the ugly hug

The Fruit Trees is the moniker of California songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Johnny Rafter, who upon releasing his debut record Weather in 2023, quickly followed it with We Could Lie Down in the Grass, the hour-long, 24 track sophomore record that rang in the end of summer this year.

Although these tunes feel worn in, The Fruit Trees, and Johnny’s writing in that case, is still a rather fresh journey, but also one of exposure and accessibility – a place to step in and step out and come back around much wiser. Like a small collection of bugs, gently caught and kept in a rinsed out pickle jar, We Could Lie Down in the Grass captures and culminates curiosity towards the most minute details that surround Johnny’s day-to-day. As the glass tinkers and buzzes with life, experimental folk voicings playing amongst warm melodies and memorable structures, this little ecosystem grows with each additional moth or pill bug – each witty one-liner or field recording – as these songs become part of a much larger story.

Through email correspondence, Johnny took the time to answer a few of our questions about We Could Lie Down in the Grass, finding placement in his changing world and embracing all bits of creativity. 

Shea Roney: We Could Lie Down in the Grass is your second album in just a little over a year. In what ways do you find comfort in your writing process that you can still rely on, as well as where did you find yourself changing course and trying something new when compared to your process on Weather?

Johnny Rafter: My writing and recording practices sort of feed into each other. Usually I find some chords and see what feelings or images they unearth. That leads to maybe a word or two, and then the lyrics spiral out from there. I find it awkward to write words separately and just sing them over chords. It’s nice to feel like the words sort of blossomed out of the music and it feels better to sing words like that for some reason… 

My writing seems to naturally go towards simple language, the passing seasons and my own blurry sense of the inner and outer world. Working alone, it can be challenging to record songs in ways that feel organic and have a sense of performance, but I tried to strive for that this time. My lack of musical understanding and skill makes mistakes and messiness inevitable, so I try to embrace it and allow things to be loose.

This time I was a little more competent at recording, so I spent less time digging through the internet trying to figure out what compressors do. There was more of a leisurely flow to the work… I think that helped me access more resonant ideas without getting tripped up on technical stuff…  It might be worth saying that my first album Weather was my first time writing songs and recording, so it’s kind of a messy testament of my own learning and curiosity about songs and recording. This new album was a continuation of that but with a little more confidence and momentum. I think the songwriting on this second album is more potent and direct.

SR: We Could Lie Down in the Grass is a rather extensive project, 24 songs and running over an hour long, yet still flows naturally amongst themes and sounds that create a welcoming and unique environment. What do you think this album was able to accomplish in part due to its length? 

JR: I’m glad that it comes off as cohesive! And has a flow to it… I didn’t really think about the length… It was just— “Well these are all the songs that came to me over the past year”. It would’ve felt strange to release them separately or never at all. I think it’s good to just release stuff so you can move on and not overthink it. I’ve been trying to embrace “good enough” and “might as well”.

I’ve tried to make writing and recording a casual part of my daily life. Something lightweight I can work on at home after work and on days off (I was inspired by Kieran Hebden’s approach “good music is about ideas not gear”; also I heard the poet CA Conrad suggest trying to write poems at your job— fitting it into the reality of your life and not waiting for some ideal situation). The advantage of that is you can make a lot of work, even if the production value might never compare to studio recordings. I think of the songs more like drawings in a sketchbook or collages — something handmade and imperfect. So this was just a longer sketchbook.

I tried to interweave the lyrics with images, ideas and words across the different songs. At some point I started to see the whole album as one long text, so it made sense to have the songs speak to each other. With the length, I was able to explore lots of approaches to making songs and just try lots of fun stuff. The process is the good part for me, though it’s cool when the fog burns off and you get to look back at everything you made as a whole. Some people told me to cut songs, but honestly it didn’t feel like it mattered. For my own emotional wellbeing, I need to stay in a 100% hobby mindset and put zero pressure on myself. So there’s no right way to go about things. I’d just like to keep writing songs as a lifelong practice/process and be unfettered about it and see where it goes. 

SR: The Fruit Trees is taken on as a mostly solo endeavor, although you worked with a handful of others to complete this record. Where did you find your vision for this album enhanced by the people who helped work on some of the parts? How is that different from going fully solo to you and your creative vision?

JR: When I started a few years ago, I didn’t know anyone making music, and I’d never been part of a music scene or anything like that. So just out of necessity I recorded and mixed myself. Naming it “The Fruit Trees” was in hopes that it would turn into more of a collective situation. The hope with the first album was that maybe if I made something interesting enough it would help me find people to make music with. 

Luckily that’s been my experience— The songs sort of feel like magic spells or beacons that have brought me closer to people after a pretty lonely chapter of my life. Over the past year new friends and bandmates have sort of come into my life in a beautiful way. I think that’s an awesome thing about sharing your art even if it’s on a casual local level, it opens up life a lot.

But yeah, the collaborations so far have been kind of light, and my intention is that future albums will have deeper collaborations. My awesome friend Ben (who plays bass in our band) and I have a really close friendship that’s slowly turning into a deeper musical collaboration. I’ve realized you can’t rush these things. I think it has to be based in friendship and trust, and also you gotta work with people who make you laugh!

SR: There are a lot of instances where you piece together field recordings, almost making this album sound like a found footage video of the world around you. What did setting mean to you when piecing this album together? Were there any throughlines that you tried to build through themes and environment? 

JR: I definitely hope to create some sense of an environment or a space— like an album as a place you can go for a while. For this album I imagined an old house and the songs were in different parts of the house like the kitchen and the yard and the porch and the attic. Some of the songs are down the street.

One way I felt like I could have the world permeate the songs was to include some field recordings from my life. Like opening the windows and letting the wind blow in. I love sounds… Like just sitting in the park and hearing the different sounds— the wind, the birds, the engines, the voices and the ways those are perpetually changing and interacting in new ways. The surrounding environment is sort of always bleeding into my inner experience (or maybe it’s the other way around?) and so I think I try to create a similar sense in my recordings.

SR: Each song feels like its own moment that can be expressed in a million different fleeting feelings, yet your writing is so concise in its expression. Were there any stories or feelings that you found difficult to articulate when writing, and did fleshing them out through the process help define their meaning further in any way? What were some of your favorite stories to tell?

JR: It feels risky to write sincerely and simply. That feels scarier to me than ironic distance and wit, but possibly more important nowadays… That being said, I hope to find a sense of whimsy in the songs, so there’s heaviness and levity happening at the same time.

Honestly writing songs is also just so cathartic and fun, and it does help me make some meaning of my confusing little life. I hope to not only write from that therapeutic place but also imagination and humor and things like that. Not just about me and my turbulent inner life but also about how wonder and pain-filled the world is.

The song Collar was a favorite— it was based on a neighborhood dog I saw that wasn’t looking so good. I was really worried about it, and this little story from the dog’s perspective appeared in my mind. To me it feels like a fairytale or a fable or like a tarot card which I like. I hope that dog’s okay.

SR: Continuing, the articulation of singular moments, the feelings and images that you bring a focus to, are often moments overlooked that hold a sense of beauty and an edge to what it means to simply be alive. Do you find that there is a consciousness in your creative worldview that embraces this simple beauty, or does it come from some sort of disconnect that needs to be tied together again to build that clearer picture? 

JR: That’s cool it comes across that way. I think perhaps it is branching out from whatever my worldview is and from the way I try to live— appreciating smallness and the mundane everyday life stuff, paying attention to my senses and how we don’t really need that much to be content. How the best things are simple like sharing time with people and eating food, or playing frisbee. Joy is always there underneath. But I also go through waves of horrible feelings of loneliness and disconnection, dissatisfaction, fragmentation, grief, separation, shame… I guess the interplay of those different states creates a lot to explore. There’s a lot of paradoxical things to hold all at once, and I think songs are good for exploring that.

SR: There is an element of timelessness that floats through this record, both in style and writing, that a lot of people gravitate towards when they listen to your music. Do you find any sense of preservation in your work, whether that be of memory, stories, people or places? And if so, do you personally feel a need, or an obligation, to make something that will be long lasting? 

JR: Honestly I don’t think about making things long lasting. I guess some people want to make art or achieve greatness or whatever so after they die there’s something left of them? I don’t really care about that, and it seems like a sick pressure to put on yourself. I remember a line from the Tao Te Ching that was like “To live as long as you live and then die is enough”. Plus things I make don’t really feel like “me” anyways. 

But on some level I guess I do see it as sort of residual evidence of who I was, what I felt, what I saw, where I was, etc. I think I fear wasting my time, not in a productivity sense, but not living fully enough— dissociating and missing the actual details and reality of my life. Maybe making songs is a way to help me pay attention and ask questions, and a way to stay a little weird. It sort of feels like gathering a bunch of small beautiful things into a basket and then leaving it on a friend’s doorstep. I just enjoy the gathering and the giving… It does seem like an interesting experiment to sustain this as a lifelong practice and then get to look back at all these words and sounds. A lifetime of music and poetry!! 

SR: What’s next for The Fruit Trees? 

JR: Waking up before dawn; time in and around bodies of water; playing more shows; I’m gonna go see Simon Joyner next week; also Agriculture; an ambient/instrumental album is almost done (a collaboration between me and Ben); two more albums in conceptland— one is a full band sort of indie rock album and the other is a classical guitar based album in a tuning I made up that I’d like to record somewhere with snow; lots of biking around, soaking up the sun and getting as silly as possible; making lots of soup; a small Pacific Northwest tour with our friend Ash’s band Swinging next January; doing chores; baking bread.

You can now purchase cassettes of We Could Lie Down in the Grass via Jon Shina’s label, Flower Sounds out of Greenfield, MA. Find more of their releases and curations here.

Written by Shea Roney | Photos by Hannah Ford-Monroe