I am thrilled that Fantastic Cat are on the bill for this year’s WYEP Summer Music Festival and not because there’s a problem with mice in Schenley Plaza! While these guys probably do have some experience with rodent removal — they are musicians, ya know — I’m mostly looking forward to watching a group of accomplished songwriters do their thing on stage.
Fantastic Cat features Anthony D’Amato, Brian Dunne, Don DiLego, Mike Montali, a handful of colorful cat masks, some moderately funny jokes, and about 28 remaining lives between them (they’ve been around the block a time or two).
The group came together in 2021 when DiLego carved out some studio time in the Poconos and invited a few of his friends to join him and write songs without the pressures of the business end of a music career hanging over them. It worked! Soon after that, they’d head back to the big city and book a show before realizing they didn’t even have a name, so instead of putting in the work to figure that out, they went to the bar. It must have been fate because they asked the bartender what she would name them and when she came back with their drinks, she said, “Fantastic Cat,” and that was it. Done.
The band’s debut — the aptly titled “The Very Best of Fantastic Cat” — came out in 2022, but we ignored them for a while. (Trust me, you never want to tell a group of professional songwriters how good they are. It’s not in anyone’s best interest to open up that can of worms.) A couple years later, their sophomore album arrived, and the pull became too hard to resist — this was a good band that really needed to be heard. We played a few songs on the radio and fell in love not only with their music, but with the way they didn’t take themselves too seriously. In fact, they don’t take themselves seriously at all. Actually, Fantastic Cat are a bunch of damn cutups, and I absolutely love them for it.
If this sounds intriguing at all, you should probably take a listen to some of their songs. The music Fantastic Cat makes — unlike the band’s public persona — is warm and real and extremely well-crafted. They’re the kind of songwriters that other songwriters admire. The band’s live shows are fun and funny and truly exciting to witness as the members move around the stage from song to song tackling each instrument with varying degrees of success.
I think “So Glad You Made It” from “Now That’s What I Call Fantastic Cat” is my favorite because it reminds me of the band Faces. It also doesn’t hurt that it features Adam Duritz of Counting Crows singing along and Darryl McDaniels (DMC of Run DMC) is in the video. They have a tender side, too, and it comes across nicely on their cover of Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me In Your Heart.”
I mean it when I say that I’m really, really looking forward to having the whole group together at the WYEP Summer Music Festival. Again, the whole group. All of them better be there — especially since they short-changed us last summer when they came to the studio for a Live & Direct Session. They said their van broke down and that half the band had to hang back and try to fix it, but they didn’t even send the two best singers, and you can’t convince me that the one who writes the best songs is also the only one who can change a tire. I mean, come on.
I hope to see you in Schenley Plaza on June 21 for Fantastic Cat, just do us all a favor and don’t aim any laser pointers at the stage — these guys are easily distractable.
Learn more about Fantastic Cat at: https://www.fantasticcatband.com/
Some other notable songs include:
- “Oh Man!” — a classic things-weren’t-supposed-to-turn-out-that-way anthem
- “Later On” — another song about how sometimes things don’t work out (but with incredible harmonies)
- “Nobody’s Coming To Get You” — yet another song about how sometimes things don’t work out (but this one’s from the first album)
If you want to hear music similar to Fantastic Cat but you don’t want to actually listen to them, try:
- Jason Isbell’s guitar player
- “Ooh La La” by Faces
- That guy at work who’s always asking you to come over on the weekend to play guitars
- Any of the band members’ solo projects
