Success bass player Austin Jones dives into singer Aaron “Rev” Peters’ hot sauce.
Interview by Jason Schreurs
Signature hot sauces are certainly not a unique thing for a band to cart around on tour and add to their vast selection of merch. Bands such as Less Than Jake, GWAR, RVIVR and many others have bottled up spicy peppers of varying hotness and sold them to their sometimes-unsuspecting fans. Aaron “Rev” Peters, singer for the Seattle punk band Success, also has a signature hot sauce called Rev’s Northwest Hot Sauce, but this sauce doesn’t bear his band’s name or likeness; instead Peters gave his sauce its own identity and its popularity became more of an organic thing. Now that Success is touring lots, Peters is planning on doing up another batch of his sauce and taking it back on the road.
So what’s the status on your hot sauce? I see you were doing it for awhile, then stopped. Are you back at it again now?
Well, I did it for awhile and sold the hot sauce when we were on tour. I sold a ton of it. Then, about two or three years ago, I got an offer from an investor, but the band had picked up and I had to decide whether I wanted to start a small business or go on tour more with the band. I decided to go on tour with the band. So Toby from [punk label] Red Scare Industries hit me up and said I should try to do something with my hot sauce again, and we’d already been talking about doing more of the hot sauce for when we go back on tour, and for when we hit Pouzza Fest in Montreal and Punk Rock Bowling in Vegas along the way.
How did it go when you brought the hot sauce on tour last time? Were people stoked on it?
Yeah, I actually sold out of it incredibly quickly. Then I started doing an Etsy page, but I had to shut it down. And that’s around the time when I got approached by the investor. But, yeah, it sold really well. I actually got invited to be in a hot-sauce competition in Austin, Texas, because I’d been working in the restaurant industry for years and I was always making hot sauces for the places I worked for. I made this one that was based off a rue of Northwest vegetables, with chillies on top of it. So it was more like a burrito additive, from a band guy point of view; like a way to turn your shitty Taco Bell burrito into something awesome.
So how did you start getting into hot sauce? What do you like about it? Because some people won’t even go near it.
Oh, for sure. There are a bunch of different levels to it. There are some people who use it just to change the flavour of their food. Then there’s people who use it to hit themselves with the heat, and they’d rather pay more attention to that. I know a guy who smothers everything in the hottest sauce he can find, and I’m sure he can’t taste his actual food. [Laughs] But I love it, man. I used to play bass in Nothington and when we’d go on tour I’d buy hot sauces from different places we’d go. Then I moved to San Diego for awhile and there was a store down there that would bring in hot sauces from all over the world, and that’s kind of where I got crazy with it and I started making my own right after that.
What’s it like making it? Is it fairly easy?
Well, it’s easy in a sense, especially if you want to make small batches. But the shittiest part, honestly, is that the bottles are expensive. It takes a good amount of time the way that I make it, because I slow roast it. I wanted that real Northwest vegetable flavour underneath, so carrots and onions and celery; like all the vegetables you would cook with a turkey. So I slow roast those with a bunch of spices on top, and you get this extremely mushy consistency before the vegetables even get blended in the food processor. And it’s the same process with the chillies, but with those I actually char them on the outside, like you would with a roasted red pepper, and you get that smokey flavour. Then I rub off the charred bits and throw it all together with the veggies and blend it. And you get this beautiful orange colour with the habaneros.
A lot of bands have signature hot sauces. Did you ever think of doing something like that?
We’ll probably keep it with my name, so it’s my specific hot sauce. But RVIVR from up here made their own hot sauce for awhile. And I was really excited by the Less Than Jake hot sauce, because I’m a big fan of that band, but they put butter in it, which I thought was kind of weird. But it’s delicious! I wish I knew who in the band was like, “Oh, yeah, totally, we have to throw butter in here.” [Laughs]
Delicious but fattening! What do the rest of the guys in Success think of your hot sauce?
Oh, they love it. They all get super pissed that I don’t make it more often.
What’s your plan for getting it back in production?
When we get back from tour with Masked Intruder in the middle of April, we’re home for three or four weeks, so I’m going to make a batch then. So I’ll hopefully have all of the money to buy the bottles and then I can bring it back out on the next tour. And hopefully the funds will just recycle, so I can keep making more for each tour. We’d like to always have it around.
Yeah, it’s good to addition to your merch. You have your t-shirts, and then you have your hot sauce.
I’m trying not to talk it up too much, but it was extremely popular. I would constantly sell out. So I’ve got good faith in it. And the thing about hot sauce is the novelty thing. People know they can only get it on tour, so they’ll buy two or three bottles at a time.
As long as you don’t start to get known as “that band with the hot sauce,” right?
Well, you know what, man? There’s way worse things to be known for.
Wasn’t there a metal band called Extra Hot Sauce? I think there was…
Cool. [Laughs] But, yeah, there’s worse things than being known as “the hot sauce band,” like you could be known for wearing neon-coloured ski masks on stage. Ba-dum-bum-bum!
Rev’s Northwest Hot Sauce‘s will be available at Success‘ live shows soon.
The band’s Red Scare Industries debut, Radio Recovery, is out March 31.
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