Bill Wharton Serves the Blues "With Extra Sauce" — and the Gumbo's Still On

Somewhere in Tallahassee right now, a cast-iron skillet is not full of gumbo. It is bolted to the body of a guitar, and Bill "Sauce Boss" Wharton is playing slide on it. If that sentence made you smile, you already understand the man. If it didn't, well — you haven't been fed yet.

This year's release from our resident swamp-blues shaman is "With Extra Sauce," a 10-track LP that dropped April 17 on Wharton's own Swampside Records (catalog SR261, for the collectors). It is his 18th album, and — for whatever a spouse's endorsement is worth, which around here is everything — his wife Ruthie's favorite of the bunch.

For the uninitiated: Wharton earned the "Sauce Boss" title honestly. Back in the mid-1980s he was messing with datil peppers in a Tallahassee greenhouse, which became his Liquid Summer Hot Sauce. In 1989 he started cooking five gallons of gumbo onstage during every show, feeding the crowd while he shredded. By the count on his own bio, that has added up to somewhere around 200,000 free bowls over the decades — a number that reads like a typo and isn't. Jimmy Buffett name-checked him in "I Will Play for Gumbo." His tune "Let the Big Dog Eat" landed in Jonathan Demme's 1986 film "Something Wild." His music runs through the 2020 documentary "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President." No Grammy, ever. Somehow that feels correct — you don't give a golden gramophone to a man whose real trophy is a stirred pot.

So what does "With Extra Sauce" actually sound like? Wharton's own description is the best one going: flavor, he says, "not unlike my Liquid Summer Hot Sauce" — hot, sweet and sour, all at once. The record keeps the slinky, swampy groove his fans expect while stretching into new corners. Eight of the ten tracks are originals, padded out with a couple of traditionals, and the running order tells you plenty: "Burn It Up" opens, and by the time you reach "Ce Soir C'est Bon," "Don't Let the Devil Ride," "BBQ" and the closer "Next Time You Wonder," you've been on a full tour of Wharton's Gulf-Coast-meets-Louisiana imagination.

He didn't cook this one alone. The core band is Neal Goree on guitar, Kendrick Jacobs on bass and Brett Crook on drums, with David Davidson adding violin and string arrangements to a pair of cuts — a lush touch on a record that could easily have coasted on grit alone.

Why does this matter beyond the novelty? Because Wharton has spent a career proving that the gumbo isn't a gimmick draped over the music — it's the whole thesis. "Something about music and food together is really healthful in terms of your psyche," he's said, and his Planet Gumbo charity, which feeds people in shelters in the cities where he plays, is that idea walking around in the world. The songs, he insists, are all pretty much about one thing. "Every one is talking about love!" he told WFSU. Then, on where the material comes from: "That's what makes you create. 'Hey, I want to tell y'all about this!'"

The album celebrated its arrival with a release party at The Pub at Feather Oaks, and Wharton remains, at an age when most players are coasting on the back catalog, restlessly making new stuff. "With Extra Sauce" is a record for people who like their blues seasoned, their bandleaders eccentric and their gumbo, naturally, extra.

Tallahassee's had a lot of exports. Few of them will stir the pot and then let you have a taste. Get a bowl. Get the record. In that order, if you can manage it.

Sources: Bill Wharton's Latest Batch Of Tasty Tunes Comes 'With Extra Sauce' (WFSU); Sauce Boss — With Extra Sauce; Sauce Boss — Swampside Records; Bill "Sauce Boss" Wharton (Tallahassee Arts); The legend of Bill Wharton, Florida's 'Sauce Boss' (St. Pete Catalyst)