For the second year in a row, Fruit Bats performed in New York City on April 20th, with this latest performance taking place at Webster Hall. The concert by the Eric D. Johnson-led indie folk-rock outfit built on a tradition that began exactly a year prior at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.
Thursday’s setlist spanned the quarter century Johnson has spent performing under the alias Fruit Bats. While showing love to his breezy catalog of songs from the Midwestern plains of Illinois, the band paid special attention to its latest album, A River Running to Your Heart, released the week prior.
A River Running to Your Heart arrived as the latest in a string of albums over the past several years for Fruit Bats following 2021’s The Pet Parade and 2019’s Gold Past Life. During that same span of time, Johnson also formed the folk trio Bonny Light Horseman with Anaïs Mitchell and multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman, releasing a critically acclaimed and Grammy-nominated self-titled album in 2020. Last fall saw the trio reunite for a sophomore effort—Rolling Golden Holy—and a winter tour that took Johnson to the Music Hall of Williamsburg back in December.
Check out a gallery of images of Fruit Bats at Webster Hall in New York on Thursday courtesy of photographer Andrew Blackstein. The band’s tour continues on Thursday at Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville. Tickets and a full list of tour dates are available here.
Fruit Bats – “Shane” – 4/20/23
[Video: Henry Bisco]
Fruit Bats – “When U Love Somebody” – 4/20/23 – Partial
[Video: Henry Bisco]
Setlist: Fruit Bats | Webster Hall | New York, NY | 4/20/23
Set: The Pet Parade, Absolute Loser, The Rock Doc, The Bottom of It, My Unusual Friend, My Sweet Midwest, Cazadera, Rushin’ River Valley, Shane, Mandy from Mohawk (Wherever You May Be), So Long, The Balcony, When U Love Somebody, Sick of This Feeling, Flamingo, A Lingering Love
Encore: Waking Up in Los Angeles, Baby Bluebird, Humbug Mountain Song
