18 years and seven full-length albums into their career, Five Horse Johnson is still rocking as hard as ever. The Toledo-based quintet’s newest album, The Taking of Black Heart, is a unique concept record that showcases Five Horse Johnson’s hard blues sound. On Friday, November 29, they will make their triumphant return to Toledo for a concert at Mainstreet Bar & Grill—their first performance in Toledo in over a year. We spoke with lead singer and harmonica player Eric Oblander about the band’s underground success, touring Europe and the secret to crafting a well-written song.
How did you build up to become the national touring act that you are today? What was your first big break outside of Toledo?
We got really lucky. Our label is very small—a Detroit label called Small Stone. There was actually a booking agent over in Europe who happened to hear our first record. I’m not exactly sure how he heard of us—maybe through the record label or maybe he bought it. Either way, he fell in love with our band and thought that our music would do really well over in Europe. He took the CDs that he had and played them over the phone for promoters and he was able to piece together enough shows for a tour. In the first five years of our band, we toured Europe probably nine or ten times. That’s how it all started, with the booking agent playing our stuff over the phone.
After 18 years together, how has the band’s sound changed?
I think we have become better songwriters. We’ve learned how to trim the fat and get to the point of the song. At first we had songs that were about seven minutes each—now we are pretty happy with a three or four minute tune. That helps us focus on songwriting.
Tell me more about the songwriting process. Does it start with the lyrics or the riffs and backing music?
Almost always a song is born out of a jam session. We will get together, have a couple beers, get in our rehearsal spot and just jam. Usually myself and the two guitarists will get together and record riffs on my computer. We give it a day or two and go back and listen to everything with fresh ears. Then, we cut all the stuff that we don’t like and hone in on the quality material.
How do you come up with your lyrics? Are they based off of real life experiences or are they more abstract?
You know, it’s kind of weird [laughs]. In the beginning I would usually write about heartbreak, whiskey and burning the candle at both ends—that was pretty much our M.O. But on our last record, The Taking of Black Heart, Brad and I decided we had our fill of our usual lyrical stuff. Don’t get me wrong—that stuff is super fun—but this last one we wrote a story. It was basically a concept record—it told a story about this guy, an old west cowboy type. It was fun to write an album that wasn’t about ourselves.
So who inspired the record? Who is this mystery guy?
It’s the story of an old west gun-slinger type guy who gets hired by a rich man in Mexico to track down his former lover, kill her and bring back her heart. The name of the last song is called “Die in the River”, so that kind of gives you a spoiler alert for how its going to end.
Tell me about your live show—do you usually stick to a script or do you rotate setlists?
Well, generally what we’ll do is mix things up a little bit the first couple days of the tour. But once we get to the end of the first week, we are kind of locked into a setlist. A lot of that has to do with the fact that we have to orchestrate a lot of guitar changes because different songs require different tunings. We don’t have stagehands so we kind of have to have a plan beforehand. Inside our songs, there is always lots of room for soloing and improvisation. That’s the nature of our music.
Five Horse Johnson performs on Friday, November 29 at Mainstreet Bar and Grill. 7pm. $12. 141 Main St. fivehorsejohnson.com
