Fitz and The Tantrums

0:00where are you right now i am back in one and i home i'll be back in some halfway warm weather yeah how long have you guys been on the road you've been on for a while uh... you're on the road for five weeks recall this city in north america that we didn't come up here you still got to come up to can undo and you want cold you got to come up here all what are you talking about we did uh... montreal and toronto dude all that southern can i'm talking northern canada all like that it was called i'm talking north of montana that kind of area on the way well maybe in the summer maybe in the summer uh... so the reason i want to talk to you one because i love the tune of the hell of a two because i just wrote read the letter that left its republished on a night and it surprised me that you you said you're still not making any

0:45money even with all the success and i think a lot of uh... struggling musicians need to hear that kind of stuff to know that they're not just in it alone yeah well you know it's like obviously a lot's happening for us right now and a lot of great things but also the bigger it gets the more money it costs to do everything right and we're sort of in this middle point right now where we're uh... you know we just did five weeks across the country and that was amazing but five weeks out on the road to do you know how many people are not even uh... we're six of us in the band yes i think that people yeah but you know with this this tour for us was uh... very busy because it was

1:31you know doing two and three shows a day you know uh... you know so because of that sort of crazy promo schedule that we had we couldn't but we could no longer be just in the band driving ourselves because we literally had to like drive all night to wake up in the next city to be at the radio station by nine in the morning uh... and because of that you know we were forced to like you know be in a bus of a tour manager which we've been i mean we've been such a d i y band for so long you know it's been usually just the six of us in a band we're tour managing ourselves we're selling our own merch we're counting in

2:18doing our own accounting and doing just all that real just logistical crap that you know you have to do as a band getting bigger you know it's kind of beyond our capabilities to do all of it are you digging it or do you miss doing it all yourself uh... no you know i mean it's like part of it it's nice to not have to like literally counting the shirts that and you and you know settle and chase down the promoter to get paid you know and stuff like that but you know at the same time it's like you know you just see it's like wow okay we just want to us uh... a bigger level as a touring band but it means you know the hope of making money gets a little further away you know i mean i think

3:04that stuff it's around the corner for us you know things that five week tour our name across the country a lot more than it was so sweat equity you know and we're definitely seeing the fruits of that labor now is that we're getting some really good offers for the summer for festivals and stuff like that such as kind of that point becomes a real you know you just have to be smart about what you do and how you do your routing to the band you know i don't know if it's all too way too technical no i dig it i i i i wanted i wanted to play this for a lot of local bands and so so i and i appreciate the the candor on it because it's it's not something a lot of people want to talk about the financial situation

3:49being a man but i feel like this day and age it's as you know i mean you've been doing this a while it's not what it used to be and it's hard for those bands that are just starting out to be like well i love doing it but how do i make make a living i mean even not even being successful but just just you can buy you know yeah and that's the thing is i think you know in a lot of uh... respects as a band you gotta be prepared to put in a couple years of energy and i'll make little um... you know i was really fortunate enough to like you know i said it in the letter you know i we got these crazy amazing opportunities to go on the road with vlogging molly maroon five sharon jones and

4:36that was all before we had a record deal like it's your chasing around maroon five and there tour buses you know it was fourteen hour drives between some of the cities and stuff that's it's on you to figure out how to how to make that work you know and i had been fortunate enough to like after sort of being over being ignored by the business when in jelman tv and made a little bit of money but basically took my savings and put it in there with no uh... guarantees of anything but the opportunity was crazy for a band that was as young as we were and had so little you know exposure nationally we couldn't say no to the opportunity to open up

5:25for a national act and be in front of playing in front of thousands of kids every night you know so it was just like if there's a will there's a way i put in money i came to everybody in the benefit look here's the deal everyone realizes what the importance is that your company you're gonna come back home broke but the experience is worth it is it not experiences worth it and if you believe in what we're doing and let's do it and everybody notably all did it you know is it everything you hope it would be yeah you know i mean it's it's a lot of friggin work hmm straight up it's a lot of work and uh... but you know i mean

6:11better to be working hard bus in your ass even if you're not making money doing something you love them sippin burgers you know that's a little um... you know but uh... you definitely have to have stamina and you have to have a lot of faith and belief in yourself uh... to keep going in those dark days when maybe nobody is paying attention it's like if you're making good music um... which i hear you guys do i mean you still get to come up here i know it's too cold for you but i hear your live show does not even come close to the record like it exceeds it tenfold yeah i mean i'm pretty proud of of of of that fact because it does elevate the record to a whole nother level there's uh...

6:56there's an electricity uh... live and that's uh... kind of a for a couple reasons one everybody in the band you know are going to be really good at their instruments you know and we said from the outside you know we're not just gonna play the the record exactly the way it is we're not going to do the arrangements we have amazing talent in this band so we're gonna like take that song and we're gonna extend that song right there at the breakdown twelve bars and we're gonna let it be a very sexy solo or we're gonna put you know twelve bars here and let the keyboard is to a ripping for fees or solo and i think what's happened with that is it's really captured like this

7:44one of a kind people i think i've just been responding to like coming and saying like just straight up there's no playback there's no auto tune there's no dj spinning backing tracks or anything like that it's just six musicians getting up there working it out and uh... except for a while i exactly you know i know well and i you know we we try to put on an extra ordinary show it's not the shoe gazer band it's not about being there's a lot of call and response there's a lot of trying to loosen up the audience and get them to feel like they can have a good time you know and dance and sing along and i think that's a lost art these days

8:35you know it's a good thing to see back to it well i mean even the record sounds a little like more council whatnot but i mean although dance shows anymore they just stand there yeah and i think it's like people you know especially in the early days when people didn't know about us you know it's everyone sort of stands there and then they slowly start to warm up no one else amazing and making people like sing along you know and we'll call straight up call out people in the audience and be like you what why so so shy and i think it's like setting as it takes one or two people to start like having a good time and then it just spreads through the audience and by the end of a show we usually have people dancing and and just having a good time you know our music is not super serious i mean there's a lot of the lyrical content is is kind of dark and

9:21about heartbreak and gold diggers and stuff like that but the music feels happy and i think uh... i think these at this day and age you know it's like these are heavy times for everyone with financial crisis everywhere and so everywhere it's also just like giving people a chance to just like come to a show see uh... see six musicians really just give it they're all every time how come you don't have a guitar in the band well from right from the outside of of of me as starting the record just one feeling like uh... whenever you see a live rock band it's always the dominant instrument and just feeling like little you know personal also because i'm a piano player and keyboard player

10:09that's where i start every song writing okay moment from you know and that's my personal instrument i don't play an instrument on stage because i just want to be about you know the singing style is very intensive it's you know belting the whole entire time and also just because no one and i are just doing this whole like you know report a on stage it just wanted to be about being a china seems in the studio on the keyboard and can of players so i just always come from a start a song that way so for me the guitar isn't even really my lexicon of the way i write music you know you might listen to the record a couple times or watch a show and only

10:55realize halfway through the set that there's no guitars but i think it just tweaks your ear in a slightly different way you know you it's more about what the keyboard and the fact that i'm not going to talk it for the vocals uh... to do harmonies and background vocals and stuff like that you mentioned uh... being ignored by the business uh... before and i will go back to it but um... how long have you been doing this what what what were you doing before you mentioned a little film and tv work uh... for many new endeavors or not for many years i was just in l.a. you know trying to put a demo together find guys you know always struggling to find the right people to play with and stuff and just always being sort of especially in a town like l.a. just such an industry place just always

11:41being kind of ignored and just and just finally couldn't really take it anymore you know because l.a. is kind of hard music scene because everything's so focused on the business it's hard to feel a sense of community sometimes musically i think that certainly i over the last couple years that's evolved and gotten better but uh... i just finally couldn't take it anymore and just was stressing about how do i make a living so i started working uh... as an engineer for a producer and uh... started just chasing after trying to write for tv and film and stuff like that and actually had a little bit of success in those worlds um... anything people would recognize? no i mean i just worked uh... after this producer mikki p we worked on uh...

12:29lady tron's light and magic record and a couple other records and just watching these these other people make their records and be in the creative process it was just like it really inspired me to uh... to wanna go back and do that on my own you know and then writing for film and tv definitely like honed my skills a little more had to make me pretty efficient because that stuff is like all about like nailing it and getting it done with the lines and all that stuff sort of just like you know worked all the muscles so that when it came time to make in this record it just all sort of benefited from that past experience did you produce her engineer this record uh... i engineered the whole record and i co-produced it with a guy by the name of

13:16christy freed right yes i saw his name on it that's right because i would think that that that that experience would make you want to be more and it is your desk at the end of the day you'd you want to be a part of every facet of it well yeah i mean for me you know second when we started making the record you know we didn't have any money for we just were forced to do it in my my home with my little home studio you know which is nothing fancy by any means but that's the great thing about technology is it a force you the ability to like you know i made that whole we made that whole record in my living room so it's like and that has been played on the radio right now and stuff like that it's like you don't need to go spend a lot of money and go into a fancy studio you know you have one microphone that's never the way you're supposed to record drums but

14:01that's the way a lot of those old mochand records were the drums on that stuff or hell half the time it was like a microphone just in the whole room and everyone was playing together right you know you can definitely do it and that's the awesome part about the times that we live in uh... an artist has never been more empowered to to make music on their own now making a success of it or getting it out there or making living that's another story you know i mean i'm not the trippy thing to about the internet is that like it's totally cannibalized record sales we're giving away money grabber for free on your website yet and but the irony is that we're giving it away for free and it's the number one selling song for us

14:47so that logic doesn't necessarily work you know people are like why given it away for free uh... where we're young band nobody knows about us so we're building an audience and when we give away that track on our website you got to give us your email address so then you know it's like here here's something for free but we want to stay in contact hopefully you love the song and then you don't mind hearing about us and it's proven to be really valuable because it's like now we go on tour we have your email address and we let you know when we're coming to town yeah and with the with the flood of the amount of music that's out there you almost need to stay in contact with these people to to remind them there's so much going on yeah and you know it's like what uh... to finish the total thought about the internet is like you know everyone's stealing music these days and so few people

15:34are buying it but at the same time the internet is is letting our song travel all the way to Amsterdam and now we have a hit song in Amsterdam and that's only because of the internet can you can you can you can you don't want to this that's cool can you afford to tour europe would you can you uh... we are actually going there in may oh nice um and a lot of that is because there's that success that's happening in the Netherlands uh... so we're using that success uh... in the Netherlands to uh... be able to go to france and the uk at the same time where nobody really knows about us but because we have some success over in the Netherlands we're able to be able to get over there and you know we're basically taking the money that we're making from that and reinvesting it into being

16:20able to like it's all about building at this point yeah and so we're not going to make any money from it we're just going to use the money we make from the shows in the Netherlands to go introduce ourselves to the uk and to to france you know and hopefully you're building it but it's all about long-term investment at this point and you better love it love it and do it because you love it because there's no guarantee that all that investment is going to pay off in the long run but but you know at the same time for me this has been a lifelong dream for me i put it down and picked it up so many times and i finally had when i started working for those engineers and doing so in tv i'd really resigned myself that it was never going to happen some peace with it so for me at this point that it's happening i'm kind of laughing because

17:08it's like really now now the now the gods are going to give it to me because i had truly finally come to a place of accepting that it wasn't going to happen so if it all ended tomorrow would you be happy would you have would you feel complete you know i gotta say i i'd have to be because i've gotten to do everything i've wanted to do i've gotten to play on npr you know do kimmy kimmel play in front of crowds that were there to see us singing what else is there i mean it's real easy in life to get into like few years ago i would have been ecstatic to play in front of 200 people it's really

17:54easy to play in front of 200 people and want to play in front of four and you can always keep moving the bar further but for me like i said i had found peace in knowing that this wasn't maybe going to happen for me in life and so for me to have it all happening now it's just all gravy you know i've gotten to do every time people listen to other cities and you know i mean it's um i'm going to start the interview off coming out of money grabber would you mind telling me about writing it yeah money grabber was uh you know i mean that song is definitely

18:42fueled by this like harsh slap in the face moment waking up and realizing the person you're with maybe have some different objectives in mind uh you know and as soon as i wrote it i felt like it was uh it was you know we uh we toured and a lot before the record came out and we were playing that song and every night people would be like what's that money song like money grabber song what's that about i love it so i knew it was something that was really resonating with people so that was like hands down the obvious choice for the first song to to go to radio for for the album and it's turned out to be the right decision because it seems to be reacting pretty well with people but i just love it it's uh it's a booty shaker it's kind of a dark song and i

19:31love to hear that people say like it's my morning wake-up jam i'm like really do you know what the song's about people just listening to melody they just want happy sounds exactly what uh what is the next single what's the next one going to be uh i don't know you know it's like uh there's still a lot of life in uh money grabber for sure i don't even know if the label has picked what would you like it's all time favorites on the record is don't got to work it out that's a song that you know i would love to see is the next single but you never know you know somebody at a radio station might decide to spend something else and that reacts or to me it's actually one of my hands down my favorites on it's on the whole entire record well that that actually leads me to five questions because there's a question in there about that so we do something on the show called five questions five quick questions one word answers okay

20:17rotor studio one word answers one word answers oh she's knees all right here we go oh she's knees all right rotor studio uh both oh come on yada is my one all right uh road lennener mccartney most important thing in a song lyrics melody or rhythm melody song you've written you're most proud of uh on the album breaking the change of love that i wrote in five minutes from start to finish it was uh by the musical god moments i'm still waiting for another one of those just like a stream of consciousness the whole song five minutes yeah it just came out and it was

21:04like felt like it was one of my strongest songwriting moments as a as a writer and it's the song that kicked off the whole without that one moment and that one song i wouldn't have found my voice as a vocalist not a one word answer at all but i'm telling you i've done like 400 bands with this with five questions because that might be the best answer i've ever heard oh no worries on the i'll give you a mulligan on the one word answer that time um and in one word fits in the tantrums that's a hyphenated of course of course