INTERVIEW: FAT TONY

TALKING TO THE RAPPER ABOUT HIS RECENT TOUR WITH WHEATUS

Fat Tony is a lot of things. Among them: a great rapper and songwriter; an A&R director; a television personality; and a DJ who blended Too Short’s “Blow The Whistle” with the Brooks & Dunn song “Neon Moon” to viral acclaim. I actually toured with Tony over a decade ago. It was a blast. But when I hit him up about doing an interview for John’s Music Blog, I wanted to focus on one specific recent event in his career: his American tour supporting Wheatus.

You probably know Wheatus. They are a Long Island alternative rock band most famous for their iconic 2000 smash “Teenage Dirtbag,” a song that I think is as good as anything Weezer ever made. It’s also a song that refuses to go away: as it happens, right before the Wheatus/Fat Tony run, “Teenage Dirtbag” started blowing up on TikTok. Needless to say, I had a lot of questions about this tour. Luckily, Tony had plenty of answers.

How did Wheatus contact you? Why did they hit you up to begin with?

So, in 2019, I was living in Brooklyn, and I played a show at Elsewhere, and I was opening up for this nerdcore rapper named Mega Ran.

I was there, actually.

Oh, shit. There, that is where I met Wheatus. So, we’re at soundcheck, and then Brendan, the singer of Wheatus, comes through. I had never met him, never seen his face except for the “Teenage Dirtbag” music video. And he’s at the soundcheck because he is going to do a song with Mega Ran. We ended up going to have dinner next door at Mission Chinese, just because we were hungry and it’s there, and all the artists playing the show decided to hang out together.

At the dinner, I sat next to homie from Wheatus, and we just started talking, and just really hit it off. We started hanging out: I would go visit him at his house in the Bronx, he watched me and my girlfriend’s car when we were out of town for the holidays. He was just a dude that I liked to kick it with. We didn’t work on music or make a song or anything, we were just vibing, talking about music, the music business, niche artists that we like and shit, talking about hardcore.

And he was like, “Yo, when we go on tour, we often bring out rappers, you should tour with us one day.” And the last time I hung out with him, at the end of 2019, or maybe even like January 2020, I was planning on going on tour. I had just put out a new album and all this shit. And he was talking to me about how this sportscaster died in his 30s of a lung thing, and no one knew what it was. He was on a ventilator and all this shit. And next thing you know, Covid-19 hits the fucking globe.

I didn’t see him for a couple years, and by the time 2022 rolls around, he was like, “Yo, we’re thinking about going back on the road, we would still love to take you on tour.” And they did it.

It was all America, right? 

It was all America, and it was mostly the Midwest, because prior to Covid, they went on tour with Hoobastank and Living Colour. And they were first of three on that tour. I came to find out that Wheatus sold way more records in the UK and Australia. So, most of their tour history has been there. Doing the tour with Living Colour and Hoobastank, according to them, was one of the first times they’d ever done just a full US tour since their first album came out in 2000.

So, they were like, “We want to go back to all these Midwest markets that we hit during the tour [with Hoobastank and Living Colour], see if we can come back as the headliners, see what’s going to happen.” And it was fucking interesting, because Wheatus are so different from any kind of band I’ve ever toured with before, ever, right? Because they’re an older band, they’re more of a mainstream rock band, in my eyes, or at least to my ears. Because I’m so used to touring with other underground rappers, or maybe an indie rock band, or maybe a punk band. But never someone that’s had a big radio hit that I used to listen to as a kid.

What did the audience makeup of these shows look like?

So, here’s the other thing: when I said yes to the tour, my gut told me “Teenage Dirtbag” was the kind of song that could have a second life again.

We talked about that the last time we hung out. Remember that?

Yes! I was like, “They are bound to go viral again. I don’t know when it’s gonna happen, but I hope it happens before we go on tour, and we can eat off of it.” And it fucking happened! It straight up became a viral smash, where every celebrity was doing this “Dirtbag Challenge,” where, to a sped-up version of the song, you would post your teenage pics, your high school pics, your college pics, your 20-something pics. And, it got them a lot of attention. Entertainment Tonight, TMZ motherfuckers were doing it, not just kids. Their streams, as most TikTok hits do, went crazy. 

Their viral moment really triggered their demographic. For some of our best shows, we had the promoter working with the local radio stations, like the local alt rock, Top 40 station, and they would bring out so many 30-somethings, 40-somethings. Like, I would say, two-thirds of the crowd at the best shows were people in their 30s and 40s, people like me–I’m in my mid-30s–and the other third of the crowd were teenagers who heard about the song from TikTok. There were tons of those kids, too, with their parents. And they would pretty much sit quietly during the show and would only get up when I did my viral moment, the “Neon Moon” blend, and when Wheatus did “Teenage Dirtbag.” Besides that, they were just chilling, but during those two moments, they would lose their fucking minds!

So your set went over pretty well?

Yeah, there was never a night where there was any negative vibe. Even the shows that underperformed, everybody was chill, everybody was nice. There was only, like, out of a two-week, two-and-a-half week tour, we had a couple duds. We had one dud that was fucking crazy. We played on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Missouri. 

Wait, a farm?

A literal farm. All of our shoes were covered in cow shit. 

Was there a venue on the farm?

There was no venue! Check this out: when I got the tour itinerary, there’s one date that’s a festival that I’m not playing. And the name of the festival was, like, cannabis-something. It was some weed shit, right, so I got the impression that it was a weed head, hippie, Deadhead-type of festival. And I’m going to have a day off, in my mind, I’m just going to smoke my brains out and fucking chill, right?

Sure.

Then I also found out that Wheatus was playing an acoustic show. So, some of the band members were like, we’re going to chill, too–this is going to be a breeze, it’s going to be a great day, it’s going to be no hassles. 

A few days before the show, the promoter hits us up and says that her business partner in the festival is no longer working for her. It turned out to be her husband. They were getting a divorce and it was nasty and he was no longer part of the business. Then we found out, whoever had the money was now out of the festival. But, the show was going to go on. They were going to honor the guarantees. They were like, “We know it’s not going to be a great turnout because of all the behind-the-scenes drama, but we’d love for y'all to come anyway.” So, we’re thinking, it might be kind of a dud, but let’s just see what happens. 

First thing when we get there, there’s no stage. It had just rained. There’s mud everywhere. And a gentleman pulls up on a tractor, and this man looks old as dirt. His name is Jim, he looks like he’s about 98, but he’s really 50-something. He has had terminal cancer since 1995, he said that his doctor told him he had a few months to live, and he’s been living since that diagnosis. He’s from California, he moved out to the middle of nowhere to live on a farm, because he’s like, “If I’m gonna die, I want to spend my last years peacefully.”

His daughter was the woman who was setting up the concert, so he was there to help her. And we kicked it with Jim all day, he was so nice, he had all these little [VW] Beetles that he put nitro engines in, that he raced around, which is actually fucking dangerous as shit. One of them had an Iron Cross on it, which was kind of weird to me, but, you know, that’s that rebel biker shit.

They made us food–vegan food–and all these local families came out of nowhere to watch the show, and Wheatus and their backup singers ended up doing an acoustic set around a campfire, in the middle of nowhere, and this day that started off looking like it was going to be a fucking disaster turned out to be extremely wholesome.  

Even some of the shows that were in weird, off places, like one of the shows that was in this fancy suburb of Omaha, Nebraska…

Is this the spot you sent me the video from?

Yes, and the venue was literally inside of a Bentley dealership. It was this fancy bar that this rich dude who is a music lover, quote-unquote, put together. And it had a fancy-ass soundsystem, a huge bar. They were selling tables for $500, at the Wheatus/Fat Tony concert. If you pulled the curtain in the venue, you could see the Bentley showroom floor.

That’s such a wild mix: the weed festival on the farm, and then the Bentley dealership.

Dude, the dualities of life. That’s what we saw on this tour! That show, with the $500 tables–there were people that bought the tables. The fucking tables were full. And they were mostly full of, like, middle-aged white women, soccer mom vibes, white wine vibes, maybe even white wine with some ice cubes in them vibes, and they were getting drunk, slamming White Claws. When “Dirtbag” came on, they were singing so loud that Wheatus stopped the show and let them do it acapella. And the room cheered for them. Every night felt like someone’s high school reunion.

Were those women into your set?

Yeah. Everyone was geeked, because it was the type of person that I think looked at going to this concert as their night out. It wasn’t like a normal show where people were even thinking critically about the music. I think people were there to have drinks and be entertained and hang out with their group of friends. They got a babysitter for the night, or whatever. That was the vibe of every show. Middle-aged white folks chilling, having a great time in America. Mixed with smatterings of college kids and teenagers who only knew the song from TikTok. And likely only know me from the “Neon Moon” blend.

All the venues were quality, we were on a bus. It was definitely one of the most comfortable ways that I’ve toured, because I’m used to, like, coming up sleeping on the floor, taking the Greyhound, even in recent years getting a van, getting rental cars, maybe getting an Airbnb every night. But to have a tour manager, a full-on driver, a tour bus, we were able to set up and break down, there were rarely openers, the venue was ours everyday. You know what I mean? It was positive as fuck.

Sounds like a great way to tour in your mid-30s.

Absolutely. Here’s another thing: because Wheatus are all grown dudes, too, it was a family-friendly vibe on the bus. They brought their dogs with them. It was very chill and nice, and I can’t imagine touring any other way at this age.

I guess that’s the power of getting a hit before culture completely fragmented.

No, totally, and it’s interesting because, you know, that’s the only Wheatus song that I knew beforehand. Now, Wheatus have several records, they definitely have some diehard fans. It’s no surprise I met them when I played with the nerdcore rapper Mega Ran. I think if nerd rock was a thing, that could be Wheatus fans. And I don’t mean that as a diss, no shots. I love nerds, I’m a nerd myself in several damn ways.

It’s not that different from Weezer in a sense.

Totally. Same time period. The real interesting thing to me was talking to Brendan from Wheatus everyday and learning about him and his life and his music career. Because he’s been hit with so much luck, so much circumstance. 

He told me that he wrote “Teenage Dirtbag” in 1995 when he was young, kind of a song he demoed by himself. He went on, over the next five years, to join another band that got signed, they went on tour, they had videos on TV–he had another thing happen. And then that ended and he wanted to start his own thing again, he started Wheatus, and pulled that song out of the vault. 

I was asking him why he never used that song for the other band that he was in between ‘95 and the Y2K period. And he told me that he always felt that “Teenage Dirtbag” could be a popular song and wanted to wait for the right moment to use it in a band, and just sat on it.

What if he had put it out back in the ‘90s and it didn’t hit? I think that it coming out in 2000, coming out with that Loser movie after the homie was poppin’ with American Pie… The look of the band, kind of a skater vibe, kind of a pop punk vibe, Weezer was still popular then. It came out at the perfect time. Somehow, some way, his gut told him to hold onto it. And, it’s his song that he wrote and continues to license. 

I’m so impressed by Wheatus because they’re really the power of what a hit song can do. Even on the financial side, they were telling me they had a good year thanks to the TikTok thing that led to all these bookings. They’re playing these festivals coming up that are kind of like the When We Were Young festival, that are Y2K radio rock and pop punk bands playing. They’re kind of having their second wind, and it’s all thanks to this one song. He lives in New York, where he’s from, he owns a house. He has an amazing studio that he built in his home.

His entire family, and his band, and all of his interests and passions are funded by this one song, really. Isn’t that crazy? One song! 

Postscript from Tony: “The tour bus company fucked up and gave us a bus with the wrap still on it. Wiz Khalifa used the bus before us for his Liquid Death-sponsored tour. People asked us what the hell the imagery was, literally, everywhere we went lol.”

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