Local singer-songwriter Jon Frailey is enjoying a successful year. In April, the Cat Mountain frontman placed second in the 2025 Stefan George Memorial Songwriting Competition at the Tucson Folk Festival. And now, he’ll be delighting audiences as part of the Oro Valley Summer Concert Series. Fans can catch him on Sunday, June 1, at OV Pizza and Pints.
The Southern Arizona Arts & Cultural Alliance and the town of Oro Valley present the free live music series. It will run from Sunday, June 1, to Friday, Aug. 8, at different restaurants, breweries and businesses around Oro Valley. The series features a range of different genres, including blues rock, Americana, Latin, country and pop/soul styles. During the shows, audiences can grab a drink and bite to eat while enjoying the performances.
Frailey will be a solo act for the Oro Valley concert, but he regularly plays with bass player Taylor Bungard, drummer Justin Donaldson and backing vocalist Syndenn Sweet. The full Cat Mountain group will be doing a show at Che’s Lounge on Sunday, June 15.
Cat Mountain started out as Frailey’s solo project and has evolved into a band in the last year and a half, regularly performing at Tucson venues such as Che’s, Sky Bar, Monterey Court and the Jackrabbit Lounge.
“I put out a couple albums, and they were playing it on the radio in town. I was playing gigs all by myself, and I just felt like it was time to have a band to play shows with me,” Frailey said. “I recruited the bass player. Taylor’s a songwriter, too, and I’d met him playing some songwriters’ events. Our drummer found us because of local radio playing the music. He just joined on his own.”
Cat Mountain is best known for the hit song “Washing Machine,” which appeared on the 2023 album “Cat Mountain II.” Frailey has recently been working on music for a new album, which will feature the full band. He hopes to release it later this year.
The singer-songwriter grew up in St. Louis and lived in Colorado for a number of years before coming to Arizona. He has been writing and performing original music for around three decades, and starting playing guitar when he was 14. He took some lessons through a church, but was mainly self-taught. He came from a generation that didn’t grow up with YouTube, so he had to use books, magazines and recordings to learn.
“We used to buy Guitar Player Magazine, and it would have guitar tabs in the back. You had no choice. Or you would play by ear,” Frailey said.
As a teen, he was more into punk and alternative rock. Since coming to Tucson about eight years ago, Frailey has begun to embrace a different style of playing and singing. For one thing, he has evolved into a folk-rock musician. He switched from the electric guitar to the acoustic guitar as his main instrument. And around 2019, he also started performing solo.
Frailey said that as a folk musician, he has had to adapt to a different singing style.
“When you’re in a punk band, you have to sing differently, so your voice cuts through all the noise,” he explained. “But when I’m alone, I can hear the vocals really well, so I don’t have to sing so loudly. It has just really changed the way that I sing…When I listen to old recordings from years ago, I don’t even recognize my voice. It’s wild. I can’t believe how different it is.”
When Frailey first started playing in Tucson, he said it took some time for him to get established.
“I had never played alone until I moved to Tucson,” he recalled. “I just always played in a band with my buddies, so I had to get used to playing alone. I played hundreds of open mics, and then I ended up hosting some open mics. I made a lot of friends doing that, people who I’m still good friends with. Those people all have bands now. Now that we are a band, now we get to play shows with all the other Tucson bands. We’ve gotten to be friends with a lot of the local bands. It’s definitely unfolded naturally over the years, especially in the last three to four years.”
While it was intimidating at first to perform solo, he has gotten used to it over time. “When you’re playing in a band and you have all your friends with you, and the music’s really loud, you can hide behind all that. When it’s just you alone with an acoustic guitar, it’s scary at first.”
In December, Frailey released his most recent album “Life on Lazy Heart.” It is his third album under the moniker Cat Mountain.
“Lazy Heart is a street,” Frailey said. “I go jogging through there sometimes. I just love the name of that street. I felt like that’s me. My heart is lazy. I can relate to that. That’s my speed.”
For the album, Frailey wrote about 50 songs. He did demo recordings of them at home and listened to them, deciding which ones he liked the best and wanted to record in a studio. He worked on it with producer Matt Rendon at Midtown Island Studio. They recorded about a year and a half ago. The album features songs like “Golden Gate Again” and “Everybody Dies Out in the West,” which are popular among audiences.
“I tend to write (songs) really fast,” Frailey said. “Usually, it’s obvious which ones are the best ones. I’ll put all 50 on a playlist on my phone, and then I’ll shuffle the playlist. Some of them, you just skip them every time, and then some of them, you turn them up when they come on. Those are the keepers.”
Jon Frailey, Oro Valley Summer Concert Series
WHEN: 6-8 p.m. Sunday, June 1
WHERE: OV Pizza and Pints, 11165 N. La Cañada Drive, Oro Valley
COST:Free
INFO: saaca.org/ovconcertseries.html
Cat Mountain Full Band
WHEN: 7-9 p.m. Sunday, June 15
WHERE: Che’s Lounge, 350 N. Fourth Avenue, Tucson
COST:Free
INFO: facebook.com/people/Cat-Mountain-Tucson/61556433211234
