The first time Hobo Johnson and his band the Lovemakers visited Chicago was in September for Riot Fest. Their set was a bonkers attack on the expectations of what acts should (or shouldn’t) do at the punk carnival — as in, it was utter cacophony. But everything was held together by this feeling of unbridled joy, the truly satisfying kind that happens when a person has created and executed their vision of their craft exactly — no matter what anyone else thinks of it.
Joy, or something like it, was there even though the road to “Hobo Johnson” for the kid behind the name wasn’t always paved with it.
At 19, Frank Lopes found himself living out of his 1994 Toyota Corolla after being kicked out of his family home — showering at a 24-hour gym and trying to hold down a job at a local pizza place while studying music composition, theory and piano at Sacramento City College.
It was during that time “in the Corolla” (just over a month) that Hobo Johnson — his “punked-up, folked-out, hip-hop-oetry” rap alias — was born. Giddy with self-deprecating lyrics and observations on a young life lived just beyond the bounds of typical suburban “normalcy” (but still very much on the internet), he and the Lovemakers have molded a sound and style that catches you off guard, drawing you in with bizarre wordplay and vocal acrobatics around Johnson’s stream-of-consciousness delivery before setting you free to debate its polarities across social media.
“Hobo Johnson isn’t bad, you’re just not sad enough,” the tweets around his NPR Tiny Desk performance of breakthrough single “Peach Scone” read. Other critics have knocked his lyrics, saying the song perpetuates toxic relationship tropes and sad boy fanfare around the concept of being “friend-zoned.”
He swears it’s a misconception, the downside to creating in a culture where artists are made online first, and that other tracks on his 2017 major label debut “The Rise of Hobo Johnson” are evidence to the contrary. But Lopes had been making music, and trouble, long before this.
After posting early tracks to Soundcloud while still in high school to little-to-no-attention, he got caught up in heavy drinking with the wrong crowd — eventually spending time in juvenile hall after accumulating several DUI’s. But in a span of five years, the now 23 year-old has flipped the script. In a way, Hobo Johnson is an amends for Frank Lopes’ youthful erraticism, jerk behavior and plain lack of interest.
“When I was younger, everyone that I knew thought I was not going to be a productive person in the world,” Lopes says on a call from the road. “Somehow I just crawled my way out of that and became someone people listen to and makes them feel better.”
It wasn’t too long ago that he realized music was all he had. On the cusp of adulthood, he made the decision to dedicate himself to recording and performing on the street and at open mics full-time, eventually meeting future members of the Lovemakers while selling copies of his first project “Hobo Johnson’s 1994 Corolla” in 2015.
“I was really just trying to figure out what I wanted to say,” he continues. “I hate the monotony of life, and it was pretty much like ‘If I don’t do this, I’m going to have to work for 50 years and every day, Monday to Friday, I’ll have to show up at this place and do this.’ At that moment I just felt really uncomfortable with that, so I just double-downed on myself and started focusing more on the sound and what I think works. At the end of the day, I want to write the songs that I really like and feel natural to me – that are cathartic or fun. All I’m trying to do is catalog my human existence and I think a lot of people go through the same things I go through, sometimes maybe worse.”
Despite perception, what Lopes has to say — about being alone, a product of divorce, a work in progress — is resonating with his audiences, made up of young punk and hip-hop-loving kids as well as middle-aged couples.
“I wasn’t observant as a kid at all. People used to say I wasn’t very aware of my surroundings. But once I started making music, I understood I wanted to write and tell stories. I started looking at the world in a way that I wanted to make sense of it. My main thing is to show people that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. After everything I went through, in whatever situation you’re in or whatever people think of you, you always have a chance in the future to crawl your way out.”
Still, he knows he won’t be Hobo Johnson forever, though his “drifter” nature is something he wants to harness as a way to give back to the community that supported him when he had nothing — and use to assess his future.
“Before we left and went on tour, I was going to homeless shelters in Sacramento and recording kids, teaching them how to do that. Touring has it made it impossible, but when I get back, I really want to do that again. I feel like once I get back to Sac, I don’t really know how I feel about Sac. I feel kind of weird about it even though all my family’s there, but I think I really wanna just drive around and go from city to city, and write and think about what I want out of life.
“In January/February, I’m going to write a musical. I think by the end of all of this, I’ll be more into films and scoring. To be honest, if all this music (stuff) were to go away, I don’t think I’d care very much ‘cause I’ve already had it, you know? I don’t really want anything more (from it). The fear of not making the musical scares me, because that’s what I want to do – but it’s the challenge of doing it. It’s going to take a lot of work, but that to me is 90% of the fun. The other 10% is people enjoying it.”
Twitter @jessitaylorro
When: 7 p.m. Friday
Where: House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn St.
Tickets: $25-$30; www.houseofblues.com
![Four years into cannabis legalization in Illinois, celebrations of the April 20 informal weed holiday known as 420 are getting bigger and more widespread. Named for the time of day a group of friends met to get high, 420 has become a chance for marijuana users to publicly share a previously illegal drug and the counter-cultural atmosphere surrounding it. The main event in downtown Chicago likely will be the second annual 420 Sesh Fest, at Green Rose Dispensary. The party will include live music, a magic show, carnival games, food trucks, pop ups, and product discounts. It also will feature Grammy-nominated […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ctc-l-Illinois-marijuana_175925141.jpg?w=546 "Four years into cannabis legalization in Illinois, celebrations of the April 20 informal weed holiday known as 420 are getting bigger and more widespread. Named for the time of day a group of friends met to get high, 420 has become a chance for marijuana users to publicly share a previously illegal drug and the counter-cultural atmosphere surrounding it. The main event in downtown Chicago likely will be the second annual 420 Sesh Fest, at Green Rose Dispensary. The party will include live music, a magic show, carnival games, food trucks, pop ups, and product discounts. It also will feature Grammy-nominated […]")
