In downtown Campbell there’s a building that has been vacant for more than a decade. The former Gaslighter Theater opened in 1970 and has been empty since 2005. But for those who remember its heyday as a venue for local bands in the 2000s, its influence is still felt.
“The Gaslighter was one of the main places that really got me into music,” says Matthew Hagarty, drummer of bluesy rock group Fritz Montana. He remembers thinking, at the first show he played there, “Wow, this is what I want to do for a living.”
Now, that dream is a bit closer to reality. Fritz Montana release their first full-length album, Father Mother Sister Brother, on June 30, and the next day the band headline the Independent in San Francisco for the first time. Recorded at Different Fur Studios in San Francisco, the new collection is the culmination of years of work for the band, who started in 2013 but consider the record their first official statement.
“We started off wanting very much to be something along the lines of the Black Keys,” Hagarty says, noting that the Keys album Brothers, and Sound & Color by the Alabama Shakes, were both early influences for the group.
Fans of both bands will find a lot to like about Father Mother Sister Brother. Album opener “Everyday” is built around two repeating guitar riffs, verse and chorus, each of which evoke that same sense of distant familiarity that The Black Keys aim for—simple, and homey, but not quite nostalgic. Fritz Montana describe the album as being inspired by singer Dave MacIntyre’s parents, who divorced while he was young, which could explain the combination of feelings the album brings up.
“Now that I’ve become the age that my parents were when I was born…I feel like I can better understand what they went through,” MacIntyre writes in the album’s description for press.
As the boarded-up front of the Campbell Gaslighter reminds us, the past is always around. On Father Mother Sister Brother, Fritz Montana seem to be saying that it’s what we create out of it that matters in the end.
Fritz Montana
‘Father Mother Sister Brother’
Jun 30
