Jonny Fritz
Album: Dad Country
Label: Loose Music
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.jonnyfritz.com

I sometimes find myself wondering what musicians do to keep the wolf from the door whilst waiting for success to arrive after years of hard work or to keep them sane whilst on the road or off it when it all becomes too much Jonny Fritz, works leather and by all accounts, he's pretty damned fine at it, not that he currently needs a backup plan, not if "Dad Country" is anything to go by, but you get the feeling it got him through until he reached the point where music actually started paying him and his band.

Hailing from Montana, raised in Virginia, it almost seemed inevitable that he would end up gravitating to Nashville, particularly as the album, as the name implies, is good ole country music, rather than Americana. Actually there was a plan b wrapped up in "Dad Country" the originally scheduled producer and studio fell through and whilst scrabbling around for a replacement, a chance meeting with Jackson Browne saw his studio becoming available. A four day blitz saw fourteen tracks being record, twelve of which made it to the album.

Blitz is a good description for "Dad Country" as well, blasting through the surviving tracks in less than thirty six minute, this is country as it used to be. You can almost smell the smoke and beer in the honky tonk, well the beer anyway.

Jonny Fritz has learnt from his hard times, there are a few good laments that pepper the album, a few rages against injustice and getting ripped off, but as importantly, he's learnt from the good times and those down and angry moments are nicely balanced by the times he was definitely enjoying himself.

There's also some great instrumental phases liberally scattered across "Dad Country", including some great organ solos as well as the more familiar guitar riffs. "Dad Country" is not going to be the most sophisticated album you're going to hear this year, but it's fun and easy to listen to, a country album the way they used to be and, it appears, are again.

Neil King