‘It’s gonna be a party’: Fat Mike teases new documentary at NOFX retrospective

Fat Mike doesn’t do birthdays.

So it was probably just a coincidence the NOFX retrospective at the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas last weekend took place on his birthday.

“My wife is going to spank my a— really hard 59 times,” Michael Burkett, a.k.a. Fat Mike, said on the roof of the museum as the sun was setting and the lights of Las Vegas were coming on. “Then she’ll do it again with a cane, and then with a paddle. That’s my kind of birthday.”

That’s an answer NOFX’s fans have come to expect from the front man known for his scabrous humor and irreverent lyrics. Fat Mike has made a career out of letting it all hang out and not taking himself too seriously, often courting scandal along the way.

From insulting country music fans in 2018 after the Las Vegas massacre the previous October, to convincing the crowd at SXSW in 2010 that his alter ego Cokie the Clown had peed in the tequila he’d just shared with the audience, Fat Mike has always been a provocateur.

But that’s just one side of the performer.

As the owner of Fat Wreck Chords, the label that put out most of NOFX’s material, as well as albums by scores of other bands, a lack of seriousness was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

“It’s a lot of responsibility,” he admitted with a sigh of relief now that the band has stopped touring and the label has been sold to Hopeless Records. “But being out of NOFX now is wonderful. I can do so many different things that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.”

Despite his ambivalence to birthdays, the museum, which was co-founded by Fat Mike in 2023, pulled out all the stops for a “this is your life”-style birthday party.

Two rooms on the 12,000-square-foot museum’s second floor displayed ephemera documenting the accomplishments of a grimy little punk rock band that stayed in the shadows of peers like Offspring, Green Day and Blink-182, but remained completely independent of major label influence — from its humble beginnings in 1983 to its final show in 2024.

Photos and fliers lined the walls, road cases were stuffed with memorabilia, and the sound of early demos played on actual tape recorders filled the space. “It’s the most substantial exhibit we’ve ever had,” said Vinnie Fiorello, one of the museum’s co-founders.

Meanwhile, down on the main floor, Mike’s former bandmates Aaron “El Hefe” Abeyta and Eric “Smelly” Sandin led guided tours through the museum, telling stories about their unlikely success as punk rock lifers. Later that afternoon, they gathered in the museum’s event space for a sold-out roundtable discussion.

The event kicked off with the trailer for the upcoming NOFX documentary titled “Forty Years of F— Up,” directed by James Buddy Day, and in typical NOFX fashion, they uploaded the wrong file. The showing had to be aborted after a few shocking scenes of bandmates bickering and Fat Mike blasting lines of cocaine.

Talk about a teaser.

For the discussion, Fat Mike, El Hefe and Smelly were joined by their longtime crew who are like a second family to the band. They shared irreverent stories and raucous laughter. At times, you could almost forget about the elephant in the room.

Almost.

Smelly read from a prepared statement addressing the reason why one of the bandmembers, rhythm guitarist Eric Melvin, wasn’t present.

Just a few hours after the final show of their final tour, Melvin’s lawyers served Fat Mike with papers accusing him of “legal and financial malfeasance.” He broke off contact with the band and directed all communication to go through his counsel.

After the roundtable, Fat Mike went out on the museum’s rooftop, feeling sad and vulnerable.

The acrimony that bedeviled so many bands that NOFX avoided for 40 years had finally caught up with them.

“We never had a f— argument, ever,” Fat Mike explained. “Things got a little sketchy during COVID, because people got desperate and we couldn’t play. But before that, we were all best friends. It was so beautiful. It wasn’t like other bands.”

Not being like other bands was the secret to NOFX’s success. While other bands chased record deals, NOFX stayed indie. When the kind of skate punk that NOFX helped pioneer went mainstream, Fat Mike didn’t tone down his act to appeal to a wider audience. He was willing to wager that, if they stayed true to their fans, their fans would stay true to them.

“When we were kids … we made ourselves targets. By the cops, by the jocks, by everybody. Why did we do that? Why did we make ourselves targets? I don’t really know why. It felt good, and it was like, ‘I don’t want to live like you.’”

That determination to live on one’s own terms, no matter how gnarly or weird other people thought you were, is what fueled Fat Mike and NOFX, and judging from the trailer, that hasn’t changed. That’s what Fat Mike means when he says, “NOFX is a completely authentic band.”

NOFX drummer Erik “Smelly” Sandin, left, and Aaron “El Hefe” Abeyta in the Punk Rock Museum.

(Melanie Kaye)

When members of NOFX were interviewed for the documentary, they were upset. Despite a wildly successful final tour, not everyone wanted the band to end and they spoke candidly about their feelings. Even though they were hard to watch, Fat Mike decided to include those scenes in the documentary.

He didn’t want to shy away from material that made him uncomfortable, including footage from a gory near-death experience he had after contracting a bacterial infection in his ulcer. “I’m on the floor and there’s blood and puke everywhere,” Fat Mike said, setting the scene. At that moment, he asked his wife to film him. “I think I’m dying, and I want my last words to be on camera.”

Even more shocking than the documentary’s content, is the way it will be distributed. You won’t be able to watch it on a streamer, download it off the internet or purchase a physical copy. The only way you can see it will be by getting off the couch.

“You have to go see the movie,” Fat Mike explained. “We’re playing it at over 100 theaters around the world once a month.”

Inspired by midnight screenings of his favorite movie, “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Fat Mike went to Cisco Adler, whose father Lou Adler co-produced the camp classic that made Tim Curry a legend, to devise a bold plan for showing the documentary. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Landmark Theater are on board to make the dream a reality.

“I want our fans to have a place to go,” Fat Mike said.

It’s a reasonable DIY strategy that feels completely radical. NOFX in a nutshell.

The documentary includes new songs performed by El Hefe, Fat Mike and Smelly, and they’re creating merchandise for the screenings like popcorn buckets, chocolate bars and NOFX 2-D glasses.

“It’s gonna be a party,” Fat Mike promises. Would you expect anything less?

“Forty Years of F— Up” will premiere in Austin during South by Southwest on March 15 and 16 and at the Nuart Theater on March 19 before opening worldwide on April 10.

Jim Ruland is the author of “Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records” and is a columnist for Razorcake Fanzine, America’s only nonprofit independent music magazine.