How do you create music that conjures up a mental picture of cool effortlessly? What does it take to arrive at an irresistible groove? How can music evoke a feeling of longing and bittersweet memories to pierce someone’s heart without pretensions? How is it done honestly, to make people not feel like they need to hold back? Well, it’s about authenticity. True passion beyond cool hairstyles. Music that swings in a way that even the devil will beg for mercy.

Myth is easily created.

Thomas Pareigis and Alf Östlund discovered rockabilly at the tail end of the new wave epidemic in the late 70’s. It reverberated from the backstreets of London to suggest that Elvis and Nashville were closer to the punk aesthetic than The Clash suggested was a life changing moment. Forming a band was the natural consequence and the duo played their homemade rockabilly throughout their youth’s county of Dalarna but was spread out by the wind after a few years.

Ten years later, fate would bring Alf and Thomas back together at a Stray Cats show at the Daily News club in Stockholm. The old friendship roared back to life. Alf brought along his old guitar-playing friend Hannu Kiviaho and Jan Lissnil. Joakim Lindahl and Jörgen Wall were soon to follow.

During a wet night at the cajun style Stockholm restaurant Peppar in 1996 someone shouted out the word “Fatboy” – jazz slang for an upright bass. It was settled there and then, a band name so accurate that it had to be a sign.

It all became clear and they were a real band now. With a mission...
Fatboy – a beautiful, love-soaked, dirty, gambling villain – was born.

The influence of Faron Young, Stray Cats, Johnny Cash, Elvis and Roy Orbison was mixed with elements of The Smiths, Chris Isaak and The Cramps. The dreams of fifties, country and rockabilly music was challenged by equal amounts of contemporary pop and indie rock plus tasteful elements of Greek bouzouki music and klezmer.

Fatboy was never about retro, or to be restricted to one sound. It was about six guys that worshipped music and lived it. It became a way of life, about singing because they had to, about playing to stave off becoming miserable. Fatboy got the urge to play from their heroes but the decision to exist beyond musical boundaries was their own decision.

The Fatboy reputation spread all the way to Pistolteatern (the Pistol theatre) in Stockholm. In 1998, they were commissioned to score a production of the famous Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper), Bertol Brecht’s 1800 epos about morale and poverty. The band performed on stage as Mack the Knife’s gang and turned Kurt Weil’s original music into suggestive country. The play became an unforeseen success and the band, which mainly spent their time in their studio next-door to Stockholm’s famous concert hall Kafé 44, got a feel for intense live performance.

This is where the second era of Fatboy begins. The gigs increased in numbers, the word spread and the passion was palpable. At the same time, it was clear that the band that knew the importance of their visual appearance. Music should take you places, far far away.

Great concerts should be performed by individuals that look the part. Like they mean it. The result should be dangerous, seductive and exciting. Fatboy take their image seriously, not as a by-product of the music – it’s a whole entity combined for maximum effect.

After a few years of constant touring, the band gathered a dedicated crowd of supporters and also a record deal – V2 saw the light and signed Fatboy. A single ”This Tear Will Never Leave My Eye” was released in October 2004, a bittersweet tale of lost love that hits the listener straight in the chest. It was a teaser that combined the promise of nostalgia along with the present and future.

The debut album “Steelhearted” was released in November the same year. It gathered the influences of eight years of rock’n’roll dreams in straight descent from The Downliner Sect, Hank Williams, Morrissey and Chris Isaak. The Swedish rock scene fell head over heels and the bands musical dynamic reflected on the many live shows that came to follow – festivals, country clientele and the rockabilly clubs. Everything worked and felt like fun for these musical chameleons with grease in their back pocket. Unexpected side projects also happened, when Mando Diao vocalist Björn Dixgård decided to do a solo tour of Europe, he hired Thomas and Hannu as bone-hard support.

So where are Fatboy today? On the long awaited sequel “In My Bones” the contrast is even sharper. Their disrespect for genre boundaries is more apparent than ever. The groove is central, as always but a bunch of cool collaborations have been thrown into the mix. Sweden’s finest musicians lined up for a piece of the action. Fläskkvartetten (The Flesh Quartet) handle the strings, Sarah Dawn Finer duets with Thomas on ”The Way We Were” and the ladies of Baskery (ex Slaptones) appear a here and there. Sweden’s answer to Woody Allen, Måns Herngren, fell in love with ”Busy Bee” so it will appear in the soundtrack to his new movie that will hit theatres on Christmas day 2008.

“In My Bones” is a record that will talk to your hips as much as it speaks to your heart. It attracts attention from all kinds of people and uses every possible human condition as an instrument. The bitter sweet ballads will crush your heart until it bleeds. The edgy country will blow off your hat and spin you around. The devilish rockabilly that glances’s at you and threatens with a knife. The pop music will make you want to close your eyes and forget the dullness of everyday life.

Here in 2008, the sixties are alive again. Duffy, Amy Winehouse and Sweden’s Veronica Maggio have discovered their parents record collections and go from success to success around the globe with sixties soul tasting songs that echo Dusty Springfield, Four Tops, The Supremes and any Phil Spector-production you care to mention. And they certainly do it well.

You want something truly genuine? Something with a feel for history but that is fashionably out of date. A combo that looks like it sounds, that isn’t afraid to laugh in the face of expectation, then one name stands tall – Fatboy.