LIFESTYLE

Video: Fitz and the Tantrums mix '60s soul, '80s pop

Jeff Spevak
@jeffspevak1

If we all continued on the paths we explored while young, Merle Haggard would be just another forgotten car thief. "I wanted to be, like, in Kiss," says Joe Karnes. "It would be a dream come true to play 'God of Thunder.' "

Yes, it's the folly of youth. Fortunately, another sound was competing for the ears of young Karnes. The Big Chill, he says of the 1983 film. Particularly that Motown-driven soundtrack. "My parents loved it. My father was a bass player, amongst other things, and I gravitated to it. 'I Heard it Through the Grapevine,' with those prominent bass lines, really spoke to me."

Karnes comes to Water Street Music Hall on Tuesday with Fitz and the Tantrums, one of this recent wave of vintage-minded sound supplicants, led by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. "Sharon Jones, they're purists, they do a really authentic, original homage to '60s soul sounds," Karnes says. "We're not as reverent."

Different degrees of reverence can be found among these revivalists. Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears. JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound. Allen Stone. Eli "Paperboy" Reed. These acts are racially diverse, and often are far more white than the records that inspired the musicians. It's one thing to listen to the southern-gospel R&B sound of St. Paul & the Broken Bones, and another thing to see the band's James Brown-like lead singer, Paul Janaway, a crew-cut ringer for comedian Drew Carey.

But they're all good. And they all mean it.

"Our influences are all over the place," Karnes says. "Our keyboardist's favorite artist in the world is Prince."

The main gatekeeper of influences is Michael Fitzpatrick, the band's founder and songwriter who also shares lead vocals with Noelle Scaggs. During his formative years, Fitzpatrick clearly had access to a lot of Stax Records music along with the Motown. Yet that would be too easy if that was all there is.

"Fitz loved ABC and Style Council," Karnes says. "Pop bands in the '80s that try to interpret soul in the way hip-hop and soul is to us."

Yes, Fitz and the Tantrums is finding its voice in very diverse neighborhoods. The cover of the group's 2009 debut EP, Songs For a Break Up, Vol. 1, looks like something you'd find in an audiophile's vinyl collection. Fitzpatrick clearly saw his band then as real, authentic, vintage R&B. By the band's full-length debut a year later, Pickin' Up the Pieces, and 2013's More Than Just a Dream, the band was beginning to wear a neon glow. It had found a little hip-hop, some 21st-century beats and the machine-tooled, synthesizer dynamics of the MTV '80s. Amy Winehouse was here as well.

"Fitz wanted to blow up the sonic palette," Karnes says. "Synth was a big part of that. Sometimes you actually want a song that's going to sound like a Duran Duran track. You just keep riffing with it, until something catches and you go, 'Ahh ...' Sometimes it's very specific, but you don't know until you actually land on it."

He likes this idea of succumbing to outside influences, "it helps you get out of the same set of music you've been playing the last few years. It makes the show that much more special."

So, lots of influences. You'll never guess what Fitz and the Tantrums is missing.

"I was really excited about that chance to go do something without guitars," Karnes says. "With guitar-based bands, it's often a struggle to get the bass heard in a live setting. Even on records, guitars can take up so much space."

Add it all up, subtract the guitars, and where is this six-piece band going?

"If we all knew exactly what we were going for," Karnes says, "it wouldn't be as much fun."

Fitz and the Tantrums had been playing small clubs in Los Angeles when Karnes was asked to play bass one night; the regular bassist couldn't make the gig. "I could see what was happening," he says. "For bands in LA, it's so hard to get people to come out and see your show. But we were playing these shows where no one in the band knew anybody in the audience. It was all word of mouth, and some of our songs maybe on local radio. I would be playing and I remember thinking: 'OK, this music makes people feel good. It makes people want to dance. Wow, I want to be a part of this thing.' "

Making people feel good never gets old to a musician, even as life's responsibilities call for multi-tasking. The 42-year-old Karnes is doing that very Los Angeles thing of conducting this interview on his cellphone while getting his car washed. "It's a Toyota," he says, lest we get the idea that he owns rock-star wheels.

"I have a 2½-year old daughter, a wife. When I come home I put on the dad hat. It's a pretty drastic 180 when I walk in the door."

Not that Fitz and the Tantrums carry their retro-music sensibility to the extreme, to hear Karnes tell it. If he ever got the chance to play "God of Thunder," it apparently would be without Gene Simmons' legendary groupie excesses.

"Three of us have children, four are married or engaged," he says. "Everyone has a significant other. It's a different atmosphere than it was in '70s and '80. Even the '90s. All the crazy drugs, I was not a part of the metal-rock scene. We know what we need to do to stay healthy. So we can go out and give the audience the best show possible.

"People always ask me, what's your big road story? We've all been in the business 10, 15 years, we've got our ya-yas out. Now it's, 'I had a smoothie, did yoga and played a show.' "

If you go

What: Fitz and the Tantrums, with Admirers.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Where: Water Street Music Hall, 204 N. Water St.

Tickets:$25 advance ($30 the day of the show), plus service charge. Call (888) 512-7469.