Fat Mike

Fat Mike, the sarcastic yet sharply witty and gifted punk musician most famous for fronting NOFX, entered the world as Mike Burkett in 1967. Growing up in Southern California, he launched his musical path while still in high school by joining the band False Alarm. Three years later, in 1983, he co-founded NOFX alongside Eric Melvin and Erik Sandin. The group’s fiercely independent, do-it-yourself ethos propelled them to worldwide fame, prompting Burkett to launch his own independent imprint, Fat Wreck Chords. Both the band and the label continued thriving deep into the 2010s. Beyond his work with NOFX, he also handled bass duties for the star-studded punk tribute outfit Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, and drew attention for his confrontational stage appearances as Cokie the Clown, a down-and-out circus figure plagued by serious troubles, among them a struggle with substance abuse. Amid these overlapping endeavors, Burkett composed a ragtime score in 2012 for Rubber Bordello, an adult film styled as a period drama from the early twentieth century.