Eric Johnason

In the midst of creating The Deep and the Dirty, ERIC JOHANSON’s previous album cracked the Top 10 on the Billboard blues chart. It was his fourth time reaching the Top 10. And for a Louisiana native who’d grown up idolizing bluesmen like Freddie King and Robert Johnson, it felt pretty good. Even so, genre success didn’t discourage Johanson from reaching beyond the blues for The Deep and the Dirty’s eclectic, electrifying songs.

“I’ve never tried to stay within one box,” he says. “Blues is at the root of the different styles of music I play — hard rock, Americana, New Orleans funk, country — but I don’t see the lines between genres, and I’m not following a standard form. What I find important about the blues is the rawness of it. The expression of it. Thehumanness of it. That’s what makes The Deep and the Dirty a blues album: the raw self-expression.”