Eric D. Johnson with JRAD : Show Review

If you read my review of Gold Past Life, the shimmering, gorgeous early summer album from Fruit Bats, you know that it’s probably going to end up at the top of my albums of the year list. I missed him in Brooklyn last month and I’m going to miss him again in New York in a recently announced November date. Oh, the pains of being bi-coastal. When I’m here, he’s there, etc. I have honestly been wondering if I should use my credit card points to book a one night trip to Milwaukee or Omaha or some such place to see the full band.

I’ve been visiting my family on the West Coast for the past week and decided to come to LA for the weekend to see Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, as well as a few other bands playing the Echo Park Rising festival. As I drove along the 10 with the windows down, back to the place I love most, listening to “Mandy from Mohawk” for the seventieth time, I had a daydream that maybe there would be a secret surprise show this weekend that I’d just stumble upon and Fruit Bats would play. These are normal things to fantasize about, right?

I got to the Greek Theatre, my favorite venue in the world, and got in line with my fellow West Coast heads. The sun gently set, leaving a pink hue over the rolling green hills of Griffith Park, and I sat in my bench seat blissfully. This was also my first time seeing JRAD and wow, what a way to be introduced!

I’ve seen so many Dead cover bands but no one has gotten to me like JRAD! The last song of the first set, Terrapin Suite, had me clutching my chest. They took a break and I came back a few minutes into “Unbroken Chain.” Okay, first of all, I can’t see anything so I heard this gorgeous voice and I thought it was Marco Benevento, who was suited up similarly. I was like “goddamn this guy sounds just like Eric D. Johnson! I gotta check out his music.” After a beat, I thought, “Holy shit, it IS Eric D. Johnson!” He finished the song and walked off stage so JRAD could finish their set. I was dancing by myself to Shakedown in the benches, then made my way down to the aisles for Brown-Eyed Women and Truckin’.

Johnson returned to the stage for the encore, and sat in on the keys and sang the Zombies’ “This Will Be Our Year” beautifully. Then to my delight, they performed Johnson’s own “When U Love Somebody.” I’m not sure if anyone else in the crowd LOVES Fruit Bats as much as I do so I was talking to everyone around me to make sure they knew who he was and that they need to listen because it’s the best!!! I was screaming along with all the words and everyone around me loved my singing. They picked up the pace with Van Morrison’s “Caravan,” Johnson strutting around stage like, well, a rock star, showcasing his incredible vocal range. He picked up the guitar again and the ensemble closed with “Not Fade Away.”

I floated down that hill when the lights came up, I tell ya. LA is where the magic is. Did I dream it? Did I manifest it? Do I happen to enjoy music from a pretty small percentage of a population who are friends with each other so things like this are very likely to happen? I took some videos but they’re not great because I was so far away but you can hear it. Still lookin’ at those tour dates, dreaming about where I can fly off to in order to check out Johnson and friends performing their full repertoire. This was a tease, a beautiful serendipitous one.