John Fonseca Fatum, born April 2, 1990, is a real life American musican and man. Creator of Jacksonport, he is a producer of records, session drummer, songwriter, and performer based in Los Angeles. In addition to four studio records at Jacksonport, he’s made two more under his own name and performed and recorded with artists such as Watkins Family Hour, Sarah Jarosz, Bella White, Liana Flores, Maya Hawke, Buck Meek (Big Thief), Aoife O’Donovan, The Brother Brothers, Jack Symes, Wilsen, Bridget Kearney, Jefferson Hamer, Olive Klug, Lucy Clearwater, Alexa Wildish, and many more.
Early began the ever evolving journey of Fatum’s creative life... from suzuki piano lessons to a Chicago Gospel Radio subscribtion basket, the Wild Onion Story telling festival and practicing highland bagpipes with a Fireman’s local. Daily he became lost in the literary universes of Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. At twelve years old in an introduction to jazz course, Fatum fell in love with the drums.
At fifteen he was invited to join the Midwest Young Artists Orchestra tour Spain for 3 weeks in the percussion section, playing Shostakovich’s 5th symphony and “An American in Paris” in stone squares and midevil church’s across the country. Traveling and performing in the land of his ancestors sparked an everlasting love of the touring life.
Back home the mystical sound of jazz records, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderly, Art Blakey, and John Coltrane beckoned John on to the Eastman School of Music and then New York City.
In New York John started playing on the subways with Jon Batiste and visited Wynton Marsalis in his midtown penthouse. Yet it was new friends his own age who played acoustic instruments; bluegrass and folk musicians, that captured his imagination. He began to re-connect with the Pete Seeger albums synonymous with his childhood, and fell in love with the power of song.
After 8 years of hustling in New York City, learning to play everything from Country and Western to New Orleans music nightly in the bars, John snapped. He arrived home after helping get his band to SXSW, a years long hamster wheel of managers and attorneys and booking agents, and decided he was done with New York. He began recording music to soothe himself, that he might want to play and return to for the rest of his life. He named the project Jacksonport, after a small town in northern Wisconsin where his family spends two weeks a year.
The humble lakeside cabin stands there calmly, in contrast to the big cities of Fatum’s continual reinvention. From Chicago’s youth Orchestras to New York City’s jazz clubs, Texas’ Folk Festivals and Los Angeles’ recording studios, Fatum has never shied away from learning and growing as a musician. Some know him as a drummer, touring and recording with artists such as Sarah Jarosz, Bella White, Liana Flores, The Brother Brothers, Jack Symes, Wilsen, Jefferson Hamer and the Watkins Family Hour, but there’s a growing contingent that find him through his own records and songs. He’s made 4 studio records in his first 4 years of Jacksonport, weaving a path through life’s forest and looking for the golden thread.
The humble lakeside cabin stands there calmly, in contrast to the big cities of Fatum’s continual reinvention. From Chicago’s youth Orchestras to New York City’s jazz clubs, Texas’ Folk Festivals and Los Angeles’ recording studios, Fatum has never shied away from learning and growing as a musician. Some know him as a drummer, touring and recording with artists such as Sarah Jarosz, Bella White, Liana Flores, The Brother Brothers, Jack Symes, Wilsen, Jefferson Hamer and the Watkins Family Hour, but there’s a growing contingent that find him through his own records and songs. He’s made 4 studio records in his first 4 years of Jacksonport, weaving a path through life’s forest and looking for the golden thread.