Frankie and the Witch Fingers

BIOGRAPHY

If you tune your ears to the cracks in the San Andreas and listen in for the world gurgling grind, you might come close to the tectonic thunder that’s been beaming out of L.A. for the past few years under the banner of Frankie and the Witch Fingers. Hashed and hardened in the Midwest Indy enclave of Bloomington and catching the ear of the Chicago psych contingent with their early singles, the band headed West around the same time that the crew at Permanent put up shop in the Golden State. With records spread across labels like Hypnotic Bridge, Permanent, Greenway, and The Reverberation Appreciation Society, the band has been an ever-evolving force of rhythm-ripped rock 'n roll pummel ever since. Anchored by songwriters Dylan Sizemore and Josh Menashe, the band has kept a rotating door of friends and collaborators moving through their midst along the way, with each bringing their own particular melt to the mountain of sound the Witch Fingers maintain.

Following the ambitious arc of their opus Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters… the band has burrowed further into the street tar grip and pelvic pulse of L.A. rock 'n roll euphoria with an oil-slick drop-kick of a single — “Cookin’ b/w Tracksuit.” The new single pushes the band further towards the propulsive pulpit that they’d approached on the last album, finding their footing as they traverse more soulful-funk and Afrobeat territory than ever before. Recorded in the band’s practice space, a concrete box in the warehouse district of Vernon, CA, the double-dose of sweat-soul psychedelia is infused with the glorious grit of their surroundings — bleeding in a mixture of hot garbage and freshly baked cookies to the aura of the track. While the tempos remain riveted, the band, like any, weren’t left untouched by the upheaval of the past year and a half. There’s a palpable chaos brewing beneath the pair of songs that can’t help but feel informed by the fevered pulse of 2020.

The band will accompany the release of the new single with a 5 week U.S. tour, putting the group back into their natural habitat up on the stage, steaming under the hot lights and sublimating a heady mix of psych-soul singe into a full-body buzz. Drummer Shaughnessy Starr will  bow out for this run as friend and kindred spirit Jon Modaff steps into the rhythm seat for these shows. Meanwhile, a familiar face, the band’s friend and long-time collaborator Nikki Pickle (Death Valley Girls), has come on board as a permanent bassist following her work on the Monsters tour. With past stints spent opening for luminaries like Oh Sees, Cheap Trick, and ZZ Top, the band has long proven their heft, and the upcoming tour sees them continuing their ascendancy as heirs of the amp stack kingdom.

The Witch Fingers’ legend has only grown over the last few years, and this tour sees them primed to grace bigger venues than ever, finding the band headlining their first show at at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom, sharing the stage with Kikagaku Moyo for Levitation in Austin, and stopping at the venerable Shaky Knees Fest in Atlanta. While the last record and an ensuing storm of dates made Frankie and the Witch Fingers a household handle — burning through a barrage of multicolored vinyl pressings and sparring with indie heavyweights for Billboard chart positions — the band returns from the forge that was 2020 to make a case for the rapture of the stage once more. Bringing an audience back to the wellspring to connect to these songs on a metaphysical level, the band transforms the stage into a sonic scrub for the soul. With years spent pressure-coating their sound into a diamond-hard hydra of heaviness, the band enters its next phase hungry for the heat of the throng and ready to wrap the Witch Fingers’ grip tighter around the reigns of rock.