Fruit Bats (Solo)

Schedule

Wed, 22 Oct, 2025 at 07:30 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

381 E Main St, Stoughton, WI, United States, Wisconsin 53589 | Stoughton, WI

Advertisement
Baby Man, the new album by Fruit Bats, is like nothing else in Grammy-nominated songwriter Eric D. Johnson’s catalog. Little in the arc of his career—including Fruit Bats’ evolution from home recording project to rollicking roadshow, his solo output, and his work with Bonny Light Horseman—points the way to this album, in which his only accompaniment, aside from the occasional blush of synthesizer, is a guitar, banjo, or piano. Save for producer Thom Monahan, reuniting with Johnson for the first time since Fruit Bats’ 2019 breakthrough Gold Past Life, it’s just Johnson in the room, meaning that when the turntable’s needle meets Baby Man’s groove, it’s just him and the listener, mutually in for a reckoning.
Working with Monahan in the past pushed Johnson to new sonic vistas, evidenced by a songbook of sprawling, ornately detailed crowd-pleasers. When Johnson produced Fruit Bats’ 2023 album A River Running to Your Heart, Monahan served as a sounding board, and their reunion started in a similar vein, with Johnson asking to borrow a microphone or two for a project that was just starting to take shape. One conversation led to another, and Baby Man came into being: an ambitious take on the sketchbook album where everything—lyrics and music—had to be newly written and recorded from scratch, everything he’d been cooking to that point left at the door. Every morning began with an empty page, every night concluded with a new song, sometimes two or three new songs, each of them terrifyingly beautiful.
Monahan’s return to the booth was vital: having mapped the outer limits of Eric D. Johnson’s musical imagination, nobody was better equipped for the deepest trip yet into his soul. Baby Man is an intimate album, but rather than deliver a stripped-down or back-to-basics approach to the Fruit Bats sound, its introspection is rendered at epic scale. “It’s minimalist-maximalism,” Johnson says of his and Monahan’s approach. “There are fewer tracks on each song—four or five at most compared to recent albums where there’d maybe be five tracks on a song just for synths—but this is me at my most hi-fi.”
What he and Monahan do to striking effect on Baby Man is explore the full power and range of his voice. Pushed forward in the mix, Johnson’s vocals—a showstopping element of his craft—have new purpose and depth on Baby Man, breathing life into some of the rawest songs he’s ever written into being, actively finding the heart in the lyrics sometimes just hours after they’d been penned. A text sent to Monahan one morning—“I’m just trying to write a couple more songs”—later becomes the first line of “Puddle Jumper,” a finger-picked heartbreaker whose only competition for the crown of Most Emotionally Devastating Fruit Bats Song is the other eight Johnson originals on this album.
“Stuck in My Head Again” finds Johnson pouring himself out over his guitar, his voice alternately contemplative and softly raging, straining to keep the reverie he conjures from his delicate playing from crumbling beneath the weight. It and opener “Let You People Down” are what Johnson refers to as the album’s “mission statements,” songs about love and loss and disappointment, “about how a life can get lived and wisdom can be gained, but how there’s always going to be more to learn.” It’s all there in the lyrics, but what’s striking is how Johnson processes them, how, in a room where the only heart laid bare is his own, he is at once self-effacing and tender.
“It’s about a lot of things and it’s about rebirth,” Johnson says of title track “Baby Man,” which is slippery and true to the song and album, its dark night spent contemplating his place in life bleeding into other nights where he found himself thinking about the Los Angeles wildfires, his neighbor’s new dog, his own dog (about which he wrote the staggering “Creature from the Wild”), his songs, and songs he’s always loved. Again and again, Baby Man sees Johnson ask a central question: Is any of this worth it? The album itself is the answer, a resounding “yes” against the pain and struggle Johnson surfaced from to record it.
At times it feels as if there is no horizon on Baby Man, barely a room beyond the space Eric D. Johnson occupies. Then the intensity of this gaze is broken—by a creaking chair, by a pattern thumped against a guitar, by the gentle twinkle of a synth, by a particularly gorgeous couplet—and suddenly one is grateful just to be in that space with him.
There are no Fruit Bats albums like Baby Man. None until this point have demanded this kind of attention. It’s a linchpin in Johnson’s career, one that not only opens Fruit Bats up to a thrilling future but recontextualizes his past, arguing that he is one of his generation’s great singer-songwriters and will be for some time to come.
www.fruitbatsmusic.com
Advertisement

Where is it happening?

381 E Main St, Stoughton, WI, United States, Wisconsin 53589

Event Location & Nearby Stays:

Stoughton Opera House

Host or Publisher Stoughton Opera House

It's more fun with friends. Share with friends

Discover More Events in Stoughton

Stoughton Opera House - Stoughton, WI
Thu, 23 Oct at 07:30 pm Stoughton Opera House - Stoughton, WI

Stoughton Opera House

MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT
Albert Cummings at Stoughton Opera House
Thu, 23 Oct at 07:30 pm Albert Cummings at Stoughton Opera House

Stoughton Opera House

Harvest of Hope Fall Fundraiser
Fri, 24 Oct at 05:00 pm Harvest of Hope Fall Fundraiser

Halverson's Everything Nice

NONPROFIT
Rhonda Vincent
Fri, 24 Oct at 07:30 pm Rhonda Vincent

381 E Main St, Stoughton, WI, United States, Wisconsin 53589

ENTERTAINMENT MUSIC
Stoughton Run Club Bar Run, Fall 2025
Sat, 25 Oct at 09:30 am Stoughton Run Club Bar Run, Fall 2025

Deak's Pub & Grill

PARTIES SPORTS
JR & Susie Anderson @ The Legion!
Fri, 05 Sep at 07:00 pm JR & Susie Anderson @ The Legion!

803 N Page St, Stoughton, WI, United States, Wisconsin 53589

The Milk Carton Kids at Stoughton Opera House
Sat, 06 Sep The Milk Carton Kids at Stoughton Opera House

Stoughton Opera House

KIDS
The Milk Carton Kids
Sun, 07 Sep at 12:30 am The Milk Carton Kids

Stoughton Opera House

KIDS
Dance Classes at Level Up (Ages: 3-12)
Tue, 09 Sep at 04:00 pm Dance Classes at Level Up (Ages: 3-12)

Level Up Fitness

ENTERTAINMENT WORKSHOPS
Ray Wylie Hubbard
Thu, 11 Sep at 06:00 pm Ray Wylie Hubbard

Stoughton Opera House

CONTESTS TRIPS-ADVENTURES
Blue Moon Karaoke with Renee @ The Legion!
Fri, 12 Sep at 07:00 pm Blue Moon Karaoke with Renee @ The Legion!

803 N Page St, Stoughton, WI, United States, Wisconsin 53589

KARAOKE MUSIC
Ray Wylie Hubbard
Fri, 12 Sep at 07:30 pm Ray Wylie Hubbard

381 E Main St, Stoughton, WI, United States, Wisconsin 53589

ART MUSIC
Fri, 12 Sep at 08:00 pm Ray Wylie Hubbard in Stoughton

Stoughton Opera House

CONCERTS MUSIC
Acoustic Yin
Sun, 14 Sep at 06:00 pm Acoustic Yin

101 Silverado Drive, Stoughton, WI, United States, Wisconsin 53589

MUSIC HEALTH-WELLNESS
Back40 Band (David and Heather) at The PUB at Pleasant Springs
Fri, 19 Sep at 07:00 pm Back40 Band (David and Heather) at The PUB at Pleasant Springs

The Pub at Pleasant Springs

MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT
St. Ann Parish Fall Festival
Sun, 21 Sep at 11:00 am St. Ann Parish Fall Festival

324 N. Harrison St., Stoughton, WI

FESTIVALS MUSIC
Jackie Marie & The Dance Hall Kings@ Utica Bar
Sun, 21 Sep at 02:00 pm Jackie Marie & The Dance Hall Kings@ Utica Bar

Utica Bar

John Raymond & S. Carey
Thu, 25 Sep at 06:00 pm John Raymond & S. Carey

Stoughton Opera House

TRIPS-ADVENTURES
Riders in the Sky at Stoughton Opera House
Thu, 25 Sep at 07:30 pm Riders in the Sky at Stoughton Opera House

Stoughton Opera House

Susie and Randy Rocking at the Pub!
Fri, 26 Sep at 07:00 pm Susie and Randy Rocking at the Pub!

The Pub at Pleasant Springs

What's Happening Next in Stoughton?

Discover Stoughton Events