Jonny Fritz‘s sardonic, clever country rock has just landed him a record deal—signed in gravy at a local soul-food restaurant, natch—and his ATO Records debut, Dad Country, featuring backing from the boys in Dawes, has just hit shelves. He’s also trying to finish up paintings and leatherwork for a list of clients that reads like a who’s-who of the Music City hipsterati. Oh, and he got married to a woman he met at Mardi Gras. “I like to make the impulsive moves,” says Fritz, who used to go by the moniker Jonny Corndawg. Fritz will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on him.
Jonny: Here’s another impulse buy of mine. This is a 2011 Moto Guzzi Griso 1200. It was $10,000, and I bought it on a whim. I don’t know what in the hell I was thinking, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I had just finished a tour and was living in L.A. for a few months. I found myself constantly drooling over sport bikes in the window of the dealership near my house. I talked with a sales rep, and he told me my monthly payments would be $150 (for like 10 years), so I went for it.
Three weeks later, I got cut off on the Hollywood Freeway (Glendale exit), and I gunned it up to 85 to avoid getting smushed. I found a nice little patch of oil under my rear wheel and a split second later found I was going into a turn with my front wheel headed for the wall and my rear wheel pointed another direction. The bike was going down, and I was about to be pinned between the bike and the wall. I said to hell with that and threw it down the other way—so as to push it out in front of me. Well, thank god for the racing tires this thing has on there because as soon as I threw it down, the two wheels we aligned again and those tires caught the road like glue and tossed the bike back up! I couldn’t believe it, but I was back in the game! I leaned as hard as I could and scraped the foot pegs as I screamed around the 45 degree turn that is the Glendale Blvd. exit off the 101. Somehow I didn’t crash, so I pulled over and threw up. The next day I put it on Craigslist, sold it three days later for $10,000. By the time my first payment came in I had paid the whole thing off, and I came out of the deal looking like a boss.
Video after the jump.
