The first thing you notice about Fat Freddy’s Drop, is that there’s no “Fat Freddy.” There is a big Samoan, some Maori members, and New Zealanders of various other origins. So it’s a large mix. But Fat Freddy’s Drop is a pretty lean operation. These artists own the label that puts out their music. And that means they have total control over how they sound. If they want to make a song that’s more than 10-minutes long, like they do on their new album, they go ahead and do it. This crowd — at The Roxy on LA’s Sunset Strip — is more than happy to indulge them.

“And though my people may not be many / we are ready for the storm to come / and though my people may not be many / we are ready to be strong as one …”

They start the night with a reggae-flavored song called “The Raft.” It’s about an epic journey, and Fat Freddy’s Drop faced one of their own, right before this show in Los Angeles. Band members Joe Lindsay and Chris Faiumu describe what happened as they were driving down from the Bay Area by bus.

“I think we were about 200 miles out of San Francisco when we see some sparks flying out the back of the bus. We pull the bus over, try to figure out what that was. We thought maybe we had a flat tire or something. We all piled out the bus and go around the back and the trailer’s completely gone.”

“We found our instruments upside-down, and the trailer upside-down in a big ditch, and we had to climb inside the roof of it. The trailer had big holes in it. It looked like someone had taken a can-opener to it.”

“We came out whole, and no one was hurt. We’re very thankful for that.”
Chris “Fitchie” Faiumu: “That’s rock-and-roll, man.”
Joe “Ho Pepa” Lindsay: “That’s rock-and-roll, yeah.”

Their sound — though — that’s not exactly rock-and-roll to most people. It’s more of a musical gumbo by way of Wellington, New Zealand.

Consider the song “Shiverman,” which references a comic-book character and overlays brass on techno.

Joe “Ho Pepa” Lindsay: “Halfway through the song, the techno kind of evolves into this crazy kind of circus-ska kind of thing. And there we lay it up, brass-upon-brass, tuba, euphonium, trombone, lots of saxes, and just created this big wall of brass.” “Building up the tension, and building it, and building it, and building it–for like, you know, ten minutes almost of building this tension, and then it just releases into this big brassy ska thing that inevitably raises the roof. Yeah, it’s one of my….”

Chris “Fitchie” Faiumu: “It’s doesn’t make sense, but it works out well.”
[Joe “Ho Pepa” Lindsay: “It does. It makes perfect sense to us.”

Their recent, sold-out concerts on the West Coast proved that it made perfect sense, to their new-found American fans. New Zealand’s Fat Feddy’s Drop is planning to be back in the US this coming spring.