Though Jonny Fritz has been everywhere, his musical ties to Houston run deep. “There’s something in the water down there, and it really produces some of the best musicians,” says Fritz from his home in Los Angeles.
Fritz will perform on Friday, May 22 at Shoeshine Charley’s Big Top Lounge with his Houston band featuring Kelly Doyle on guitar, Geoffrey Muller on bass and Tank Lisenbe on drums.
“They are my favorite band I’ve ever played with and I owe knowing them thanks to Robert Ellis,” says Fritz who describes his friendship with Ellis as the two “thick as thieves” and credits it with providing some of the richest musical experiences of his life.
“He brought me into the Houston scene, and ever since then I get with the Houston band any chance I get.” Muller, also known as Cajun Banjo, will open the show with his distinctive DJ style blending a wide variety of sounds often leaving country tunes dripping with Houston rap swag.
Fritz, born in Montana and raised in rural Virginia, dropped out of high school and began building log cabins with a historic restoration company. At 19, he decided he wanted to see the world and began participating in medical experiments to foot the bill.
By 21, he had traveled far and wide spending his birthday in India. “I just had such a thirst and lust for travel and life and started touring when I was 19 and just kinda never looked back.”
Fritz was playing shows all over the country and running himself ragged from gig to gig when something changed. While living in Nashville, Fritz developed severe pain in his leg and was having difficulty finding answers from local doctors.
On a trip to Los Angeles, a friend encouraged him to seek help there. The doctor immediately told Fritz he had been limping around with a dangerous combination of internal bleeding, infection and dead bone, and that he needed surgery to avoid sepsis.
“I was like, why in the hell have I been prioritizing these shows that guarantee 300 but cost 250 to get to? What am I doing? I finally got this surgery and it changed things for me. I realized I don’t think I’m doing the best for myself even though I’m having a really good time.”
Fritz had released his 2016 album Sweet Creep and done two tours to support it, but about a year later he was ready to step down and do what he had never done, stay still. He describes looking at his efforts to support the album with a “sense of compare and despair.”
“I just didn’t like to start looking at this thing that I love the most that way so I decided I want to pivot, I want to take a break from this and I only want to come back to it when I’m truly in love with it and that way if I make money in some other way, I won’t put a financial pressure on the thing that is just purely about love. It just didn’t make any sense the way I was doing it.”
When he lived in Nashville, he got his first taste of success in real estate. Fritz took that mentality to Los Angeles and branded himself as L.A.’s Premiere Used-House Salesman™.
“I said if I ever got done with touring I would just become the anti-salesman real estate agent where I just helped artists get housing. That would feel like a really good way of giving back and helping the arts as well.”
Fritz decided he would go back to music and touring only when it made sense to do so and now is the time. Last fall Fritz released a major project Debbie Downers, a four-part album release with an unconventional concept.
Debbie Downers was made into four entirely different versions, two of which are already out. For the first version, Fritz teamed up with Nashville producer Jordan Lehning, son of legendary Nashville producer and engineer Kyle Lehning.
“I said Jordan, I want to do a music row record where you hire all the musicians and I don’t want to know who any of them are and I don’t want any of them to hear any of the songs before we get into the studio.”
Fritz describes nodding his head to the band, playing the songs on acoustic guitar while they jot down some notes and take it to the studio creating the arrangements right on the spot. “Everything is completely fresh,” says Fritz of the process. “Nothing has been scripted or prepared and it’s a very weird way to make a record.”
Debbie Downers is full of Fritz-style comedy and songwriting, capturing a beautifully classic country sound while showcasing his one-of-a-kind ability to find humor and observation in the smallest details.
“I gotta say when it comes to songwriting I can’t say something anybody else has ever said before. I’m really pretty hard on myself about that.”
Fritz also teamed up with composer Andrew Conrad for the second and totally surprising interpretation of Debbie Downers where they re-imagined each song replacing the “chicken picking” on the guitar with woodwind instruments.
“He composed these incredible arrangements which I could never could have imagined,” says Fritz. “He constructed what I think is a masterpiece.”
The additional two iterations of Debbie Downers are equally different but yet to be released. Fritz describes one as being like ‘80s karaoke tracks where he had some of his best friends sing his songs including Vincent Neil Emerson, Joshua Hedley, Courtney Marie Andrews and Nick Shoulders.
The final release is Houston-centric as Fritz asked his Houston bassist Muller to turn the album into a type of “chopped and screwed” style but calling it “Smothered and covered” in a nod to Waffle House.
After hearing what his friend can do when mixing sounds, Fritz says he asked him to just do that to his whole album. “He’s just taken my record and put it through whatever the hell he does and slowing it way down, and putting all these bizarre beats behind it making it a bizarre Geoffrey remix.”
For someone who usually made albums under tight time and budget constraints, Fritz has really sat with Debbie Downers, carefully considering how to bring the project into the world with the joy and charisma he has always been known for.
“I really hope it goes well. I just don’t know how well I do anymore. I just have no idea so every one of these shows I’ve been playing since taking my break has just been a total surprise.”
Jonny Fritz will perform on Friday, May 22 at 9 p.m. at Shoeshine Charley’s Big Top Lounge, 3714 Main. For more information, visit Jonnyfritz.com
