Three songwriters. Five bandmates. More than 15 years together, building a grassroots audience with a combination of stacked vocal harmonies and collaborative, song-driven Americana. Fruition is proof that there’s strength in numbers.
How To Make Mistakes, the band’s first studio album in four years, showcases a reinvigorated group at the peak of its powers. This is American roots music at its broadest and boldest — a melting pot of rock, soul, folk, and pop. What began as a busking string band has evolved into something more eclectic, rooted not only in the unique delivery of three different singers, but also the cohesion of five friends who prefer their music to be homegrown and honest… mistakes and all.
“This is the first studio album that we’ve recorded entirely live,” says Jay Cobb Anderson, who shares frontperson duties with fellow multi-instrumentalists Mimi Naja and Kellen Asebroek. “We recorded 17 songs in 7 days, with everybody playing together in real time, and we didn’t overdub anything. The songs sound honest and real. They sound like us.”
Co-produced by the bandmates themselves, How To Make Mistakes restores the momentum that Fruition nearly lost in 2020, back when Covid-19 forced them off the road and into quarantine. At the time, they’d been playing some of the biggest shows of their lives, crisscrossing the country in support of their most recent release, Broken At The Break Of Day. The album’s lead single, “Dawn,” had even become a hit on Americana radio. Years of relentless work had taken a toll on Fruition’s mental health, though, and cracks were starting to show in the band’s foundation.
When they reunited one year later for a long-overdue band practice, they took stock of everything that had changed during those 12 months apart. Some members had started families. Others had gotten sober. All of them had made the conscious decision to return to music. Fruition funneled that growth and maturity back into their new songs, which doubled as rallying cries for a band eager to chase down success once again.
And who, exactly, is Fruition? On songs like “Lonely Work,” they’re a folk-rock band powered by pedal steel and lovely, loping tempos. On “Scars,” they’re a group caught halfway between the earthy textures of Americana and the spacey sweep of something far more ethereal. On “Get Lost,” they’re a group of adventure seekers looking to leave the big city behind, stacking their electric guitars into harmonized solos along the way. Fruition’s acoustic roots are evident throughout How To Make Mistakes, too, from “Can You Tell Me” — a rough ‘n’ rowdy folk song laced with resonator guitar, mandolin, and upright bass — to the campfire ballad “Never Change.” How To Make Mistakes embraces the full spread of the band’s past and present, mixing unplugged instruments with electrified arrangements, creating a sound suitable for arenas one minute and front-porch picking parties the next.
