Southern BBQ Boys headed to NYC

By Staff
Kim West
What started as an economical way to study off-campus during a school break has turned into a media bandwagon for the Southern BBQ Boys, a quartet of Birmingham-Southern College students who spent more than two weeks in January studying Southern culture through visits to barbecue restaurants across the Southeast.
Art Richey, a senior at Birmingham-Southern and a graduate of Russellville High School, said the idea for the trip, an independent study monitored and graded by BSC professor Dr. Natalie Davis, came to him one day at work.
"I was sitting at work one day and trying to come up with something to do during the interim break," said Richey, who is the state's only Truman Scholar and plans to attend law school. "I wanted to go somewhere off-campus, but I didn't have the money to study in a place like Italy.
"We were talking about where to eat lunch, and we were actually headed to Dreamland (BBQ) that day. I'm a big fan of Southern culture, and I thought, 'Why can't we study the South and barbecue by going on the road and eating at different barbecue restaurants?'"
The Southern BBQ Boys, comprised of Richey and classmates Jeff Vaughan, Will Foster and Matt Lee, who maintains the group's Web site, www.southernbbqboys.com, left Birmingham Jan. 7 and returned home Jan. 23 after visiting 17 restaurants in 17 days.
The five-state trip included stops at Byron's in Auburn, Dreamland's in Tuscaloosa, Big Bob Gibson's in Decatur and Demetri's in Homewood; Fresh Air and Old Clinton in Georgia; Germantown Commissary, Neeley's, Corky's and Sticky Fingers in Tennesesee; Sweatman's and Scott's in South Carolina; and Lexington No. 1, Stamey's, B's BBQ, The Pit and Wilber's in North Carolina.
Several newspapers featured the BBQ Boys before the trip began, but publicity took off after the group members were contacted by a media consultant while they were still traveling. The Boys, who recently received a phone call from "Sweet Home Alabama" songwriter Ed King, are now booked for a live appearance in New York City on the Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends" this Saturday between 7:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.
"While we were still on the road, Scott Willard, a media consultant, contacted us," Richey said. "We were picked up by the national (Associated Press) wire Feb. 13, and 150 newspapers ran the story about our trip. We were on the front page of the Dallas Morning News and the Tuscaloosa News, and on newspaper Web sites in England, India, Turkey, France and Canada.
"Before we left, our Web site had 16,000 hits, and after the AP story ran, I think we're now up 38,000 hits. It's just crazy that even though the trip is completed, the project isn't over because now we're going get to talk about it on (national) TV."
Richey, who wrote about 30 pages between an online blog and the academic paper required by the interim course, said while the trip has been filled with fun experiences, the main purpose was to learn about Southern culture.
"People don't believe us, but this trip was a lot of work between writing for the blog and our academic papers, filming the YouTube videos, taking photos, keeping up with the Web site and learning deal with the media," he said. "It's not like we just gorged ourselves on barbecue and went to restaurants."
By this weekend, the group's academic materials will be available on its Web site, which includes links, photos and a blog about the trip.
"I wrote a reflective narrative paper about what Southern culture means to me and my perspective on the South. It's frustrating to me that so much of what makes the South great and what it is about also contains a negative side with poverty."
Despite eating barbecue non-stop during the trip, Richey said he and the rest of the BBQ Boys continue to eat their share of slow-cooked ribs, barbecued chicken and pulled pork sandwiches.
"We're actually not tired of eating barbecue," he said. "I've eaten it seven times since the trip, and I've actually become more obsessed with barbecue. And we're going to eat at two barbecue restaurants while we're in New York."