Will Johnson's road to his latest album ran right through the Texas countryside where he now lives.
Johnson was born in Missouri and has released records with Centro-matic's Monsters of Folk and is now a full-time member of Jason Isbell's band, the 400 Unit.
For his 10th album under his own name, he kept things simple writing and recording at his Texas farmhouse. Ahead of his performance at Cat's Cradle this Saturday, he spoke with WUNC's Eric Hodge.
When you decided to get down to work on these songs, you woke up, started writing and recording, and didn't call it a day until you had two songs done. Were there days when that took a long time?
Fortunately, there were not. If I get in a writing phase sometimes and the songs are coming together really quickly, it's exhilarating and it's exciting to have a couple songs by noon. But then by 2 or 3 p.m., I'm inherently wondering, are they good enough? Or did I — I afforded myself too much free time this afternoon.
I better at least write another one or two, or go back and make those previous two better.
That reminds me of that line from "Cairo," where you sing about the high art of wasting time. Is that what you sometimes feel you might be doing?
Sometimes. I mean, you know, what's, what's the old phrase? When the boss is looking, look busy? Find a way to look busy or whatever.
But, uh, I don't know. Fortunately, I, I, I always have plenty to keep me busy.
You credit your wife with urging you to go with this more bare bones approach. Has she always wanted you to record like this?
I think she has celebrated and been super supportive of most any method of recording. Although, particularly early in our relationship, I would play demos for her or four tracks. A lot of the time I record on a four-rack cassette machine, a Tascam 424, which is actually what this record was made on.
And there were times, especially years ago, in the early years of our friendship where she would get really attached to the four tracks or the demo versions and we'd make the studio versions and I think she loved them just as much.
She was excited and exhilarated when those finally got to, we got to sort of unfurl everything in higher fidelity. But there were times where she really was just like, man, you know, the demo version of that song is the one that I'm gravitating toward. It is an inexpensive record. I think it cost me the walloping expense of two cassette tapes. So it's affordable.
Well, these days in the era of streaming when nobody pays you anything, that's good.
Geez, it's good to keep your overhead low.
Is "Floodway Fall" a road trip song originating in your home state of Missouri?
Yeah, it is a little bit. I spent a lot of time in my childhood — like, I was in southeast Missouri until I was 12 years old in the Bootheel and we always sort of joked that it was a part of Missouri that even Arkansas didn't want.
So we were an hour and a half north of Memphis, so we were always on that I-55 stretch to and from Memphis, and my hometown of Kennett. Memphis was the closest town of any real culture. That's where you went to see Santa Claus at Christmas. It's where you went to get school clothes or whatever. If you wanted to go to a museum or anything like that, or needed any kind of elevated healthcare, that was where you went.
The song was born of inspiration kind of through that area, and I tried to sort of make it sound like a drive on that road, at least in my imagination.
"Unfamiliar Ghost" is really evocative and I see those black birds on the lawn in the morning, but the thing that keeps me coming back to that record — there is a very meditative ruckus at the end of that with that guitar part that kind of repeats itself and goes on longer than you think it will, and you just, as a listener, you get locked into it and then you're sad when it goes. How did you get to that place?
Somewhere around like eight ... I don't know. It's hard for me to know what age, but maybe 15 years ago or so, I just became far less afraid of the long, drawn out, longform song. So it didn't bother me.
Some of the live versions of the things that we're playing start knocking on the door of 8, 9, 10 minutes. And it doesn't bother me. I just think it's all an exploration and, and I do think a little bit of that, going back to "Unfamiliar Ghost," I mean, I'm sitting in the room that I wrote it in and tracked it in looking out the window to the pasture out back and the literal space that our family moved into about three and a half years ago from Austin.
And I don't think it's any accident that moving out to the country from the city definitely inspired some more spacious music. As a matter of fact, there's a giant buzzard right here on the telephone pole right outside, up by the street. And there's always birds. There's so many critters and so much movement out here naturally that, that started to get into the songwriting and into the music for "Diamond City."
I mean, the 16 blackbirds on the lawn thing, all that — it is just inspired by a lot that I started to see and really appreciate once we moved into the country.
Is there anything we left out there that you wanted to talk about?
The reason that I'm gonna be at the Cradle will be because of the Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co. short tour to celebrate and sing and highlight the legacy and the songs of our dear and past friend, Jason Molina.
The entire set will be a two-and-a-half hour, three(-hour) long journey through the "Songs: Ohia" and Magnolia Electric Company catalog, as well as the record that Jason and I released together in 2009. So it'll be emotional and exhilarating and I think exciting to make that noise with, with the Magnolia Electric Co. guys again. It'll feel good to be back in Carrboro.
