One morning in the early '70s, Wharton walked out of his house and found a 1933 vintage National Steel guitar in his front yard. This guitar led him down the blues path. Deep in the woodshed, he penned "Let the Big Dog Eat," a song that was featured in Academy Award winning director Jonathan Demme's "Something Wild."

When the Sauce Boss decided to put cooking and music in the same show, the whole thing took off. Some have called it shtick or a gimmick, but Wharton says "it's two things that I've always loved to do--play music and cook dinner!" Paris correspondent for International Herald Tribune, Mike Zwerin, says "he does both equally well." National Book award winner Bob Shacochis featured Bill Wharton in his "GQ" column "Dining In," which later appeared in Shacochis's book "Domesticity." Wharton has played festivals and clubs in the US, France, Ireland and Canada, cooking all along the way. He's made gumbo in New Orleans and Lafayette, Louisiana, and that's a tall order.

In his first trip to France, he cooked and played to a sold out concert in the prestigious Printemps de Bourges festival, where he had the assistance of not only his band, The Ingredients, but also a master chef and ten apprentices. He cooked for two solid weeks at Le Meridien (a four-star hotel in Paris). Wharton has appeared in national TV and radio shows in Paris, and has toured throughout the country. Playing the French "National Festival de Blues" for two consecutive years, he was selected as honorary President of the festival in 1995. Recent guests to Bill Wharton concerts have included Max Weinberg of "Late Night with Conan O'Bryan", Branford Marsalis, Lester Chambers of the Chambers Brothers, Kenny Neal, Jimmy Buffett, and Artemis Pyle of the legendary Lynyrd Skynyrd band.

Performance Dates: June 30, 2000