Interview: Noelle Scaggs (Fitz and The Tantrums)
While Michael Fitzpatrick gets top billing in Fitz and The Tantrums, co-lead vocalist Noelle Scaggs is just as key to the soul-pop band’s success. Armed with an array of ultra-catchy hits that you’ve almost certainly heard — particularly “Out of My League,” “The Walker,” and “HandClap” — the LA-based artists reach peak appeal on stage where the two singers crank up the party atmosphere atop a bed of layered instrumental goodness.
A few hours before taking the stage in Boston, and a few days before her band headlines Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.’s outdoor amphitheater on Friday, Aug. 22, Scaggs spoke with Asheville Stages about the impact of the LA wildfires on the group, the importance of speaking one’s mind, and how the ensemble maintains is reputation as a top live act.
Edwin Arnaudin: I'm glad y'all are coming back to Asheville. I was at the St. Paul and the Broken Bones show you did a few years ago [at Rabbit Rabbit] and it was a blast. So I'm happy to see y'all back on the schedule.
Noelle Scaggs: We love that town.
EA: Have you gotten to explore much in your downtime when you tour through here?
NS: I mean, primarily because it's kind of one-off shows, we haven't gotten to spend a lot of time, but usually I walk around a lot. I'm a big foodie, so I'm always walking around and looking for things, and I always love going over to the co-op markets and looking at local products and buying them for the bus and putting them in my little wardrobe kit and things like that.
But yeah, food is always a big thing and just strolling around the neighborhood and finding a cute spot to go eat lunch or grab dinner or whatever. But yeah, it's pretty there. The Carolinas, it's just gorgeous over there in general. I live in Nashville, so I really respect trees and shade and things of that nature. It’s always really nice to go over there and just walk.
EA: Nice. I think you'll have a similar experience at the Sierra Nevada Amphitheater. It's just a gorgeous property and they've done a lot of really nice work with it.
NS: I cannot wait.
EA: So you said you're in Nashville, Tennessee?
NS: I live there now. I'm originally from LA, which is where most of the guys [in the band] live. But I moved to Nashville almost 13 years ago and I love it. It's a different kind of community.
EA: With the LA connections, I was mindful of the wildfires, obviously, that happened earlier this year. And I was curious about how that impacted the band and the making of Man on the Moon [released July 25]. Were y'all out there working on it when the fires hit?
NS: I am not going to remember if the fires were happening during the process. I know that we were definitely working. I was actually in Nashville when the fires hit. Our keyboardist, Jeremy Ruzumna, his house is standing, but his neighborhood was highly impacted because he lived in the [Pacific] Palisades. So, they've been dealing with a lot of the post-fire [issues ] and dealing with insurance companies and all of those things.
But I think as a community, LA across the board was impacted. It was a really scary time, even for those of us who were not in the city but are actually from there to watch our hometown go up in flames. You know, I'm calling my parents every day. My parents live in the Pasadena area. Fortunately, they were low enough on the mountainside that they didn't really see any of the flames, whereas I had a lot of other college friends and people I've known since childhood that all lost their homes.
And with all of that devastation, it was also watching the number of people coming together to support their community, and that was what was so beautiful about it — the aftermath. I think a lot of people don't really talk about what happens in the aftermath of a disaster, and you see it in so many other cities. Thinking about tornadoes and people being impacted by the tornadoes — there was that huge tornado that went through Nashville and basically tore apart East Nashville [in 2020]. The amount of community members that came together to support their neighbors is what is often not talked about outside of just the disaster itself.
And I think that with LA coming together like they did to support their communities, to talk about some of the issues that did happen, it wasn't just about the fires. It was about the local communities — everybody coming together, the organizations, and not even just in Los Angeles; outside of LA as well. There were a lot of states that stepped up to help out; other countries coming in to help out. And that's what made that a situation that the community was able to move forward from, because we came together when it was time.
EA: That's almost…I mean, very similar to what we experienced about a year ago when the floods [from Tropical Storm Helene] hit. I agree with a lot of what you said, especially the community — just, neighbors that I'd never met, we're helping each other get water and food and just checking on each other, making sure we have what we need. And it was really affirming, especially in an election year and all that. It was a kind of light in the darkness.
NS: Absolutely.
EA: I'm curious, too, with having the new album out and having a tour to maybe take the focus off the tragedy, in a way — has that been a way to heal and move forward as a band?
NS: Listen, there's a multitude of things that are happening in the world that are really impacting all of us. We are all thinking about what is happening in our country. We're looking at our day to day changes that are happening in this political climate that we're in right now. And it's hard to turn away from that. It's hard to get on stage every single day and not have that in the back of your mind.
I think us, as a band, have always tried to present joy; have always tried to give people a way of exiting anything that’s a weight on their shoulders. When they come into a concert, they are able to dance that off. They're able to sing it — even if it's just a moment; if it's 90 minutes of just pure joy and utter release. That is what we have always put our energy into.
And I think even in our records, where we have songs that are talking about what is happening in our world, encouraging people to stay firm and use their voices and to come together and to unify and to use love, we are also doing it in a way that allows for physical release. You're able to dance to our records. You're able to kind of even just sit back and chill and enjoy the entire album, right? We're focused on not just writing what song is gonna be a cool thing to listen to for the next three months. We're writing a full body of work and we're also doing visuals that capture your imagination and hopefully get you to think in different ways and in different perspectives. That is what I think we've always tried to initiate in our music or encourage in our music.
For me as a songwriter, I come from a background of hip-hop. And in hip-hop, we talk about everything that's happening in our community. There's nothing that holds us back. If we wanna talk about politics, we'll do it. If we wanna talk about what's happening in our neighborhood, we will do that. It's the grain that I come from.
So when I'm approaching my parts of the songs, when I was working on “Young Days,” I was really impacted by what was going on in the world — and not just here in the U.S.; just watching the world in general and how humanity can often treat each other, but also how we can support each other as well. So, just kind of looking at it from a unifying perspective and for people to not be afraid of using their voices and using their power in whatever field or fight they feel they wanna take on — doing it and doing that with all the courage that they have in their being.
That was my way of really saying and having a discussion about things that have been impacting me and my worldview and my experience. I think all music is that way. I think all music has the power to really reach people and to define different types of emotions and really put forth more love and more positive experience. I think that it's a universal language that, if used in the right way, can really create movements and really inspire people.
EA: Absolutely. Very well said.
NS: Thank you.
EA: I was curious, too, about y'all's general songwriting approach at this point, because the finished products seem so smartly constructed and have so much thought put into them. Are y'all generally starting with a groove, with a beat, and then writing to it? Or do you let the lyrics inspire the instrumentation?
NS: They come in different waves, man. For me, it's important for the lyrics and the melody to come together, because that's how I know how to actually sing it, how to get it into my body. So, I can go through different forms of lyrics, saying something. But initially, for me, the top line and the words typically come together.
I could just be hashing something out on the piano and words will come to mind, and I just kind of let a freestyle flow happen. When Fitz and I write together, it's typically we'll hop on piano or he'll do a drum beat or I'll come up with a rhythm-kind of pattern and we riff on that.
And then other times, there's been songs, especially in our past records, where we had been jamming just in a sound check and something sounded really cool, so we put it on a note and then maybe three or four months later, we came back to it to see if there was anything there.
I guess it depends on the day, too, because there's some days that I'm like, “I can't come up with anything cool at all.” And then I let it sit for a second, and then I come back to it, and it's the greatest song ever. [laughs] I don't know. But that's typically how it works. For me, it's definitely melody and lyrics together.
EA: Excellent. And, obviously, the other half of y'all's mass appeal is this energetic live show that, you know, I said I was lucky enough to see a couple years ago. How do y'all strive to maintain that reputation as a great live band and keep pushing yourselves to stay innovative? Are you always seeking inspiration or leaning on certain collaborators to keep pushing you forward?
NS: Honestly, I think it's a credit to the era of music that we came out of — just the music that we used to listen to when we were kids and the performers and all of these things I think we're very much influenced by. The culture and era of music that we grew up in, from the ’80s and ’90s and 2000s, the performances were so important. Everybody had a role. The musicianship was amazing.
And just energetically, me and Fitz feed off of each other and we feed off of the audience, and I think that's just been a natural progression for us since day one. I've always been a very energetic performer, and I think my role within that is kind of like one half hype woman, the other half vocalist and musician in the band. But we all have this really cool role. I mean, James King, our saxophonist, has his own one-man band on the left side of the stage. He plays sax, he has flute, and piano and he comes in on guitar in some songs. Everybody plays this really amazing role together and the synergy of all of us, it's magnetizing for people.
EA: Kind of bringing all that together, which songs from Man on the Moon are you having the most fun translating to the stage on this tour?
NS: I love playing “OK OK OK.” I love “Young Days” because it's quite different from all the other records where I'm more of a lead on it and it gives an opportunity for people to just kind of listen, and that's been really fun.
I also really like playing “Umbrella.” “Umbrella” is kind of a jam, live — it's got a really huge sound to it, energetically. And then it's been really fun playing “Man on the Moon.” I like “Man on the Moon” because it's kind of an ode to our early records and kind of gives a nod to what made us a band in the beginning.
IF YOU GO
Who: Fitz and The Tantrums
When: Friday, Aug. 22, 6 p.m.
Where: Sierra Nevada Amphitheater, 100 Sierra Nevada Way, Mills River, sierranevada.com
Tickets: Sold out
(Photo by Matty Vogel)
