Michael John Burkett (born January 16, 1967), known professionally as Fat Mike, is an American musician and producer. He is the bassist and lead vocalist for the
punk rock band
NOFX and the bassist for the punk rock supergroup cover band
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (often shortened to just Me First or the Gimmes) are a punk rock supergroup and cover band that formed in San Francisco in 1995. The band's lineup consists of Spike Slawson, Fat Mike, Joey Cape, and Dave Raun. Ch ...
. Fat Mike started out with his first band
False Alarm in 1982. He credits
Joe Escalante
Joseph Patrick Escalante (born January 30, 1963) is an American television writer, film and television director, musician, radio host, and former television executive. He is known professionally as the bassist and songwriter for the punk rock ...
of the Vandals for introducing him to punk rock when he was 13 at a summer camp.
Musical career
While attending
Beverly Hills High School, Mike began his musical career with the band False Alarm. After the band split up in 1983, he met
Eric Melvin and
Erik Sandin and formed the original line-up of NOFX. He has also appeared as a guest-vocalist on a number of other bands' tracks including "Peter Brady" on
Screeching Weasel
Screeching Weasel is an American punk rock band consisting of Ben Weasel (vocals), Mike Kennerty (guitar), Mike Hunchback (guitar), Zach "Poutine" Brandner (bass) and Pierre Marche (drums). Screeching Weasel is originally from the Chicago subur ...
's 1993 album, ''
Anthem for a New Tomorrow''. Other appearances include "Beware" by Randy, "Mr. Coffee" and "Lazy" by
Lagwagon. Mike can also be heard heckling and requesting "
Free Bird" at the end of the
Lunachicks
Lunachicks are an American punk rock band from New York City. The band formed in 1987 and had been on hiatus since 2000, with the band reuniting in 2019. The band cited influences including the Ramones, Kiss, and the MC5.
Biography
Theo K ...
song, "Missed It," off their 1996 album, ''Pretty Ugly'', which he also produced. He also appears as a guest vocalist on the
Dropkick Murphys single "
Going Out In Style". Mike is the owner and founder of
Fat Wreck Chords.
Mike recorded the ''
Cokie the Clown'' EP with NOFX, playing Cokie on both the cover of the EP and the music video for the title-track, "Cokie the Clown". In the video, Mike dresses as Cokie and puts white powder into his squirting flower, which in the song he describes as "my own special blend of X, coke, and K". Cokie then walks around
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
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squirting powder in pedestrians' faces, as chronicled in the song itself. The video was shot during the punk music festival
Riot Fest.
Fat Mike has made several appearances as Cokie the Clown, but one of his most memorable was at
Emo's, a popular nightclub in
Austin on March 20, 2010, at the
South by Southwest festival. He recounted several graphic and disturbing stories about his life, and played several songs both previously released and unreleased. He also tricked several members of the audience into drinking tequila, before showing them a video of himself filling a partially full bottle of tequila to the top with urine to shocked reactions. The stunt was later revealed as a joke on NOFX's website, which showed Fat Mike switching out the urine bottle for an untainted one before making audience members drink it. Mike has since been banned from Emo's. However, in NOFX's autobiography Mike claims that the urine was indeed served to the audience.
In 2015 Mike premiered a
musical titled ''Home Street Home'' which he co-wrote with Soma Snakeoil and
Jeff Marx.
In 2019, Fat Mike released a solo album, in the character of Cokie the Clown, titled ''You're Welcome''. The album features Fat Mike as Cokie as well as
Dizzy Reed (Guns N' Roses) and
Travis Barker (blink 182).
Activism
Punkvoter.com
Fat Mike founded the website Punkvoter.com in 2004 in an effort to mobilize the punk community to vote
George W. Bush out of office in that year's presidential election. He had never been very active in politics before then, admitting that he never even voted until
2000. However, he was driven into political activism because of Bush, whom he viewed as "the most ridiculous president in the history of presidents." Punkvoter.com targeted 18-to-25-year-old punk fans and other disenfranchised young people and encouraged them to vote Bush out of office. At its peak, the site was getting 15 million hits a day and ultimately raised over $1 million.
Rock Against Bush
As with Punkvoter.com, Mike organized the
Rock Against Bush
Rock Against Bush was a project mobilizing punk and alternative musicians against the 2004 U.S. Presidential re-election campaign of George W. Bush. At its core was the idea of using music to create an anti-war, pro-peace sentiment, similar to ...
campaign to mobilize punk fans and musicians against President
George W. Bush. Fat Mike's band NOFX, along with many other well-known punk artists including
Alkaline Trio,
Green Day, and
Jello Biafra, embarked on a tour of American college campuses in the months leading up to the
2004 presidential election. Mike hoped to go beyond just protest and actually educate kids about why they should vote against Bush. At the shows, he would hand out free DVDs of ''Uncovered: The Whole Truth About The Iraq War'', a documentary that questions the Bush administration's motives in the Middle East.
To coincide with the tour, Mike released two Rock Against Bush compilation albums on Fat Wreck Chords featuring new music from some of the bands on the label. The albums sold over 650,000 copies and proceeds helped fund the tour, as well as going toward magazine ads and billboards in swing states.
Personal life
Burkett lives in
Sherman Oaks,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
. He attended college at
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different ...
and graduated in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in Social Science and a minor in Human Sexuality. According to the book ''NOFX The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories'', Burkett has said that he received the moniker "Fat Mike" from "one of the guys from
he band
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
Subculture". He is of
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
heritage but is an
atheist
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...
.
He and his wife Erin divorced in 2010 after 18 years of marriage. They have a daughter named Darla. In October 2009, Mike appeared in the documentary ''
The Other F Word
''The Other F Word'' is a 2011 American documentary film directed by independent filmmaker Andrea Blaugrund Nevins. The film explores the world of aging punk rock musicians, as they transition into parents and try to maintain the contrast between ...
'', an analysis of punk rock fatherhood.
Fat Mike formerly owned a
gastropub
A gastropub or gastro pub is a pub that serves gourmet comfort food. The term was coined in the 1990s, though similar brewpubs existed during the 1980s.
Etymology
The term ''gastropub'' (derived from gastronomy) was coined in 1991, when David E ...
-style restaurant in the
Park Slope neighborhood of
Brooklyn, NY called Thistle Hill Tavern. He has been into
BDSM
BDSM is a variety of often erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged ...
for years: he has had a
dungeon in his house. Fat Mike has numerous tattoos, including one on his left arm that features a golfing
dominatrix
A dominatrix (; ) or femdom is a woman who takes the dominant role in BDSM activities. A dominatrix can be of any sexual orientation, but this does not necessarily limit the genders of her submissive partners. Dominatrices are known for inflic ...
and her bound caddy. When discussing the
NOFX song
Fuck Euphemism for which he wrote the lyrics he discussed how he describes himself as
queer: “I live a BDSM lifestyle and I’m a crossdresser, so it did bother me when people were calling me a
cis male. I like the whole thing of defining yourself using your own terms, because I’m a punk rocker first, and then a submissive crossdressing male. The transgender community and the gay community are taking a stance on how we want to be known, and I’m going to be known as a certain way.”
Fat Mike announced his engagement to adult film actress Soma Snakeoil on January 28, 2014. Mike and Soma separated August 2017.
He has been vocal about assisting with his terminally ill mother's death, describing the episode in a song called "La Pieta" which is featured in NOFX's audiobook version of ''The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories''.
In 2014, Burkett started Fatale, a brand of panties marketed towards men.
Assault incident
On November 5, 2014, at a NOFX show in
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...
, Australia, Fat Mike had complained about a neck injury and had asked the audience not to throw objects at him and grab him while on stage as it caused him pain. While playing the song "Linoleum", a fan climbed onstage and put his arm around Mike's neck, to which Mike responded by elbowing him to the ground and then kicking him in the face. The fan suffered some bruising on his face but had no major injuries. Later, Fat Mike and the fan both apologized via
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
. A video was released of Mike giving the fan a beer and custom T-shirt and letting him kick him with a fluffy slipper as an apology.
Discography
;As Cokie the Clown
*''You're Welcome'' (2019)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fat Mike
1967 births
20th-century American guitarists
Jewish American atheists
American anti–Iraq War activists
American male guitarists
American male singers
American punk rock singers
American punk rock bass guitarists
American rock bass guitarists
American male bass guitarists
Beverly Hills High School alumni
Critics of religions
Fat Wreck Chords
Living people
Jewish American musicians
Jewish singers
Jews in punk rock
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes members
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Guitarists from San Francisco
NOFX members
People from Newton, Massachusetts
Queer men
Queer musicians
San Francisco State University alumni
Singers from Los Angeles