Hobo Johnson: How Do You Balance Honest Expression And Self-Preservation?

If you’ve heard about Hobo Johnson & The Lovemakers then chances are you’ve heard their origin story. Frank Lopes, who chose the stage name Hobo Johnson during a period spent living in his car, entered NPR’s 2018 Tiny Desk Contest with a clip of his band performing Peach Scone in their backyard. Sitting somewhere between rap and slam poetry, indie rock and 'anti-folk',  the track was an instant hit. 

Before entering the competition Lopes and The Lovemakers had built a respectable following in their hometown of Sacramento and Hobo Johnson & The Lovemakers’ songs were averaging “around 40,000 views on everything”.

“Then we released Peach Scone and in the first day it had 70,000,” says Lopes. “The day after that we woke up and it had a million, you know? And the day after that it had two million.” 

At the time of writing the video is sitting at just over 17 million views. Hobo Johnson & The Lovemakers didn’t win the competition, but their career skyrocketed. 

“I made [debut album] '94 Corolla around 2015, and then I released The Rise [Of Hobo Johnson] November 2017, and then March, four months later, five months later, Peach Scone happened. So,'94 Corolla was crickets and then The Rise was crickets too..

“I do think Peach Scone, it was just kind of the perfect storm. It was me being kind of a manic, crazy man and Peach Scone is kind of like a manic, crazy song. So it just kind of split somehow in the perfect way to launch us, I guess.”

The group capitalised on the single’s success, playing national and international tours and releasing their third LP, The Fall Of Hobo Johnson.

Lopes shares that most of the songs on the album, which dropped in September, were written before the band broke (you can read rough lyrics for Mover Awayer in an Instagram post from 2017). So despite being the follow-up to their viral success, Lopes says making the record “felt pretty comfortable”. It’s the next one that has him feeling the pressure. 

“[Post Peach Scone] I wrote I Want A Dog, Subaru Crosstrek [VX], some parts of Typical Story... That's pretty much it. This is going to be the first full project that I've written completely after Peach Scone. So I’m pretty curious to see from a lyrical standpoint if it’s going to hold up.”

“Some people fucking love it, some people hate it.”

Given the success of that period’s material, particularly Peach Scone, is it tempting to try to recreate that manic energy when writing?

“No, I just try to do whatever I think - I think I feel just, every fucking emotion that there is to feel sometimes. So sometimes I feel like a crazy, manic, fucking madman. And sometimes I feel just super depressed and quiet, you know? Self-deprecating, whatever. I just kinda go with whatever I feel and that usually, somehow, I've found that that still works for me.”

“I think we're lucky and I'm lucky that I can just kinda do how I feel and people still enjoy it.”

But not everybody. Lopes spills his emotions openly in his lyrics and not all of them are pretty. At the core of both The Rise and The Fall Of Hobo Johnson is a need for love and validation, expressed in brittle confessionals and vented in lurching rants. It can be a little unsettling, like asking a stranger how their day is going and getting an honest, unpleasant answer. 

As Lopes says, “Some people fucking love it, some people hate it”. His biggest critics, most famously Pitchfork, say that Lopes’ focus on failed relationships through a spectrum of desperation, loneliness and insecurity is just self-absorbed soft boy chauvinism. Even some of the write-ups in his favour talk about his voice, his appearance and his lyrics like it’s a competition to come up with the most backhanded compliment. His fans, however, love him for his candour and his willingness to strip down to his most uncomfortable flaws. He’s a polarising figure, to say the least, something he still hasn’t learnt to take in stride.

“No,” says Lopes, “not at all. It’s definitely a conversation I have once in a while with people, whether it’s management, or anyone. At the end of the day, it sucks to be criticised and every human being, I think, feels bad. I think at the end of the day, everybody wants to be accepted by their peers. And that’s probably why a lot of musicians, like myself, do this, is just to be accepted by their peers. You know, whether it’s growing up you didn't feel like people cared about what you had to say, or whatever, there’s probably millions of different reasons, but... I think that’s what it is.

“So it’s definitely annoying as fuck, and sometimes I think, ‘Would I rather be less polarising in a much, much smaller band? Or would I rather be who we are, and have people talk shit and criticise me and write the worst articles anyone's ever written about music just to shit on me.’

"'Would I rather be less polarising in a much, much smaller band?'"

Lopes explored his difficult relationship with public opinion in The Fall Of Hobo Johnson track Ode To Justin Bieber, which sympathises with the superstar’s erratic behaviour under incredible scrutiny (“If you buy your mom a house when you're 13/You gon' be fucked up mentally.”). It’s strange to discover it was one of the album tracks written pre-Peach Scone, when they were a promising local act rather than international drawcards. “I wrote about it and had no idea. I thought I knew, but I had no, no fucking idea,” says Lopes, considering their increased pressure and exposure in the last two years.

“I don’t know. I think I need to be more grateful for the situation I currently have. We’re touring, you know, doing really well, somehow. But it’s tough... It makes you grow thicker skin and that isn’t necessarily good for songwriting or poetry. You kind of want to be as sensitive as you can, or as open as you can to feel anything. And the second you close yourself off you’re kind of just fucking up. So it’s definitely, it’s a really interesting balance to try and figure out. I don't know, do I just get upset all the time and sad ‘cause people, some random person in Manhattan, talked shit about me? Or should I just not care? It’s tough. It’s a tough middle ground."