Can You Fly

Johnston, Freedy

album cover

Thirteen Flying Leaps, Each Different, All Perfect

This album starts with Freedy Johnston making a confession: "Well I sold the dirt to feed the band." He sounds unsteady, and maybe a little upset, as he shares this thought, which turned out to be autobiographical. The reedy-voiced Johnston actually sold part of his inherited family farm, in Kinsley, Kansas, to pay for the recording sessions that yielded Can You Fly.

Talk about putting things on the line. Here's a guy who sounds like a cross between a forlorn slacker and Jimmy Stewart, literally betting the farm on a longshot rock and roll dream. Spend a little while with these fine songs, sung with winsome looseness, and you will be grateful for Johnston's determination. At first Can You Fly seems simply pleasant and easygoing—too easygoing, in fact, to be carrying any big ideas. Go deeper, and you discover that Johnston's songs are loaded with details that insinuate themselves into your subconscious.

Though he's no jack-of-all-trades, Johnston is compelling whether he's twitching like a '60s rocker, or doing a revivaltent stomp in the Hank Williams tradition ("Remember Me"), or moving solemnly through the grim chores that go along with being an adult ("Tearing Down This Place").

Can You Fly was acclaimed as soon as it was released and led Johnston to a major-label recording contract. Though he followed it with one near-great record (This Perfect World), Johnston never connected the same way again. Those who subscribe to the "necessity is the mother of invention" theory of creativity have suggested that Johnston stumbled because, subsequently, the stakes weren't the same; having sold the dirt and fed the band, he never quite had that make-or-break motivation again.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1992, Bar None
Key Tracks: "The Lucky One," "Tearing Down This Place," "Responsible."
Catalog Choice: This Perfect World
Next Stop: Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour of Bewilderbeast
After That: Bright Eyes: I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Book Pages: 405–406