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All Music Guide:
A gifted songwriter whose lyrics paint sometimes witty, often poignant portraits of characters often unaware of how their lives have gone wrong, Freedy Johnston seemingly appeared out of nowhere in the early '90s and quickly established himself as one of the most acclaimed new singer/songwriters of the day. Johnston was born in 1961 in Kinsley, KS, a small town with the odd distinction of being equidistant between New York City and San Francisco. Growing up, Johnston developed a strong interest in music, but living in a city without a music store or a record shop, doing something about it took some effort. When he was 16, Johnston bought his first guitar by mail order, and a year later, a friend drove him 35 miles to the nearest record store so he could buy an album he'd read about: My Aim Is True by Elvis Costello. After high school, Johnston enrolled at the University of Kansas in Lawrence; while his academic career didn't last very long (less than one year), Johnston wasted no time immersing himself in the city's new wave scene and became a passionate fan of local legends the Embarrassment. Johnston also began listening to everything from Neil Young to XTC and developed a taste for country music. After several years of working in restaurants and writing songs on a four-track recorder in the evening, Johnston pulled up stakes in 1985 and moved to New York City. (A collection of Johnston's early four-track recordings was released in 2004 under the title The Way I Were.) After several years of making the rounds, Johnston's work caught the attention of Bar/None Records, a respected independent label based in Hoboken, NJ.
Johnston made his recording debut in 1989 with two tracks on a Bar/None label sampler, Time for a Change, and his first album, the scrappy and genially eccentric The Trouble Tree, followed in 1990. While the album received largely positive reviews and became a minor hit in Holland, sales were poor in the United States, and in order to finance recording of his second album, Johnston was forced to sell some farmland which had been with the Johnston family for generations (an decision Johnston set to music in his song "Trying to Tell You I Don't Know"). However, the risk paid off as 1992's Can You Fly earned enthusiastic reviews and was named among the year's best albums by The New York Times, Billboard, Spin, and Musician Magazine; Robert Christgau in The Village Voice went so far as to call it "a perfect album." The album also earned a healthy amount of alternative radio airplay, and Can You Fly's success convinced Elektra Records to sign Johnston. His first set for Elektra, 1994's This Perfect World, received similarly positive press and spawned a minor hit single in the song "Bad Reputation." While Johnston's next three albums for Elektra -- Never Home, Blue Days Black Nights, and Right Between the Promises -- didn't fare as well in terms of sales, he maintains a loyal fan following and the respect of critics and peers. He released The Way I Were: 4-Track Demos 1986-1992 in 2004, followed by Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop in 2006. Johnston has also dabbled in film scoring by writing incidental music for the Farrelly Brothers comedy Kingpin, and he performs occasionally with the Know-It-All Boyfriends, an informal cover band featuring Butch Vig and Doug Erikson of Garbage.
Wikipedia:
Freedy Johnston (born Fred Fatzer in 1961) is a New York City-based singer-songwriter originally from Kinsley, Kansas. He has scored several minor hits since the early 1990s. Johnston's songs are often about troubled loners, and cover topics like heartbreak, alienation and disappointment. Known for the craftsmanship of his songs, he has been described as a "songwriter's songwriter."Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).
Biography[edit]
Johnston was raised in the small town of Kinsley, KS, pop. 1,658 (2009). His interest in music was hampered by the fact that there were no record shops or music stores in his hometown. When he was sixteen, he bought his first guitar from a mail order catalog, and at 17, had a friend drive him the 35 miles to the closest record store to buy an Elvis Costello album he had read about. When he graduated high school, and left to attend the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, Kansas, he immersed himself in the new wave music scene.
By 1985, with some songs he'd recorded on a four-track recorder he moved to New York City. He decided to change his name to Freedy Johnston; "Freedy" was a nickname that his mother had given him, and Johnston was his mother's maiden name. After a few years there, he signed with Bar None Records, and debuted just two tracks called Time for a Change, in 1989. His first album, The Trouble Tree, was released in 1990. While the reviews were generally good, the album was not commercially successful.
Johnston sold some of his family's farmland to finance the recording of his second album, Can You Fly (an event he wrote about in a song on that album, "Trying to Tell You I Don't Know"). Johnston followed up with his 1994 major label debut, This Perfect World, which received rave reviews and led to Rolling Stone naming him "songwriter of the year". Other publications, including The New York Times, Spin, and Musician Magazine gave the album high marks as well. It featured the single "Bad Reputation", which reached 54 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is one of his best-known songs. The success he enjoyed convinced Elektra to sign him and he released his next three albums under that label; Never Home, Blue Days Black Nights, and Right Between the Promises and while they didn't reach the same level of praise as This Perfect World, they still earned both respectful reviews and some degree of commercial success.
He has contributed songs to the soundtracks for movies including Kingpin, Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, and Kicking and Screaming. Johnston and fellow musicians Jay Moran, James "Pie" Cowan, Duke Erikson, and Butch Vig perform occasional shows as a covers band called "The Know-it-All Boyfriends". Vig put the ensemble together for his brother's Christmas party, and it proved to be so much fun that they decided to keep going.
In early 2008 Johnston released a covers album entitled My Favorite Waste of Time. It includes selections from Tom Petty, Paul McCartney, Matthew Sweet and The Hollies. His most recent CD, called Rain on the City, was recorded in Nashville (as was My Favorite Waste of Time) and was released in January 2010.
In 2012, Susan Cowsill, Johnston, and Jon Dee Graham, working together as The Hobart Brothers and Lil' Sis Hobart, released a collaborative album on Freedom Records entitled At Least We Have Each Other.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).
Style[edit]
Johnston's music was described by a critic from CD Universe, after the release of This Perfect World, as "marr[ying] perfectly realized power-pop sensibility to skilled, literary writing chops."Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).
