After years playing progressive rock, Lee Loveless, guitarist for Wooden Badger, went back to his guitar playing roots -- the blues. He formed Fat Man’s Misery with his sister, Kathleen, and Mark Scott, the drummer from Wooden Badger. They were then joined by Lee’s son Andrew, formerly of the Black Market Hearts. The band is focusing on traditional electric blues, but with Lee and Mark’s progressive influences, Kathleen's rock roots, and Andrew’s punk ethic, who knows what will come out of this substantial pool of talent.
Loveless gave the Reader three reasons why he called the group Fat Man’s Misery:
1. “It’s a blues band. This may sound simple, but I’ve been playing guitar for 35 years, and this is my first blues band. Although blues is the foundation of my guitar approach, I’ve always been in progressive rock bands. I wanted the name to reflect a turn to the blue side of life and music.”
2. “I’m fat. Oh, yeah, I mean FAT. Not just a little overweight, but at my heaviest I was 431 pounds. Oh, yeah. That’s fat. True, I’m 6’3” so it’s not as bad as if I were a foot shorter, but it makes me different, very different from most people. This helps tap into the blues side. Being fat is not viewed very kindly.”
3. “I am a very proud second-generation native of San Diego. I am inexorably linked to this city (county, actually) and Fat Man’s Misery was a place in Torrey Pines my sister (the bass player) and I used to go to when we were kids. So, this ties in the city and the fond memories of my sister and I together. And, I guess I haven’t mentioned, my sister was the essential member when I first thought of doing this band.”
Of their earlier name, Wooden Badger, Loveless says “All of us in the band are huge Monty Python fans. The name is a reference to a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where Bedevere's Trojan Rabbit idea fails, because they forgot to get into it...Bedevere says, ‘Um, look, suppose we built this large wooden badger.’”