Brisket and a Benefit, Dave Grohl and John Mayer Headline Soundstage of Hope in Hollywood
The Foo Fighters frontman, who smokes meat for Skid Row, was booked to headline a Saturday gala for two Los Angeles missions.
Dave Grohl has two ways of showing up for Los Angeles. One involves a guitar. The other involves a smoker. Soundstage of Hope, a gala for Hope the Mission and Los Angeles Mission, was booked for Saturday night, October 10, at Chaplin Studios in Hollywood, with Grohl headlining, which puts the guitar to work for a cause he usually serves with the smoker.
The Gala
The benefit was set to start at 6:30 p.m., according to LAist, with Grohl joined on the bill by John Mayer and the cover band Chevy Metal. Grohl told LAist that with Chevy Metal he gets to play Talking Heads, Black Sabbath and Rolling Stones songs. “Chevy Metal rocks, dude,” he said. The gala’s website lists McG as a special guest, and Hope the Mission’s events page describes an evening of performances by Grohl and Mayer, food and drinks, stories of lives being transformed and surprise guests.
The two missions put the night on together. Hope the Mission, which the gala site says grew from humble beginnings in the San Fernando Valley into the largest rescue mission in the United States, provides shelter, meals and medical support. Los Angeles Mission has served Skid Row since 1936. Together the two organizations provide nearly 4 million meals and more than 1,000,000 nights of shelter every year, the gala website says.
The Man Behind the Smoker
For Grohl the cause is practical, and it began with food. “I fell in love with barbecue at a young age,” he told LAist. “Over time, I started cooking myself. When we had the Malibu fires in 2018, I thought, ‘OK, well, I’m going to start cooking for people in need.’” He told Bon Appétit that he ended up barbecuing hundreds of pounds of meat and bringing care packages to the fire stations, and that the effort led to Backbeat BBQ, which he called “my one-man catering company.” His smokers grew too, he told LAist, until he had one in his driveway that can cook for up to 500 people.
His attention turned to people experiencing homelessness on a cold, rainy trip to his recording studio in Northridge, he told LAist. “I thought, ‘Rather than cook for a fundraiser, I just wanna give food to people that are hungry and hand someone a plate of food,’” he said. He recalled carrying hot boxes of food to 200 to 400 people on Skid Row, and said he had found the thing he loves as much as music, if not more.
In February 2023 he spent a stormy night at Hope the Mission’s Trebek Center in Northridge, cooking brisket, ribs and pork butt on his own smokers for more than 450 unhoused people, the Los Angeles Times reported. The mission’s Rowan Vansleve told the paper that Grohl stayed out from about midnight until 6 a.m. tending the fires.
Grohl sees the kitchen and the stage as the same craft. “The song is your recipe,” he told LAist. “The preparation and the cook is the recording. Serving to people, that’s your performance. And if people came back around for a second plate, that’s your encore.”
Practical Details
Soundstage of Hope was scheduled for Saturday, October 10, at Chaplin Studios in Hollywood, starting at 6:30 p.m. Tickets and sponsorship options are on the Hope United Gala website.
