{"id":76872,"date":"2021-02-08T08:15:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T14:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/?p=76872"},"modified":"2021-02-07T21:14:43","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T03:14:43","slug":"conversations-with-kc-musician-fritz-hutchison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/2021\/02\/08\/conversations-with-kc-musician-fritz-hutchison\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversations with KC musician, Fritz Hutchison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Madison Holloway <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fritz Hutchison is a multi-instrumentalist whose talent is well known in the Kansas City music scene. After playing in a variety of local bands for the last ten years, he released his first solo album\u00a0Wide Wild Acres<\/a><\/em>\u00a0in March of last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A comforting mix of Americana, indie, pop, and jazz; the eight-track album has been described as feeling like Spring<\/a> and freedom<\/a> \u2013 things we\u2019re all craving right now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hopped on zoom to talk with Fritz about his experience writing the album and putting it out during the pandemic. We talked about his inspirations, and what he was working on and listening to in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madison: Hi Fritz, how\u2019s your new year been so far?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fritz: Fine haha. It\u2019s good. Not ideal in a lot of ways, but definitely optimistic so far. I think things in general are taking a turn for the better in the world. I mean maybe we\u2019re all just used to it being…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M: Really bad? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

F: Haha yeah exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M: I\u2019m glad you\u2019re feeling optimistic though. So, in March of 2020 you released your first album Wide Wild Acres<\/em>. Can you tell me more about the backstory and how you decided to make the album?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

F: Sure. All of the songs on that album are really old. I started recording it five years ago actually. I was in a band called She\u2019s a Keeper for about six years and I was writing more songs than there was room for; so I just started stockpiling ones that I didn\u2019t think were appropriate for that band or ones that I wanted to have more control over\u2026 Sort of ironically, being a full-time musician kept me from putting out my own record. When I met [my manager] Patrick, he heard the album and was enthusiastic about it, so we started working together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M: To me the album felt sort of nostalgic because I grew up listening to some of the influences you cited on your website like Bruce Springsteen and 70\u2019s singer-songwriters. That\u2019s what my parents played in our house, so listening to it I was like \u201cOh this sounds like my childhood.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Wide Wild Acres<\/em> is the debut album from Kansas City based artist, Fritz Hutchison.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s your creative process like? What do you do to write a song?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

F: It\u2019s very slow. I try to write a lot and most of the ideas are bad, but a lot of times there\u2019s a little nugget of something good. \u201cSchnatterling Dream\u201d is a perfect example. That whole second verse was a different song\u2026 When I came up with that riff that kind of sounds like \u201cStacey\u2019s Mom\u201d I was like \u201cThis is more fun. This is a cooler riff.\u201d So, I put the lyrics onto that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That happens to me a lot. I save up all these scraps and it can take a while for them to come together\u2026 I also like to play different instruments. I\u2019ll come up with a chord progression on a guitar and get kind of stuck and don\u2019t know where to go with it. Then I\u2019ll try it on piano instead and my hands will just do something different\u2026 So, I try to jump around on different instruments.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M: What was it like putting out an album right when the pandemic got really serious in Kansas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

F: It was incredibly frustrating. It was gonna be great\u2026 and I was supposed to go out on tour this summer. At the time it was just really, really frustrating but it turned out to be kind of okay. You know, ironically the thing I\u2019ve always been the worst at with being a musician is the social media and self-promotion stuff and there\u2019s nothing else to do now except be on Instagram. I\u2019ve been making a lot of videos. It\u2019s helped me be project focused. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

M: I\u2019m glad some good came out of it for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, you\u2019ve lived in Kansas City your whole life, and played a lot of different instruments in a lot of different bands. What is it about the KC music scene that\u2019s keeping you there? What do you love about it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

F: I\u2019ve never experienced really any gatekeeping. There are enough musicians that there\u2019s a really wide variety of people who are very skilled at a lot of different kinds of music. You can go see an amazing salsa band or swing band or there\u2019s really killer DJs here and noise artists. You can find anything on the traditional to freaky spectrum. The cool part about that though is there\u2019s also not enough musicians that those genres are closed off from each other. So, everyone\u2019s very open.\u00a0There\u2019s a necessity of collaboration that makes things really interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M: Yeah definitely. I read in an interview with V13<\/a> that you\u2019re feeling yourself being pulled toward more character studies with songwriting. I was wondering what led you there. Why is that something you\u2019re interested in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

F: I think maybe I\u2019m doing better personally. I\u2019m not as bummed-out as I was haha. I have an easier time writing about sad things than joyful things, but you can only write about the same things so many times. Unless you\u2019re Paul McCartney writing about love;  then you have infinite bangers. But I don\u2019t know, I just kind of got bored writing about being bummed out so I turned my gaze outward. In the new batch of songs I\u2019ve been working on\u2026 there are a lot of songs inspired by certain friends and their families. I think missing people has a lot to do with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

M: Can you tell me more about what\u2019s coming next? Are you working on another full album right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

F: I am working on another album. I\u2019d like to put it out in the summer. That\u2019s kind of my personal goal. I just spent the last week tracking it\u2026 My goal is to not finish it and sit on it for five years this time haha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M: Now people are waiting! We heard your first album, and we want another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

F: Exactly. That whole time that I wasn\u2019t putting out the first album I was still writing songs. So maybe I\u2019ll trick some people into thinking I\u2019m a prolific songwriter. So yeah, I\u2019ve been working on that and I\u2019ve just kind of been keeping\u00a0a band together. Everybody in that band is incredible. Just such good musicianship all around so I feel very lucky.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hutchison said the band is currently unnamed.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

M: That\u2019s great. For your more well-acquainted fans, what were you listening to in 2020 that we should also be listening to? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

F: \u201cTwo Hands\u201d by Big Thief. It\u2019s a masterpiece. It\u2019s been my favorite record of the last few years\u2026 Man, the vibe is so good, and you can tell they love each other a lot. You can just feel how tight knit they are. It\u2019s a very patient record. There\u2019s no ego on it. The jams are so quiet, and there\u2019s a lot of trust and space in the air. It\u2019s a really amazing album. Can\u2019t recommend it enough. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

M: Yes! I love Big Thief. Then for your new fans: what do you hope people feel when listening to your music?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

F: Hmm. I was really happy that you said nostalgia. A lot of those songs are written from a nostalgic place. So that, and I think\u2026 I\u2019m literally just trying to think of how Bruce Springsteen makes me feel. There\u2019s always an element of struggle in his music, and as a singer who\u2019s like not that great, listening to Bruce Springsteen be not that great but very powerful of a singer is something I relate to. I wrote some of the songs on Wide Wild Acres<\/em> to be intentionally difficult for me to sing because I like hearing someone else struggle through the same things that I need to struggle through. And then lyrically, there\u2019s some sadness, some missing people, some gratitude. I want people to feel comforted. If people can latch on to a sense of \u201cthat guy\u2019s doing his best and so am I,\u201d it\u2019s sort of like a high-five. It\u2019s a feeling of community and that we\u2019re all just trying things out, combined with like \u201cI remember my summers on the farm.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can read more about Fritz and buy Wide Wild Acres<\/em> on his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

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