Fat Camp (l-r) members Phil Shive, Adam Phillips and Lee Grutman. Photo Credit: Matt Comer.
“Go Fat Camp!” someone exclaimed from a car driving down Central Ave. To the side of the street, I stood in the parking lot of Grand Central with local indie rockers Lee Grutman, Adam Phillips and Phil Shive. The unexpected showering of fan praise is a testament to their local celebrity, the kind that won them recognition from Creative Loafing readers as “Best New Band” in this year’s Best of Charlotte contest.
Together, Lee, Adam and Phil comprise Fat Camp, an indie rock band that has put hilarity and sex — gay sex, to be exact — at the forefront of their repertoire. And, despite calling themselves “North Carolina’s premier homosexual party rock band,” only one in the group, Lee, actually identifies as gay. The other two are straight, but that doesn’t hold them back from having a good time and making folks laugh.
I didn’t know what to expect sitting down for an interview with these guys. Usually, I write about politics, civic life or religion — mostly tame and predictable things. Thus, my experience in the local arts scene is limited at best and completely ignorant at worst. Regardless, It didn’t take long for the three guys to lighten my infamously serious (if not astonishingly boring) mood.
Other than their generally happy and friendly nature, all three of the guys also have years of experience as musicians and each have played in various bands off-and-on since high school. After being involved for so long, Lee says, he came to a point where he just wanted to let loose and have fun.
“We’ve all been in serious bands and tried really hard to be serious musicians,” he says. “It was fun and it was great but it wasn’t as enjoyable as a band should be. I called up Adam and said, ‘Hey would you consider playing drums in a band and having as much fun as humanly possible?’ He said, ‘Sure!’”
Adam and Lee also both knew Phil, who works booking acts at the Milestone Club, one of Charlotte’s indie rock venues. They got him involved and the band’s trajectory naturally plotted itself from there.
“We didn’t like sit down and say these are the kinds of songs we are going to play,” Adam recalls. “We just got together there were these kinds of songs that popped up.”
Lead singer Lee Grutman, with Fat Camp band members, guitarist Phil Shive and
Adam Phillips on the drums. Photo Credit: Joe Perez, Eyebodega.com
The guys give credit to Phil — and Lee’s lyrical magic — for helping push the band in the direction it’s gone.
“We were just going to be a band that sang about food and big living,” Phil says, “but Lee has all these songs that are so perverse and that was pretty much the end of that concept.”
The irreverent, yet laughable, “Making Love to the Ginger Jew,” was one of the guys’ first songs. Anything but traditional, it still carries a familiar sound — think J. Frank Wilson’s classic “Last Kiss” with a faster tempo: “Well we made it to Rosh Hashanah-nah-nah and our love is doing alright. The only problem’s your mother’s pissed, you let a Gentile into your life. Just like Moses parted the Red Sea and set your people free, I remove your yarmulke and you climb on top of me, you climb on top of me.”
Adam thinks their lyrics, however irreverent, serve a purpose: “I think there is a place for political correctness for sure in politics or whatever but I think it is a healthy thing to be able to laugh at yourself or have others laugh at you and being comfortable with it.”
Just like the lyrics of their songs, the name of the band itself was chosen in jest.
“I’m sure there are like 10 other bands called Fat Camp around the world,” Lee says. “I thought, hey, we’re fat and it’d be funny to call ourselves Fat Camp. Inadvertently, we do put the ‘camp’ into ‘Fat Camp’ by being overly campy. It’s not like drag camp, but our songs are just ridiculously silly.”
From their first show in February, Lee, Adam and Phil say they’ve been pleasantly surprised by the reactions they’ve gotten. The stereotypically “hardcore” image indie rockers have gotten doesn’t reflect reality as they take the stage — whether at the Milestone Club in Charlotte or The Local 306 in Chapel Hill — and audience members get into the groove.
That reaction, Lee thinks, is a sign of fast-moving public opinion about LGBT people.
“I mean, we’re playing to punk rockers and they think it is the funniest thing they’ve ever seen,” Lee says. “We’ve had nothing but a wonderful reception. We even played to a tattooed biker crowd one night and that went over really well, too. People realize that the songs are really funny; they know we are having a good time and they want to have a good time, too.”
Lee hopes the local music scene can become more popular with LGBT crowds.
“There are a lot of gay indie rockers but they aren’t really in Charlotte,” he says. “We would really encourage all the gay kids, like between 18-35, we would encourage them to break out of their normal routine and go to places like the Milestone or go to a show at Snug Harbor. There’s way more going on in town than, you know, just going to Petra’s or Scorpio.”
Lee, Adam and Phil love their music. Yet, each have their own day jobs — you have to pay the bills somehow, right? That fact is evidence of Charlotte’s yet-mature indie music scene, a scene the three cherish and would love to see grow. They’re putting out a call for people to care about the arts.
“Having a creative subculture is the stimulus for community,” Adam says. “Everything about the Charlotte music scene has come and gone. It’s been cyclical and if there isn’t a sense of community there nothing will be sustainable, clubs will shut down. If people don’t stop and care about the arts, these places will continue to shut down and it will be cyclical and never reach a certain point where it is sustainable.” : :
info: Fat Camp will release its first 7-inch vinyl in October at the Milestone Club in Charlotte. To listen to their music, learn more, find show dates and more visit fatcampband.blogspot.com.
