The Skinny On Cortes & The Fat Amigos

By Fringe Staff

By Sheri Broussard

In a sleepy suburban ghetto on the south side of San Francisco, a pretty Latin girl waits by the window. She smiles cheerfully out into the late afternoon sun as she waits for her band members to arrive. She walks back across the orange carpet and sits down on the silky vintage green flower couch and strums her guitar. Soon she hears the patter of feet clonking up the marble steps to her home.

“Dave,” she shouts as she opens the door and lets her band mate in. He walks in with his large guitar and they sit across from each other in her living room. Standing next to the computer of the tiny pink and orange room is Charley Gerritsen, vocalist and pianist. Next to him stands Stuart Braddock, bassist. Dave begins to strum his guitar and Charley, Stuart and Steph follow suit. The beats of music begin to come together as Steph catches onto Dave’s timing and Charley and Stuart join in. A melodic voice fills the room and somehow brings the lyrics and notes together.

Stephanie Cortes is the vocalist for San Francisco based rock band, “Cortes and the Fat Amigos.” “I just thought it was a funny name,” says band founder and leading amigo, Dave Hart. He began the band because he loves to play guitar and write songs.

Before Cortes joined the band they classified themselves as rock-a-billy, or rock with a bit of a country twang. Cortes noted that most of the songs were about real life and thus more “rock” than “a- billy.” Currently on the band’s Myspace page they describe their sound as ” A happy mash of Elliott Smith, My Bloody Valentine, Beatles and Johnny Cash…. or just some folky type rock stuff. Fast at time, slower when it needs to be.” Cortes began to embrace her love for music and the Beatles when she was 19-yearsold and found a guitar with in her grasp.

Steph even handed down her love of music to her younger sister.

Steph handed her sister, Sarah, who had just turned 17, a giant wrapped box.

“What is it,” her sister asked looking up at her with wide brown eyes.

“Open it!” Sarah sighed and pulled the box open. Inside she found a sleek black guitar. Steph looked at her sister longingly as she watched her hold the guitar and strum the chords. She remembered looking at the guitar on the shelf in Gelb music store and longing to play it.

“I looked at it, sitting there in the room, and it was calling to me,” Steph says nostalgically about the guitar. “I went to go make sure Sarah was gone and then I picked it up for the first time. I got the Beatles cover book and I tried to put my fingers on the chords and strum along, it didn’t really sound too good at first,” she says with a laugh. Cortes says that she grew up surrounded by music, first with her mom signing around the house and later at her parent’s music at their Saturday night ‘Canasta and Lasagna’ parties. She taught herself to play the guitar when she was 19-years-old and then began to write songs to express emotions.

“I love the Beatles, but at that time I had a boyfriend who hated the Beatles and he wouldn’t let me play the guitar, so I went one year without Beatles music until I couldn’t stand him anymore and we broke up. Then I played the guitar everyday after that,” she says. From Cortes’ broken relationship she developed the song, “flaws” and also began to embrace her singing talent. A few years later she met her band mate, Charley, and sang for the first time in public.

Her memory of her first performance starts with a tall blond man waiting for his singing partner to enter the chapel at the San Francisco Mormon church. She walks in and they practice the hymn, they are supposed to sing together, “Nearer my god to thee.” A few people walk in and watch them for a few minutes. They both nervously glance at each other.

“You ready for this Steph,” the man asks her. “I guess so, Charley.” The chapel begins to fill with hundreds of people. Steph can feel her heart begin to race as she looks down at the podium, then back to Charley as the music begins. She closes her eyes, pulls the Mic towards her and begins to sing. The notes of the hymn are powered by her angelic voice and the crowd is silent as they watch her and her band mate sing. A piano solo comes along and she glances at her hands, knowing that she will choke if she looks into the crowd. She closes her eye lids yet again and finds the courage to finish the song. A round of applause is accompanied by a rush of cool relief all over her body. She quickly walks off the stage and sits next to a friend whispering, “I can’t believe I just did that.”

Cortes and the Fat Amigos plan their debut to be sometime late this year, but for now they are content in their pursuit to sound like Belle and Sebastian, who happen to be the best band ever according to Cortes and Hart.