NOFX
Interview with Fat Mike
Words: Scott Harrell

Appearing:
February 22, 2008
House of Blues, Orlando

February 23, 2008
Plush, Jacksonville

After twenty-four years and approximately four million releases that first defined and later became the standard bearers of West Coast punk, it's a little tiresome to try to get into the nuts and bolts of the NOFX process. You're either down with the group's patented high-speed juxtaposition of the smart and the dumb, the funny and the deadly serious, or you're not. Instead, we bothered singer/bassist and Fat Wreck Chords founder “Fat Mike” Burkett on a Wednesday morning with questions about the upcoming presidential election, punk-rock cred, and most importantly:

REAX:  So why no Tampa this time around?
Fat Mike:  We're not.  So I'm doing an interview for Tampa?

REAX:  For Florida. We're advancing the Orlando show.
FM:  This tour was just supposed to be the Midwest and Texas, but we wanted to get a few games of golf in before we hit the cold, and we haven't really projected the next tour. I don't know why we're not going down there. Oh, I know what it is. I'm going to a wedding out there, and I want to take my daughter to Disney World. So that explains Orlando.

REAX:  Has touring gotten harder for you as you've gotten a little older?
FM:  Yeah. We don't want to tour much anymore, and when we do tour we don't tour for more than two, two and a half weeks at a time. So we're never out on long tours. It's one of the reasons we can't do the Warped Tour anymore – the main reason, really.

REAX:  So no more Warped Tour for NOFX?
FM:  We'll do a few weeks at a time, but we can't do the whole thing anymore.

REAX:  Whom do you like for the Presidential race?
FM:  I'll take any of the three Democrats. I'm not choosy. I guess I would take Obama over anyone else, because, I don't know, he's a pretty good speaker.  It's a good move for the world stage, to get a black man to be President.  It really says something.

REAX:  Do you think the Democratic Party got too greedy, putting up an African-American man and woman as the main candidates?
FM:  I don't think so. I mean, I think it's pretty crazy in the primaries how the Democrats are coming out and voting. I don't think Democrats have any problem voting for a black man. I don't think we're a racist country, we're a classist country, and an educated black man has a better shot than a woman. I think they both can win. Hilary's just not universally liked. I really can't figure out why.

REAX:  What keeps you from just throwing up your hands in disgust about the whole thing?
FM:  I'm different than four years ago; I have a totally different outlook now. But I've gotta to do my part. The 2004 election, that was harder on my life than anything. But I do it cause it's gotta be done.

REAX:  Will you guys be doing any “get out and vote” stuff on this tour, besides just talking about stuff onstage?
FM:  I'm not even saying anything like that onstage. We get 1500 kids a night, I think most of our fans now are registered voters, and most of our audiences are in their twenties now, so it makes it kind of weird. It's not my thing; it never was my thing. Maybe a couple of years ago, yeah, when it really needed to be said, but it's not a career. We're still doing punkvoter.org, we're still putting out music, and we're still encouraging people to vote. We did the Rock Against Bush tour, and we brought out Jello Biafra, and he's a lot better at it than I am. It's my job to bring the kids, and his job to influence them, I guess. Laughs

REAX:  When was the last time somebody punk tested you?
FM:  I don't think it's ever happened.

REAX:  It's has to be something some kids see as a really punk thing to do, to try to test some well-known scene guy's integrity.
FM:  Maybe four or five years ago, in France, I was reading the menu outside the front door of some club with my mom, and some kid called me a sellout. It was pretty laughable at that point – as I'm walking out the front door of the club with two hundred kids out there. So no one ever questions my credibility. It would be kind of a punk thing to do laughs. I'm pretty sure we're the biggest DIY band in the world. We even book our own tours now, and I think we outdo ourselves.

REAX:  Do you pay attention to what's going on in music, beyond in a professional sense?
FM:  I'm really bad at that. I really don't like anything. Everyone does their top ten lists at the end of the year, and I couldn't even write a list of the top ten CDs of 2007. I had to write a list of the top ten CDs I bought in 2007, because I did buy ten CDs, but they weren't new CDs.

REAX:  Do you ever think about retiring from the band end of things?
FM:  You know, it's weird. It's just fun. I think I'd miss it too much. Luckily, being in NOFX, our worries are not the worries most people in big bands have. We don't worry about what people are gonna like, or if we're still good, or how many people are going to the show. We just worry about where to get the best drugs afterwards and where the closest golf course is. So I don't know. Going on tour with your best friends is the best thing ever, so I've never really thought about stopping. Even our crew, we've had the same crew for seventeen years, basically. Some people longer, some shorter, but that's pretty much unheard of.

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