Jimmy Fat Function is a 9-piece tour de force, combining the polish of pop with a smoothness
of 60's soul and the rawness of 70's funk, formed in the halls of the music school at
University of Wisconsin. The multiple award-winning band have performed at clubs and music festivals
across the United States and Japan. Fat Function has upcoming shows in Madison and Milwaukee,
here to tell us about the band's revival, upcoming shows and little known secrets about the
band, is singer, sax, and band leader, Al Fulassi. Al welcome to Maxic Radio. It's up, Al.
Thank you. First of all, thank you for what you guys do for low-com musicians and thank you for
having me. Oh, man. Tell us real quick before rocker gets into this, about the last song we just
played Juniper. It's kind of a cover, isn't it? Jimmy, I'm going to throw you under the bus a
little bit here. Oh, Jupiter. Jupiter, as in like the planet. Sure. Earth, wind and fire is the band that
our two biggest influences is Tower of Power and Earth, wind and fire. Those are the two bands
that we grew up as a horn band that's pretty much the Bible and the Bible too. And so I grew up,
I had two older sisters that were 11 and 12 years older than me and that was house cleaning music
on Saturday. I love that. So I brought that into the band and we kind of did our own little spin
on it and was that your parents that played? That's all the minds of parents. My parents were like
World War II era. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so big band. Swing. All Woody Herman, Duke Ellington, Count
Basie, all that stuff. My sisters were in that funk R&B 70s, 80s, early 80s and 70s era. So
that's where I got all of that. Wow, the truth is out. There's the first secret for our listeners
who may not be familiar. Tell us about forming this band in the halls of the music school and the
University of Wisconsin. Yeah, so 1993 young little 18-year-old Al came from Kenosha, Wisconsin
and shout out to the summer music clinic that gives away 10 scholarships every single year to both
UW Madison and UW Milwaukee. And I met pretty much half of the people that were in fat function
at the camps trying out for that scholarship, a bunch of us got it. And while we were here in high
school at those camps, we didn't want to do each floor that stayed in dorms had to do like a song
and dance thing. And we didn't want to do it. And at the time, the Arsenio Hall show was huge
and they had that band that was funky as all get out. And so we asked them, Hey, can we get out
of doing the song and dance thing if we do a pit band? Well, can we be the Arsenio Hall band?
It's a great idea. Wow. That's what I thought. And so Tim Whalen and myself, Tim Whalen,
keyboard player, myself formed this pit band and we had so much fun doing it that I said,
Hey, man, if I get to scholarship and I come to Hughes a year older than me, if I come to UW,
we got to do this, do like a tower of power, earth, wind and fire kind of thing. And I ended up
getting the scholarship came to UW. And a couple of years later, we got into a speaking about
Rock Ensen. It was the college version of a kind of a garage band battle of the bands at the
at the Memorial Union Terrace. And we entered that competition and it just kind of was a hobby
that grew out of control. And the next thing we knew we had a couple albums and we were going to
Japan and and and and and the rest of the stuff on that piece of paper in front of you. Wow.
So when your kids go out of control by the musical instruments, the band, let's see,
the band also enjoyed touring success in Japan. You just talked about that making two trips in
2006 and 2012. But I want to know your thoughts on bidets. Funny, funny, you should bring that up.
Yes, this is not public video. Yeah, this is not public video, but we actually have early
cell phone video of us going into a Japanese hotel room. And I didn't read the instructions on
the bathroom, but apparently our guitar player and our bass player did. And he walked in as they
were pressing down on the toilet rim and this little robot arm came and was shooting water at the
ceiling. And they were taking video of it. And that was my introduction to Japanese bidets.
Oh, Americans, huh? He did seats too, by the way. You know, another Madison artist that
has played in Japan with his band, Lords of the Tried Antichristian. He's so infatuated with
bidets. He has like nine in his house. Yeah. And I've sat on one of them,
be tell you, if you ever needed an excuse to go to ties house, you take him up on it. Yes.
All right, I'll send him a DM. Okay, please do. Okay, we have to talk about something also kind of
important because it something good did come out of a tragedy struck in 2009 when your wife Kate
lost her battle with cancer. I'm so sorry to hear that my apologies to you. But you decided to
host the event funk out for cancer for the UW Carbone Cancer Center. And we would like to know,
I know the number, but I wonder how you say it, how much have you raised in memory of Kate?
Over the events life, I think we donated over 260,000 to Dr. Dusty Deming,
his lab at the UW Carbone Cancer Center, which is specific to colon cancer,
who he became a colon cancer doctor and weeks after he became a colon cancer doctor,
was diagnosed with colon cancer himself. Oh my god. Wow. It's an incredible story,
but he's doing incredible work and some of the advancements in colon cancer research worldwide
have come out of his lab and have been direct results of the funding from funk out cancer.
Oh my god. Can people still contribute to this to this funder? We haven't done it in a couple
years. COVID kind of threw a little bit of a wrench in a lot of things. So it's it's to be determined
whether or not we will resurrect it here, hopefully in the in the future. Wow. That's incredible.
Well, you know if you do, you got all kinds of support. Thank you. Recently, Tim Whalen, he moved
back to Wisconsin from Washington DC and you got the band back together. Tell us the resurgence
of fat function. Yeah. So this is this is the the paint's not drawing on this yet. You know,
it's it's it's fresh. But Tim has been he was a member of the United States Army band.
Their pop rock band that is kind of a carbon copy of fat function. It's called the downrange.
There you go. But they they did a lot of pop and so he didn't he had an incredible job of
arranging a tribute to Led Zeppelin and the who for the Army strings and the Army chorus.
An incredible gig and he was out there for 15 years, which made it difficult to say the least
to do fat function stuff back here. So for the last 10 to 15 years, pretty much we were just doing
one or two shows a year. And Funko Cancer was every other year and then we would play our own show
at Majestic or Hainan Saloon. But he is recently retired from the Army and he is originally from
Milwaukee. So he moved back to Milwaukee like months ago. And so we are excited about trying to get
the band to be much more active in Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, Minneapolis, corridor. I don't
think anybody wants to get in the van anytime soon, but it's got to. I love that you're like no
rest for you. I know you just got back. But hey man, we got we got to do some important stuff
here. Okay. So fat function does have shows coming up. You you you did mention the Majestic
Theater. So that's the first show in Madison. That's April 6th. The Saturday, right? Saturday
April 6th with a Dem Tess Faye. Yep. So that should be good. And he's awesome. Yeah. I've heard I've
not seen him live, but I've heard you play him Jimmy and I cannot disagree with him. You've been
around the black poet society. They were huge in Madison. They were the roots before the roots.
Oh nice. Yeah. Also Dem's a long time friend. Oh, that'll be great. Okay. So Saturday, April 6th.
And then your second show is June 1st. And this one's in Milwaukee at the Vivarium. And that's
with Mama Digdown's brass band. Don't tell me that's not going to be a good time. They are
our longest time friend. We used to rehearse in the halls of Mills Auditorium with Mama Digdowns
back in the day. We used to open up for them until we started getting bigger. And then we would play
our own shows with Mama. Their dear friends of ours were super excited to be playing. And it's a
brand new venue that was opened up by the PAPS Theater Group. So yeah, that's right. Yeah. So
they just had their first show. I think weeks ago. Yeah. It's brand new. Yeah. The paint is just
dry. At least the paint is dry on something. Love the smell of fresh paint, right? That's Saturday,
June 1st. Saturday, June 1st. Okay. So getting on backstage with these people that you've known for
so long has just got to be, I mean, your face is lighting up. This is great. Yeah. We have always
enjoyed our time with Mama Digdowns. Very dear friends of ours. We go to their gigs. They come to
ours. We play on stage. We'll definitely do something together at the end of that night. Yeah.
And my buddy, Paulie Ryan. Paulie Ryan. Everybody knows Paulie Ryan. Oh, yeah. Love the guy.
Hey, real quick. What's the current lineup right now for a fat function? Who's all the members
what they do? Sure. It's damn near close to what it was when it started 28 years ago. So myself
and Tim Whalen co-founded the group. The horn section is John Shipper on trumpet.
Jimmy Doherty on trumpet and Courtney Larson on trombone, which sounds really,
really close to the Steeley Dame horn section. Oh, yeah.
Nice. And John Shipper is nothing but amazing. He is an absolute beast. So in trumpet world,
there's solo trumpet and there's lead trumpet. And that guy is world class lead trumpet player.
When he was playing at Atwood Fast on stage, he blew these trumpet notes that they went on for
so long and it was really hot. Like, I was worried about the guy just like completely just like
going down, man. Yeah. I've never seen anybody play so passionately on trumpet. He's a monster.
That's awesome. I've got that from the Madison Scouts. Yeah. Another. Yep.
Drum and bugle, of course. That's right.
Rhythm section, Tim led by Tim, Tim on keyboards. Vince Jesse on guitar, who also plays in town
with the Mike Camelary organ trio. And then Nick Moran on bass, who plays with every Latin man
that there is, I think. All of them. Your, your boy and my boy, Paul Ryan on percussion,
who he is, he is world famous. And then our drummer is Darvante Murray. His nickname is Turbo.
Everybody calls him Turbo. Southside of Chicago straight out of the gospel.
Um, you know, that, that genre, uh, and it's just an absolute monster. And he's been with us
since 2005. So it's amazing that you guys are getting back together, doing some more music.
We can come check you out. Fat function at the majestic on, uh, here in Madison on April 6th.
Al, thank you so much for coming in. Tell us all about fat function. Really appreciate you.
I'll go ahead again. Yeah. I just, I just got to say one thing before you leave. You said there's
a big tower of power influence. I want you to know my very first concert was Tower of Power.
There's a reason you and I feel it. I feel it. Uh, we're going to play a well run dry. Tell us
about this song before I play for the people. Um, so Tim wrote this. Uh, he, he, even though he
is a keyboard player, he's a guitar player at heart and Stevie Ray Vaughn, he was channeling his
best Stevie Ray Vaughn at this point. And we wrote the lyrics about a dear friend of ours who
struggled with, uh, addiction and still does today, but, uh, has turned the corner and, uh,
this goes on to him. All right. Thank you, Al. Appreciate you. It's fat function live on
Max and Concevic Media. We are Local Music.
