No Rent: BDSM Meets Broadway in NOFX Frontman Fat Mike’s New Punk Musical Home Street Home 

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Indeed, Fat Mike and Soma were considerably more excited about the introduction. The couple told Marx they were writing a musical ("'Yeah, I play in a punk band and I wrote a musical,' — you must've thought, this is gonna be terrible,'" interjects Burkett) and later emailed him one of the songs they'd written for feedback. It was "Three Against Me," a song one runaway sings about physical violence at the hands of his brothers; it's one of the musical's sadder numbers.

"I just responded to it in a way I never respond to things," Marx remembers. "And I thought, 'Damn, if the rest of the songs are anything like this...'" He wrote a "two-page" email back to the couple to let them know he loved it and wanted to work with them. Burkett and Soma were in Las Vegas, where they read the missive at 4:30 in the morning. "We both just started crying," Burkett says. "It was so emotional. It was our foot in the door. This was our chance."

Four years later, the trio has gelled into a complementary, if unlikely, theatrical team, combining their collective knowledge of sex work, punk rock, and Broadway into something they believe to be wholly unprecedented. Says Marx, "It really is a motley crew of Goddess, Mike, and me, coming from three different worlds, but blending them so seamlessly and peacefully. I think we've all learned so much from the process." Burkett and Soma credit the songwriter with elevating the work to a point that more traditional, even conservative fans of musicals may enjoy the play almost in spite of themselves.

"The delivery of [the show] paves the way for people to enter a place that may be scary to them — it's authentic, and the songs are so tuneful, they stay with it," adds Marx. "When we workshopped it at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut, there were all these people there who came with real reservations, and after...they were saying 'Don't change a thing. Don't let the producer or anybody else water it down.'" He laughs at the thought. "We said, 'Don't worry.'"

Here's where we might as well address the elephant in the punk house.

Fat Mike knows all too well that many people, upon hearing of his involvement with a musical, will say something to the effect of, "Oh, like Green Day did with American Idiot?"

He understands, of course. It's a comparison weighted by roughly three decades of insider Bay Area punk history and something like good-natured sibling rivalry. While Green Day has continued to charge towards broader commercial mainstream success, complete with Grammy Awards, songs in iTunes commercials, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominations (the band will be inducted this April), NOFX has remained staunchly anti-major-label. In the mid-aughts, the band began wearing its anti-establishment politics on its sleeve in a decidedly less radio-friendly way than Green Day. Nestled comfortably at Burkett's Fat Wreck Chords, NOFX has settled into a routine of touring the world for three weeks every few months, playing to the band's legion of loyal fans — but not exactly trying to convert new ones. Appealing to a mainstream audience, even if it were possible, has simply never been part of the goal.

Burkett says his frustration over the comparison is more about Green Day beating him to the theatrical punch than any deeper sense of competition. And if he's concerned about the musical giving members of the notoriously divisive punk scene ammunition for calling him a sellout, as American Idiot did with Green Day, he's not saying it — likely in part because that word has been lobbed at his band from the moment it started making money.

"I've had some of these songs written for 17 years," he says. "I never thought it'd be big, I just thought I'd write something and it would maybe get done in a community theater." But when Green Day announced it would be adapting the band's 2004 record for a stage show, Burkett admits it lit a fire under his ass.

"I had 12 songs done when I heard they were doing it, and I thought, they're turning this record they already have into a musical? That can't be the musical that represents punk rock," Burkett says. "It became: 'I have to write something that really shows the punk rock lifestyle.' I know some people will think I'm just copying them, but they definitely won't think that when they see it."

Marx chimes in here, looking a bit nervous about how far Burkett is going to take his Green Day riff. "American Idiot had a tough time," Marx says, diplomatically. "It's tough to take a record and build a play around it, to act out a story where you can't change the words to the songs, or anything. What we've done is just completely different."

It's about a week after our first meeting and a week before opening night, and Burkett is feeling decidedly more confident about the play. He's gotten great feedback on the concept record, Home Street Home: Original Songs From the Shit Musical, and the band's first live rehearsal with the cast went well. Everyone is present and energized — with the exception of Soma, who's remaining in L.A. a day longer than planned. She hurt her back while the team was there over the weekend. ("It's kinda my fault," Burkett explains. "Our dungeon has a hardwood floor, and lube is ... it's slippery. ")

Anyway: about that Green Day comparison.

"Jeff made us go see American Idiot," Burkett says, "and at some point, someone had a bag of coke, and they poured it out, and I shit my pants. Who would do that?! That would never happen."