titled debut album is out December of 2019, and we couldn’t be more excited to introduce you to them. Bonny Light Horseman is full of beautiful songs inspired by traditional folk tunes of the British Isles, and we know you’ll be amazed by the gentle harmonies, gorgeous songwriting, and soothing sound of this great debut work.
The folk event of the year could already be upon us. Bonny Light Horseman may sound like a meaningless arrangement of words, but it’s actually Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson and Josh Kaufman, three incredible musicians and creators in their own rights who decided to bless the acoustic music world by joining forces. And their namesake is actually derived from an English-Irish ballad with origins in the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, “Bonny Light Horseman,” which is also the first track on their self-titled debut album and features TheNational’sAaron Dessner on guitar. The three artists first gathered at Justin Vernon’s Eaux Claires Festival circa summer 2018, and a year later they rendezvoused at Pickathon. You know the Portland-based Johnson from his band Fruit Bats, and Mitchell is the mastermind behind Hadestown, which won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Musical, and its coinciding concept album, which she first released in 2010. Kaufman is a producer who’s notably worked with Craig Finn, Josh Ritter and The National. Together, they’ve made something truly spellbinding: a folk album whose influences span the centuries and the continents, but whose core is so very of-this-moment.
Their timeless qualities of traditional tunes can carry us across oceans and eons, linking us not only to the past but to each other as well. It was under the banner of those eternal connections that the trio of Bonny Light Horseman came together. From festival fields and a German art hub to a snowy upstate studio and everywhere in between, the astral folk outfit is mixing the ancient, mystical medium of transatlantic traditional folk music with a contemporary, collective brush. The resulting album, Bonny Light Horseman, is an elusive kind of sonic event: a bottled blend of lightning and synergy that will excite fans of multiple genres, eras, and ages. The album features fellow 37d03d artists-in-residence Michael Lewis (bass, saxophone) and JT Bates (drums) as well as Justin Vernon, Aaron Dessner, Kate Stables, Lisa Hannigan, The Staves, Christian Lee Hutson, and more. Leaving the 2018 37d03d Berlin event with roughly 60-percent of a record, the band reconvened at Dreamland Studios in Woodstock, NY, in January 2019 to finish, bringing Lewis and Bates as well as engineer Bella Blasko along with them.
When Fruit Bats announced its new album and signing to Merge Records late last year, singer/songwriter Eric D. Johnson did so by “Getting in a Van Again.” The 15-minute mockumentary presented a surrealist view of the music industry, while teasing the very real themes explored on his previous album Gold Past Life—Released on June 21, 2019. “I know I said I’d be around this year, but here I am getting in a van again.”
Gold Past Life marked both an end and a beginning. It’s the end of an unintentional thematic trilogy of records that began with 2014’s EDJ (a solo record by name, but a Fruit Bats release in spirit) and hit an emotional peak with Absolute Loser. They encompassed years of loss, displacement, and the persistent, low-level anxiety of the current political climate. They were written in the wake of friends who left these earthly confines and families that could have been.
“I wrote music to comfort myself,” says Eric D. Johnson of those times. “It was a soothing balm.”
But these salves, these songs on Gold Past Life, also represent new beginnings—the journeys that await after making it through troubled times.
That spiritual sense of place is particularly important to Johnson, who has always been fascinated by dreams and the subconscious stories they can tell. “Some of these songs are directed at specific people, some at amalgams of people, and lots at myself, or the subconscious version of myself—that version like how they say you’re every single character in your dreams,” he says. “Even the artwork represents the notion that we’re all the characters in our dreams. Here’s me looking at you: I’m a deer on a beach looking you dead in the eye and licking my lips.”
The new record also features more keyboard influences and a range of guests including Greta Morgan (Springtime Carnivore, Vampire Weekend), Neal Casal (Circles Around the Sun), Trevor Beld Jimenez and Tim Ramsey (Parting Lines), Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), and more. It also sees his working relationship with producer and engineer Thom Monahan (Neko Case, Peter Bjorn & John, Devendra Banhart) hit its stride.
According to Johnson, “Fruit Bats has been a cult band for a long time.” he hopes to bring more immediacy to the music and share positivity, hope, and motivation to keep on keepin’ on with a wider audience.
“Fruit Bats makes existential make-out music,” he describes with a chuckle. “But you’re also welcome to dive into it deeper if you want. Good pop music should be sublime like that.”
One of the year’s best folk records is by a supergroup comprised of some of the most accomplished artists in music today. We’ve got Anaïs Mitchell, the force behind Hadestown, Eric D. Johnson, leader of the Fruit Bats, and Josh Kaufman, composer/writer/arranger who’s penned music for everyone from Bob Weir to The National. Their debut LP finds the trio reimagining centuries-old English, Irish and Appalachian tunes in a way that sounds modern and new. Take the set’s lead track “Bonny Light Horseman,” for example, a ballad about a soldier killed during the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century. The trio’s storytelling prowess is on full display here.
Fresh off their debut appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, Anaïs Mitchell (whose Hadestown recently led the 2019 Tony Awards with eight wins, including ‘Best Musical’), Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats), and Josh Kaufman (Craig Finn, Josh Ritter, The National) officially announce their new group, Bonny Light Horseman. The trio has also shared their debut single “Bonny Light Horseman,” a cover of the folk ballad that features Aaron Dessner on hi string guitar, as well as JT Bates (Big Red Machine, Phil Cook) on drums and Michael Lewis (Bon Iver) on tenor sax — both of whom also perform with Bonny Light Horseman live. Johnson explains, “This is a song about a handsome soldier who may or may not ever come home. And we named our band after it not just because it sounds kind of cool, but because it’s somewhat emblematic of what we’re trying to do here: sing you ancient love songs of timeless humanity and heartbreak. Songs that are gonna make you feel something no matter what century you’re in.”
This past weekend, Bonny Light Horseman performed one of their first shows (“our fourth or five,” Johnson approximated) to a packed crowd at Newport Folk Festival. The group first formed in 2018 during a residency at Justin Vernon’s Eaux Claires Festival. Bonny Light Horseman will go on the road with Mandolin Orange next month.
Fruit Bats, aka Eric D. Johnson’s alt-folk band and songwriting project, are preparing to release their first new album since 2016’s critically acclaimed Absolute Loser. The new record tilted, “Gold Past Life”, marks Johnson’s seventh studio effort under the Fruit Bats name and his third in an “unintentional thematic trilogy” of albums beginning with 2014’s EDJ, which he released under his own initials. Following those five years of political and personal chaos that maxed out with Loser, Gold Past Life promises a shimmery new beginning.
The third single, following the previously released title track and “The Bottom of It,” is a real folk-rock charmer. It’s called “Ocean” .
“This is a song about late bloomers, late discoveries, adult baptism, coming-of-age when you’re way past the right time to do that,” Johnson says. “About growing, I guess. And how a good love can help you do all of that. In short, this is a lovey-dovey song I hope you enjoy.”
“Ocean” begins in calm waters, with just some light acoustic guitar, before maracas and staggered baroque piano accelerate the tempo, just as Johnson is “watching it all tumble into view.” As is usually the case with Johnson’s realist yet romantic songwriting, “Ocean” is nostalgic without collapsing into melodrama.
Fruit Bats signed to Merge Records earlier this year following Johnson’s longtime “mega label crush” on the North Carolina mainstay. Gold Past Life is their debut on the label, and it’s out June 21st.
From the album Gold Past Life, out June 21st, 2019 on Merge Records.
Though it sounds perfectly natural in the line of succession of Fruit Bats albums, it’s the five-year hiatus preceding “Absolute Loser” that makes all the difference. That album, as cohesive and strong top to bottom as anything frontman Eric D. Johnson has previously made, The album gathers its sense of purpose from the sort of self-reflection and search for meaning that caused Johnson to put Fruit Bats on hold after 2011’s Tripper.
But “Absolute Loser” unfolds as a rock-solid example of what Johnson has done best for more than 15 years. Although the album stacks more of its mellower songs toward the end—trading some of the enthusiastic spirit Johnson brings to Fruit Bats’ return for a finale that sounds thoroughly peaceful—in the end, anyone who’s tapped feet or nodded along to Fruit Bats in the past will find plenty to embrace with this new batch of familiar, comfortable tunes.
Fruit Bats – Absolute Loser
Recorded Live: 5/9/2016 – Paste Studios – New York, NY
Though it sounds perfectly natural in the line of succession of Fruit Bats albums, it’s the five-year hiatus preceding the latest album release Absolute Loser that makes all the difference. That album, as cohesive and strong top to bottom as anything frontman Eric D. Johnson has made, gathers its sense of purpose from the sort of self-reflection and search for meaning that caused Johnson to put Fruit Bats on the shelf after 2011’s Tripper. But Absolute Loser unfolds as a rock-solid example of what Johnson has done best for more than 15 years. Although the album stacks more of its mellower songs toward the end—trading some of the enthusiastic spirit Johnson brings to Fruit Bats’ return for a finale that sounds thoroughly peaceful—in the end, anyone who’s tapped feet or nodded along to Fruit Bats in the past will find plenty to embrace with this new batch of familiar, comfortable tunes
The new album, ‘Absolute Loser,‘ will be released May 13th on Easy Sound Recording Co
The Fat Angel Sings 