Fatty Lumpkin is a progressive rock band that provides a soundtrack for the new millennium. Its members grew up in Grapevine, Texas and began their musical journey shortly after meeting each other at Grapevine High School. The nucleus of the band was formed when Kelyn Crapp and Seth Myers got together during their junior year. Practically learning their instruments in front of each other, Kelyn and Seth made a routine of after school jams and song-writing sessions, drawing their influences from a multitude of genres such as classic rock, hip hop, punk, reggae, and jazz. Upon deciding to form a band (the name of which Kelyn and a friend had envisioned years before) they recruited Mike, who was playing with Kelyn on the school football team, and Jordan, a drummer who befriended Seth in Auto Body class. The first gigs came during senior year at GHS when they locked a weekly gig playing at a local bar shortly after winning their first battle-of-the-bands competition. Upon graduation in 2003, Kelyn accepted a full scholarship to the University of Florida, forcing him to leave the group, but returned to Grapevine after eight months to study jazz guitar at the University of North Texas in Denton, TX and to rejoin the group.
After the band reformed in 2004, Fatty Lumpkin hit Dallas/Ft. Worth, paying their dues by playing relentlessly around the area, deliberately crafting and polishing their sound and style. While studying in the College of Music, Kelyn and Mike, also majoring in music, ran into Matt, a friend from high school and percussion major at UNT, who quickly joined the group playing hand percussion in 2006 and switched to the drum kit after Jordan split with the group in 2007. Since then, Fatty Lumpkin has increased their output and reputation through constant performance in DFW and branching out to venues and music festivals in Austin, San Angelo, Lubbock, TX, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, LA, Norman, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, OK and the Wakarusa Music Festival in Lawrence, Kansas. They have also played at benefit events for Habitat for Humanity and the Benefit for Battered Women.
Fatty Lumpkin has been fortunate to share the stage with many talented and accomplished musicians including EOTO (Michael Travis and Jason Hann of the String Cheese Incident), RAQ, Mike Dillon's Go-Go Jungle, On The One (John Staten of Karl Denson's Tiny Universe and Jesse Molloy of Giant People), Cecil "P-Nut" Daniels, Tony Furtado, The Motet, Moving Matter, Snarky Puppy, Tribal Nation, Topaz, The Eric McFadden Trio, Spoonfed Tribe, Qwiksand, Egress, The Code Talkers, and many,many bands from the Denton and DFW area. The members live by the ethic of being musicians and artists for life, writing and performing music that reflects the culture of the generation from which they come. The mission statement is simple: Life, Love, and Music. Come see a show and witness the evolution of the DFW jam scene.
