Any band claiming to be sweatier than Fatter Than Albert should retire.
This is a band that will play to hundreds of rabid fans in boiling basements.
This is a band that isn’t afraid to throw heavy-handed bass and gravel-throated horns against jazz-fueled punk guitar with sweat-soaked delivery.
But underneath their wall of sound and sweatbands is a band with a smartly designed song catalog rooted in traditional ska and jazz with a keen ear for melody and clarity.
The result is the best punk rock powerhouse to ever cross the Westbank. This is the band that has filed the blueprint for New Orleans ska.
But this year’s Fatter Then Albert is a much different band than the album- and tour-less group of teenage ska fans from just a few years ago. After losing a practice space and making countless personal sacrifices to Hurricane Katrina, the band pulled through with the arrival of last year’s self-released triumph “Erin’s Runaway Imagination” and a tour throughout the Eastern U.S. and Canada. FTA is now riding the waves of success as a band of early-20-somethings in for the long haul – as long as a hurricane doesn’t stand in their way.
“Just having a practice space is like having a home again,” marketing senior and bassist Greg Rodrigue said. “I just hope New Orleans will pull through, but it could take 15 or 20 years.”
“It’s not like we were the Jetsons before,” added guitarist Hunter Miller.
“The hurricane put things in a new perspective,” drummer John Bourgeois said. “The scene has come back so strong.”
With a larger scene and evolving sound, FTA’s lineup now consists of music industries studies junior and trombonist Daniel Ray, adding monster horn riffs to Charlie McInnis’ baby-making saxophone sound.
“I got to grow up watching them and playing with them,” Ray said. “So it’s great to actually play with them.”
With the addition of Ray, FTA “gets a point of view from the other side of the story,” Bourgeois said. “You go from dancing in the crowds to thinking, ‘I’m making them do it’.”
With a ska scene re-emerged from the flood and an FTA-led revival of an even brighter and energetic New Orleans ska scene, FTA has grown into a well-oiled machine with some serious road-tested wisdom under their belt. And they are just getting started.
“We want to keep bringing it to the stage, keep doing this more and keep it DIY – work within our means,” Rodrigue said.
“We just want to keep the ball rolling and think, ‘How do we do that again?'” added Miller.
But the band knows that as they grow up, they’re going to have to be patient with results as they continue to push the envelope within their brand of New Orleans-based ska.
“Thinking about the next tour or the next album is exciting, it just takes time to get prepared and make new music, ” Rodrigue said. “Any good band will take their time with it. There’s just lots of pressure to hurry up and do it.”
“We have a long songwriting process – we’re all busy working full time or going to school,” Miller added. “It’s not something that can be forced, so we’re not cranking anything out. It’s invigorating just to have a new song.”
Growing up under the ska umbrella does present a few problems for the band as they shake the genre’s critics and embrace what they love. But FTA found that shedding the watered-down image of this generation’s ska, the third wave, is more difficult than imagined.
“We’re not chained to the stereotype,” vocalist Michael Volpi said. “Interviews feel contrived, like we’re made out to be a typical third wave ska band. It’s doesn’t present a good name for us.”
“Ska can span between anything from The Skatalites to Less Than Jake – that’s a big problem,” Ray said. “The popular view of ska is that it’s not changing, that it’s as formulaic as A-B-C, 1-2-3.”
“It’s disturbing to us,” Rodrigue said. “We hope we’re bringing something beyond that to the table. The music is fun – we get into it. We just have to be convincing, too.”
Alex Woodward can be reached at [email protected].
