Words: Jon Bosworth
Photo: Annie Beedy

There is something strangely ironic about Sub Pop's current roster of bands featuring so much southern-influenced music. Fleet Foxes, Blitzen Trapper, Band of Horses, and Iron & Wine are on the list, but probably most notable is The Shins. Eric D. Johnson plays with The Shins, but his personal writing vehicle is Sub Pop's Fruit Bats, and they definitely fit the southern-influenced bill.

Although these groups are often lumped together in the genre of alt-country, there really aren't any defining characteristics for the tag. The moniker was first passed around back in the days of The Jayhawks and Uncle Tupelo, when it was necessary to make a distinction between hipster college-country and the Hank Williams Jr. brand that was on C&W radio stations; but it seems wholly inadequate now that it spans everything from raw, folk-ish music like Iron & Wine to the very southern rock-ish Fruit Bats. However, music journalists need these neat categories, because few tasks are more difficult than trying to explain music through printed words. The point is, it's hard to imagine that Cobain wouldn't shit himself to see anything even remotely country or southern coming out of the Sub Pop factory. Back in Cobain's day, harmonies like those the Fleet Foxes employ were not in any way cool. Evan Dando was the brunt of Cobain and producer Steve Albini's prank calls, and Dando's Lemonheads were the epitome of punk rock going soft with vocal harmonies and ballads.

Another piece of the irony lies in the fact most of the hipsters composing these southern jams are yankees. Portland, where the Fruit Bats live, has "Southern Style Restaurants" that are expensive four-star brasseries playing up southern culture like an ethnic delicacy. They come to southern thrift shops for their novelty decor and charge offensive rates for fried catfish and shrimp and grits. So are the very Allmann Brothers-esque Fruit Bats making novelty music and then parading it down into southern territory like something those yankees now own?

Unfortunately, the phone interview with Johnson was cut short, which is probably for the best, since he was a really nice guy and there was no need to unleash any southern rage.

REAX: Many people categorize you as alt-country, but it seems to me you have more of a '70s southern rock thing.
EJ: I've always had an affinity for the '70s southern rock thing, for sure. I like to think that the new record is a combination of my affection for sort of soft, British rock from the '70s but also more like southern rock from the '70s too, which I don't think has ever really been combined before. That's what I was trying to do. But yeah, you hit the nail on the head, definitely. I like that stuff.

REAX: You don't have a whole lot of southern dates, are you nervous about being a yankee and bringing your southern rock down here?
EJ: We have a fair amount of southern dates. Does Texas count?

REAX: No. Hell no.
EJ: Then we've got Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia.

REAX: We're going to miss you in Florida, though, we're sad about that.
EJ: Well, we're coming to Florida in the winter. That's the best time to come. Although the last time we came to Florida it was a weird cold spell you all had. I can't remember what year that was now, but it was like 20 degrees in Tampa the night we played. I think it was like the coldest night ever recorded or something like that. When we came to Florida it was totally freezing. But we're coming this winter, for sure.

REAX: The Fruit Bats and the Shins are very distinct bands, but as you get to the point where more of the members of the Fruit Bats are joining The Shins, do you ever worry about there being a blur between the two or one overshadowing the other?
EJ: Laughs I think it's pretty clear that one does overshadow the other, because The Shins are way more popular, so there's no threat; it is what it is. We have one other guy that's in both bands and he was just kind of in the right place at the right time and he sort of fell into it. So there's two of us in the two bands. Unless something miraculous happens with this record I think I can be safe saying The Shins already pretty much overshadow us. I don't need to worry too much about that.

REAX: How difficult is it to have any sort of a life when you're writing and performing with two touring bands?
EJ: It's not that bad, because a lot of times these things are pretty condensed. Instead of a nine-to-five job five days a week, you work this 24-hour-a-day job for nine straight months, but then you could also get nine straight months off too. That's the weird trade-off. It's the same amount of time, I think, as a normal job, so I have time off to do stuff.

REAX: Who do you consider your contemporaries? Whose new albums do you anticipate and get excited about?
EJ: If I were just to list off some contemporary band I've liked over the past few years - I've had an association with this band too, but I'm still a fan - it'd be Vetiver. They're also friends. That's the other thing, a lot of times you sort of end up becoming friends with people, so you're sort of a friend and a fan. I always love M. Ward's records, I had a recent discovery, and now they're my label-mates but I don't really know these guys, Blitzen Trapper. I've really liked their last few records. Who else have I been stoked on? I've always liked Grandaddy, even though they are no more. That would be a short list. There are many more.

REAX: Fun fact: a fruit bat is also called a flying fox, and Fleet Foxes are also label-mates in a similar genre.
EJ: Oh, that's another contemporary band that I really like, and they are our friends as well as label-mates.

REAX: Isn't it weird that Sub Pop is signing so many country-ish bands? That's not very punk.
EJ: They've kinda been doing that since we signed with them, like seven years ago. Maybe more so lately, but they've been slowly picking up a lot of bands like that for the past seven years. Maybe not all country-ish, but folk and/or country. It's cool. You get like one person in there who has a taste for the thing and starts picking up on it, and others start picking up on what they're doing and it sort of happens like that. Yeah, it's cool.

REAX: Do you think Kurt Cobain would freak out to see this sort of country movement take over the once-punk rock label that he championed?
EJ: I don't know. I think Kurt Cobain had pretty diverse taste in music, so I'd like to think that he'd be cool with all of it.

REAX: That was a really dorky question, sorry.
EJ: I haven't gotten that one yet, so it was original.

The Ruminant Band is out now on Sub Pop. The Fruit Bats are on tour in the U.S. through August and September.

myspace.com/thefruitbats