After not seeing each other for about a year during the pandemic, Portland-based Americana rockers Fruition looked to their live musical roots when they finally got back together for a jam session at a friend’s cannabis farm. The result was a new album that band members say reinvigorated the group and reignited the momentum they lost due to the pandemic.
“This record is an honest representation with scars and all of where we are at as a band as Fruition is now, and it’s also a step in the direction of where we’re going,” said Jay Cobb Anderson, singer and guitarist for the band, which will perform at the Troubadour in West Hollywood on Saturday, Oct. 26.
The show is the group’s only local stop on the band’s national tour in support of their latest record “How to Make Mistakes,” which was released in August and marks the band’s first new studio album in four years.
“We’re going to put on a hell of a show that’s going to span through our 16 years as a band. We like to mix in a little bit of everything, and we also like to make people cry,” Anderson said with a laugh.
The quintet got its start busking on the streets of Portland performing harmony-laden string music as a trio before evolving into a five-piece band. And up until the pandemic the musicians, which besides Anderson (vocals, guitar, harmonica), include Kellen Asebroek (vocals, guitar, piano), Mimi Naja (vocals, guitar, piano, mandolin), Jeff Leonard (bass), and Tyler Thompson (drums), were riding high on their success crisscrossing the country and playing the biggest shows of their lives on the heels of the band’s 2019 release “Broken At The Break Of Day.” That album had earned them radio play and new fans.
“We were out on the road when the world started shutting down and what was different was that we were hitting different cities and playing venues to more and more people and they were singing the new songs. So we were really really pumped and we felt like we were hitting a new stride and then the world shut down and it was a big kick in the soul,” he said.
The band members went their separate ways for a year during lockdown while also questioning whether there was even a future for Fruition at all until they got back together and did what they always did best, just jammed live.
“We got together and we instantly knew we were not done, we were just beginning,” Anderson said.
The new 13-track album was recorded entirely live, which felt both familiar and challenging for the band.
“I feel like we were getting back to our roots but we were also pushing ourselves in a way we’ve never done before,” he said. “We kind of leaned into the fact that we know what we’re doing live.”
Recording it live also meant that just like back in their live busking days the new album wasn’t going to sound entirely perfect.
“The second we all accepted we were going to go for this live album feel we had to lean into the fact that maybe the tempo is fluctuating on a song, maybe the vocal goes flat a little bit,” he said. “We wanted to lean into mistakes and what makes creation and art beautiful,” Anderson said.
New songs in the album include tunes like “Lonely Work,” a folk-rock tune powered by pedal steel that opens the record and the rowdy “Can You Tell Me,” which features mandolin and upright bass.
But if there’s a defining song for the record and the band it’s the harmony laden “Made to Break,” which includes a line that gave the album its name.
“I think that the song is the essence of Fruition and where we’re at. The harmonies are there throughout the song. It gets loud but it’s also tender,” Anderson said.
Fruition
When: 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26
Where: The Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood
Tickets: $23-$93
Information: fruitionband.com
