Frank's Corner #18: In Conversation With Ritt Momney
The Utah Jazz, fleeting moments of fame, and the comfort of settling after years of nonstop go-go-go-ing.
Happy Thursday, everyone. I hope everyone had a nice valentines day and is continuing to stay warm. I feel like I start all of these with wishing warmth to the masses, but it’s serious, I need this cold shit to get out of my grill. Anyways. In this 18th installation, I find myself at this really awesome point where I, yet again, get to start this off by expressing my admiration and fandom for my latest guest.
Just 48 hours before the release of his third LP, BASE, Jack Rutter, or as many of you probably know him, Ritt Momney, sits before me in what appears to be a side of his studio workplace, buttons and other gadgets glowing, then going dim, then illuminating again in the background. Momney’s career trajectory has been, and remains, hardly linear. Somewhere in the mix of his two prior LPs, he would find himself catapulted into the internet song virality limelight—a cover of Corinne Bailey Rae’s “Put Your Records On,” seeing him to over one billion (yeah, like billion with a fucking B) streams across Spotify and Apple Music, and over 1.6 million uses of the sound on TikTok.
“It was the craziest thing ever,” Momney tells me, though quickly assuring me of his awareness (and at the time, extreme anxieties) over the fact that things like that don’t last forever.
Following a longer hiatus after his second record, “Sunny Boy,” Momney would toy with the idea of leaving music for good. He expresses that it was never a resentment, but instead a growth beyond. Since getting married and moving into a house that he says feels like home, a sense of permanence feels more blaring now than ever. This record earnestly sings to this feeling. Instead of avoiding past versions and sounds, Momney simply ignores them, which, in doing so, has produced his heaviest, most lyrically chilled, and sonically bold body of work to date.
This was one of my favorite conversations in a while. I hope you enjoy!
25F: Talk to me about how you’re feeling 72 hours before the record’s out?
Ritt Momney: Yeah. It’s crazy. I didn’t even realize that. I feel like I’ve been a little bit less invested in the release process of this album than I have been in the past, which maybe isn’t a good thing to say in an interview about the release. It really does feel like the writing, recording, and making of the album was the real reward with this one, and releasing it is the cherry on top. In the past, I would have been anxiously awaiting the release, really paying attention to the numbers of the singles as they came out, and stressing about it. Now it’s more like, “Oh, that’s cool, people are going to hear it.” I am really excited, and I think it’ll be really special.
Does this more relaxed approach make it feel more exciting and maybe a little more enjoyable or easy to absorb?
Totally. I don’t know if I would even describe my past release experiences as enjoyable. I was pretty anxious and pretty invested in the career and financial aspect. When you’re thinking about your music like that, it’s intimidating, like working a job where you’re finding out what your salary is going to be for the next two years, and it could be way down here or way up there. When you’re counting on your music to make you money, that’s a very reasonable and rational anxiety to have, but that’s why I’ve really turned away from that mindset.
I was reading a little bit in the press materials about you brushing up against the idea of quitting music at one point. Was there any point in making BASE where you surrendered that idea and thought, “Okay, actually, this is something I’m really good at, and I can fully go back in”?
I think it was pretty immediate. I had tried to trick myself in the past into thinking I could quit, almost as a motivating factor, but I knew that wasn’t really true, that I wasn’t actually ready to walk away. Eventually, I fully embraced the idea of quitting, and right then, I was like, I want to make something. The idea of “quitting music” doesn’t even really make sense; I think I did quit music to some degree, but what I quit was all the weight I was putting on it and thinking of myself as a career musician. That was huge for me in making this. After that mindset shift, I pretty immediately started craving making stuff again.
Were there any rules you’d set for yourself in the past as Ritt Momney that you felt you needed to set aside if you were going to put a record like BASE out?
It was more about the rules I set for myself to make this album, things I wasn’t willing to do anymore. In the past, I took a compromise approach between the business and money side and the creative side. I always had in the back of my head: I want it to be cool and exactly what I want to make, but I should be smart and set myself up for the future. I just don’t think it works like that; it drains your creative well when you’re trying to make that compromise. To make this, I was strict with myself that I couldn’t think about it that way, because I might as well get a more secure desk job or go back to school and do some kind of business thing if I’m going to approach music like that. Maybe I’ll have to do something like that at some point, but for this album, I set strict rules about not compromising at all on what I wanted to make.
It was so much easier to make than my past music. With my first album, those pressures weren’t as strong, but I was still thinking, “I’m taking my shot at a career,” which added pressure. With the second album, right after “Put Your Records On,” I was heavily in that mindset of trying to split the difference between being “smart” about my career and being true to myself, and every time I was in the studio, it was this internal battle. Your creative spirit can tell when you’re using it as a means to an end. This album was just so fun to make for that reason.
Did the “Put Your Records On” situation reshape the idea of what you were supposed to sound like? And if so, was this album at all a way of pushing away from that or embracing it?
This album was more about ignoring that. With the second album, I was influenced by that sound, or at least the poppiness and digestibility of it. That’s the compromise I was talking about—when I was making Sunny Boy, I was asking whether a production idea or lyric would push away that crowd more than I wanted it to. That didn’t really work. It was also tempting in that rush and excitement to think, “Can I maximize this? Should I put out an EP of 2000s covers in that style and lean into it?” I pretty quickly shot that idea down, but those thoughts lingered. The best thing “Put Your Records On” did for me was show me this isn’t what it’s about. It gave me about as much of that feeling as I was ever going to get of watching numbers shoot up, and it wasn’t satisfying. It was obviously exciting and a major blessing, like winning the lottery financially, and it’s still paying the bills and allowing me to make this album, but it also showed me this isn’t worth chasing again.
Going from that and going into the new stuff, you put out “Gunna” as your first single. What was that song trying to say about BASE, or why was it the intro that no other song could be?
I would say that’s probably the best song I’ve written, and in that sense, it made sense as the first single. It captures BASE in the sense of the drudge of it. While I was making the album, I was feeling a type of depression that’s not really painful, just “I really don’t want to do anything,” and that feeling pops up throughout the record; “Gunna” is all about that. It felt good to talk about it because it’s relatable, but it’s not the sexiest thing to write about. A song about being deep into drug addiction might grab you more, but it was nice to let myself write about something kind of lame and true. A few years ago, I probably would have worried that the idea wasn’t edgy or catchy enough, especially for a first single, and I might have chosen something poppier. But I feel like “Gunna” sets the precedent for a really honest record.
With everything else on the record, like “The Tank” and the Utah Jazz references, it feels like self‑reinvention, basketball, local stuff, and fun. How much of this was about self‑reinvention versus just saying, “I don’t want to do that again, let me write about whatever I want”?
When I’m writing my best music, I’m not really thinking about anything. That’s why I say I tried not to think of this record as pushing away from or embracing “Put Your Records On,” just not thinking about it at all. Your conscious mind tends to sterilize and filter ideas and operate out of fear more than true creativity. The best songs I’ve written just came out, and I have to be intentional about not overthinking.
“The Tank” came from me being obsessed with the Jazz—watching every game, watching YouTube videos about prospects, thinking about draft picks, and player development. Anything can fill up your creative well, and that was what was there to come out. At first, I thought consciously, like, “Isn’t it weird to put a song on my album that’s literally about this thing nobody else cares about?” You have to put those thoughts away. There’s some kind of message in everything, and even if there wasn’t, you have a responsibility to that creative spirit to let it create freely.
You mentioned drawing from the Jazz, and I was reading about you growing up in a heavily LDS community in Salt Lake City. Your previous records always seem to hover around these themes in your writing. Does this record still carry that religious or cultural shadow, or do you feel like you’re writing from a post‑SLC perspective?
Consciously, I feel pretty over that. At this point, I don’t really think about the church much; my relationship with my family is great, and they understand I’m not going to be a member again. Like a lot of post‑religious people, I had my anti phase of “fuck all this stuff” and thinking people were stupid for believing it, but now I just don’t think about it consciously very often. That said, I’m sure it’s still in there. My immediate family and most of my extended family are LDS, and I live in Salt Lake, which is heavily influenced culturally and socially by the church. I’m sure some ex‑Mormon people will hear songs and think, “That’s what he’s singing about,” and they’re probably right to some degree.
With past records, have you ever gone back a year or two later and done that same thing, realizing that you were writing about something you didn’t know you were dealing with at the time?
Totally, that happens all the time. It’s just an example of how present and vast your subconscious is. That’s the beautiful thing about art—different people get different things out of it, and I, as a different person a year later, will get different things out of it too. It’s always interesting to notice ideas that were trying to get out and came out subconsciously. It’s really special when that happens.
If, and these are my interpretations of your catalog, Her and All My Friends was more of an adolescent project, and Sunny Boy was more about growing pains, what life chapter would you say BASE documents best?
I think BASE is about settling in. Since high school, I hadn’t lived in the same place for more than a year, and I’ve been in this house for about three years now. There’s still conflict—you can hear that in the music—but it feels different.
A word I wrote down was “permanence.” It feels like the heaviest record, and I hear that in the vocal processing too—it feels different and weighty.
I like that. It does feel heavy. Through the first two records, my growth and journey were pretty volatile, and BASE feels like coming from a place of settlement. It’s like I’m growing up through the first two and then suddenly I’m here, wondering, “Am I grown up now? Is this what it feels like?” It’s scary to think, “Is this how I’m going to feel for the rest of my life?” Theoretically, not much is going to change; most change happens before you’re about 25, and then you’re more or less living the same life for decades, so there’s some reckoning with that. I just listened to the album again for the first time in a while and noticed a lot of fear in there. Listening to “Rightback,” it felt like I’m about to die, and I’m really scared of dying.
Do you look back at a feeling like that and think it’s cool you were able to pull it out, or is it more like, “Damn, I was really scared, and that’s still scary as hell”?
It is daunting, because if you really let your subconscious out, things become conscious that you hadn’t seen before. Obviously, I think about dying, but hearing that song and feeling that fear made it feel very real. I do think it’s cool, though. With artists who make darker or sadder stuff, people assume they’re depressed all the time, but I’ve been pretty good. I just got married, and I’m happy a lot of the time. Everyone is always a little bit of everything, and when you let your subconscious speak, you can really get into those feelings and release them in a way that would be hard to consciously admit. It’s special that humans can be happy and write a sad song, or vice versa. I really like that word “permanence” for the album. It feels less like I’m searching for some goal, and more like this is how it is. There’s still a searching element—everyone feels like they’re searching—but there’s also a kind of letting go of hope, not in a sad‑boy sense, more in a Buddhist way of letting go of attachment to the idea that things will be different someday. It feels very present, not looking forward too much, like I’m at the destination and this is how I’m feeling.
Were there any particular risks—lyrically, personally, musically, or non‑musically—that genuinely scared you during the making of the album?
I definitely had fleeting thoughts, like with “The Tank,” wondering if no one would care about that song. Other than that, I don’t think there was much that scared me. The nice part of how I think about music now is that there’s not much to risk; there’s not much to lose. In the past, making a song as different as that might have felt like risking listenership or alienating part of my audience. That’s what I mean when I say I couldn’t have made this without radically changing my mindset about what I want out of music and what my priorities are.
At this more “constant” state of your life, if you were to play BASE for a younger Jack—the kid who just started Ritt Momney while his friends were about to leave on missions—what do you think would surprise him most about where this project ended up?
I think I’d feel like I got a lot better at being honest. It would probably be scary. If I were 18 or 19, feeling volatile, moving around a lot, emotions swinging, hearing this record might be overwhelming. Being in this more stable and comfortable place now, I know I have somewhere to come back to. In the past, without that strong base, I might have spiraled.
Listen to ‘BASE’ on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp out February 27. Follow Ritt Momney on Instagram.