Freedy Johnston Bio

Freedy Johnston Bio 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 enrolled at the University of Kansas in Lawrence; and while his academic career didn't last very long, he wasted no time immersing himself in the city's new wave scene. 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. After several years of making the rounds, his work caught the attention of Bar/None Records, a respected independent label based in Hoboken, New Jersey. Freedy 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 that had been with the Johnston family for generations (a 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 Freedy 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 didn't fare as well in terms of sales, he maintained a loyal fan following and the respect of critics and peers. After Elektra dropped Johnston, he occupied himself with live work, dabbled in film scoring by writing incidental music for the Farrelly Brothers' comedy Kingpin and performed occasionally with the Know-It-All Boyfriends, an informal cover band featuring Butch Vig and Doug Erikson of Garbage. In 2010, Johnston released Rain On The City, his first set of new material since leaving Elektra, followed by extensive touring. Johnston launched a successful crowdsourcing campaign to finance the completion of his next album Neon Repairman; Freedy Johnston’s first self-produced effort, which was released in the summer of 2015. .

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