Cellar Sessions: Freedy Johnston - This Perfect World April 29th, 2018 City Winery New York

Freedy Johnston sits down for a One On One Session at City Winery New York on April 29th, 2018. Watch the full session here: https://youtu.be/OZ05fNgLPEY For more info visit: http://www.freedyjohnston.com Audio & Video by: Ehud Lazin

Setlist:

Bad Reputation

This Perfect World

Cold Again

Dolores

Evie's Tears

When you talk about the tunes of Freedy Johnston, there’s only one little problem. After you’ve been blown away by his songs of suspicious circus carnies, shoplifters, unfaithful lovers, the drug-dependent and the truth-challenged, how do you tell people about this guy without worrying you’re overselling him. You don’t. Because you’re not. After twenty years of one great disc after another, the kid from Kansas is back. Bearing maybe the best record he’s ever made, Neon Repairman. And its songs will keep you up nights, just like those bright lights of the title track.

Like most of the general public, you probably first heard Freedy when his chiming, catchy single, Bad Reputation, full of his trademark tunefulness and street-level lyrics hit the airwaves. The song was the opening salvo of Johnston’s masterpiece, This Perfect World, superbly-produced by the legendary Butch Vig, of Nirvana fame. Vig kept the record radio-friendly, but brought enough clarity so that Freedy’s characters, the lost, criminal and crazy, all came through loud and clear. These desperate people caught not just the average listener, but filmmakers The Farrelly Brothers. Soon, several of Johnston’s tunes showed up in their comedy Kingpin. Topping that achievement, in 1995, Rolling Stone Magazine named Johnston Songwriter Of The Year. Enough to bring color to any man’s face. But when you saw that number two was Kurt Cobain, well, Johnston must’ve really blushed. Rolling Stone made the right decision, too. It won’t be long until This Perfect World, starts showing up on everyone’s All-Time Best Album lists.

After touring the album, sharing stages with everyone from The Indigo Girls to Jackson Browne, he dropped Never Home, another collection of strong, literary songs, produced by Danny Kortchmar, best-known for his guitar work with James Taylor. The record had Johnston’s usual raggedy bunch of immoral or simply exhausted Americans. In the rockin’ radio track, On The Way Out, a two-bit thief wonders less about stealing than how he’ll look on the surveillance cameras. As a sparse band kicks ass behind his creepy musings. Western Sky, tells a sad, panoramic tale of a pilot whose “son won’t fly” so the two take off in a car, while wife and mother, ironically, flies above them in a jet. Rarely has there been an an album so beautifully bleak.

Johnston made several more superb discs for his label, but his luck could’ve been better. The record industry nosediving, he went indie. While producing several more solo gems, Johnston was briefly part of two alternative supergroups: The Know-It-All-Boyfriends (featuring Vig) and The Hobart Brothers and Lil Sis, which sported songwriters Jon Dee Graham and Susan Cowsill (yes, that Susan Cowsill) for a loose, lovely album of country-ish tunes.