“Can You Fly” (Sunset Blvd. Records)
By Eleni P. Austin
“Well, I sold the dirt to feed the band.” That’s Freedy Johnston’s opening gambit on his brilliant second album, “Can You Fly.” Released in 1992, the record wound up topping plenty of annual critics’ polls, receiving airplay on plenty of College and AAA radio formats and even popping up on MTV’s 120 Minutes. At the time, it felt as though he had suddenly burst on the scene, but in reality, he had been working toward that moment for nearly a decade.
Born in 1961, Fredric John Fatzer grew up in Kinsley, Kansas. Music was an early obsession, initially, he was drawn to music from Led Zeppelin, David Bowie and Aerosmith. He bought his first guitar at age 16 via mail order. There wasn’t much of a scene in his hometown. After he had been playing guitar for about a year, he persuaded a friend to drive him 35 miles to the closest record store so he could purchase a record he had read about, Elvis Costello’s 1977 debut, My Aim Is True.
During his brief stint at University Of Kansas in Lawrence, he began devouring the music of Tom Petty & Heartbreakers, Tom Waits and The Replacements. By 1985, he had relocated to the East Coast hoping to pursue a career in music. As a kid, his mom nicknamed him Freedy and the moniker stuck, he added her maiden name, Johnston, et voila! Instant nom de Rock.
He began making a name for himself and signed with the respected indie label Bar/None. Freedy’s debut, Trouble Tree, arrived in 1990, and received positive reviews. But it was his next album, Can You Fly, that not only garnered unanimous critical acclaim, but also sold a respectable 40,000 copies. A wry singer-songwriter, his sound was a sly combo-platter of Folk, Pop, Country and Rock, was matched by eloquently specific lyrics. Critics and fans alike immediately drew comparisons to heroes like Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello.
Pretty soon, he was opening for established acts and kindred spirits like Soul Asylum, Matthew Sweet and The Lemonheads. Major labels began paying attention and Freedy inked a deal with Elektra Records. Butch Vig, the producer behind Grunge mega-sellers like Nirvana’s Nevermind and Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream, leapt at the chance to produce his first Elektra effort, Bad Reputation. It was released in late 1994. Once again, critical acclaim was unanimous. Rolling Stone proclaimed him “Songwriter Of The Year” and the album’s title track climbed to #54 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
For the remainder of the 20th century, Freedy made consistently great albums like 1997’s Never Home and 1999’s Blue Days, Black Nights. His music began popping up in indie films like Heavy, Noah Baumbach’s Kicking And Screaming, Kingpin and Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead. His final record for Elektra was Right Between The Promises. Released in 2001 it paired idiosyncratic character studies with wildly accessible melodies.
Freedy was less prolific in the early aughts, but no less compelling. He recorded a couple of live sets, Live At 33 1/3 and Live At McCabe’s. 2007 saw the arrival of his My Favorite Waste Of Time album, which found him covering tracks from artists like Marshall Crenshaw, Tom Petty, Paul McCartney, NRBQ and Cole Porter. Rain On The City followed in 2010 and Neon Repairman popped up in 2015. In 2009 he began collaborating off and on with Texas singer-songwriter Jon Dee Graham as the Hobart Brothers. After a couple years they enlisted Susan Cowsill and became The Hobart Brothers And Lil Sis Hobart. Lead vocal duties were split evenly among the three, and their much-anticipated debut, At Least We Have Each Other was released in 2012. A decade later he returned with his 12th long-player, Back On The Road To You, another winner, it featured vocal contributions from Aimee Mann, Susanna Hoffs and Susan Cowsills. Now the Boss and Bitchin’ kids at Sunset Blvd. Records are reissuing Can You Fly, which has long been out of print.
After a muffled false start, the record kicks into gear with a couple of elastic rockers. The aforementioned “Trying To Tell You I Don’t Know” is an origin story sorts, anchored by low-slung guitars, agile bass lines and a hammering beat. Freedy’s vocal delivery swings from Punky defiance to dulcet deference as lyrics detail the struggles and sacrifice involved in jump-staring a music career: “Yeah, I sold the house where I learned to walk, falling down as always, 50 bucks to use the van, trying to find your city man, trying to get back my guitars, trying to tell you I don’t know…well, I sold the dirt for a song, bleeding on every note.” A swaggering guitar solo unspools on the break that completely justifies the song’s sweet bravado.
A swift and succinct drum salvo signals the start of “In The New Sunshine.” Stripped-down guitars align with boinging bass and a backbeat that simply snap, crackles and pops. The sanguine arrangement belies angsty lyrics like “Now, I will burn before I sing, wouldn’t get too close, now I will sing my shriveled song, in the new sunshine.” Tilt-a-whirl guitars oscillate wildly between verses underscoring the lyrical equivocation. But his diffidence is undercut by the song’s monster hook.
Although Freedy’s music was defined as singer-songwriter, he rarely hewed to that narrow paradigm. Take “Sincere,” a Stonesy groover powered by splayed guitars, fluid bass lines and a chunky beat. He wraps his reedy tenor around cryptic, fish-out-of-water lyrics: “Mister, can you tell me what to call this place, I’ve been cheated like I’ve never been, and it’s a frustration like I really need one, and the man at the hotel has been breaking my balls, breaking my balls.” Flickering licks dart across the break just as the arrangement picks up speed and guitars growl with authority.
The framework for “Tearing Down This Place” weds sun-dappled acoustic guitars, roiling bass and strummy electric riffs to a shuffle rhythm. Opaque lyrics attempt to dismantle a structure that was once the site of domestic discord: “Here’s the room where they lay awake through a complicated night, he was staring at the wall as she cried and cried and cried, under a roof that held the real rain out and covered up the sound, he built her every wall and we have to tear it down.” A Countrified, spangly guitar solo meanders through the break just ahead of the emotional demolition: “Knock it down, take it away, we’ve got work tearing down this place, built for a ghost, haunted by love, left to decay, knock it down, take it way, we’ve got work tearing down this place, take it away, take it away.”
Meanwhile, “Remember Me” splits the difference between one of those Public Domain Folk songs that Bob Dylan used to strip for parts and reconfigure, and an undiscovered boom-chicka-boom classic from the Johnny Cash cannon. Jaggy acoustic guitars and Freedy’s flinty vocals are quickly supplanted by slap-back six-string bass, barbed electric guitar and a rattle-trap beat. Lyrics like “Well, I left town with a hardcore band, headlights shining on the beach, left my money in a Maxwell’s coffee can down by the cemetery gate, when I walk into your kitchen and hold your tiny face, Mother dear, will you remember me,” walk the line between autobiography and apocrypha.
A streak of melancholy threads through a couple songs, “The Mortician’s Daughter” and “Can You Fly.” On the former, plaintive acoustic guitar intertwines with lowing cello, spiky electric riffs, angular bass and a portentous beat. Freedy sweetly offers something of an aural pentimento, where grief and memories collide: “I used to love the mortician’s daughter, we drew our hearts on the dusty coffin lids, I grieve tonight over this letter, my tears dissolve an image from the careful link… “I used to love the mortician’s daughter, we rolled in the warm grass by the boneyard fence, her skin so white, the first leaves falling, the long forgotten night, I am there again.” Rueful and poignant, the final verse is followed by tender pas de deux between cello and guitar.
The latter simply yearns for a bit of emotional rescue. It’s a no-frills affair, it’s just downstroke guitars, blocky percussion, prickly electric riffs, liquid keys and sepia-toned bass. Lyrics seem to be addressing a higher power: “You came down, down, down, down in a midnight storm, you came down, down, down, down in a midnight flash, we’ve all been looking at you, I must know, is it true, can you fly, can you fly, can you fly.” Freedy’s vocals are suffused with longing. This moodily magnificent song aches in all the right ways,
The best tracks here hopscotch across the record. “The Lucky One” matches loping guitars, thready organ and lithe bass lines to a kick-drum beat. Electric guitars spiral between verses, and Freedy is cheerfully upbeat as he marvels at his humble good fortune: “I’m standing on the corner, if I could find a dollar, I know I’d be the lucky one, standing in the last light, artificial daylight, I know I’m the lucky one.” A willowy guitar solo floats across the break as he insists “I know I’m the one, I’m the one.”
On “Responsible” jangly guitars, keening pedal steel and buoyant bass are tethered to a cantering gait. Freedy unfurls the nuanced narrative of an estranged daughter escaping to the big city: “The streets are slick with dew and motor oil, a girl walks in and out of the morning sun, a barred window reflects the cloudless sky, no blue reaches those eyes/She has gone to New York city, through that arch on a summer night, I went there once on her first birthday, lay my head on the cool stone.” As he deflects blame, a waspish pedal steel refrain drifts across the break, effectively undercutting his argument.
Finally, “Down In Love” is tart duet between Freedy and sui generis singer-songwriter Syd Straw. Rumbling guitars are bookended by wistful accordion, spidery bass and a thumping backbeat. Syd handles the verses and their voices dovetail on the chorus. Lyrics limn the vicissitudes of romance: “The day breaks down and cries a river, soaks me to my heart, down in love I know they’re laughing, tearing us apart.” Even as they hit rock bottom: “…down so far you must be joking, no more dreams for me, no more dreams for me,” they display a steely resilience that offers a glimmer of hope.
Other interesting tracks include the driving “Wheels,” which opens with this immortal couplet: “There really is a town called Hopeless, on a faded map, circled in blue.” Then there’s the rollicking Golden State homage of “California Thing.” The album closes with the woebegone lament of “We Will Shine.” Freedy’s voice takes on a scratchy Appalachian flavor, latticing piquant guitars and lonely windchimes. Lyrics deftly paint a portrait of marital ennui: “Get your red dress on and we’ll go out tonight…we will shine like the stars, winding down with the hours, I will shave in my sleep, I will dream in my shower, yeah I brought you here, but you don’t complain, and I find you crying on your birthday.”
The record originally ended on that bittersweet note, but the reissue adds two bonus tracks that first appeared on Freedy’s Unlucky EP, a year after Can You Fly was released. The guitar-driven “Lost Key” is gritty and subterranean. Freedy’s frustration is palpable as he confesses “I’m alone and I know why.” The song boasts not one, but two wiry guitar solos, that manage to mitigate the lyrical angst.
The final track is spare and fairly austere, as plangent acoustic guitar tangles with loose-limbed bass lines and ticklish percussion. “Caroline” finds our hero obsessing over a spectral ex: “By the song in my head, I would swear that you were really here, is that you down on the stairs, little wonder that I never knew, Caroline, Caroline, were you born to rule my mind, or did you fall from the moon when I turned out the lights?” When this album arrived in 1992, the charts were dominated by Madonna, Billy Ray Cyrus, TLC and the ascendence of Grunge. By charting his own course, Freedy managed to navigate between these disparate genres and garner quite a bit of attention. Hard to say if “Achy Breaky Heart still resonates. But three decades on, Can You Fly remains a revelation.
