King of BBQ

In the midst of rehearsal, after I’d just finished my Elvis song, Jim Messina issued a threat.

“Hey, Ben,” he said, “I just want to let you know I’m gonna be writing a review about this!”

“Turnabout is fair play,” I conceded. After all, back when I was at Rolling Stone, I used to write about Messina, who was in Buffalo Springfield and Poco before becoming half of Loggins & Messina.

Loggins wasn’t around, but next to Messina was Richie Furay, his bandmate in Springfield and Poco. And in a far corner were Mickey Raphael, Willie Nelson’s harmonica wizard, and Tony Brown, Nashville label executive, producer (Vince Gill, Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle) and former keyboard player for—yes, Elvis Presley.

We were in the Hunt Suite of the Mansion on Turtle Creek, the Dallas resort hotel where Dean Fearing—the ebullient executive chef and guitar-slinging leader of The Barbwires, a band composed mostly of chefs—gathers as many ringers as he can every year to play his fundraising Summer Barbeque Fest.

On this hot July Saturday, some 600 people would soon show up (at $250 per ticket) to sample grilled and barbequed dishes offered up by celebrity chefs from around the country, and to participate in an auction emceed by Al Roker and Peter Greenberg of NBC’s Today show. (Sample splurge: a winemaker paid $15,000 for an autographed six-string guitar.)

But mostly, there were the musicians, and the chance to see renowned Texas chefs like Fearing, guitarist Robert DelGrande (of Café Annie in Houston) and vocalist Tim Keating (of Quattro, also in Houston) performing with bona fide country and rock stars.

And there was me. I’d covered last year’s bash in a feature for Gourmet magazine, all about chefs who never got over their passion for music, and who still dreamed the rock-star dream—even if only for jam sessions and occasional sets at fundraising events.

Sometime that weekend, Fearing learned that I enjoy singing (although I usually do it through the voices of Elvis, Dino, and Dylan). So I was invited back for this summer’s event.

Having observed Colman Andrews, editor of food magazine Saveur, singing “House of the Rising Sun” with The Barbwires at last year’s shindig, I figured I was being tapped as this year’s ink-stained wretch of a singer. I happily accepted the invite since it is, in essence, a free pass to a nonstop party at a luxury resort (and, after hours, at Fearing’s favorite watering hole, a Tex-Mex restaurant called Primo’s). The festivities, including a couple informal rehearsals, are interrupted only by meals featuring the chef’s signature dishes, tortilla soup and Warm Lobster Tacos with Yellow Tomato Salsa.

To give The Barbwires an idea of what I thought might work for my stint, and to let them choose the song they most wanted to perform, I recorded myself singing a couple of oldies, The King’s “Treat Me Nice” and Ricky Nelson’s “Stood Up,” and sent them off to Fearing.

I heard nothing. Did they like both of them? One of them? Would they prefer I simply show up as a correspondent for Paste? As Dianne, my wife, and I jetted into Dallas, I was in for a few surprises.

At the Mansion, I learned that what had been a cozy eve-of-the-BBQ jam session for the main players, their families and buddies on a Mansion patio the previous year, would this year be open to the public—at least that portion of the public that bought a VIP package. And it’d be at the Nasher Sculpture Center, a sparkling new museum devoted to modern and contemporary sculpture.

The Mansion, which operates a café in the museum, would provide food and drinks, and the band—some of whom were meeting each other for the first time in a year, or ever—would do the entertaining.

This, I thought, could be very entertaining. On the shuttle over from the hotel, the talk was dominated by restaurant gossip. But at the Nasher, music took over. Fearing raved about having collected a ’54, ’55 and ’56 Fender Telecaster in recent months. Messina declared himself “a big Ricky Nelson fan.” Johnny Reno told me he’d heard my CD and raved about the walking bass on “Stood Up.” “I gotta find that guy,” he said. Good luck, I told him. It was a karaoke track.

Soon enough, I was called onstage, faced the crowd, shouted out, “Thank you, Detroit!” and kicked off “Stood Up”—then promptly forgot the second line.

Although I did recover, my tape of the performance reveals that, as Randy Jackson would put it, I ‘sounded pitchy here and there, dawg.’ And The Barbwires played the Elvis song at mid- instead of up-tempo. Still, afterwards, band members and the well-washed public alike began calling me “Elvis.”

On the bus to Primo’s, Fearing revealed that he’d listened to my CD in his car, on his way to work. “I put it on and said, ‘Oh, my God, nobody’s gonna believe that this is Ben! Then I sent it to Jimmy (Messina), and he called and said, ‘That’s unreal.’” Messina himself added: “I know who died and made you Elvis.”

For Messina, this visit to the Mansion amounted to a scouting trip. In October, he’ll return to conduct his Songwriters Performance Workshop at the hotel, where his students will include Fearing and DelGrande. “I hope to get more structure and fine-tuning of my songwriting,” Fearing said. “Yesterday, he was teaching me the lick for ‘You’d Better Think Twice’ on open G. It was just his patience about it. You can tell Jimmy’s a teacher, and he’s giving back.”

And in his own way, so is Furay, who serves as pastor of a church near Boulder, Colo. In recent years, he’s made Christian albums, and his latest includes Poco cohorts Rusty Young, Paul Cotton and Messina, along with Ex-Byrd/Burrito Brother Chris Hillman and members of the Dirt Band. Poco is still together, he said, and is doing a short California tour, including the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, during the summer.

In the Hunt Suite, the morning after the night before, and on the day of the show, Fearing played a few songs and loudly proclaimed, “The problem with tequila is, it wrecks your fingers.” Professor Messina would have none of that. “That’s ‘cause you haven’t played much,” he said. “Don’t blame José!”

With Messina’s two backup singers, Antara and Delilah (who have three folk CDs out under their own name), joining in, I watched and listened as my songs took shape. We found the right tempo for “Treat Me Nice.” Messina counseled me on my timing and phrasing. I got more nervous than ever. I wasn’t in a karaoke bar anymore.

Fortunately, at the barbeque fest, I had no time to build up a case of stage fright. Near the end of the show, I checked the set list, saw that I wasn’t up for another three songs, and danced with Mimi—wife of Barbwire’s Robert DelGrande—to the gorgeous tune of Furay’s Buffalo Springfield song, “Kind Woman.”

At song’s end, Fearing motioned for me to get onstage. Time was tight; songs were being cut; and, suddenly, there I was, watching for Antara and Delilah to cue me into the first song. The Ricky Nelson classic got the crowd streaming to the front of the stage, and they danced through “Treat Me Nice.”

Was I nervous? Was I excited to be singing with this assembly of all-stars? Did I recall the year I spent at age 13 in Amarillo, in the Texas Panhandle? Living in a bungalow behind my father’s restaurant, the Ding How, I’d strum a toy guitar and do Elvis.

But no. More than anything, I was focused; trying hard as I could to remember the next lines; to maintain the tempo, to avoid mistakes. Each time I do something like this, I appreciate professional musicians, and I understand the range of stage demeanors we see, from relaxed and outgoing to serious and business-like.

Having done my bit, I relaxed while Furay and Messina led The Barbwires—and the audience—through the finale, “Your Mama Don’t Dance.”

As confetti streamers showered the crowd, the band exulted. “I had more fun than I’ve ever had,” said Tim Keating, who played congas and provided backup as well as occasional superb lead vocals. “We don’t do this for a living,” said Fearing. “This is a great gauge. This year, we couldn’t have been better, as far as being with the big dogs and being able to keep up, being dynamic.”

Fearing thought back a few numbers, to his guitar solo on “Kind Woman.” “For 20 seconds,” he said, “I can be Jimmy Messina! Like Robert says, ‘Livin’ the dream!’”

I enjoyed my 20 seconds as well, and, through the night, the hits just kept on coming. We all gathered—the musicians, the chefs and, of course, the VIPs—at Primo’s, where some of us reprised concert numbers like “The Weight” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Fearing did The Beatles, and I snuck in some Dino. Well past closing time, the last—or the longest-lasting—of us fell into a shuttle bus. There, the chef asked for more Elvis. I did an a cappella “Love Me” and something else; I forget. Whatever it was, Fearing was still raving about it at our farewell brunch.

As we said our goodbyes, the chef invited us back for next year. “You,” he pronounced, “are an honorary Barbwire.”

What could I say? Nothing, of course, except thank you. Thank you very much.