This weekend, local Rock band Fat Mezz will take the stage at Camden’s Freedom Mortgage Pavillion opening up for bands like Three Days of Grace and Alice In Chains at 93.3 WMMR’s Annual MMRBQ. Through the years Fat Mez has become a staple in both the “shore band” scene and the local Philadelphia bar scene as a popular cover band.
“We’ve been playing since 2020, we started at a lot of local clubs in Wildwood. After a couple years of playing the shore scene we did a little bit of traveling, more Philadelphia in the off-season months, and then as we began releasing original music we’ve been booking our own original shows,” explained Kurt Foster, the lead singer of Fat Mezz.
Modern rock music is tricky to define, because so few bands are focused specifically on embracing the classic rock sound. That being said, Fat Mezz is as close to a modern classic rock band as you’ll be able to find in 2025. Their most recent single Three Years and a Day features all the hallmarks of a classic rock song from the 70’s or 80’s seemingly delivered via time travel to the present.
Fat Mezz has been trying to pivot away from the cover band lifestyle and introduce their fans to their original music. “The majority of shows are cover band gigs where we’ll play 1-2 originals,” starts bassist Dom Levy “but we do only originals at original gigs, it’s finding that balance and getting people to listen at shows. Chickies and Pete’s is one where we do a lot of originals.”
Kurt interjects “it’s difficult converting the cover audience over to songs they don’t know.” Fat Mezz is releasing a new single on the first of every month in 2025.
Freedom Mortgage Pavilion will be the largest venue that Fat Mezz has played to this point, with a capacity of 25,000. On the Thursday before Memorial Day, they were nearly able to sell out Ardmore Music Hall performing all originals. Kurt and Dom mentioned seeing greats like the Doobie Brothers, Chicago, the Black Crowes, Bad Company, Joe Walsh, and Willie Nelson on the same stage that they’ll be performing on Saturday.
When asked to describe their music, Dom Levy said “It’s Rock N’ Roll, it’s jam, and there’s some soul in it… there’s a couple songs that sound similar but we kind of write a bit sporadically, we have stuff that’s more indie, we have stuff that’s more rock. I don’t really think about it much, I’m just trying to write.”
The members of Fat Mezz currently live together in Lynnwood, New Jersey where they are pursuing their rock n’ roll dreams. If you’re headed to the MMRBQ this Saturday, get there a little early to support the local act kicking off the show.
Philly Plain Dealer 
Leave a comment