For the past seven or eight years, I’ve had the great pleasure of presenting a seminar at the annual Craft Brewers Conference. On subjects revolving around the art and importance of good promotion, publicity and cheerleading for craft breweries. Always with a dose of live music at the end of each session.
Every other year that seminar fun reaches much greater heights thanks to The Gourdians, a (self-proclaimed) power trio featuring my pals/heroes Greg Koch (Stone Brewing), Dave Buhler (Elysian Brewing) and myself.
The three of us cover similar buzz-building subjects for the benefit of our beery brothers and sisters, and we also include a dash of musical fun.
Our 2010 seminar ended with a surreal, wild-idea-come-true scenario: Cheap Trick guitar god Rick Nielsen joining us for spoof of his mighty “Surrender.” (Sample lyric: Malty’s alright / Hoppy’s alright / But if you want rocking beer / Promote it / Promote it / But don’t give your beer away)
Hard to top, yes?
Well, a couple weeks ago we gave it a great shot. By having another guitar ace, Kerri Kelli, lead guitarist for Alice Cooper, join us for the finale of our May 11 CBC seminar entitled The Gourdians Go Metal: Turn Your Brewery Voice to 11.
Here’s a clip of the four of us rocking a couple hundred of our beery peers with “Enter Beer Man,” a send up of Metallica’s famed “Enter Sandman.” That’s Kerri taking the solo and bandleader duties, Dave and Greg on crunchy guitars and cool facial hair, and yours truly attempting some James Hetfield-style lead vocals.
Okay, fist in the air and repeat with us: Exit light / Enter might / Take my hand / We’re off to clever craft beer land!
See our 2010 Gourdians number with Rick Neilsen at Wynkoop TV.
