Oh, Big Fat Head. Where do I begin. T’was an ordinary weekend in September, or it would have been if they hadn’t been playing a show. So, it was at 934 fest I had the privilege and the honor to witness their musical magic firsthand.
Pictured (L to R): Stanic (drums), Nate (vocals/guitar), Jordan (guitar), Olivia (bass/vocals)
Big Fat Head is a four-person punk/ indie rock group that’s been a big name in the local Columbus scene since Covid. Sometimes gritty, sometimes folky, sometimes ethereal, they leave no stone unturned for the sounds they can create. They collaborate with a lot of different people too. Most of their album covers cover a different art form such glassblowing (Kicking My Own Ass cover), woodworking (Villain Pop cover), illustration (Bobo’s Rising), and animation (Kicking My Own Ass music video). They’ve also featured many artists in their music like Let’sPaintTV in Bobo’s Rising and HenrySexySaxMan at multiple shows.
Bobo’s Rising, their latest 10 track album, was released in May of 2024 and their newest single Paradox was just released this October. If I were you I would buy a CD. Mine looks super sick-tastic in the center console of my Civic. Also I love it when artists put cool little illustrations on the CD. It fills my heart with joy every time I get to pop that thing in.
Nate - Hi-dy ho, it’s uh Nate Wilder, Big Fat Head, playing guitar, singing songs.
Jordan- Hey, I’m Jordan, I play guitar.
How did you guys end up meeting?
Nate - Me and Jordan met at summer camp when we were youths and then in high school we had a band, kind of went to college. Did another band, graduated, Covid was happening, and formulated this one. So it’s like a phoenix, like we’ve risen from the ashes a couple times to take a new form I think. There was a good void in just like shows happening at venues, particularly in Columbus, so it was easy to kind of like study all the stuff going up on bandcamp from all the Covid albums and everything before what people were like really listening to and attending before Covid happened and kind of tap into that and start playing shows when the void was open after Covid was starting to lift. Within reason, you know, we weren’t rushing to it necessarily but once it seemed kind of reasonable to do we started playing shows and stuff. It was cool.
Backgrounds
Did you guys go to a lot of local shows before starting the band?
Nate - Yeah, absolutely. Just so many bands that I feel like inspired us that kind of like do it. Yeah, I don’t know. Columbus isn’t necessarily like a complete hot-bed, but there are and were a lot of bands that were cool. Tonight, Dana is kind of like our godfather band right now. Kind of running Cafe Bourbon St. and keeping the punk scene alive. Super fantastic. Bummers was a big one I feel like when we were in high school.
Jordan - Yeah.
Nate - Like psych-rock stuff in Columbus was really cool when we were youths, kind of starting it out. Everything that was going on in Athens, in like the late 2010’s was pretty exciting and just like really, I don’t know, like everyone everywhere is tapped into the internet and that really connects you to just like everything.
Pulling influences from literally everything ever. But local scene, of course inspiring to be able to see that people actually give a shit and will show up. Especially here, like tonight in Fairborn has been insane, cause, I don’t know, what else is going on. It’s cool that everyone’s pulling up, but at the same time, no one could be pulling up
Yeah, on like a nice Saturday night like this.
Nate - Fairborn is the only place named Fairborn in the world, so, who’s really here, what’s going on?
You have some of the sickest album covers I’ve seen, but Villain Pop and Baby’s Anthem stuck out to me the most. What are the stories behind those?
Nate - Baby’s Anthem, we bought a little baby theremin, synth from a company/person called Moon Armada, and they’re actually from Ohio like, man I forget what town, but they live in Turkey or something far out right now and they’re making these theremin synthesizers and, a bunch of other stuff at this point, into baby dolls and other just like random kind of devices. It’s pretty epic, we just snapped a photo of that. Olivia got it for me, our bass player and singer, for Christmas or my birthday or something like that and I don’t know, it just seemed perfect. That song I recorded during Covid, when I was in school. Rented a bunch of equipment, was recording an album in my basement of like… I had a bed-bug house, so like half of the- Jordan was my roommate, and then we had some like, we sued our landlord, some fall-out happened. He moved out, but he came over, we recorded this album over like a week or so. He played drums on Baby’s Anthem and another song or two and then Olivia sang on some songs and we kind of just hodgepodged it during Covid cause we didn’t think we were gonna be a band.
Or, I didn’t. Just kind of making the songs and yeah, I don’t know, so the cover just like again was just kind of slapping it together. But Villain Pop, since we had kind of formed a band and were like a real thing, my dad had been carving some heads and doing some folk art stuff and I asked him to carve all of us into figurines, so he did, and we worked together on that. It was cool. It was like bittersweet because by the time the Villain Pop album had come out, we had switched drummers. But it was cool too because Lorenzo, our former drummer, he had played on the album so he was kind of cemented in the cover. But by that point, you know, Stanic, our current drummer, had been playing at it a lot. It was cool in the next album, Bobo Rising, to have him cemented in it too and then in the next one, may or may not have a visualization of us again in another form, in another medium.
For someone who hasn’t heard your music before, what shape do you think would describe your sound?
Jordan - Pentagon.
Nate - Trapezoid.
Sharp?
Nate - Yeah, sharp. It’s not that round.
Jordan - Definitely not like, not anything too simple like a square but not too crazy like uh... I don’t know
Nate - Like there might be curves but, and it’s not gonna be like a really complex star or like..
Jordan - So it’s like an amoeba of some sort.
I could see that.
What are your artistic backgrounds?
Nate - I played in orchestra, my mom is like a graphic designer and a painter. My dad blows glass as like a primary trade and then he does the wood sculpting on the side. A lot of my family are artists, but I’m not really gifted in visual arts.
Nate - (to Jordan) You played in band when you were a youth.
Jordan - Yeah, I was in marching band and the jazz band; school band in general. I feel like at the time it was not cool, but it was fun. I feel like I’ve been doing music stuff forever. My mom makes sculpture art and stuff, so that’s cool. I’m like a very bad doodler, but I like doodling, but for the most part it’s always been music and I feel like there’s always been things to make noise with since I was a little guy.
Nate - Stanic’s played in bands forever. Him and his brother and Olivia have been through a variety of classes through schooling, but she really picked it up super quick when we started the band. She hadn’t played bass before we played in this band. And, um, I don’t know, we excelled. It’s crazy.
I do really like the basslines in your songs. Super sick.
Nate - She shreds.
When I heard about you from people, I’ve only heard good things. So what was it like starting out, first gig, getting into the Columbus music scene?
Nate - It was all bad things. No, uh, it was honestly (in an old-timey accent) “well it was about 4 years ago on this very weekend”. No, it was 2 weeks after, it was Halloween, 4 years ago, we kind of like, we had been practicing a little bit, post Covid, trying to do a thing or 2 and Halloween was coming around the corner and it felt like, it seemed like everywhere in the world was gonna be having Halloween parties and then Covid was no longer of an extremely major concern.
So we started, we played shows that weekend and it kind of just launched us into starting to get asked to play more and, I don’t know, immediately we were playing amongst friends for the first couple shows so it was like a soft launch 3 times over in a weekend. Like we played on a Friday night, and then we played Saturday at like 5:00 in Columbus and then drove to Athens and played at like 9:00 or something like that. It was cool. It just kind of spiraled from there. Like I said earlier, I mean we tried to do our homework and see what was going on in the Midwest and in Columbus. What are people actually gonna want to hear? Finding out what people will show up for.
And what was it like changing this thing you were doing from a hobby to something bigger like this?
Nate - Uh well, you know, I don’t really care about work or my job so.. I’m gonna play songs with these guys anyway probably. Like we’ll get together whenever we can, whether we’re taking the stage or not we’ll probably always be making and recording music, so taking it more seriously.. I don’t know. Until it pays money seriously, which I don’t ever expect that to happen, then maybe I’d have a different answer but for now it feels like the same thing as earlier. We’re just doing it more. It just feels like we’re hanging out more. Like the relationship has gotten more serious, like we’re no longer just dating. We’re getting towards something bigger.
Going to third base?
Nate: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Jordan: I feel like we’ve gone through different phases, but I feel like none of us have ever been in the headspace of… or we’ve all been in the headspace of like “If we could just do this for a job that would be sick” but I feel like, as 20-something year olds, living in a midwestern town in modern day America it’s just been like “well no one gives a fuck, so like let’s just do this for fun”.
Nate : The joy is the moment. Like tonight, it’s 100+ people at this weird fucked up theatre just like off the chain.
Jordan: I feel like I’ve always thought of work in the context of the band in the past couple years as just whatever I can do to just survive so I can do the things I actually want to do.
*Stanic arrives*
Stanic: Sorry, I’m his lawyer. Anything that’s been said, you need to.. Yeah. Erase, forever. Just kidding.
Nate: This is drum-chatterbox.
Stanic: Ohhhh… me. Yes.
Please introduce yourself for us.
Stanic: They call me drum…. They call me drum. I like drum.
Hypotheticals
Would you rather have a hamster that looks like a rock or a rock that looks like a hamster?
Jordan : Hamster that looks like a rock just because it would be cool to have a hamster.
Stanic: Double down.
Jordan: I’ve never had a hamster man.
Stanic: I agree.
Jordan: pets in general, cool. Underrated.
Stanic: I love that. Yeah.
Jordan: The more animals the better.
Nate : I say hamster that looks like a rock… or a rock that looks like a hamster because, taking care of a hamster…
Jordan: Wait, so we all agree?
Nate: No, no. We DON’T agree. You guys want a hamster that looks like a rock.
Stanic: Oh yeah, true.
Nate: But I want a rock that looks like a hamster because I’m not gonna take care of a rock. I’m not gonna feed a rock. I’m not gonna clean up the shit of a rock. But, if I had a little hamster I could pet I could be like, “Oh it’s a little hamster”, BUT it was inanimate. That would be nice.
Jordan: Yeah but… Ok, we’re saying we actually have a hamster.
Nate: But it’d be a rock.
Well it looks like one.
Jordan: Yeah.
Nate: It looks like a rock. It may be a hamster.
Jordan: That’s tough.. But would it be soft like a hamster?
Stanic: Hmmm..
Nate: No, it’d be a rock! That’s why I’m saying that if you had a rock that was a hamster it would at least be soft and look like a hamster. You could hand it to a child and be like “Oh it’s not petrified. It’s just still”.
Jordan: Does it move?
Nate: No, probably not. Cause it’s a rock. Fuck.
Yeah I don’t know, it just looks like one.
Jordan: Important factors.
I wish I came to you with more information. I’m not versed enough in this.
Nate: That’s my final answer. If I could buzz the button. Rock as a hamster.
Stanic: Lawyer approves.
Jordan: I think my final answer is just a hamster animal. Real heart.
What do you think would be your all star line-up for a show?
Jordan: Ingram music hall, Nickelback headlining and… Who would be the opener? We would be the sandwich. It doesn’t even have to be Nickelback, and I know this sounds funny but any butt-rock band like Shinedown or Creed, or any just like real *guitar noises*
Stanic: I think generally we’d love to be tapped in with Twenty One Pilots. We want to, you know, link and bill with them.
Nate: Like a Mormon tabernacle.
Stanic: Yeah.
Jordan: In all seriousness I feel like either Newport or Nelsonville. Those are like the dream gigs.
Nate: Yeah, we’d ultimately like to be tapped into Ohio. I mean straight up tonight, like being able to come here with Dana was fantastic. Just playing so much with them in Columbus and seeing them going around town and all about the country. That we were attempting to do so with them before and I mean everyone was great, everyone from Cincinnati, everyone from Dayton, Everyone in Columbus. It was cool. It was like seeing the scene kind of organized and staying alive after it feels like when we were young it was just kind of dissolving. And maybe as silly as “the dream gig” of all time… Like if I could play a show with anybody, fuck man I don’t know. I wouldn’t really want to play with any of my heroes because I think it would just be embarrassing but if I could see any show I would love to see Beethoven’s 9th when he performed it right before he died. I would love to see Jimmy Hendricks set his guitar on fire. I would love to see Nirvana at Paramount…
Jordan: Reading?
Nate: Or Reading would be sick. But Paramount in New York, that was a crazy one too. Fuck dude. I don’t know.
You don’t think if you played with Beethoven he would get down with you?
Nate: He might, he might. Honestly if he could hear it he would probably be like “this shit’s kind of ripping”.
Stanic: Like “you guys are from the future”.
Nate: He would be like “why am I doing all this, I could just do 2 chords”.
He should have learned bass.
Nate: Yeah that’s what I would say to him.
Ending off, if you have anything you want to shout out. Any big projects in the future.
Nate: shout out to motherfucking… Exotic Latin Grill, Columbus Ohio. Shout out to our album which will be coming out in March. We have an EP coming out on the very first day of the next year. We’ll have another single coming out in a couple weeks. We’re playing with Metric Ton in Cincinnati. We’re playing with Metric Ton in Columbus Ohio. We are rocking and rolling until we fucking die and rot in the ground. We’re probably never gonna leave Ohio in the long term, but we’re gonna fucking vagabond across this country for forty, fifty, sixty years until something happens.. That’s awful. To us. But not to you. And the music should hopefully live forever.
Stanic: Amen.
I’d like to add, shoutout to your new single. Paradox, just came out recently. Go stream that one.
Big thank you to Big Fat Head, go stream all their stuff, spread their stuff around and go to some shows. This is one I would go out of my way to see personally. I’m exited to see what they might have cooking up in the future.
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