Jonny Fritz
@jonnyfritz
Jonny Fritz, Debbie Downers
For 15 years, Jonny Fritz relentlessly traveled the world as a country music eccentric. You
could find him everywhere: onstage, singing songs about laser hair removal and the age old
debate of Ford VS Chevy; in Jackson Browne's recording studio, tracking his debut for ATO
Records; in the writing room, penning Top 40 hits for Dawes and cult classics for himself. Fritz
put in the hours, climbing the music industry's long ladder with a novelty-golf-ball-concession-
stand sized personality whose sheer weirdness didn't overshadow, but rather magnified, his
genuine talent at songwriting.
Then, one day, he just quit. "I think I kinda overdid it," he says, thinking back to his decision to
leave the road for nearly a decade. "I worried that if I kept making music not only as my
passion, but also as my paycheck, it was going to ruin it for me. I needed music to be kept
pure and free from the burdens of economics."
What followed was a long break from the limelight. Jonny became a father, settled into his new
home in Altadena, and rebranded himself as "L.A.'s Only Realtor," bringing his wild brand of
creativity to the real estate market. For years, he avoided the recording studio and the road
altogether. When he finally returned, it was to make Debbie Downers: a collection of four
interlinked records, each one featuring a wildly unique interpretation of the same album. First
on the menu is the country version, recorded in Nashville, produced by Jordan Lehning and a
band of world-class studio musicians. Think of this as the album. Three variations of the album
follow in stride. The next course features a version that was arranged and recorded with a
quintet of woodwinds. The only real note that arranger Andrew Conrad was given was to
“make it sound like tea time on The Titanic”. Here Fritz traded guitars for a wholly unexpected
mix of clarinet, flute, and piccolo. Following the woodwinds comes the so called "Karaoke
Version" of Debbie Downers, featuring MIDI arrangements straight out of the 1980s and a star-
studded roster of singers — including Joshua Hedley, Erin Rae, Nick Shoulders, Courtney
Marie Andrews, and Shovels & Rope's Cary Ann Hearst — from the upper echelon of modern-
day American roots music. The final record is sort of a "Chopped and Screwed" version,
stacked to the brim with experimental instrumentation from free-jazz country guitarist Kelly
Doyle and psychedelic remixes from Ryan Olson.
Together, those four records are more than a reintroduction to a man who's always crammed a
crowd's worth of personalities — the bawdy joker, the serious songwriter, the satirical goof, the
nudie-suited torchbearer of classic country — into the same package. They're also proof that
this time, Fritz is doing things his way.
"I had an idea — a dumb idea, maybe, and I followed it through, making these albums exactly
as I'd envisioned. And hey, at least it was expensive —" he says. "It's so easy to fall into a
pattern of saying, 'Well, the label wants things to sound a certain way' or 'I'm not sure we can
afford this,' but I didn't want any of that to influence my decision making. I just wanted to stay
true to myself. Artistic integrity is worth so much more than any monetary payback, so this
project has already been a major success to me, simply because I haven't compromised or
done anything conventional yet. I think that’s the key to success, actually."
There's an ancillary benefit, too. "When you release a record, everyone forgets about it a week
after it comes out," Fritz explains. "But I made four different versions of the same record and
I'm going to release them over the course of a year. Now I can say, 'I made a record! … Oh,
you forgot about it? Well, HERE IT IS AGAIN!’" (Used-car salesman voice)
Years spent in the real estate market haven't dulled Fritz's sense of humor. On the Nashville
recording of "Hot Chicken Condos," he blasts the city's celebrity and bachelorette party
culture, mixing mischief and melody in equal amounts. "I love Nashville," he promises. "I lived
there for a decade, but I think it