Episode 46: Jonny Fritz

Jonny Fritz: And I get into a cab and the cab driver just asks me all these questions like, you ever been to India before? I was like, no, that first time, you know. And where are you staying? I was like, I don't know. I'm gonna figure it out. I kinda know the neighborhood I wanna get to. And he was like, all right. How much money do you have? I was like, not much.

Josh Caldwell: Hello, my atypical daydreamers. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Jonny Fritz. He's a man of many talents, but best known as a songwriter. He plays both types of music, that is country and western, but with a heavy dose of some sweet magic that makes his songs something special. In today's episode, Jonny takes us back to those same beginnings where we take risks, we follow the whisper that says come over here, and hold on to the magic that makes it all matter.

Jonny Fritz: When I first got started touring, I was like nineteen, I think. I moved to Philadelphia from Virginia. And I just really wanted to see the world and was excited about writing stories, telling stories, writing music. I fell in with these punks that just had their book of contacts. Everybody had their book. You'd meet up with somebody like, do you know anybody in Kansas City? And you'd trade contacts. Do you know anybody? I met these guys in San Antonio and they have this warehouse, here you gotta call them. And because you had the book, you could share the contacts and put together a whole incredible tour just from that. Hey man, I'm friends with Josh Taylor in Denver at Monkey Mania. Yeah, of course. It was just so easy and so beautifully organic. Your whole world was an adventure.

Then I wanted to grow it. I wanted it to be bigger, more popular. But it was all noise and punk stuff and I was just doing country stuff. It didn't make sense. The more that I tried to grow it, it worked. I got more popular. But everything else suffered. The shows were better, there were more people, a little bit more money, but the adventure stuff just dried up. It's like an exact X pattern. If it's gonna be more interesting for money and finances and popularity, you're not gonna have a good time. That's been kind of a heartbreaker. Really trying to get back to just, wait a second, I actually love the travel and meeting people and the experiences you get to have because of this beautiful thing that we're doing.

But in Philadelphia in 2003, everybody was just doing medical experiments. That was the whole punk economy in Philadelphia and New Jersey. Glaxo Smith Kline and all these pharmaceutical companies pay all these young healthy white males for studies. So if you were twenty-one and healthy, you could just get paid. The first one I did was an inpatient study, meaning you stay in the medical facility. It was eighteen days. I took some sort of blood thinner or something, and at the end of it I got twenty-eight hundred dollars. I'd never considered that much money ever before. I was like, fuck man, I'm rich.

Jonny Fritz: I had met somebody in Los Angeles on tour who had her Rolodex. She was like, have you ever been to Australia? I was like, no, I've always wanted to go. And she said, well I've got people in Australia who would love your music. I'll bring you down there. And so they said, if you can get there, we can book you this tour. I was like, I can get there.

So I did this medical study, got the $2,800, and started looking at around-the-world tickets. You could spend like a thousand dollars and get seven destinations with twelve months to use them. I was like, I don't really know where to go except I love Indian food and I know I want to go to Australia. I was fresh out of Virginia, I'd really never been anywhere. So I'll go to Australia for two months and India for two months and Cambodia and Thailand and Europe. I spent $1,300 on the around-the-world ticket and I was set.

I did a couple months in Australia, hitchhiking up and down the coast. The first tour I was in Australia, I met all these people who are still some of my best friends. This is twenty-something years ago. And my friend Dave, he had just gotten his boating license. He's like, my uncle won't let me borrow his boat, but I know where he keeps the keys. I've got my license so screw it. I just need to swim out there and find the keys.

It was an amazing night. The phosphorescence were really active in Sydney at that time. But it was also a freaky time because a couple days before, a person was climbing out of a boat in Sydney harbor and another person jumped into the water, and the shark was going after one of them. The person who jumped practically jumped into the mouth of a shark and was killed. Everybody was on alert. Stay out of the waters. And especially because the phosphorescence meant if you're in the water there's like a laser beam on you.

But we were determined. We're gonna steal this boat. So in the middle of the night we swam a pretty good distance. I remember being pretty winded, just like naked in the Sydney harbor thinking, I really hope there's no sharks here. This is gonna be a dumb headline. We were on the boat for maybe an hour just searching and kind of naked and shivering. I'm not swimming back. I had just enough to get out to this boat. And he finds the keys.

Jonny Fritz: So we fired it up, went back and picked up our friends on the dock, and went out to a dock near this little island off the coast of Sydney. We swam, had the most amazing night, slept on the boat. And then the next morning hiked to the top of the mountain of this little island. And there's this concave cave at the top with all these aboriginal paintings on the inside of it. What the hell is this? And we were really hungry. We hadn't brought any food. But as we were taking the boat back, we saw a commercial shoot on the shore on the bluff across from the island. Very obviously there was a catering tent up there. So we docked the boat, scaled the wall, got up under the catering tent, and just started taking muffins and bananas and throwing them down. My god. It was just one of the best nights I've lived. I've said this many times. Nothing really tops that. Whatever. We get back to the boat, swim a little more, return the thing, hide the keys, swim back to shore. No harm, no foul. We got away with it. Just an amazing night.

Josh Caldwell: Hey, it's Josh. Hope you're enjoying the podcast. And if so, are you wanting more road stories? Well, good news. I've got you covered. Consider becoming a patron. You'll have access to loads of great bonus stories that there just wasn't time for. And you'll be supporting a truly independent podcast. Find the link in the show notes and thanks. Now back to the show.

Jonny Fritz: A couple weeks later I flew to Thailand and then went to Cambodia. And I was just by myself. All right, let's see what the world's like. Got to India and I really wanted to go into it with being like, I don't know anything. I don't want to know anything. I just want to go into it. This lust for life. Just give it to me. Don't tell me about it, just give it to me. So I got to Delhi. Got into a cab, really early in the morning, like five o'clock. The cab driver just asked me all these questions. You ever been to India before? No, that first time. Where are you staying? I don't know, I'm gonna figure it out. I kinda know the neighborhood I wanna get to. How much money do you have? Not much.

In India, what I learned the first hour I was there, is that the drivers, there's no money there unless they get a commission from bringing you into somebody else's shop. All these shop owners, if you bring somebody in, I'll give you fifty percent of whatever they buy. The cab drivers often say, you don't have to buy anything. Just go in, let them make you some tea. Ten minutes later we leave. And oftentimes you're like, yeah, I'll do it because I know you'll get paid. But I didn't know that. I was just a little too polite. So we went into this travel agency and it was dark and five o'clock in the morning. The guy's just banging on the door. And all these people are sleeping on the benches and on the floors, living in there. No, I don't want to do this. But they're like, what country, where do you wanna go? I was like, nowhere, I'm here, I don't have any money, I just wanna stay in Delhi. And they're like, yes you are, you're gonna take an express train to Varanasi, you're gonna see the Taj Mahal. And I was like, no I'm good.

And it was probably the most intense moment of my life at that point. They got really, really aggressive and they took my passport.

Jonny Fritz: They said, you're going to Varanasi on the express train at noon. And I was like, I just got off a fucking plane, I'm not doing that. They said, we'll take you to the ATM and you can take the money out. I'm like, yeah, you bring me to an ATM, I'll show you how much money I'm gonna take out. And I go to the ATM and I just kept fucking with the numbers. I'll just get the card eaten and that'll be fine. I've got like three hundred bucks cash to my name. But in India they're just like, you can have a thousand attempts at your pin. No need to eat the card. You're still trying. And then this big dude just bumped me out of the way. What's the number? And he was like, doot doot doot doop. Took out two hundred and fifty dollars. And took it.

Then we went back to the travel agency and at that point there were, I'm not exaggerating, I think thirty-five people there. Thirty-five people who had been contracted because of me to render a service. One was wearing a suit and had a car, another guy had a bicycle, there were chai wallahs, samosa cart guys, the travel agents, all his family, all their kids, all their grandparents. They're all there like, hello, hello, you motherfucker, it's your turn to pay all of us. I was like, yes, yes, good morning. Hello, hello, hi.

Jonny Fritz: The moment I got to Delhi they're like, here's your car and here's your driver, you're going to Agra where the Taj Mahal is, you've got a ticket, and the next day an express train to Varanasi. And I was like, fuck, well that does sound like a lot of stuff. After being there for a couple weeks I was like, that was about eleven dollars worth of shit and I spent two hundred and fifty on it. I did it. I learned right away.

It hardened me in a way that I wish it hadn't. Because I was just really open-hearted. I was like, come on in, you're not gonna hurt me, and even if you do, I'd rather you hurt me than look at you with a side eye. A very naive way to go about the world, but it had always been up until that point.

When you first start out and do the DIY thing, you have just exceptional experiences that are unrivaled. And then when you try to expand upon that and say I want to build this or I want it to be a livelihood, all that other stuff just kind of goes away. And that can be pretty heartbreaking. I feel like in the last fifteen years I've just been so tickled. I can't believe this. People pay to see me play music. It's fucking amazing. But the more that happens, the farther away you get from the interesting stuff. And I really don't want to lose that because it's the only thing that really matters.

Josh Caldwell: I want to thank Jonny for sharing his experience. He's got a brand new album coming out on October twenty-fourth on Garhold Records. It's called Debbie Downers, and I love the first single. You can pre-order the album now. The link is in the show notes. Also, if you like Jonny's stories, be sure to check out next week's bonus stories at my Patreon. Jonny talks about trying to record an album in India and what happens when you drink water from the Ganges River. Yum yum. This podcast is created and produced by me, Josh Caldwell. Music by Visual Aid, my side music project. General support and copywriting by Miranda Caldwell. Thank you for listening, and I hope you come back next time.