BBQ & Music - Both With Spice

We went to a barbecue cook-off and a blue grass festival, sort of, in nearby Kennesaw yesterday evening.

The parking was difficult. We finally parked in a Dollar Store / Brewster’s Ice Cream parking lot…. And so did a lot of other people. Each store might as well closed for the evening.

I felt, until I got used to it, at the cook-off, we were the cookees. The sun was bright and the heat was blaring hot. All we needed was an apple in our mouths and a dry-rub.

I suppose there were twenty or more tents or camps,. There were different contraptions of smokers with teams of people at each preparing what they think is the best with their secret ingredients…. But more than that, I think it is a social thing. They see their friends and competitors at the different cook offs and they develop their own little community with their own cliques and their elites, and their own bragging rights.

Along with them comes the carnival atmosphere of venders selling things like cotton candy, funnel cakes, polish sausages, steak on a stick, and games such asthrow balls and win prizes… suckers get in line here… then you have booths of things like Verizon, Comcast, and other companies trying to get to know you better – to register for a prize… and every time you will probably win something that someone wants to drop by your house and deliver and introduce to you a new vacuum cleaner or something.

We ran into a couple that we have known through the years. It seems lately we have ran into several times, mostly at concerts. We talked about several movies we have seen and this and that. Our friendship is sort of based on cultural self-back-patting. They told us they walked out of several plays in downtown Marietta’s Theater of the Square because of “weird stuff” and “gay stuff”. I said I enjoyed watching it all. They looked at me blankly for a second and then went back with our cultural pat-on-the-back talk.

We had barbecue sandwiches from the commercial venues and nibbled samples from some of the contestants that were proud to hand out samples.


I think all the tents and booths that sold barbecue none had seating for their customers to sit. Way out of the way where the music was being performed were seats but they were not close by. At one time we were tired and wanted to sit and also wanted something to eat. We bought one bbq pork sandwich from a booth named Beer Duty BBQ Catering out of Atlanta, mostly Sandy Springs, they told us. We wanted to split one sandwich. They graciously provided us with two paper plates and cut it into for us. Not only did they do that but they also brought two seats from the back for us to sit in. How is that for service? The meat they piled on that one sandwich was enough for 3 normal bbq sandwiches. The pulled meat had just enough fat in it to enhance the flavor and it was delicious! Click here for their website.



We also went to their live music area. The group that was on stage had a mixture of rock and bluegrass. They were pretty good. The main one had a voice like Elvis and face like Elvis if he was alive today… winkles on a sagging face. The audience was sort of small. Only three rows of folding seats were being used. The first row has a few sitting on it. One the first row was an alert looking man to look to be about age 35 to 40. He had a full beard and a bright blue shirt. I noticed he clapped the loudest and seemed to be the most attentive. He was sitting alone. One time he hollered out to the main singer asking did they ever play in Knoxville. The main guy said yeah, they had a gig lined up the week before Thanksgiving in Knoxville and told him where at.

He stood and socked the air and said, “By God! I’ll be there!”

Good Lord! Were they that good? Did I miss something?

The fan was a big man. He was stout and big. In just about any fight I think he would be the winner in most cases.

In one of the songs the key singer, the old Elvis-sound-alike, walked out in the audience singing and strumming his guitar. His main fan was tickled pink. He stood about 4 feet from him and followed him with his camera-cell phone. I think the big brute of a fan had a crush on the old man.

I noticed the also had a CD he had bought from the table down front. He kept looking at it.

After the group’s time on stage they packed up their musical instrument to make way for the next group “Hurrican” Somebody with his backups the Singing Cowboys or some such name the star struck fan came up to the edge of the stage and was talking to the old Elvis. Suddenly the big fan walked off quickly, stopped about 15 feet away, turned and said something to the old man, then left rather hurriedly. I wonder what that was about.

“Hurricane” then kept looking for something on the edge of the stage. He walked around looking for whatever it was, back tracked his footsteps, carefully looking down, then back over to where he and the fan exchanged words… he never did find it.

I wonder if the fan picked up a little authentic souvenir to snuggle up to last night?