Even if you don’t believe you know their name, if you’ve been exposed to media as of late, you’ve probably heard the soul-filled music of Fitz and the Tantrums. That’s because although the band was formed just in 2008, they’ve made significant strides in gaining awareness for their throwback sound and stylized presentation reminiscent of 60’s rhythm and blues. In the recent past, their music has appeared on a T-Mobile HTC phone commercial and television shows, including programs such as Criminal Minds, Desperate Housewives, Mob Wives, and Beverly Hills 90210. Also, the band has performed on late night television shows such as Jimmy Kimmel Live, Conan, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, as well as the Internet music powerhouse, Live From Daryl’s House. In this interview, frontman Michael Fitzpatrick openly shares the story of the indie band’s successes and path so far in the music industry.
Let’s talk a little bit about the inception of the band and also the band’s position in the music business. First of all, what inspired you to start Fitz and the Tantrums and specifically approach the music in this soulful way?
For me, I was just going through a bad breakup and the music in return will truly just come in and save my ass and heal me or give me an opportunity to express myself when I just am basically in a lot of pain. So that was kind of the catalyst. I just was needing to be creative and put my energy somewhere. And then it turns into the style of music, I’ve always been a big fan of it. For myself, I’ve been a singer my whole, entire life. I’ve always been in love with that period of songwriting, but never knew if I had the chops to be able to sing in that soulful style. Sometimes you’re lucky to get in possession of an instrument and it’s just a catalyst for everything and it’s so inspiring. And I got possession of this old church organ and as soon as I turned it on, it’s just like anything I did on it felt like it could be an idea. Maybe it was because it was late at night and nobody else was around, but I was just courageous enough to go for a vocal style that I always was in love with. As soon as I did, for myself as a vocalist, found light and felt genuine and [it] was a real moment of defining myself in terms of what my voice was. From those very first songs, the reaction I got from friends and family and other musicians was pretty crazy and encouraging, and it at that point, just really motivated me to keep pursuing it. You got to do this, this is your thing. This sounds like your thing.
I don’t believe that there are a lot of original soul bands out there. Am I missing something? Maybe I don’t hear a lot about them.
Unless you’re into the scene, I don’t know if you would necessarily in the mainstream, but there is definitely a soul movement happening right now. Most of that, in a ground paving way, can be given to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. And then there’s other artists like Aloe Blacc, Jamie Lidell, Plan B out of the UK. There’s this whole soul movement. Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings were the backing band and helped write a lot of the stuff for Amy Winehouse’s record. There’s the Adelle’s and Duffy’s. That music is out there. I’m not sure if it always reaches mainstream status or if the radio ever pays attention to it, but it’s definitely out there.
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings have done a lot to bring that sound to the forefront, but what is it about popular music, that in many ways, it’s lost its connection withsoul, which really has been such an influencing catalyst and powerful component of music throughout the history? Up until recently, it was almost absent from most current popular music. Why do you feel that that’s the case?
I think these things are always kind of cyclical. I think that a lot of the remnants of what soul music found its way into R&B, and then R&B has just had its own evolution, and then there’s this whole convergence with technology and people getting into autotune-DJ-electronic-music culture, which are all totally rad and valid, but I think that one of the reasons why soul music is having a resurgence right now is because we’re just at a point where some people are maybe feeling disconnected from that music. There’s a certain amount of sterility to it and ultimately, people are responding to soul music because it has a heart; because it comes from an emotional place; and because it relies on nothing more than great musicianship, performance and just an old school sort of songwriting melody and great players. That’s really what our band is about. I’m so proud to play with these guys because they’re incredible musicians. Anybody can make a good recording these days, but to me, the true test is go see a band live. Can they pull it off because technology allows anyone to fudge it these days. But, if you’re up there playing live, you’re going to be able to tell if this is the real deal or not.
Let’s talk about the progression of the band, in regard to what you were doing up and to the point where you were signed to Dangerbird Records.
I started the project. Before that, I was working for an engineer and working trying to do composing and stuff like that to pay the bills. The band came together very quickly after those first couple of songs, and it’s been a kind of a blessed experience. Five phone calls and that’s the band that’s there today, which is not the case when you usually try and put a band together. It takes a lot of time to try and find the right people. There’s not really a soul music scene in LA, but we just started playing, started getting great responses from people and we just started building our fan base one show at a time. We did a little bit of touring on our own and we just got some really lucky breaks, and that was all because of word-of-mouth.
Word-of-mouth combined with the Internet. It’s like one person will hear about us, post it on their Facebook page or on their blog and some friend across the country or in another state would read about it and it was just a real do-it-yourself approach. And that landed us a couple amazing opportunities to go on tour with some very big name acts…at the same time that kind of stuff costs a lot of money to do. But the opportunity was so great that you kind of had to take the risk. Everybody in the band tightened their belt buckles. I dipped into my savings that I had gotten from doing composing for film and TV and just put it all out on the line to be able to take advantage of these opportunities that were coming to us by touring with these other people.
We were lucky enough to get KCRW here in Los Angeles, which is our station, which has a lot of influence world-wide. They have their own streaming site with listeners all around the world. They saw what we were doing, took us under their wing and let us perform on Morning Becomes Eclectic and that was one of the first big breaks we got and just slowly started to build one thing after an other and just keep pounding the pavement. We got a couple of those tours and we went into South By Southwest as one of the buzz bands from last year. We did our big KCRW showcase at South By Southwest. Literally, every president from every label was there. It was nerve-racking. We did the show, we put on a great performance, and then they all watched it and promptly left. It was a really stressful time because I had spent all my savings on this band. Everyone was broke and stressed and not knowing how we were going to continue even though there was amazing opportunities. Every one of those opportunities was more money, more time with no end in sight.
Our last show at South By Southwest was playing for Dangerbird. One of the owners of DangerBird is this gentleman by the name of Jeff Jeff Castelaz, who has a foundation called the Pablove Foundation, which is a foundation that he created to help fight children’s cancer after his son Pablo died of cancer. He asked us to play this show, being from the neighborhood. We live in the neighborhood that Dangerbird Records is in and we did the show and it was not an industry only show, it wasn’t an event from South By Southwest, so there was just a lot of regular people there, packed house and we had a great show. People really responded to us, and I think Jeff saw that connection we were having with just regular people. Flew back to LA, and he took me out to coffee and he said, “I really admire what you guys have done on your own. Not waiting for the opportunity, but creating your own opportunities and I want to be in business with you guys. I believe in your guys.” And, thank God because I don’t know what we would have done if he hadn’t stepped up in that moment.
What has Dangerbird provided? What specifically does an independent label mean to a band?
I think that some of those things about do you really need a label; do you really need retail anymore, are true, but then again they’re not. We’re lucky enough to be with an independent label that has some financial resources. So they were able to give us an infusion of a little bit of money, a modest sum of money where basically they were able to pay for us to make a record, pay for the manufacturing. They have their distribution channels set up to get our music into independent record stores and the like. So in that regard, it’s still something that’s important. Sure, Radiohead can go release their record on their own on their website and sell a million copies and say, “name your own price,” but that’s only because they were able to build their business on the backs of having a major label support them. There is always a Never Shout Never band…on the internet where some kid and his guitar is on MySpace and has 10 million hits and 30,000 downloads of his record, but that is the exception. You certainly as an independent band can go out there and build your following. If you can make it without the help of a record label and you can build your own fan base and put your record up on iTunes and keep all the money that you sell, great; that’s easier said than done.
Who handles distribution for Dangerbird?
It was ADA, and now it’s Fontana Music.
So we’re talking about Universal’s distribution.
Those kinds of bigger partners make a difference. All of a sudden, Fontana loves what we’re doing and they get our music video placed on Jet Blue’s airplanes so that you get on the plane and our video is playing on every seat in every Jet Blue airplane. Is that quantifiable? No, but it definitely has some real exposure. And also, our team before was six of us in the band and two managers that just believed in us. Once we got signed, it was the six of us, our two managers, and then a whole team at the record label: the president, the marketing director, the licensing person, the radio person, the retail person, all getting behind the record and using their expertise to try and see how they could help push this band further outwards.
Dangerbird has an amazing radio person who was able to actually get us playing on Triple A radio and it’s made a huge difference. I thought before this band that nobody listened to radio, but I was totally wrong. Lots of people listen to radio and it makes a huge difference, and we just got off tour traveling to every coldest city in America from Portland, Maine to Milwaukee and everything in between; cities we had never been before and every one of those shows was sold out and everybody knew the song and that’s because of radio.
Most independent artists don’t have much of a shot on commercial radio. What is it about your music that radio embraced it?
We’re not that radical of a band, but we’re definitely not usually categorized into the top 40 format, or the R&B format or alternative, but we’ve had some courageous program directors at some of these radio stations that just really love the record and take a chance on it. This guy Mike Kaplan up in Seattle at the alternative station saw us play in New Orleans and said, “I’m adding you guys. I believe in what you’re doing.” He’s an influential guy in radio. People look at him and take a cue from him. There’s a lot of smaller stations; we’re hitting the NPR stations and the college radio stations. We went all the way up to number two on the Triple A charts. This band has been so many different middle pieces, from playing a show with ten people in the audience, to doing Live From Darryl’s House, to radio, to having our song in a commercial or on a TV show, to doing Late Night with Carson Daly, or Kimmel, last night we just did Conan. There’s so many different little pieces that are all just slowly building on top of one another, including the most powerful one of them all has been word of mouth.
I don’t know if you can differentiate at all, but I’m curious what you feel the value specifically of college and/or community radio is in regards to getting your name out there and potentially selling music.
I know that all those things make a difference. Even if it’s a smaller college (station) with a very small radio station. It might be just a campus with a couple buildings and some houses around it, but if we got 10 new fans out of it, then we’ve got 10 new fans. Some other cities, the NPR station has a lot of weight in the community. It’s kind of variable depending on the reach and the influence that that station already holds within that community.
Indeed, but important nonetheless.
For sure. Everything big to small has collectively added, whether it’s a station that has a thousand college kids listening to it or if it’s a station in a major market like Manhattan that has millions of listeners. I’ve actually seen a lot of time those smaller stations have had more influence because they know better what their audience is.
Tell me a little bit about what performing on Live From Darryl’s House has done for your band.
It’s definitely been one of the most important things ever for us. We found that after doing that, his show has a huge, huge reach. Hundreds of thousands of people that come visit his site every month check out the music. They’re true music fans on the quest for a great musical experience and what we quickly realized coming off of this five week tour, or in the middle of that tour that we just finished, was that every city we went into, at the end of the show we do an old school meet and greet where Noel and I, the other singer will sell our own merch and shake anybody’s hand, take any photo that anyone wants to, and try and make that personal connection with the fans. What we found was that every city across America, people would be like, found out about you from Live From Darryl’s House. That was the number one thing we were told of how people came to discover us. Those fans are very varied in age range, but there are also a lot of older people that are hungry to discover a new band, and they click right on the iTunes button and they go buy the record. It’s been incredible for us. Unlike Jimmy Kimmel or Conan was just one night and it’s done. You do a tour with him and it’s the front page of his website for a month straight and then it’s in the archives forever. You just get introduced to so many new fans; it was incredible.
Tell me a little bit about the sale of music. You said that retail is still important.
There’s no doubt that you’re not going to sell anywhere close to the amount of records you were able to sell pre-internet. I think we sold about 30,000 records so far which in this day and age is not bad and certainly not a bad number for an independent artist, but I could tell you based on how much we’ve played out and how many people are knowing every word to every song on the record that there’s no way that half of those people or two-thirds of those people didn’t get the record for free. But at the same time, when you look at us and our business it’s like retail still matters. Half of the records we sell are from record stores. Obviously that matters when you’re making a physical good or an actual product of a record, a tangible record, there’s always that fine balance of how much money do you spend to make a record before the demand is there and that’s not my business. That’s the label’s business, but I’m sure they have to be kind of cautious and not manufacture more records, especially with a totally new, unknown band such as ourselves. At the same time, if your record’s not in the record store, people aren’t going to find it and go buy it, so they obviously know what they’re doing and have found the right balance between knowing when to manufacture more records and stuff. I’m sure everyone’s more into making more records and getting the record into more stores, from independent stores to the Best Buys of America.
Is your release available on vinyl?
Yes. We also did do vinyl because obviously that’s a specialty item that people are really, really hungry for and we’ve done quite well selling those, especially when we sell them at the shows and we’re sitting there and taking the time to sign people’s records. People are really hungry and excited. We sold out half or three-quarters of the way through the tour of all of our vinyl. If we had more, we could have sold a ton more.
If you could tell me a little bit about merchandise. Is that a big part of your business or is it a significant part of the business for you?
For us everything is about investing. Nobody in the band’s really making any money, even with the success. We’re just building towards something. We get offered better rates to play and bigger festivals, but you definitely want to be able to provide merchandise for fans. Fans are always hungry to have a piece of memorabilia whether it’s a shirt or a sticker or a poster from your show, especially if they had a great experience. They want something to remember it by. It’s definitely an added way for a band to make some money out on the road. It definitely adds into it. Then again, always kind of a catch 22, because how much merchandise do you make? It’s not made for free so you’ve got to do kind of a layer of how much money you want to spend.
Explain a bit about your activities on the social networking side.
For us, we are on all of the things from Twitter to Last FM…. we’re on all of it, and every one of those things has had different levels of influence and exposure for us. So I wouldn’t want to discount any of them. And we have our own website, or own mailing list. We use Topspin where we give away a track on our website in exchange for an email so we can stay in touch with people. All of that stuff has made an influence, but hands down, Facebook has been the number one way because to get anybody to click through to anything or to add another web address is a huge thing. Here you have this platform that everyone’s using on a daily basis to socialize, to post pictures, to stay connected with friends, to flirt, to do whatever they’re doing and here you can seamlessly integrate it into what they’re doing personally with their own social network. I personally believe that it’s because of that we’re able to have a deep connection and access because people don’t have to be typing in your web address or going to another website to stay connected. They see a comment you made in their news feed or you post a picture and it’s right there seen as part of what they’re already doing, so it’s easier for them to stay engaged and Noel and I, we do all of our own messaging on there. We take a lot of time to respond to people. We put a lot of time to let people see our journey, our lives, in this road of just trying to be musicians whether that’s a homemade music video we made, or posting a picture of us at the truck stop, or a funny thing we found, or just our every day experience of living on the road, or a funny picture of one of the guys.
All of that stuff has just given people a way to stay connected with us. It’s really helps form a long lasting relationship with a lot of these people. They feel like they have been living this journey with us because they have…for two and a half years cheering us on, telling their friends about it, commenting on our photos and living the experience with us. Now that all of this stuff is happening, they’re heavily invested in wanting to see us succeed because they really care about us as a band and as people. The other part of that too is that we are a very down to earth band. There’s no attitude. Nobody’s a jerk or arrogant. We spend the time to meet and greet anybody at every show. We are incredibly humble and appreciative of the opportunities that are happening to us. And that’s not show humility, that’s a genuine excitement and sincerity on our part and people respond to that and appreciate that and it just makes them be even more into what’s happening to us and wanting to see us succeed.
Let’s talk about licensing and any opportunities that you’ve had in that space of the business.
We’ve been lucky enough to get on a couple TV shows, and its interesting to see which ones make a difference and don’t. We were on a bunch of 90210 episodes, and then we got this one really prominent feature music video played on Criminal Minds in the opening sequence of whatever the thing was. That’s a show with millions of viewers. Thousands of new fans introduced to us from that moment. We had a really prominent commercial on an HTC phone ad, where they played the music and said our name– tons of exposure. I don’t know if it really sold any more records or if it also just put the name into people’s subconscious. Sometimes people need to hear your name or hear the song five or ten times before it can break through to their mind. There’s so much information out there.
Beyond the exposure, I’m curious how significant the revenue has been or has it mainly just been an outlet for promotion?
It depends. Some of them have paid out a little bit of money, some of them have been all about the exposure opportunity. It’s not like we made any enormous sums of money from it, but it all helps to feed the engine to be able to continue to pursue and continue to do what we want to do and keep building as a band.
In regards to what you’ve learned on your journey, if you don’t mind sharing one of the biggest lessons that you’ve learned.
One of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned is truly about putting in the hard work and if you’re willing to do that, and you have faith in what you’re doing, and you keep working towards it, hopefully everything lines up. It’s been a really humbling experience to watch all this stuff, but also feeling like you’ve done the hard work. We’ve put in the time to build this thing and it’s great to see that all the things that are happening are a direct result of every show where there were ten people there, but we gave it 110% even though no one showed up at the gig because we gained ten more fans. We put in the work. It is a lot of work, so you better really love what you do and just be appreciative of it, because I’ve seen bands here today, gone tomorrow. Who knows how long the ride lasts, so better really be enjoying the experience because that is the deal.
Thank you so much Michael. I wish you continued success. I appreciate you taking the time to speak and share your experiences.
Well, thanks so much. I really appreciate it. I appreciate having an interview where we actually get into some detail and talk about the real stuff. For other musicians and stuff it’s a hard road and it’s not all about glory, you’re a musician and that’s your calling in life. It’s important for people to know the realities of what it takes to have things happen.
Interview and story written by Israel Vasquetelle.
Like soul? Check out this interview with the late great legendary Motown R&B artist Teena Marie.
Great article…the independent music business scene is obviously still alive…
These guys are funky. Thanks for recommending this.