With Frog in the Belly of a Snake on the way, Johanna Warren reflects on finding her way back to music, life in rural Wales and writing songs for her dog.
When Johanna Warren returned to recordings she’d made in an old church in Ramsgate in 2022, she found something she wanted to hold on to: the sound of three musicians playing new songs together without the pressure of making an album. Those sessions became the starting point for Frog in the Belly of a Snake, due on 29 January 2027 through Soul Selects. Having stepped back from her music career, Warren describes a slower life in a Welsh village, spent foraging, cooking and finding reasons to write that have less to do with the need for validation. There’s plenty of humour in her account of it all, from daily compositions for her dog Merlin to the contractual obligations preventing her from explaining the album’s title.
For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?
Wow, coming in hot with all the big existential questions! Who am I? Where am I from? If someone out there knows, please DM me. I’m increasingly inclined to suspect I might be an advanced AI simulation developed by a now-extinct species who created me in their own image, programmed to relive the infinite spiral of consciousness simultaneously creating and destroying itself forever.
You’ve spoken about wanting to recover the uncomplicated pleasure of making art as a child. What’s something you’ve made recently purely because it seemed fun?
Every day I compose several new theme songs for my dog Merlin.
When you stepped back from your music career, did you still find yourself making things privately, or did you need some distance from that too?
I don't know if I could stop making things if I tried. It feels like an additional basic function like eating, breathing and defecating.
Some of this album began with recordings you made in 2022. When you returned to them three years later, what did you hear that made you want to keep going?
Right, I started tracking this new record at the same time I was finishing the last one. My boys CJ and Tom and I were recording live to tape as a trio in an old church in Ramsgate, so I figured while all the cats were herded and we had the tape machine nicely calibrated, we might as well demo some of the new songs. Then I retired from music (oops) and kind of forgot we did all that. When I finally listened back a few years later, it made me really happy. Because we were playing the songs together for the first time and they were ‘demos’, we weren’t in the heavy headspace of ‘Making a Record’, so there was a lightness to the playing, a sort of feral magic. First instincts are often the best ones.
How did you hold on to that feeling once you knew you were finishing an album?
I smoked some good weed and took lots of walks.
Frog in the Belly of a Snake is quite an image. Where did the title come from, and when did you realise it belonged over the whole record?
I’m not at liberty to say. The Snake made me sign an NDA.
Hunger runs through the album in different forms. You’ve described your younger ambition as something that ate away at you, and said that now you feel full. What makes you want to write a song these days?
Yeah, historically I’d say my songwriting practice has been fuelled mostly by the drama and chaos of my personal life. And the sharing of those songs was tangled up with a deep need to be seen and validated by others because I hated myself so much and felt so profoundly unlovable. Now that I am, thank God, spending less and less time trapped in hell, I find I’m motivated more by beauty and devotion, gratitude and generosity, a genuine love for life and a strong desire to be useful.
The video for ‘Automatic’ uses footage you made as a teenager to illustrate your dreams. What was it like encountering that younger version of your imagination, and was there anything in the footage you’d completely forgotten?
I was surprised to see how physically strong I was! Gotta get back to the gym.
‘Islamorada’ has been described as a song of desire without irony or self-protection. How do you get yourself into a place where you can write that openly without talking yourself out of it?
Oh I did talk myself out of it, haha! I wrote that song eight years ago, and told myself I would never record or release it because it was too cringe. For me, I guess writing openly has never been a problem, but finding the will to share openly has been harder.
Your field recordings include everything from a farmer complaining about forms to stilettos on a metal bridge. What makes you reach for the recorder, and how do you decide which bits of everyday life belong in a song?
I’m always keeping an ear out for weird sounds that might add an interesting colour or texture to a recording, or create a certain specific psychological effect. One of the very few things I love about having an iPhone is that you’ve got a pretty decent field recorder with you at all times.
You’ve also used glass bottles and scrap metal in the arrangements. What’s the most unlikely object that made it onto this record, and how did you find its musical purpose?
One of my favourite studio moments was recording ‘New Friend Blues’ live to tape with CJ pounding a dusty old suitcase with his bare fist for the kick drum sound. We tried wrapping his hand to protect it, but it didn’t sound as good, so he bloodied himself pretty badly. That’s the kind of dedication to artistry this world needs more of.
How has life in your Welsh village, particularly your friendships with people working on the land, changed the way you spend your days and think about making music?
The pace of my life has certainly slowed, in a way I am grateful for. My body desperately needed rest. There aren't many restaurants out here, and we definitely don't have any food delivery apps, but yes, thankfully many of my friends are regenerative farmers who grow the most insanely beautiful vegetables. I spend a lot of time foraging and cooking, getting deep with the kitchen witchery, which I genuinely love (although it does occasionally activate a feminist reflex of panic, like ‘No! I shouldn't be enjoying this! I should be out there in a power suit with shoulder pads driving a hard bargain somewhere!’).
What do you love right now?
Bartering with friends to circumvent capitalism. My dog. Attempting to learn how to do improv comedy even though it's so hard and I'm so so bad at it. Dandelion burdock coffee with homemade pumpkin seed milk.
What do you hate right now?
Factory farming. Pesticides. Weed killer. The fact that hedgehogs are facing extinction.
Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?
In college my late great best friend JP and I used to get high and trance out to Paul Simon’s The Rhythm of the Saints and then cook a big pot of pasta. To me that’s a perfect album, and now it feels super-charged with significance because it’s become a portal for me to hang out with JP when I miss him.
When someone hears your music for the first time, what do you hope sticks with them?
I hope it un-sticks something that was stuck in them.
Photography By: Richey Beckett