Frankie and His Fingers
By Peter Aaron

It’s been 53 years since Elvis Presley first walked into Sam Phillips’s Memphis Recording Service; 30 years since The King “left the building” for good. So why would a pair of 21-year-olds think rock ’n’ roll is still relevant enough to play now—and do it like they really mean it, no less?

“God, why wouldn’t we want to play it?” counters Sammi Niss, the petite but potent drummer who powers Woodstock-based garage pop duo Frankie and His Fingers. “This music is in our blood. My dad played me rock ’n’ roll when I was still in the womb.”

“Yeah, music, especially rock, is like a religion in my family,” says Frank “Frankie” McGinnis, the band’s eager, side burned singer-guitarist. “We were raised on the hits, pop stuff from the mid Fifties to the Nineties, a lot of Top 40. I have a brother and five sisters, and everyone had different tastes. And we were never shy about our feelings, which makes you very sensitive. I guess that’s why I go in for a lot of that
heart-on-the-sleeve stuff with my songs.”

Frankie and His Fingers got together in the fall of 2004, when the Roxbury-raised McGinnis and Westchester native Niss met as students at Vermont’s Bennington College. At first, the pair hooked up regularly just so McGinnis could hear a beat behind the confessional anthems he was cooking up in his dorm room. But after it became apparent there was something special going on, they decided not to waste time auditioning other members and started playing out. Soon, the pair was tearing up stages across the Northeast, and even found their way onto the bill of a festival in Missouri. “We’d always planned to add a bass player or get some other people in the band,” says McGinnis. “But we just kept forgetting about to do it [sic],” adds Niss.

The concept of expanding the lineup is one that audiences who’ve seen the energetic twosome perform are likely to forget, too. “[Theband] is just so exciting and so crisp-sounding every time they play,” says Kristen Garnier, organizer of Woodstock’s annual teen band battle, the Garage Rumble, at which Frankie and His Fingers have performed as non-competing special guests. “They have such a full, complete sound for being only two people.”

Inevitably, the group’s two-person/lady percussionist configuration has led unimaginative listeners to compare it to, you guessed it, The White Stripes—which makes about as much sense as comparing Rush to The Jam simply because they have similar-sized lineups. “Yeah, we’re nothing like The White Stripes,” reasons Niss. “Their stuff is more raw, more bluesy. We’re a lot more poppy.” It’s true; on One Hell of a Skeleton, Frankie and His Fingers’ independently released debut, poignant and sugar-smacked cuts like the handclap-punctuated “Thank You, Mr. Vinkermichael” and the improbably titled “The Boys Who Cry During the Last Scene of Ghost Make Better Boyfriends Anyway” have more in common with McGinnis’s admitted pop-emo influences of Weezer and the Get Up Kids than that of Jack and Meg White’s punk blues. (Not to mention the fact that McGinnis plays bass on his band’s studio tracks.)

But while One Hell of a Skeleton’s clean-and-clear production (by the Felice Brothers’ Jeremy Backofen) adequately captures the unit’s hummable bubblegum M.O., it was a recent gig at Joshua’s in Woodstock that won this music fan over. Live, the duo’s combined high energy and McGinnis’s jangly guitar hooks reveal more Buddy Holly/early Beatles/Marshall Crenshaw-esque melodies than even the front man himself might be conscious of—no bad thing at all. But watching Niss attack her kit is perhaps what gives the better part of a Frankie show’s take-home impressions: Besides mastering the essential art of laying down a riveting, locked-in beat—something many of her elders never get the hang of—she throws in complex tribal patterns on her rack toms and wild, all-over-the-place rolls like she’s merely out for a stroll. It’s no surprise that Keith Moon is her hero.

“I took bass lessons when I was really little, but I was having a hard time because my hands were too small,” Niss recalls. “One day, my dad was playing a Who record and I couldn’t believe it. I asked him how many people were playing the drums on the record and he said, ‘No, Sammi, it’s just one person playing the drums—that’s Keith Moon!’ So I listened for few more minutes. Then I said, ‘Um, Dad, can I play the drums instead of the bass?’”

The band’s live reputation has earned it a devout Hudson Valley following (“It’s small, but large enough to make us feel good,” says McGinnis), especially among fans in their own late teens/early twenties age bracket. “It’s great to be playing to a packed room at the Colony Café [in Woodstock] and have kids yelling along with the words of our songs.” Currently, the group is working on new material (“We write a new song just about every practice,” beams McGinnis) and, believe it or not, auditioning bassists. “We want a fuller live sound,” says McGinnis. “But it has to be the right person. We’ll just have to see if we can find them or not.”

As they put potential third members through the mill, McGinnis and Niss are also coming to grips with their justifiably growing status as members of a “local band to watch.”

“It’s crazy, I was at the mall a little while ago and this girl stopped me and asked if she get my autograph and have her picture taken with me,” says McGinnis. “When stuff like that happens, it just makes me scratch my head.”

Better not trim those fingernails just yet, Frankie. Something says you’ll be doing a lot more head scratching in the years to come.

Frankie and His Fingers will play with Countess of Persia and The Comeback Tour at Cabaloosa’s in New Paltz on September 15 (Sammi’s birthday).

www.myspace.com/frankieandhisfingers