IT’S NOT AS eyebrow raising as Van Halen’s demand for M&M candies with the brown ones removed, Mariah Carey’s request for 20 white kittens or the dedicated meditation room for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
But to the uninitiated, the contract rider for blues guitarist Bill “Sauce Boss” Wharton’s show at The Bamboo Room in downtown Lake Worth Beach on Nov. 22 might seem a bit mouth dropping at first.
Or shall we say mouth watering.
After all, this rider is more of a recipe: Two pounds each of chopped onions, green peppers and zucchini; 2 pounds of crawfish tails (or substitute shrimp); 4 pounds of chopped okra; 5 pounds of chicken cut into bite-size pieces; a cooked 5-pound bag of Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice; a 5-gallon cast-aluminum pot and a 4-ounce metal ladle.
Wharton brings his own roux and signature Liquid Summer Hot Sauce.
Of course, the big difference with Wharton’s contract is that all of those rider demands – unlike the candy, kittens, meditation room and other rock-n-roll lifestyle perks – are ultimately for the people attending his show.
On stage at the Bamboo Room, wearing his signature chef’s smock and hat, Wharton will cook up a hot set of blues on his slide guitar while cooking five gallons of spicy gumbo in between songs. For an encore, he’ll serve free bowls of fresh gumbo to the audience, a gastronomic boogie-woogie he’s been performing since 1990.
Bring your dancing shoes. And an appetite.
“It’s like a soul-shouting picnic of rock-and-roll brotherhood,’’ he says. “After the show, everybody breaks bread together. It’s a communion.’’
Wharton said he’s looking forward to returning to the Bamboo Room, where he has played several gigs over the years before it was renamed Rudy’s at Bamboo in February. But his immediate thoughts are on western North Carolina.
He’s headlining a benefit show this Friday at the American Legion Hall in Tallahassee, organized by his Planet Gumbo charity, to raise money for residents displaced by Hurricane Helene.
His charity already has shipped 10 liquid propane heaters to the region, a special place for him since his days as a kid attending summer camps. And in December, he will head to Asheville with his guitars and cooking utensils to play benefit shows.
His Lake Worth Beach show, expected to draw a large crowd, will feature a tip jar dedicated to western North Carolina.
“All money we collect will go to hurricane relief in North Carolina,’’ said Wharton, who was born in pre-Disney Orlando and remembers Hurricane Donna in 1960.
Wharton has played slide guitar at gigs around North America and Europe since the 1970s. Through his nonprofit Planet Gumbo, he has performed since 2003 at soup kitchens and homeless shelters around North America. And since 2019, his tours have included stops in areas hit by hurricanes.
With his wife Ruthie doubling as business manager and roadie, he gets around these days in a 2015 Ford Transit T-150 with 240,000 miles on it. The van is tricked out with an inverter and “two huge marine batteries” that can power his PA, amplifiers and guitars for four hours — longer if the van’s engine is running.
“I can go where there is no electricity,’’ he said. “When (Hurricane) Michael came up to Mexico Beach (in 2018), it flattened the place. I parked my van on the beach and made gumbo for everybody right there.’’
He used the same set-up to play a benefit show in Fort Myers in October 2022, a few weeks after Hurricane Ian tore through the area. He fed 400 people.
“A big part of my job is to make people forget about their troubles and be in a place that’s comfortable with music that’ll lift their spirits,’’ he said.
“I really concentrate on let's spend an hour or two hours hanging together and having a good time. It’s none of this crying in your beer kind of blues. What I do is try to uplift people. I keep to a positive and upbeat kind of message just to make people happy.’’
Blues has been his passion since he found a 1933 National Steel guitar in his front yard in the 1970s, a gift that sent him on a blues journey that he chronicled in “The Life and Times of Blind Boy Billy,’’ a memoir/cookbook.
His “Sauce Boss” persona took root in 1987 when started making his Liquid Summer Hot Sauce and serving samples on crackers to friends.
“People would have to have it. People would come over to my house and eat all my hot sauce. I would make a couple of gallons and it would be gone in a couple of weeks,’’ he said.
“I knew back then that this sauce was so different. When you cook with it, it’s amazing. It’s kind of got a creeper burn that comes up slow. It’s got flavor out the ying-yang.’’
He started bottling it and selling it at gigs.
In 1989, he was recording at Kingsnake Records in Sanford, Fla., when Louisiana blues legend Raful Neal was there cutting an album.
“His wife Shirley was making gumbo and I watched her like a hawk,’’ he recalled. “When I saw Shirley making that gumbo, I said, ‘Man, I can feed a lot of people out of one pot and show ‘em how good this sauce is.’’’
The Sauce Boss was born.
He played his first gumbo gig on New Year’s Eve 1989. Since then, he estimates he has served up more than 200,000 bowls of gumbo at thousands of gigs around the world.
Jimmy Buffett attended one of his shows years ago and put the Sauce Boss in his tune "I Will Play For Gumbo."
“It’s more than a show. It’s a real community event,’’ Wharton said. “Some of the songs are about food, some of them just my regular tunes. I weave the cooking and the music and the camaraderie together.’’
Jonathan Demme used Wharton’s slide guitar anthem “Let the Big Dog Eat” in his movie “Something Wild.’’ And Wharton can be heard playing guitar on “Jimmy Carter Rock and Roll President,” a 2020 documentary directed by his daughter, Mary Wharton. He won best original score at the Los Angeles Film Awards.
Wharton turns 77 next month and he is happy to continue doing what he loves. His latest album, “The Sauce,” hit No. 5 on the Florida roots music chart and No. 14 nationwide for blues rock.
“It’s so easy for me and Ruth to hop in the van. It’s really cool. It’s totally contained,’’ he said.
“I’ve always had a great time at the Bamboo Room and I’m really looking forward to getting back there.’’
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About the author
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, the birth of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. View all posts by Joe Capozzi.