TPN talks to Jeremy Ruzumna of Fitz and the Tantrums

It’d be tough to find a more successful year than Fitz and the Tantrums’ last 12 months.

Though some were thrown off by the band’s shift from Motown soul-pop to synth-heavy ‘80s revival, it brought an explosion in popularity and recognition. More Than Just A Dream peaked at No. 26 on the Billboard 200 and the hit single “The Walker” found its way into a commercial for the Oscars and the Hot 100 earlier this year.

The band returns to Pittsburgh for the fourth time in as many years this Saturday but on a significantly larger stage — Stage AE Outdoors.

The Pitt News talked to keyboardist Jeremy Ruzumna, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, about writing on an extensive touring schedule, producing with Macy Gray and being a pseudo-lead guitarist. 

The Pitt News: As a band, you’ve avoided guitars for much of your career. In many tracks, the keys act as a stand-in for guitars and build the riffs, so does that give you an increased songwriting responsibility?

Jeremy Ruzumna: We all contribute and do all that we can but a lot of the sonic stuff goes to me. And also, keyboards on the record — Fitz played some keyboards, our producer played some keyboards. Keyboards, more than anything, define the aesthetic in the band because there are no guitars. For example, the first album was all about Fitz’s out-of-tune upright piano and giant old organ in his living room. Those two keyboards defined the sound of the first record, whereas on this record, we decided to do whatever we want. We used everything from old keyboards to laptops, synthesizers and everything in between. That, more than anything else, changed the sound and the feel of the record. Between me and James King, our sax player, we’re both sort of the lead guitar player.

TPN: Where did you personally start off before Fitz and how did you become part of the band?

JR: I played, wrote and recorded with Macy Gray for a long time, between the late ‘90s and early to mid 2000s. I’ve written with other artists, like Bruno Mars and Rod Stewart, so I had a whole thing before this band. Anybody knows that success in the music business comes in waves — I definitely realize that. You can be on top of the world for a few years, then you can not be on top of the world for a few years, then it comes back. That’s the thing about this band — it’s not overnight. We’ve been working for six years and we’ve been working really, really hard. I can say I’ve worked harder in this band than any other thing in my life. It feels more sweet, since I’ve been on both sides of the coin.

In terms of getting into this band, I was playing in a house band at this club in LA called Bardot and our drummer, John Wicks, was the drummer in that band. He played on some commercial recordings that Fitz had done. Then I joined the band but I initially had no idea that it was really going to reach like this. I just thought I’d have some gig doing commercial music for Fitz’s company. But it’s funny, because it turned into “Oh, can you do a week in a van?” and then two weeks here, two weeks there. And then we just all knew, as a band, that we were all putting 100 percent into it all the time.

TPN: Did your prior production experience give you an elevated role in producing Fitz records?

JR: [With] some stuff … there’s a song where I did a track in my house, turned it in, then that became a song. Our drummer, John Wicks, also had some production experience and he did a track. If anything, I think on this album I was allowed to — basically, the producer would give me the file for songs we were working on and I would take them to my home studio and just sit there for a few days, undisturbed by anybody and just lay down a ton of keyboard parts before bringing them back to the studio. We’d sort through those and use some of them or a bunch of them on the album. So yeah, in that sense my production stuff came in handy because I was left to my own devices in some cases.

TPN: The band took a huge sonic shift from Picking Up The Pieces to More Than Just A Dream and probably expanded your fanbase to bigger than you could have imagined. Do you see yourselves exploring other time periods in music history or refining what you’ve already done?

JR: It’s sort of up in the air right now. We’re still riding the wave of this record. But the one thing that’s consistent on both records, that we always try to do, is just to make sure we have really good, catchy songs — it’s just a matter of how you produce it. A good song is a good song, whether it’s just on an acoustic guitar in front of nobody or just with mega-production. I don’t really think it was a conscious decision on the first record — I mean, it was sort of pegged as retro or Motown — but it’s just the way it happened. So it’s not that there’s a plan on the next record for exactly what the sound is going to be.

TPN: Since you guys are touring so much, does much of the songwriting process happen on the road or during breaks?

JR: It’s a combination. We’ve got hundreds of jams from soundcheck that we record on our iPhones — almost too much. When we were doing the second record, some of them, I think, came in handy and then, in a lot of cases, we just decided, “You know what, let’s just not sift through a bunch of stuff. Let’s just go.” One thing about this band and one thing about Fitz’s personality, which really influences the whole band, is it’s very much about going forward and just shooting first and asking questions later — just doing it. So with that in mind, the songwriting process tends to be just sifting through what we have, jam something out right now or come in with a track. That’s the thing about songwriting, too. You have to have that immediate spark or gratification, whether it’s a synthesizer sound, a drum track — something has to come immediately. That spark can be very fleeting, so when you’re sifting through recordings, it can get lost. Although sometimes you hear something and go, “Oh my god, what the hell was that thing we did two years ago in that one city that sounds amazing?”

Correction Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the band’s show would be on Sunday at Stage AE. It has since been changed to the correct date of Saturday.