This weekend, Soulard hosts its 10th annual Oktoberfest. It is a monumental celebration of German heritage; an event packed with boundless German entertainment, from its 2,000 kegs of beer and 1,000 Munich-style baby-back ribs to the 11 bands that will perform. Earlier this week, I sat down with Mr. and Mrs. Oktoberfest to hear what makes this event so authentic and fun. The couple is not married, but they certainly banter affectionately as if they were.
Hanging With Mr. and Mrs. Oktoberfest
I innocently asked them what I believed to be a simple question: How long have you been involved in Oktoberfest?
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“The last four years? Five?” Betty (Mrs. Oktoberfest) responded.
“No, no, it’s been more than that,” asserted Gert (Mr. Oktoberfest).
The couple, dressed in their Oktoberfest outfits, 75-year-old Gert in his lederhosen and beer stein hat, his girlfriend Betty in a colorful German dress, drew the attention of customers of the St. Louis Bread Co. The patrons couldn’t seem to stop staring, smiling as they walked by.
“It can’t be more than five, Gert,” Betty continued.
Mr. Oktoberfest stubbornly dug through his stack of photos from previous years’ celebrations. He finally found his first year and glanced at the photo’s back. “This was…2009,” he said, showing me the photograph of himself and Mayor Slay.
“So, it has been five years,” I said, laughing.
Ten years ago, John McKinstry organized Soulard’s first Oktoberfest. He did everything he could to make it comparable to Munich’s yearly festivities, even importing the pretzels from Germany. In 2009, he asked his friend, Gert Goetz, to get involved.
“I knew [John] and he said he needed a guy, a little happy guy that filled his lederhosen up, with a bad accent,” Gert chuckled. “A little funny guy who would have a good time, get the people going, keep the old German heritage up. Oktoberfest actually started 200 years ago. During King Ludwig’s wedding, they celebrated every day for 16 days in Munich. That’s how it started.”
He fills the role well, a smiling, endearing German man who knows no strangers. At one point during the interview, a woman approached our table and began a conversation with Gert—in German. He enthusiastically told her about his hat and handed her a flyer for Oktoberfest. She moved here from Germany 20 years ago, she said, and has never been to an American Oktoberfest.
After she said goodbye and thanked Gert for the flyer, I asked him about what he loved most about Oktoberfest.
“Good music! Everybody be happy. They dancing, having good food and a glass of beer, they enjoy themselves and have a good time. That’s what I like.”
“They’ll have ribs, chicken, turkey legs, brats…” Betty said.
The food will be prepared by Kenrick’s Meat Market & Catering, and there will be 35 food, drink, and merchandise vendors throughout the event. Organizers expect to draw a crowd of 60,000, though that (of course) depends on what happens with the Cardinals. So they are installing a 24-foot and 16-foot movie screens to broadcast the game, and offering Cards packages: $45 for admission to Oktoberfest, shuttle rides to and from the game, and a signature beer mug.
Dorfrocker: From Germany With Love
Before meeting up with Mr. and Mrs. Oktoberfest, I was able to speak on the phone with a member of Dorfrocker, the band headlining at this year’s Oktoberfest. The trio, made up of brothers Markus, Tobias, and Phillipp Thomann, played almost 700 shows in their native Germany last year. We spoke with Markus, who plays accordion.
Are you excited to be coming back to St. Louis?
Yes, of course. We’ve been there twice before…and we’re happy to come back.
How does our Oktoberfest compare to Oktoberfest in Germany?
There is one major difference: in Germany you have a lot of tents at the Oktoberfests. The most famous Oktoberfest in Germany is the one in Munich and there you have 10 or 12 big tents. In St. Louis, you have a big open-air festival with a few tents, where the tents are all also open on the sides. In Germany…Oktoberfest is very established. Every little town or little city has its own Oktoberfest. Ten or 20 years back, there was just the Oktoberfest in Munich, but at the moment it’s a very big hype in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Here in the United States, Oktoberfest is a special thing; you don’t have Oktoberfest in every city. But the Oktoberfest in St. Louis is very big, because of its atmosphere with the open air. It’s pretty good.
What was the most fun thing you did at our Oktoberfest last year?
Most fun? Boy, we have fun on all our gigs and I think we had a lot of fun in St. Louis because in St. Louis there is the “Chicken Dance,” which in Germany we do not play so often, but in America everybody is happy when you play the “Chicken Dance.” We made a “Chicken Dance” contest and we made a drinking contest and a bratwurst eating contest and it was also funny because we tried to [teach] the audience to yodel. [Singing.] Yodel-tee.
Will you do all of that again this year?
Yes, of course!
I watched your Oktoberfest music video that you made while you were here last year…that looked like a lot of fun.
Well the song, we specially wrote for Oktoberfest in St. Louis, and we also recorded this video in St. Louis at the Arch and downtown and a few places in St. Louis. We played the song on a German television show two weeks ago where we talked about Oktoberfest in St. Louis, so the people in Germany know we are in the United States at the moment and that we play at the Oktoberfest in St. Louis. This was a special song for the Oktoberfest in St. Louis, because we had a good contact in John McKinstry.
So you play with your brothers, right?
Yes, we are three brothers. We play with our band…in our live shows.
How long have you three been playing together?
Well, Tobias is the singer, and I am the accordion player. We are the older ones, and we play together…25 years, I think. When we were small children we started playing music with the accordion and with the drum set and then, time after time, we tried different types of music—we played rock ‘n’ roll, and we played popular music and reggae. [When] our small brother, Philip, became bigger…he learned to play the electric guitar and I think it was 9 or 10 years ago when we decided to make a band. This was a time when we decided to play our own music, and not only to cover other music songs, but to write our own songs. In 2006, we got a big record deal at Sony Music, and then in 2007, we had our first television gig in Germany. In the last 6 or 7 years, we played over 800 live shows in Germany and we had 100 television gigs. We became better and better. With the last CD we were very good with the German charts. It’s something like the Billboard charts in America. It’s a good development.
I hear you’re more popular in Germany than Lady Gaga.
[Laughing.] I don’t know if it’s true, but yes, when you compare it with the success and CDs, this could be true.
How would you describe your music?
It’s a combination between folk music…because of the accordion and the traditional instruments, and you can hear the electric guitar and the drums, which stand for rock music, so it’s a combination between both.
What’s your favorite song to perform?
We are happy to play the Oktoberfest Song for St. Louis.
Have you played for Chancellor Angela Merkel before?
Yeah. In the elections a few weeks ago, Merkel won…so before these elections, we played a few gigs for her. It was before a big speech. We made the warm up for the people there, so the people were in a good mood. There were thousands of people there. So after the gig, Merkel spoke to the audience.
That’s actually really impressive. That would be the same thing as a band here playing for our president.
Yes, yes. So for us it was a good success, and also five years ago at the last elections we played for Merkel. There is a photo…where we are together with Merkel and she holds our new CD.
Do you tour pretty often in Germany?
Yeah, we play every weekend. In the next year we have 130 gigs.
You’re doing a kind of tour in the States now, right?
Yeah, we try to play a tour here, but the problem is our time schedule or our calendar is very filled with dates in Germany. In the last year, we tried to make a tour…but the problem was we didn’t have time. If we have more weekends free, it would be a nice thing to play here more often, but we have to plan it in the long term.
Well, maybe next year.
[Laughing.] Maybe next year.
Oktoberfest kicks off Friday, October 11 at 6 p.m.; general festival admission is $10 Friday and Saturday, and Sunday is free. The festival grounds are two blocks east of the Soulard Market, on Third and Lafayette. For more details, visit soulardoktoberfest.com. For more information on Dorfrocker, visit dorfrocker.de.
