J’Dubs BBQ (Food Truck) - Webster City, IA

In what seemed like a long time coming, I finally got to be out on an extended road trip doing shows. I'm reluctant to call it a tour because we were never more than a few hours from home. It was certainly hard to be away from my wife and son for several nights in a row, but the great rooms we played and the company we kept help keep spirits high. It was the second go-round of a little program I've taken to calling North By Northwest Iowa (#NXNWIowa). I'm running it with my good friend Casey Joe Collins. Being a native of northwest Iowa I wasn't exposed to a lot of art. KUOO and whatever our high school art teacher Hank Hall could show us.  When I started performing music, I didn't really travel outside of that area much and struggled to find rooms to perform in with my original music. The Iowa Great Lakes was rich, nearly spoiled, with cover bands and solo players reading chords and lyrics off of a music stand. Everything has it's place, but up there, it was all over the place. I was fortunate to find a few rooms that would host me, and it helped developed the building blocks of my career. I wanted to take an opportunity to travel to the better rooms in that part of the state and perform my original music. I'm especially happy to split the time with my good friend Casey Joe Collins. We run these shows like writers rounds, sitting up on stage together and swapping songs back and forth. Through years of being friends and traveling around the country (together and separately) we've built up a solid stage banter performance along with the songs. It's a bit more of a variety show, if you'd allow us to call it an actual show. On the third day of this run we woke up in Cherokee, Iowa and had to be in Ames before noon. We did an hour set in Ames, and then had to turn around and drive back up to Sioux Center, Iowa after that. Roughly 6 hours in the car without leaving the state, but they were two great shows. At the Goldfinch Room Reunion Festival in Ames they had a food truck, and I was able to score some baked beans before we had to hit the road again.

This whole website is me waxing poetic about this line of work. Can't we just talk beans? 

J'Dubs BBQ was the food truck they had on site at this festival in Ames and I knew I couldn't leave town without getting some beans. Their menu was a la carte so you can mix and match whichever items you wanted. Fortuantely for you, they had a "smoked baked beans" menu item and I dove in. It was served up warm in a decent sized, white styrofoam cup. Full to the top. By appearance alone, I knew these were going to be above average baked beans. Like many dishes of this style, this was a single bean dish. The traditional navy bean, if I'm not mistaken. These beans were slightly over cooked and a bit mushy to the tooth. The beans were cooked in a textbook sauce. Not too runny, and not too thick. The sauce it self was a delicious mix of sweet, tangy, and spicy. Truly a mouthwatering sauce. To give you a bit of variety in the dish, the team at J'Dubs BBQ threw in some extras that really helped separate these from a lot of other side dishes. Did it have meat in it? Yes. Was it pork belly? Hell yes. Large, tender chunks of pork belly were mixed in and cooked down with these beans. They also included diced bell pepper. Extra color, additional vegetal flavor, and a third texture in the bite. This was a very good order of baked beans, and if you see this truck at any event in the state, make sure and order these beans. Tell them I sent you. 

Ratings (On a scale of 1-5)
Appearance: 5
Flavor: 4
Mouthfeel: 3

Total Score: 12

For what it's worth,
Finding your dream and pursuing it: 5