Eric Ernest Johnson
&
Inara George
From ANDRAS JONES: When Inara told me she wanted to invite Eric Ernest Johnson to ask a question on her episode I nearly bust a sync nut. I met Eric in the early 00’s. It was during the massive protests to the Gulf War part 2 under GW Bush when Eric, along with Ethan Gold and I, started an interactive live music event called The Ex-Patriots that we presented for several nights at the then-new Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. There would be three songwriters onstage and the idea was, one would play a song, then the next songwriter had to dig into their own catalogue for a song which would respond in some way to the one that preceded it. The connection could be tenuous or direct and the result was an entertaining and synchronistic set that forced us out of any performance rut we may have been in, made us really listen to the other songwriter, and demanded we re-think of our songs in relation to those of our peers. If you sense a whiff of Radio8Ball-ness to this you’d be correct. At the time, Radio8Ball was just a late night radio show at KAOS that I’d put on hiatus so I could spend a year in LA, living in a trailer behind Andy Dick’s place, but synchronicity in music was definitely an obsession for me. And here, all these years (and wars) later synchronicity and music were drawing us together again, three songwriters onstage; one a host, one an album cover artist, and the other a star.
Young Adult
I was the daughter of my father
I was the color of a half lit moon
Riding down sunset making records at night
There’s a calling in my gut and I have to just follow it
I was a girl in New York City
Collecting stories like I’m saving money
Just hang it on the wall we didn’t care at all
Cause caring meant that we weren’t invincible
Where is the line
Between all this joy and all this sorrow?
Who do you know
That’s helps you get from here to there to tomorrow
What do I know
What do I know
I know that I want to see where this thing will go
Let’s resurrect that biggest feeling
Like getting hit with something strong and hot
With our wine stained teeth and some dirty little habits
I would never change a thing, just the way I got out of it
And then I landed like I was dreaming
I came back into who I started being
With a head strong body with a soft, soft voice
And you never tried to change it you just wanted who I was
Where is the line
Between all this joy and all this sorrow?
Who do you know
That’s helps you get from here to there to tomorrow?
What do I know
What do I know
I know that I want to see where this thing will go
