The Fritz — Six Years and Counting
Funk-rock-tronic band The Fritz popped up on my radar at the Bear Creek Music & Arts Festival in 2014. Longtime fans of this Asheville, NC quintet (by way of Jacksonville, FL) would say, “Where’ve you been?” When they hit the Forest Stage that Saturday, the funky rhythms and scorching organ of What She Please began to rise from the wafting vapors of the fog machine, and I was immediately hooked. Back on April 10, 2009, the band played their first gig together. Six years later to the day, their tour van rolled into Norfolk, VA to play a gig at Pancho N Luigi’s with local jam band Woodwork opening things up. 
The crowd surged towards the stage as the first notes of All You Say began to ring out. With Jake O’Connor laying down a funky bass line, backed by his rhythm section mates Michael Tillis on drums and Mike Evans on percussion, Jamie Hendrickson joined in on guitar and Jamar Woods kicked in on the organ, and the whole place ignited! Everybody was dancing and jumping from the first note to the last. The band worked through their extensive original material, throwing in a cover of Life During Wartime to mix things up. About two-thirds of the way through the show, Jamie Hendrickson filled the crowd in on the sixth anniversary date and introduced Prehistoric Stomp, the only song from their earlier shows that they regularly play. I’m glad they still do, because it’s a funk tour de force! They closed out the show with a titanic cover of War Pigs that had the fans screaming for more. 
Local jam band Woodwork has been around in varying forms since 2007. Over the years they’ve developed an extensive catalog of original material, mixed in with Grateful Dead and Phish covers. Featuring Kyle Folsom on lead guitar and vocals, Andrew Majkut on rhythm guitar, Pat Spalding on bass and James Dale on drums, they have a strong local following and have appeared on the bill of regional festivals such as Phamily Gathering, Camp Barefoot, and Mantrabash. Their opening set definitely got everybody warmed up for the evening. [The Fritz Setlist: All You Say, The Disease, Oppenheim, Voices, Life During Wartime, Gone, Prehistoric Stomp, Robbery, Trinitite, War Pigs] Remember that Bear Creek set I mentioned at the beginning of the article? You can check it out here, thanks to GeeQueue. https://soundcloud.com/geequeue/the-fritz-bear-creek-2014-sat?in=geequeue/sets/bear-creek-music-festival-2014 [Woodwork Setlist: Dig, Breather > Unwind, Next, Tuesday, Salve Sully, What It’ll Do > First Tube, Timeside] Written by John Phillips | Photography by John Phillips/Festy Shots Photography
