One of the biggest bummers about most music festivals is their lack of good food and drink choices. How many outdoor music festivals have you been to in face-melting parking lots, only to find warm beer and lukewarm burgers the only choice to fill the belly?
Well, GWAR B-Q has that shit covered. Put on by none other than those metal invaders themselves, GWAR, the food and music festival (notice how food comes first?) is now in its sixth official year in Richmond, VA, where the band originated.
Started in the ’90s as an annual BBQ and mega-jam party for the GWAR crew, the band decided to bring it back legit in 2010. With the unfortunate passing of GWAR singer Dave Brockie (a.k.a. Oderus Urungus) before last year’s event, the GWAR B-Q has taken on a whole new meaning for the band and its legion of scumdog followers.
We recently chatted with GWAR drummer Brad Roberts (a.k.a. Jizmak da Gusha) about the annual event and the importance of hosting an event that can also pay tribute to Brockie.
Let’s talk about GWAR B-Q. Can you tell me how it all started up?
Well, the GWAR B-Qs were these GWAR-style parties that we threw in the ’90s where we would pass around the hat and try to gather up some beer keg money and then people would show up and whatever guys in bands were there would play. They’d just get up and jam at our old compound, The Slave Pit, over on Chamberlain Avenue in Richmond. Those kind of died out in the ’90s and we decided to resurrect them in 2010 and started making it a legitimate music and food festival in 2010. So this will be the sixth annual one, as well as the 30th anniversary of GWAR on this shit-hole planet.
You guys have always had a big love for food, with your different products and your own GWAR Bar opening up. Can you tell me about GWAR’s relationship with food?
Well, Balsac the Jaws of Death [Michael Derks] is GWAR’s master chef, so we’ve always loved to cook humans and animals. Babies are the tastiest. Goats are pretty good. But Balsac has been in the culinary game in cooking and creating great recipes for decades. And it only makes sense that we’d try to open a restaurant and a bar, and the menu is completely contrived from Balsac and all of this great recipes, hence spawning the GWAR B-Q Sauce, and this year we’re going to be releasing our own hot sauce to the masses, which we’re really looking forward to. We just got the test batch back today and it’s delicious.
When you guys were first starting out doing the parties at the Slave Pit, were you always doing communal meals and having big feasts before the shows?
Not always, but the GWAR B-Q is our one band party of the year that we’d throw, and we’d throw down on the grill outside in the summer and get some kegs of beer and have an impromptu jam, or show up with a bunch of musicians and different bands from Richmond, and it kind of just took off from there.
How was it last year doing the GWAR B-Q after Dave had passed away?
It definitely had a special element with the memorial we had for Dave, which was bittersweet at best. It was a huge pilgrimage for fans that love GWAR and Oderus across the globe to come here. But the festival itself has been growing every year by about 30 percent. So, yeah, last year was special, and it’s like that every year; there’s always some special element that GWAR provides the fans and the surrounding area of Richmond that you can’t get from GWAR if you go see them on tour.
With everyone celebrating Dave last year and coming from all over the place, it must have been quite the experience?
Yeah, it was great. He was loved and he was probably one of the greatest frontmen in rock and roll history, in my opinion, and a lot of peoples’ opinions. It was great that everyone came out to pay their last respects, and our followers are the best on the planet. There’s nothing like those guys; they’re so loyal and we love our fans, and the fact that they came out to honour Dave was great. And we felt like we owed it to them as well, to give Oderus a send-off and have everyone there to be present and pay our last respects to him.
Tell us about some of the food vendors coming in for the festival.
We have a lot of things coming in and not everything’s final, but we have the Richmond food-truck coalition that runs the gamut of all kinds of food, from cookies, to coffee, to BBQ… and we’ll have our own signature dishes with GWAR being represented there, and some of our other restaurant partners as well. It’s just going to be a great mix of food; it’s going to be awesome. It’s basically celebrating the food renaissance explosion that’s happening right here in Richmond, and it’s enough to choke a hog!
Is it safe to say that GWAR B-Q is all about gluttony?
Yeah, I know [laughs]. All I can say is the fans were tearing up all of the food last year. There were lines for every single vendor. Everybody was just busy all day long feeding the masses at GWAR B-Q. Our rabid fans love to drink and eat; it’s great.
When you first started planning this again after that long absence, you put the focus on food and drink. Why do you think not many other music festivals do that?
Well, they focus on music, because they’re music festivals. But GWAR B-Q is much more than a music festival. We’re GWAR, so obviously we have more to offer than most everything else! [Laughs] And the dynamic of the GWAR B-Q is unlike anything else that’s out there, whether it’s big or small, it has the Richmond flavour, and it’s at the water park, which is definitely cool; it’s always a hot day and there’s half-naked people all around having fun in the water. It’s a celebration of the town that spawned GWAR. There’s so much stuff happening and all kinds of events at the GWAR B-Q, and it’s just better than putting two stages in a parking lot and having some bands play. And that’s why people respond to it and think Richmond is so cool. It’s this little hidden secret in the south and we’re going to shed some light on that; there’s a great art and food and music scene here, and we’re going to share it with the world.
You’ll have to try to get Avail back together!
Yeah, you know, we put it out there. Those guys don’t all talk to each other too much, as far as I understand, so when we floated the idea out there, that’s where it kind of stayed. It just kind of floated. So we took their non-response as how they felt about getting back together.
Oh, I’m sure Tim Barry will play!
Yeah, Tim might be an option, for sure. It’s really an all-weekend event, including the day before, the day of actual festival and then on Sunday we do the Brutal Brunch at the GWAR Bar, and even though the GWAR Bar is small, there’s a park across the street and we can have more bands, food and beer in the park, and actually Tim would be a great candidate for that. We’ll try to cure everyone’s hangover with some Americana-style stuff in the park.
Yeah, I was gonna say there will be lots of hungover scumdogs on Sunday morning.
Yeah, and we’ve got the cure for that at the GWAR Bar with our Brutal Brunch.
Well, thanks a lot, dude. Good luck with everything.
Thanks, and one more thing! If you don’t come to GWAR B-Q this year for the 30th anniversary of GWAR on this planet, then we will surely find you in your home and come jam a rubber sword up your ass. So do not miss it! Hail Oderus!
GWAR-BQ takes place in Richmond, VA on August 15, 2015.
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