Sticky Fingers: 16th annual Rib America Festival brings music, barbecue to Indianapolis

A waist-high fence separated Alison Ruess from singing with Blind Melon lead singer Travis Warren, so 40 minutes into the band’s Indianapolis show, she jumped it.

“My friend standing right next to me pointed to me, and he waved me up to the stage,” Ruess said. “No one in the front row wanted to sing, so I just jumped the railing and went for it.”

Behind her, another Rib America Festival crowd member wasn’t as lucky. As Ruess reached for the microphone, two security guards led the second gate-jumper away.

“They tried to make me leave, too, but Travis said, ‘No, I need her to sing,’” Ruess said.

From Friday through Monday, thousands of rib eaters and music lovers from across the country made their way to Military Park at White River State Park in downtown Indianapolis for the 16th annual Rib America Festival. More than 75,000 people visited the festival in 2010, and despite the weekend’s heat, Rib America Marketing Manager Jo Carlin said everything was going as expected.

“It looks like Wal-Mart on a Saturday,” one crowd member said.

The festival began in a parking lot in 1995 with about seven vendors and moved to Military Park four years ago with more than 10 regular vendors.

John Giovenco of Chicago BBQ said his company’s truck has traveled to the festival every year since its inception.

“It’s always a good time,” he said. “People out here are friendly.”

In the Chicago truck, more than 1,680 ribs in 140 cases waited to be distributed.

“I’d like to not go home with any,” Giovenco said. “We went through about 15 cases last night, which is not a lot.”

But the truck has a reputation for having the best ribs in the festival, at least in Rachael Chuman’s opinion. Chuman works with Chicago BBQ and has attended the festival as a cook for the past few years.

“I work at another restaurant, but I don’t eat anyone else’s ribs but ours,” she said. “I like flavor. I like the rub. I like the way they fall off the bone.”

To make the ribs, Chuman said the meat is rubbed down with spices and placed in a slow roast cooker for three and a half to four hours.

“We normally get here pretty early to cook them,” she said.

After they’re tenderized, the ribs are taken out of the cooker and given one brush of barbecue sauce on each side.

Vendors have different ways of making the ribs, but festival attendee Scott Brackney said there’s one main way to eat them.

“With your fingers,” he said. “Just pick them up and gnaw on them. I just do the Neanderthal thing.”

During the course of Labor Day weekend, bands including REO Speedwagon, Everclear, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Johnny Lang and the Doobie Brothers performed for crowds of sticky-fingered music lovers. But crowd member Cheri Johnson attended the festival for one band in particular: Blind Melon.

Like Ruess, Johnson went through great lengths to see her favorite musicians, traveling from Massachusetts to see them live for the seventh time.

“They’ve got, like, a hippie, fun vibe,” she said.

Though she chose not to sing with Warren — “I can’t sing that in tune” — Johnson said she enjoyed the show.

“It was great to see Nico sing,” she said of original lead singer Shannon Hoon’s daughter.

Hoon died of a drug overdose on the band’s tour bus in 1995, less than four months after Nico was born. Now, Johnson said Nico performs with the band at shows near her hometown, Chicago.

“She was great,” Johnson said. “That was history in the making.”