How a Midwestern landfill inspired Fruit Bats’ latest album

Fruit Bats’ Eric D. Johnson has a knack for finding big questions in everyday places.

On the band’s new album, The Landfill, a childhood memory of a Midwestern landfill becomes a meditation on climbing a mountain of failures and the perspective that comes from reaching the top.

Johnson has been thinking about songwriting for a long time, going all the way back to his days as an instructor at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music. Today, he reflects on how his approach to songwriting has evolved and how he’s gotten better at capturing complex emotions with fewer words.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus. Our executive producer is Bruce Warren.