New Album From 'Jamcross’ Label Fruit Flow 'How To Make Mistakes’

Before all three The founding members of Fruition had their first face-to-face meeting since the Covid-19 pandemic, unsure of what the future holds for their band. The Portland Americana act had been inseparable for more than a decade, but they hadn’t seen each other in more than a year when the lockdown began. All may be over.

“There were definitely moments in your life where you questioned everything you had done [ask]’Is this a band? Are we done?”’ says singer and guitarist Jay Cope Anderson via Zoom call with his co-songwriters and lead singers Mimi Najah and Kellen Asbrock. „You know, we’ve been a band for a long time. Need we say anything else?”

A June 2021 meet-up at a friend’s ranch in Oregon put all those fears to rest. „The moment we all got back together and played music together again, I was like, 'Oh, man, the magic is there. It’s still there,'” Anderson says. „There is certainly more to be said and more to be done.”

The band’s new album, How to make mistakesToday, it’s a marker of the growth the five members have experienced over the past four years and a return to Fruition’s harmonious roots as a group of scrappy buskers on the streets of Portland. During their time apart, they got married, became parents, and went to rehab. But, most of all, they learned to enjoy music again.

„We really hit a lot of benchmarks: We were making a living out of it; we played Red Rocks; we were on tour,” recalls Asbrock, a multi-instrumentalist like Najah, of the band’s pre-pandemic fortunes. „But no matter how much we grinded, that’s what we always did: We were grinding.”

It didn’t help that, throughout 2019, the band began to scatter across the country. Anderson left for Seattle and Najah for Atlanta. Their drummer, Tyler Thompson, and bassist, Jeff Leonard, also relocated to the East Coast. Only Asbrock stayed in Portland. „We really had to fight to keep up,” Asbrock says.

Their lives took equally divergent paths in the intervening months. Thompson and Leonard both became fathers, and Anderson married, and Naja sobered up. „After my darkest, darkest hour I went into rehab where I was locked up for three and a half weeks,” she says. „And, yeah, being able to sustain a touring lifestyle, both personally and as a band member, is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Like many of their peers, Frushan felt they had real momentum when the pandemic hit. „Dawn,” their most recent single, received airplay on Triple A radio, and they noticed a new influx of fans to their shows. As well, they felt like they had stepped into the box.

„We’ve been in this jamcross scene for some reason that we still don’t fully understand,” Naja says. „And they nurtured us and supported us, but we don’t jam, we don’t play bluegrass. So we wanted to take this opportunity to express ourselves in a way that we thought we should be heard.

That, to their ears, is Americana. They ditched the rock elements that permeated recent albums — which they admit was a conscious effort to differentiate themselves from bluegrass — and focused on plugging back into each other. For their first run of shows in the summer of 2021, they tour as the acoustic trio they started 13 years ago.

When it’s time to register How to make mistakesThe point is, they did everything live in the studio. In total, they cut 17 songs in seven days, including a record 13. „Part of it was making the songs hit. Go for it, get as many takes as we can for one song, and move on to the next thing,” Anderson recalls. „It was a way to get the ball rolling.”

The spirit of the album’s title was embraced by the band themselves – hiding nothing, blemishes and all. Loosening that grip on control helped bring them together, too. Until now, Anderson, Naja and Asbrok have always independently brought their songs to the group. This time, they chose Govan.

„It’s always a very personal thing for every songwriter, and we decided to step away from that a little bit,” Anderson says. „We had some difficult conversations … but, basically, we all came together and tried to write together, and being vulnerable to each other made us stronger.”

All three agree that the line „Made to Break,” which gave the album its name, is the cornerstone of this new collection. But the song’s melodious compositions aren’t all there How to make mistakes is to provide. From the musical theater of „Can You Tell” to the twinkling optimism of „Scars” to the woozy whistle and pedal steel of „Lonely Work,” the album has a crisp wisdom, a sense of putting oneself back together and finding strength in a shared voice.

„We’ve tried to stop worrying about what people think of this music and write songs and make art that our hearts want to write and make,” Asbrock says. In that sense, Fruition’s time spent alone can be a boon to them. Instead of hitting the end of the road, they believe they are just getting started.

„We feel like the pre-pandemic years are like the first stage, the training stage of this game,” Asbrock adds. „Now we’re in the open world, doing the thing.”