Fruit Bats

Tickets $15 ADV / $17 DOS
On Sale 9/23 at 10am: http://bit.ly/2csfwlq

ALL AGES
Doors at 8PM

Eric D. Johnson was ready to drive the car off the cliff. He bristles at the memory and the metaphor. Instead, he recalls, he and his wife drove their Toyota Echo—so old it lacked power locks—through the Redwood forest the day they got the bad news. Their baby, due on his wife’s 40th birthday, didn’t make it past the first trimester. “I was so grief-stricken,” recalls Johnson. “I wanted to blow up my life.”

And so he started over. He abandoned the Fruit Bats band name that carried him for
16 years and five successful studio albums. He ditched the moniker that connected
him to stints playing with The Shins and Vetiver and Califone. Instead, Johnson
continued pursuing other musical passions. He focused more on scoring films
(having already contributed to works like Smashed and Our Idiot Brother). He
produced Breathe Owl Breathe’s 2013 album Passage of Pegasus and grew his
Huichica Music Festival in Sonoma, California.

Then, in 2014, Johnson released a solo album. That record, released under his own
name and simply titled EDJ, “was the outpouring of grief” resulting from those
experiences.

“The EDJ record was about how making something—like a person—is really easy
for some people and really not for some people,” he says. “I was so sad about that,
but also fearful to discuss it.”

In the process of grieving, reflecting, and resigning himself to his new realities,
Johnson realized how much weight a name can carry and how much of his sense of
self was contained in just two small words.

Eric D. Johnson is Fruit Bats. And Fruit Bats is back.

“I’m finding my identity again,” he begins, “which is somehow, weirdly this dumb
fake punk rock name that I put on a four-track tape.”

Fruit Bats’ sixth album Absolute Loser represents a triumphant return to name, form, and self. Despite implications, its title refers to the furthest depths of loss itself, rather than the state of those who have lost something. It’s the most honest, most confessional album of Fruit Bats’ career.

Johnson draws from deeply those personal experiences, yet Absolute Loser
encapsulates universal themes and emotions. While “My Sweet Midwest” could be
taken completely literally, it addresses the holistic nature of finding your center
during turmoil. “Baby Bluebird” stings in its portrayal of losing what you never
really had. Album closer “Don’t You Know That” is about picking yourself up, even
when no one seems to care how far you fell.

Musically, Absolute Loser retains the same structural pop elements that made Fruit
Bats so beloved in the first place. Its simple sounding melodies belie such thick
musical textures, as some tracks incorporate up to 10 guitar tracks layered on top of each other. Johnson also hearkens back to his days teaching banjo at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, and that instrumentation adds a folksy, Americana spirit to record.

Fruit Bats’ rebirth parallels Johnson’s resiliency, and Absolute Loser is his treaty on how to redefine oneself after tragedy. Although he maintains that he doesn’t have it all figured out quite yet, Johnson acknowledges that with that self-awareness comes some sort of acceptance.

“I am what I am,” he says. “And that’s freeing in a way.”