Mario and Mishell really got the foundation of Fats in the right place.

Look closely enough at the composite picture above, and you can make out the original FOH PA. That original setup was two, JRX full-range boxes and a single JRX sub. Now, it’s true that the sub eventually got moved upstage for the drumfill, replaced by two Peavey boxes that I had wanted to sell. However, it’s important to note that everything in that original, functional setup was used – continuously – from that first, fateful show with Wes’s band to the mainstage’s final night.

Let that sink in.

With one or two exceptions due to a bad power switch on an amplifier, ANY SHOW anybody heard at Fats came through the core of the original PA. A JRX rig isn’t a two-million dollar setup from Meyer Sound, but it still sounded just fine and was more than adequate for the needs of the venue. By the end, that system had a lot of miles and a lot of smiles associated with it. In terms of overall return on investment, those entry-level JBLs were probably the best value of anything ever purchased for shows at Fats.

Now, let me tell you about what makes the “good ‘ol days” the “good ‘ol days:” It’s the people, the love, and the dedication.

It wasn’t the load in and load out.

Back in “the good ‘ol days,” I loaded in and out almost as much as the bands did. I brought in a snake, extra mics, a mixing console, monitors, and some sundries – and, when the weekend was through, I took them out again. I was often the first person in and the last out. It was acutely exhausting, but it was great in its own way.

It wasn’t the acoustical environment.

The original version of the basement had no acoustical treatment at all, beyond the carpeted stage. The upstage wall was corrugated metal. Anyone who, in later times, thought that Fats was a loud venue probably wasn’t around for the first part of my tenure. The very live (and thus, LOUD) room necessitated a lot of PA if you wanted to balance the mush with some sort of clarity. I regularly ran the system all the way up to the clip lights…with vocals! I didn’t want to tear anyone’s head off, but I often did.

It wasn’t the world-class production.

The gear we had available was certainly decent enough, but it was sparse and limited in its performance. In the early days, bands got a handful of mixes on compact wedges. The console that I brought in was a bit of a dinosaur, built in the age when the Elves forged rings of power…and digital-mixer manufacturers hadn’t yet discovered that EQ on the buses was actually a stonking-great idea. (Oh, Tascam. Your design choices make me chuckle so.) Our stage-lighting consisted of three bulbs, bare, in saturated colors, connected to a group of sockets run on a single dimmer switch. Nobody was going to confuse us with The Depot or The State Room.

But what we did have were great people, a love for music and the people who make it, and the dedication to do everything we knew how to do as best we knew how.

The original downstairs serving team of Mario and Krista set the tone and the bar – no pun intended – for all future crews. With the three of us there, what you had was a no-bull group of music fans who wanted to hear good tunes and treat people the right way. Krista blended a razor-sharp sense of humor with a honed instinct for the real craft of bar service. She could sing along with pretty much any walk-in music I had, and never had any trouble making friends any musician who walked in the door. On Mario’s side, there was a special sort of presence to the room with him, an owner, being hands-on with the proceedings. Mario is the sort of gentleman who gets respect due to people just wanting to respect him. He was the craftsman who took the basement from a run-down storage area to an actual venue. He was absolutely fearless about “getting dirty” in pursuit of a job being done, and as a drummer, he could talk shop with any band in the room.

Mario was ENTHUSED about what was going on with every aspect of a show, and some of my fondest memories of Fats are the pre-show conversations we used to have about bands and live-production. We could kill hours with chit-chat about mics, speakers, guitars and the people who played them, drum techniques, and anything else you can imagine that had to do with music. We called those times “The Calm Before The Storm,” and there wasn’t much that could equal them.

Like I said, we didn’t start out with all the cool toys. Even so, bands seemed to get a real kick out of the place. There’s a reason that this quote survives: “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” I think bands responded to being wanted. I think bands responded to a crew that wanted to do everything possible with what was available. I think bands responded to venue management that was all about being fair, folksy, and easy to work with. I think bands responded to seeing that the point of the basement was to have music: The stage was a focal point instead of an afterthought, and the show was meant to be the reason you were down there.

Zero musicians probably remember how loud (or not loud) those mini-monitors were, but I’ll bet a whole bunch of musicians remember being treated like they actually mattered to somebody. I can’t remember any band that, upon being asked, did not want to sign the wall where players recorded their presence at Fats.

As a final point, I’ll also say that part of what made those early shows “the good ‘ol days” were the first experiences in that room with all the great talent Mishell booked. It didn’t matter that that the system didn’t do “crushing, Reggae dance hall bass.” Wasnatch and Dub Symptom still knew how to party. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t do ultra-minute surgery on every aspect of a guitar sound. Stonefed and Marinade still jammed hard enough for the crowd to fog the mirrors. You do have to have the basic tools, but past that, the actual humans involved in the music are what makes it work or not.

Even in the early days, Fats definitely worked.