FITZ & THE TANTRUMS

CONNECTIVE SOUL

Fitz & the Tantrums bring their neo-soul stylings to Charlottesville

by Matt Ashare |  

Posted April 10, 2013

Ok, so, I never thought it would quite come to this, but I've opted to defer to Oprah acolyte Rachel Ray, specifically to the enthusiastic endorsement she gave to the LA-based neo-soul band Fitz & the Tantrums when they appeared on her afternoon talk show back in January of last year. "What do you get when you put together six killer musicians, five dapper suits, and a little serendipity?," she asked with rhetorical flair. "You get our next guests, the soul-shaking band Fitz & the Tantrums."

       Indeed: six "killer" musicians, five "dapper" suits, and a touch of "serendipity," which, last time I checked, equated to something along the lines of dumb luck. That doesn't seem particularly generous, especially when you take into account the four-going-on-five years Fitz & the Tantrums, who headline the Jefferson Theater this Sunday, have devoted to honing their stylized take on feel-good r&b grooves, not to mention all the ironing that goes into keeping those suits looking so sharp. It also only alludes to the crucial fact that, along with five dapper dudes, the band comes outfitted with one big-voiced, tambourine-wielding, often short-skirted young woman, who harmonizes, sermonizes, and just generally works with Fitz to throw the party that the Tantrums have become.

       That party began in 2008, when frontman Michael Ftizpatrick — the Fitz in the Tantrums — hooked up fellow r&b enthusiasts James King (saxophone) and John Wicks (a session drummer who'd played with Bruno Mars and Cee Lo Green), and they connected with Noelle Scaggs, who'd herself been a behind-the-scenes player with Dilated Peoples and the Black Eyed Peas. Rather than going the usual rock route and recruiting a de rigueur guitarist, the Tantrums opted to build their Motown-inflected sound around a vintage organ Fitzpatrick had acquired. Keyboardist Jeremy Ruzumna and bassist Ethan Phillips came on board to complete the line-up, and the band set out to test their mettle as a live act.

       "We definitely didn't stop playing," says Fitzpatrick, who'd previously spent the better part of a decade as a studio engineer in LA. "We didn't stop trying to put on the hottest, sweatiest dance parties that we could, for three or four years running."

       Fitz, as he prefers to be called, is at home in LA on a short break from touring, as the Tantrums gear up for the May 7 release of their major-label debut on Elektra, the aptly titled "More Than Just a Dream." And he's clearly hoping to capitalize of the momentum the band has generated since the their indie-label full-length, "Pickin' Up the Pieces," came out a little less than three years ago. In that time, Fitz & the Tantrums went from being an LA club sensation to touring with Maroon 5, whose lead singer Adam Levine was an early convert, scoring a modest radio hit with the suave single "MoneyGrabber," and performing with Daryl Hall, of Hall & Oates fame, on his web series "Live From Daryl's House," a possibly serendipitous booking for a band on updating classic soul for a contemporary audience.

       "That was an incredible experience for us," Fitz enthuses, referring to the "Daryl's House" session. "It was such an incredible day. And it was really one of the most important things we did as a band. Anywhere we go in the world, whether it's Philadelphia or Melbourne, people are like, 'we found out about you because from watching that.'"

       But, having spent years working behind the board in studios, Fitz is acutely aware of the importance of what happens when the band is in front of a live audience. "Even when 'MoneyGrabber' was getting played on the radio, and our first album started getting some traction, it was still very much about the word-of-mouth thing. People were like, 'these guys really work it out on stage: you gotta go check them out when they come to town. It just seemed like a lot of people were coming to the shows with a recommendation from friends who were saying this is not a band to missed live."

       There's certainly an organic quality to the way Fitz & the Tantrums bring together borrowed pieces of r&b's past, much of which Fitz chalks up to the group's chemistry. "I had always dabbled with playing in bands over the years," he explains. "But my main focus was always the studio. I just loved the process of being autonomous and being able to start in the morning with an idea and by the end of the day you're driving around in your car listening to something you've created in the studio. But there's nothing like the creation of music live on a stage, when there's just six people working together and there's no smoke and mirrors. I mean, Noelle and I started this high energy duel between the two of us, and the more we put into it, and the more the audiences started to participate, it just kept getting more and more intense. It can get pretty crazy. We get people really worked up, and they get us worked up, and it's like this infinite loop of energy."

       At the same time, there's a clear method at work as well — a process of creating dynamic epiphanies with well defined grooves, carefully crafted hooks, and shout-along choruses. It's something Fitz says he developed a feel for as a studio engineer. "That's where I learned and watched people create not just songs, but also moods and atmospheres. That's so important. There are only 12 notes to be played. So it's not like you're gong to come up with a totally new chord progression. So, it's the emotional context that you place a chord progression in that makes all the difference."

       If "Pickin' Up the Pieces" was the Fitz & the Tantrums way of nailing down the r&b essentials with retooled back-to-basics formulas, then the new album marks a break from the strict rules of genre, as the band make soul connections with house-music dance grooves and the synthy sheen of ’80s new wave, "I always envisioned Fritz & the Tantrums to be a bizarre hybrid, influenced by ’80s Brit-pop that was influenced by ’60s soul music, with some hip-hop beats and melodies that aren't purist or traditional per se," Fitz observes.

       "I mean, look at Dexy's Midnight Runners, or ABC, or Style Council — they were all British bands who were drawing on soul music in the ’80s, but doing it in their own ways. It's their own weird take on it, with all the latest synthesizers. And I liked all of those things. I wanted to use all of that — to mix some of those ’80s synths with more modern keyboards, and mix that with old Motown-style drums and a classic organ. There have been times when we've look at each other and wondered whether certain songs really sounded like us. And we've just decided that there really aren't any rules."