Everyone is making room these days for Fitz and the Tantrums, the silky smooth six-piece out of Los Angeles. And the few who haven’t somehow picked up on the hit single “MoneyGrabber” or caught wind of the incredible band by word of mouth are soon learning – just like a certain venue operator.

“I told him, ‘I promise you we're gonna have a lively crowd and it's gonna be a dance party. You're gonna have to move those tables,’” explains Fitz on his way back to Nashville for the first time since that night. “He refused and said, ‘No, people want to sit down.’ We had it out, and the concession was that I had to move the first two rows of chairs back and he was all pissed and grumpy.

“Then we played, and it was a knockdown, sweaty dance party with everybody crammed up in front, people standing on chairs and all of that,” he continues. The venue operator did come back and apologize to the band at the end of the night, admitting his mistake.

“It was a minor victory for us,” says Fitz.

That minor victory will likely be a forgettable one soon enough, given the incredible momentum behind the band. With a tight rhythm section, arresting horns, dynamic vocals and irresistible melodies, Fitz and The Tantrums command the attention of every audience they meet. Whether they’re opening for Flogging Molly, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Foo Fighters or The Flaming Lips, they’re attracting scores of fans at every stop.

“Without the Google Calendar, I don't even think we know where we are half of the time,” says vocalist Noelle Scaggs. “Every day it's something new and different. We wake up in a different city, and that's just how it's been since the end of last year.”

The appeal of the band’s full-length debut, Pickin’ Up The Pieces, can be seen in the wider demographic the band draws each night from coast to coast. Scaggs says it’s among the most inspiring parts of her involvement with the band to see so many different people enjoying their music.

“The demographic of fans that we have is amazing,” she explains. “You have everyone from young children [to] 55-year-olds who are turning their children on to our record. Some of them are bringing their children or grandchildren to the shows or vice versa, where the kids are bringing their parents or grandparents. That's the coolest part of this experience so far is the amount and variety of people who are into what we're doing.”

Fitz admits the band had some nice breaks come their way in the beginning, but he also insists they have worked incredibly hard to get where they are. It’s that combination of hard work, great music and a dash of luck that’s brought Fitz and company to a level few bands with their experience have enjoyed.

Both Fitz and Scaggs say the tipping point of the band’s success was last winter when they sold out shows in cities they’d never even visited. The band’s music had become viral at this point, and rumors of the unforgettable live show went before them to each stop along the tour. It also didn’t hurt that the band was playing the same songs from dawn to dusk.  

“I think it started to set in for all of us when we did that winter tour in January and February,” says Fitz. “We all put in some of the hardest work any of us had ever done in the music industry because we were all doing three to four shows a day every day for a month straight. We'd show up at a radio station in the morning, then do another one in the afternoon. We'd then go to a record store and do an in-store and play that night. We also do a meet and greet with fans and sell merch after every show.”

“We were selling out major cities that we'd never set foot in,” agrees Scaggs. “It was going to Chicago for the first time and selling out the Metro. It was going to New York and, after playing a small pub where nobody knew who we were, we were coming back and selling out the Mercury Lounge. It was coming to these different cities and seeing the amount of people coming to the shows and singing the songs. Going to Boston and seeing the energy there, you knew something crazy was happening. Everything felt magical at that point.”

Both vocalists use the word “serendipitous” in their conversations about the band, a sign that all parties involved realize just how fortunate the band has been along the way. That’s especially true when it comes to Fitz’s inspiration for the infectious tunes: an old church organ that came as a final word from a girlfriend.

Fitz’s last relationship endured a bitter break with a formal “no talking rule” set in place. Yet his ex couldn’t keep from calling him when she spotted the organ, as she knew it would fit his musical personality well. Little did she know what a phenomenal fit it would be.

“Sometimes you get an instrument and it just has spirits already living inside of it,” says Fitz. “I turned it on, and anything I touched on it just felt alive. I felt so inspired to have this new vocabulary in my home stereo. I was in so much pain from the breakup, but at my lowest points in life, music always seems to come in and save my ass and lift me out of those times. This was just one of those moments.”

The sound of Fitz and the Tantrums came quickly from that point forward. The first song Fitz wrote, “Breakin’ The Chains of Love,” came together in three minutes. “MoneyGrabber” was another song stirred by the spirit of that old organ. Scaggs says she knew fairly quickly that the latter would become an anthem for the band when fans instantly remembered it.

“With ‘MoneyGrabber,’ you could really see the young kids picking up on it,” she says. “I knew it would be a hit then. When you get children singing along to a song they've heard twice, you know it's going to go a bit further than you thought it would when you wrote it. People were coming up after shows asking us what that song was, or they'd be singing the melody after they'd just heard it. I don't think we really knew it would be to the level where it was at, but we knew there was something there.”

The band’s success only continues to grow with recent festival appearances playing for 20,000-plus fans at Summerfest in Milwaukee and dates with Dave Matthews. Fitz says he even tests the crowd’s knowledge of the band only to be surprised by the feedback. “We're playing in front of 5,000 people and asking who has heard of us before, and every hand goes up.”

As much as they’ve enjoyed the fruits of their labor, Fitz says he’s ready to move forward with new songs. For now, the band has to take advantage of what little free time they have on the road, but the vision is there for another batch of soulful jams.

“We're definitely thinking about the next record,” Fitz says. “We're on our eleventh month of touring on and off and seven straight months nonstop, so it's definitely a challenge to think of what's next. But during sound checks, we'll come up with little ditties and ideas for melodies. Someone will break out their phone and record it, so we have this massive pile of ideas.

“When we finally get a decent stretch at home, we'll jump into the studio and start to work them out,” he continues. “We have a couple of songs already. We're just always in that process, but it's going to be a few more minutes before we can sit down in earnest and get cracking on the next record, because this thing just keepsgetting bigger and bigger by the day. For now, we’re pretty much booked until Christmas.”

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To read more stories by Matt Conner, visit stereosubversion.com.