Eric Johanson has lamented in recent social media posts about a common and continuous refrain from promoters and music industry gatekeepers: He is too rock for the blues and too blues for rock.
It’s an all too familiar but frustrating critique, particularly considering that rock doesn’t just borrow from the blues — it was born from it. The lines between the two have never been clean, because they were never meant to be. They bleed into each other naturally, instinctively, the way a river feeds into the bayou. One current, many paths.
So why does Johanson have to pick a lane?
Maybe it’s because the industry prefers its artists in neatly labeled boxes. Blues over here. Rock over there. It’s easier to market; and also easier to ignore when you don’t play by the rules.
But the best music has never cared much for lanes, and neither has Johanson. Perhaps that’s exactly why he chose to self-produce his new album, The Open Bayou, and release it on his own newly formed label, Levee Ward Records. He’s not picking a lane between both genres — he’s paving his own road.
The ten-track album was recorded over just three days while Johanson was on tour. And yes, it sounds like a quick recording, but not in the way you may think. The songs don’t sound rushed – they sound like they could not be contained. There’s an urgency that pulses through every track, a restless energy that feels less like a studio session and more like a dam breaking.
The first cracks of those breaks are heard in the opening rim clicks and slide guitar of “Till the Sun Swallows the Earth.” From there, Johanson expressly warns us of the fury he intends to release over the course of the album’s ten tracks and the mayhem that will arise from it:
When the ground starts shaking, ceiling cracks in two… If the mountains crumble, the ocean rises up… When the sky breaks open, buildings start to burn… Till the sun swallows the earth.
“Shake the Fever,” the album’s first single, adds immediate fuel to the fire with a massive fuzz riff that explodes from the speakers. It’s a heavier and more psychedelic texture for Johanson, one that is perhaps owed to his collaboration with Bill Skibbe, who mixed and mastered the album.
Skibbe is the engineer behind some of Jack White’s recent studio records, as well as albums by The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, The Kills, Jon Spencer, and The Black Keys. Echoes of the sonic landscape these modern rock artists have created are woven throughout The Open Bayou, but never replace Johanson’s individuality.
To be sure, The Open Bayou is not Johanson joining their party, but rather inviting them to his. With songs like “Mercy and Madness” and “Alligator Smile,” it’s a party that stretches across the Louisiana landscape — psychedelic, swampy and heavy. Others, like “Open Bayou,” stretch even further, with a guitar slide and dreamy interlude reminiscent of the best from Warren Haynes (Gov’t Mule) and Derek Trucks (Tedeschi Trucks Band).
There is no denying Johanson’s guitar virtuosity. He’s been named one of Guitar Player Magazine’s 25 Best New Blues Guitarists and included in Total Guitar‘s list of the Greatest Blues Guitarists of All Time. From the aforementioned “Shake the Fever,” “Mercy and Madness” and “Alligator Smile” to “Back Down in New Orleans,” “Castaway” and “What Makes You Real,” The Open Bayou will do nothing but strengthen his place in that stratosphere.
But Johanson is more than just a gunslinger. In an era where the riff gets the credit and the words get the shrug, Johanson writes with the kind of imagery that lingers long after the amp goes silent. These aren’t words he is merely throwing away. They’re stories, lived in and worn through.
On “Still I Move,” he sings of a life spent chasing the next gig, the next town, the next horizon:
Back where I started. These broken streets. They won’t stay put beneath my feet. Miles on the highway. Chasing a dream. Just burning money and gasoline. I’m just arriving, don’t know where I’ve been. Chase the horizon until I meet the end. Watch it all turn to dust. Try to hold onto what you can trust.
On “Lay Your Trouble,” the tempo slows but the weight doesn’t:
This crowded room feels empty. We can wake the dead. Now you’re dancing with me. Somewhere in my head. Burden gets too heavy. To carry all the time. There’s still a way to let it down. Leave it all behind. Lay your trouble next to mine.
And then there’s “Back Down in New Orleans,” where Johanson distills life on the road and beyond the aforementioned promoters and gatekeepers into a single line: I’ve been running these lonesome highways trying to get somewhere I can’t find.
Whatever Johanson was searching for, let’s hope he found it with Levee Ward Records. Too rock for the blues? Too blues for rock? Say what you want; Johanson is too good to be ignored. The Open Bayou is no exception.
Tour Dates:
9/12/26 Maggie Valley, NC Thunder In the Smokies Rally
9/17/26 Decatur, AL The Princess Theatre
9/19/26 Fort Wayne, IN Baker Street Centre
9/20/26 Newport, KY The Southgate House Revival
10/11/26 Huntington, WV Jerk’s Pullman Square
10/12/26 Pittsburgh, PA Jergels
10/15/26 West Dundee, IL RocHaus
10/16/26 Bloomington, IL Jazz Upfront
10/18/26 Grand Rapids, MI Tip Top Deluxe Bar & Grill
10/21/26 Baltimore, MD Ottobar
10/22/26 Hagerstown, MD Hub City Vinyl
10/25/26 Annapolis, MD Rams Head (1PM Show)
11/4/26 Hagen, Germany Gaststätte Stock
11/20/26 Wien, Austria Reigen Live
11/23/26 Salzburg, Austria Rockhouse Salzburg
11/24/26 Rimsting, Germany Blues Club Chiemgau
11/27/26 De Tamboer – Hoogeveen, Netherlands
12/20/26 Boca Raton, FL The Funky Biscuit
12/22/26 Wildwood, FL Rohan Rec Center
