[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart, and I'm joined now by a band the Village Voice calls the Wu-Tang Clan of Folk Rock. Fantastic Cat was formed in 2019 as a kind of fun side project for four musicians who had their own independent careers in the New York rock scene, but turned out, they liked playing together, so they decided to keep it going. The band released their second album in June called Now That's What I Call Fantastic Cat. Let's listen to a song from the album. This is All My Fault I could.

[MUSIC - Fantastic Cat: All My Fault]

I could blame it on the moon

I could blame it on the stars

I could blame it on the tune

That was playing at the bar

I could blame it on the proof

Of the alcohol

But to tell the truth

Oh it's all my fault

It′s all my fault that you kissed me

Alison Stewart: Now That's What I Call Fantastic Cat is out now, and some special breaking news that we can announce, mark your calendars. They will be headlining the Stone Pony on November 2nd. Before then, though, they're here. Fantastic Cat is here in studio for a special live performance. Anthony, say hello.

Anthony D'Amato: Hello. Thanks for having us.

Alison Stewart: I also got Brian Dunne. Hi, Brian.

Brian Dunne: Hey. How are you doing?

Alison Stewart: I'm good. Don DiLego. Did I pronounce it right?

Don DiLego: You got it. Yes. Hello.

Alison Stewart: And Mike Montali. Nice to meet you.

Mike Montali: Nice to meet you.

Alison Stewart: I understand you're going to start us off with a song.

Mike Montali: We're ready.

Alison Stewart: All right, let's do it.

[MUSIC - Fantastic Cat: Oh Man!]

Sonny wrote a check that he knew he couldn't pay

So he gathered up his shit and he headed for LA

But he only had the gas, oh, to get him halfway

So now he lives in Indiana

Oh man, oh man

We're just doing the best we can

Oh man, oh man

We're all doing the best that we can

Jackie had a job working seven nights a week

At a fancy restaurant where the mayor used to eat

Now she's making twice as much selling pictures of her feet

To strangers on the internet

Oh man, oh man

We're just doing the best we can

Oh man, oh man

We're all doing the best that we can

Katie bought a gun, yea, to keep herself safe

Thought her neighbor was a thief pulled the trigger by mistake

Now she's living in a cage out at Chuckawalla State

Thinking, What was I so scared of?

Oh man, oh man

Oh man, oh man

So if the universe is expanding

Why's my rent still going up?

Oh man, oh man

We're just doing the best we can

Oh man, oh man

We're all doing the best that we can

Oh man, oh man

Sometimes the best-laid plains

Oh man, oh man

We're all doing the best that we can.

[MUSIC - Fantastic Cat: Oh Man!]

Alison Stewart: That was Oh Man! From Fantastic Cats. Oh, I was singing. I was just singing my heart out on that. Thank you so much for joining us. That's the first song on the record, right, Anthony?

Anthony D'Amato: It is. Yes.

Alison Stewart: Anthony, explain why that would be the first song on the record. Why would you make that the first song you want people to hear?

Anthony D'Amato: That felt like a mission statement, sort of, for this album. It was a song where, when we did the first record, we didn't really know what this group was going to be. It was four different songwriters coming in, all bringing their own songs to the table. This record we wrote as a band for the first time, we figured out what everybody's strengths and how we all fit together like puzzle pieces. We wrote this song. Everybody has their fingerprints on this song, and we're just doing the best that we can.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: You guys switch positions on me. That's not fair. Mike's there.

Mike Montali: You got it.

Alison Stewart: The bridge in the song. Who wrote that part? The bridge.

Mike Montali: That was actually Don, I believe.

Alison Stewart: Don.

Mike Montali: I think.

Alison Stewart: Mmh?

Brian Dunne: We actually don't know.

Alison Stewart: Oh, no.

Don DiLego: Actually, yes. Musically, it was this bit that I had, and Anthony had come out to my studio and I explained this kind of vibe that we wanted for the song. I think, Anthony, that was probably your lyric.

Anthony D'Amato: About, if the universe is expanding, why is my rent still going up?

Alison Stewart: Yes, that's the part.

Anthony D'Amato: It's true.

Don DiLego: Anthony lives in--

Anthony D'Amato: No one can explain it to me yet.

Alison Stewart: What does it take to make a good bridge? What is a good bridge in a song? What does it do?

Don DiLego: That's an excellent question. I think, for this record, we have so few bridges, actually, on this record. With that one, I remember I wanted something to break up the momentum of the song. As you're going along, it's such an upbeat song, and we're so used to in the modern era being on a grid and everything's just going at the same beat all the time. I wanted it to really break up, just stop, slow down, and cut out of the song and come back in. I think that's where the inspiration for it came. We love doing it every night. It's fun.

Alison Stewart: Brian. Fantastic Cat. Where'd the name come from?

Brian Dunne: We were at the bar, 2A.

Alison Stewart: Oh, I love 2A.

Brian Dunne: We were downtown, and Don was given a whole spiel about how all band names are stupid. For whatever reason, we believed him. We were a few drinks in, and Don convinced us that when the waitress came back with our drinks, we were going to ask her for a suggestion of a band name. Whatever she said, we were going to go with it, and she said, Fantastic Cat. It's all her. She gets 10% of everything we make, and she's living in the lap of luxury.

Anthony D'Amato: She's in a lot of debt right now.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Mike, what was your reaction to Fantastic Cat?

Mike Montali: I'm allergic to cats. Instinctively, it wasn't my favorite, but it could have been much worse, so I went with it.

Alison Stewart: Were there any other names that night?

Anthony D'Amato: No.

Mike Montali: That was it.

Brian Dunne: Fantastic Syphilis.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Glad you didn't go that way.

Mike Montali: It could have been.

Alison Stewart: Well, you said you're allergic to cats. Everybody else a cat person, dog person?

Anthony D'Amato: I'm also allergic to cats.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Allergic to cats. How about you, Brian?

Brian Dunne: I'm a cat person. Don's a crazy cat person. I have one. He has a bajillion.

Alison Stewart: You have a bunch of cats.

Don DiLego: Two cats.

Alison Stewart: Who are?

Don DiLego: Bruce and Evie.

Alison Stewart: All right. Hi, Bruce and Evie.

Don DiLego: Yes. All right.

Anthony D'Amato: Are they listening at home right now?

Don DiLego: Probably.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Just staring at the radio, just the two of them. My guests are Fantastic Cats. The album is called. Now That's What I Call Fantastic Cats. Anybody who has seen your videos or knows about you knows that you have a look. You have giant cat heads that often appear in the video. Why did you decide to go that way?

Anthony D'Amato: It started off just when we were making the album art for the first little EP we released. My wife is an illustrator, and she created these kind of cat versions of us that became the artwork for it. When it became time to do a record, we just realized nobody needs to see a picture of us.

Don DiLego: We did one photo shoot and we looked at the [unintelligible 00:08:11].

[crosstalk]

Anthony D'Amato: No one can see these faces. No one needs this in their lives.

Don DiLego: No.

Anthony D'Amato: There was something about the music and everything that goes with this project that's a little bit surreal and a little bit playful and off-kilter. We just felt like, "Why not embrace the kind of semi-cartoon nature of it?" We ended up with this hybrid where it's human beings but with giant cat heads, and you'll never see an album cover of us with our actual faces on it, that we can promise.

Don DiLego: You're welcome.

Alison Stewart: You've released some hilarious music videos, one that includes Darryl DMC, McDaniels from Run-DMC, Adam Duritz's the Counting Crows. I was going to explain it, but I decided to pull it from YouTube. Let's listen.

Adam Duritz: Hey, there.

Mike Montali: Hey, what's up? It's Mike from Fantastic Cat.

Adam Duritz: How did you get my number, Mike?

Mike Montali: I'm doing great, too. We've got this new song we've been working on, and we would love for you to sing on it.

Adam Duritz: No, I can't. I promised Zoe I'd stay home and floss the cats tonight. Anyways, I got to go. See you.

Mike Montali: He said no.

Speaker 1: Don't worry, guys. I actually just downloaded this killer new Counting Crows plugin for pro tools.

?Brain Dunne: Wait, how does that work?

Speaker 1: It's tricky. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but it sounds exactly like Adam Duritz. Let's track it.

Alison Stewart: It's tricky gets me every time. Every time. How did you guys decide on the video, and how did you get those guys involved in the video?

Mike Montali: I played in a band called Hollis Brown for a long time. We toured with the counting crows and became really good friends with them. Adams, an old friend of mine, and DMC is also an old friend of mine in a weird way. He liked the band, and he came to see a bunch of our shows years ago. And so whenever he needs somebody to do the Steven Tyler on Walk This Way, he would call me and say, "Hey, could you come to Brooklyn Bowl and sing Walk This Way? I would do it, so we kind of became really close friends and would go to dinner and stuff.

We had this kind of AI concept of Adam saying no to singing on the song, even though he said yes in real life, and that he came up with this idea that every time his part came, that he would get a notification and have to sing the part in an AI version. We had this idea of an engineer, and I said, "Well, what if DMC does the engineer?" Not thinking he would do it at all, but he did, and he came and he was a blast. We rigged the system a little bit on that one.

Alison Stewart: You obviously are having fun as you play your music and seeing you interact together, it's a good time. Why is having fun important for your band success?

Mike Montali: It's all an act.

Brian Dunne: We've all taken great acting classes. No, I think that we all as singer-songwriters, being out there on the road, especially by yourself, it can get a little solipsistic and all that kind of stuff. It's really, I think, that people just respond to the togetherness and the excitement. If you're having fun, they're having fun. It seems obvious, but it's actually-- It's not as easy as it looks. It took a long time to loosen up this much.

Alison Stewart: Anybody else?

Anthony D'Amato: I don't know. I think Brian's right on the money. I think when you're a solo artist and your name is on the marquee you can be a little precious with things. You can be a little worried about what's being associated with Anthony D'Amato or Brian Dunne. When it's Fantastic Cat, you can take these bigger, sillier swings and not worry about missing because who cares? We all take the fall together, and that's kind of funny, too.

Mike Montali: At the beginning, too, because it was-- I don't say side project, but something we just did for fun. We decided really early on that whatever decisions we had made in the past we were going to do the exact opposite.

Brian Dunne: It's a very George Costanza approach. The ethos of this band is very Costanza.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Fantastic Cat, let's hear another song. What are you going to play next?

Brian Dunne: We're going to play a song called Later on. Here we go.

[MUSIC - Fantastic Cat: Later on]

Later on

When they've all gone

I'll save a seat next to me for the long ride home.

And late at night when the world is quiet.

At least you'll know in the afterglow you're not alone.

Isn't it just madness the life we made?

Chaos every second now big mistakes

I don't wanna be who they want me to be.

And nobody sees me the way that I see me like you see me

Later on

When they've all gone

I'll save a seat next to me for the long ride home.

And late at night when the world is quiet.

At least you'll know in the afterglow you're not alone.

Lately I've been thinking maybe I shouldn't think

It's caused me nothing but trouble now, among other things

Maybe I've been standing, been too long in the crowd

Wondering if I seem like I made good on my dreams or just flamed out

Later on

When they've all gone

I'll save a seat next to me for the long ride home.

And late at night when the world is quiet.

At least you'll know in the afterglow you're not alone.

Later on

When they've all gone.

It's hard to believe how hard it can be to find some relief

Late at night

When they kill the lights

Nobody sees me the way that I see me like you see me.

Later on

When they've all gone

I'll save a seat next to me for the long ride home.

Alison Stewart: That's Fantastic Cat. Anthony D'Amato, Brian Dunne, Don DiLego and Mike Montali. Also, we have guests on the piano. Would someone like to--

Anthony D'Amato: That is Hess on the keys. There he is our unofficial fifth member, Michael Hesslein, and he's been playing with all of us, individually and collectively, for years. Amazing.

Alison Stewart: How're you doing?

Michael Hesslein: Hi.

Anthony D'Amato: We don't let him talk, though.

Alison Stewart: You all have your individual careers, when you're working with Fantastic Cat, is there anything about the music or your creativity that you may not have gotten to with your individual careers?

[crosstalk]

Brian Dunne: We like to talk a little-- No, absolutely. I think that it really has opened up, I think, for all of us, an opportunity to try new things. I think when you're looking at it in the sphere of a democracy, you treat a song differently because you have to be open to everyone else's ideas. It makes you think backwards about some of the ways you write songs.

Anthony D'Amato: I also think it means different things for each of us, like, for Brian and Don and I, who have been solo singer-songwriters, this is a band where we can exercise the fun, loose rock and roll muscle that maybe you don't get to do solo acoustic. For Mike, who's coming from a rock and roll band, this is a chance for him to write some sweeter, more sincere, mellow acoustic kind of songs that he doesn't get to do with his rock band. It's different for everybody.

Don DiLego: As Anthony likes to say, it's an opportunity for us to earn a quarter of the money that we're used to.

Alison Stewart: Yes, of course.

Brian Dunne: That part's been awesome.

Alison Stewart: Have you been able to continue working on your solo projects, Mike?

Mike Montali: It's been tough. This band has gotten real busy, and, you know, we thought we were going to make a record for fun and play one show for our friends. We're doing, like, a hundred shows this year, so it's been currently. No, but we'll get back to it eventually.

Alison Stewart: We should mention that you are going to be headlining the Stone Pony in Asbury Park on November 2nd. A little broken news on the show, Don, let's talk about the Poconos. This is where you have your Velvet Elk--

Don DiLego: Oh, no.

Brian Dunne: Oh, our tax shelter.

Alison Stewart: We shouldn't talk about the Poconos.

Don DiLego: I love the Poconos.

Alison Stewart: That's where your studio is?

Don DiLego: It is. Yes.

Alison Stewart: When you're in the studio and you're mixing the album, mix the album. What are you looking for? You're part of it, but you also have to stand aside.

Don DiLego: I'm looking for seclusion from the band.

Brian Dunne: He's looking for notes from the rest of us.

Don DiLego: I don't even know what you just asked. What was the question?

Alison Stewart: I just asked, well, you're part of the band, but then you have to stand back and mix the band. The band.

Don DiLego: It's very interesting because, as we've all said, in one way or another, we're also intimately a part of this. And when you're mixing it, I got to the point where all I could hear was a shaker or a tambourine or the hi hat, or one little verse or a bass, and they weren't even songs anymore. Then, of course, as we're going along, because it's that democracy that I really hate, everyone would be giving little tiny notes, and Anthony might say, "Oh, move the tambourine to the left." Mike says, "It should definitely be on the right." At the end, one of the biggest pleasures for me at the end of it, and of course, I'm sitting in the woods with watching deer and bear go by as I'm mixing this thing.

A few months went by after it was done, and I didn't listen to it at all. Finally, as we were getting ready to manufacture it, but just finally sat and listened to the record, and I think everybody's contribution with those notes made the best record we could have made. I was very, very pleased with that.

Mike Montali: I think we need more tambourine in this interview.

[laughter]

Don DiLego: That's what I think.

Mike Montali: You don't have to convince me of that.

Alison Stewart: We're going to hear one more performance for us. You're going to play the Hammer & The Nail. How is this song written?

Mike Montali: Anthony actually texted me. This record came about. We were doing sessions sporadically. It took us a little--

[tambourine sound]

Mike Montali: Thank you, Don. It took us a little while to figure out exactly the kind of record we wanted to make. He texted me and he said, "I think we need a casino boogie, like a stones kind of thing that's a little loose and a little country honk, and maybe you're the best person to write it in the group. I sat down and I had some ideas, and I demoed it. Tthen we got together and we worked out arrangement and a couple lyric tweaks and came together pretty naturally.

Alison Stewart: I have to mention, you are wearing the same suit, sort of.

Brian Dunne: Well, four versions of the same suit. We're not all in one suit.

Alison Stewart: All in one suit.

[laughter]

Mike Montali: Again, we didn't talk about it. This just happened.

Alison Stewart: Just happened.

Anthony D'Amato: Fashion is big for this band.

Alison Stewart: I was going to actually ask you about that.

Anthony D'Amato: Not good fashion, but fashion.

Alison Stewart: Why?

Anthony D'Amato: I think it comes back to the same thing with the first photo session. It comes back to the-

Alison Stewart: First photo session.

Anthony D'Amato: -cat heads and that first photo shoot where we saw ourselves in our natural street clothes and we were just like, "No one can see this. No one needs this in their lives." We want everything about this band to be fun. Visually, musically, we take the music very seriously. But everything else about it, we want it to be a party. We want it to be fun. We want you to walk away from the show and be like, "I got to bring my friends back to see that. Because that was just ridiculous." It comes down to ridiculous suits. It comes down to cat heads. It comes down to bouncing around the stage. We switch instruments on almost every song. It is a spectacle. It's chaos.

Mike Montali: We should say we do not wear the cat heads on stage. You can't see through them.

Alison Stewart: There are no cats.

Brian Dunne: Once we get that real money going then we get the helmets. The Daft Punk style helmets. For now, we spend all our money on confetti.

Don DiLego: Sweeping up confetti.

Alison Stewart: I've been speaking with Anthony D'Amato, Brian Dunne, Don DiLego, and Mike Montali. They are the members of the band Fantastic Cat. Their new album is called Now That's What I Call Fantastic Cat. They've made a special announcement today. They'll be headlining the Stone Pony at Asbury park on November 2nd. Thank you so much for joining us. You're going to play us out?

Anthony D'Amato: Yes. Thanks for having us.

Don DiLego: Thank you.

Mike Montali: Thank you.

[MUSIC - Fantastic Cat: The Hammer & The Nail]

Sometimes you're the hammer

Sometimes you′re the nail

Lately, I just keep on getting screwed

When all your friends they hire lawyers

And you don′t recognize who's in your bed

And the smokes only get you feeling normal

Maybe, kid, your best days aren′t ahead

Dirty laundry on filthy floors

The skeletons swim out your door

And your family won't return your call no more

Maybe, kid, your best days aren't ahead

Sometimes you′re the red light

Sometimes you′re the green

Sometimes you're the ocean

Sometimes you′re the stream

Sometimes you're the hammer

Sometimes you′re the nail

Lately, I just keep on getting screwed

And my drink it tastes like dirty secrets

As the guilt it builds slowly in the drain

And my hands are wrinkled, my eyes they sting like rays

Maybe, kid, your best days aren't ahead

Sometimes you′re the red light

Sometimes you're the green

Sometimes you're the ocean

Sometimes you′re the stream

Sometimes you′re the hammer

Sometimes you're the nail

Lately, I just keep on getting screwed

Sometimes you′re the red light

Sometimes you're the green

Sometimes you′re the ocean

Sometimes you're the stream

Sometimes you′re the hammer

Sometimes you're the nail

Lately, I just keep on getting screwed

Sometimes you're the hammer

Sometimes you′re the nail

Lately, I just keep on getting screwed

 

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