Eric Johanson

In the midst of creating his new album, “The Deep and the Dirty,” singer-guitarist Eric Johanson learned that his 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 new album’s eclectic, electrifying songs. “I’ve never tried to stay within one box,” Eric 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. The humanness of it. That’s what makes “The Deep and the Dirty” a blues album: the raw self-expression.”