Wavy Gravy – Hippy Icon, Flower Geezer & Temple of Accumulated Error

Photo Credit: Cooper
Photo Credit: Cooper

HIPPY ICON, FLOWER GEEZER & TEMPLE OF ACCUMULATED ERROR

September 27- October 5

Sat at 5pm | Sun at 2pm
The Marsh BERKELEY

Wavy Gravy performs at NYC’s City Winery on October 20. What better way to get ready than to perform for Marsh Audiences for four shows only. In Hippy Icon, Flower Geezer & Temple of Accumulated Error, Wavy Gravy recounts his legendary life and times, spilling proverbial beans. Among many other things, you may possibly hear about Albert Einstein walking five-year-old Wavy around the block or maybe about the time Bob Dylan shared a room with Wavy over the Gaslight in Greenwich Village and wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” on Wavy’s typewriter or, yet again, just maybe, about Wavy at Woodstock.

Artist Biography

Best known to millions as the inspiration for a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor—”I am an activist clown and former frozen dessert,” says Wavy—it is through his good work on behalf of the planet and its least fortunate residents that Wavy Gravy has achieved his own brand of sainthood. His friend and satirist Paul Krassner has called him “the illegitimate son of Harpo Marx and Mother Teresa.” Wavy says, “Some people tell me I’m a saint, I tell them I’m Saint Misbehavin’” (which is also the name of Michelle Estrick’s critically acclaimed documentary on Wavy). All performances will benefit Seva Foundation and Camp Winnarainbow.

Wavy Gravy recounts his legendary life and times, spilling proverbial beans. Among many other things, you may possibly hear about Albert Einstein walking five-year-old Wavy around the block or maybe about the time Bob Dylan shared a room with Wavy over the Gaslight in Greenwich Village and wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” on Wavy’s typewriter or, yet again, just maybe, about Wavy at Woodstock.

Hugh Romney, much better known as Wavy Gravy, already well into his official geezerhood’, is more active and more effective in the world then he was decades ago. Back then when still known as Hugh Romney he stood on the stage of the original Woodstock concert and announced….” What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000!” He was at Woodstock as a member of an entertainment/activist commune known as the Hog Farm. Today, the Hog Farm still exists, collectively owning and operating the 700-acre Black Oak Ranch and hosting the annual Pig-Nic. And Wavy lives 8 months of the year in a Berkeley Hog Farm urban outpost, a big communal house he refers to as “hippie Hyannisport” But Mr. Gravy has expanded his activities over the past three & a half decades to include codirectorship of Camp Winnarainbow, a performing arts camp for children which takes over the Hog Farm for 10 weeks every summer, and the organization of all-star rock concerts to raise money for a variety of environmental, progressive, political, and charitable causes, most notably Seva, a foundation he cofounded in 1978, initially to combat preventable and curable blindness in the Third World.

He may be best known to millions as a cosmic cut-up and the inspiration for a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor – “I am an activist clown and former frozen dessert,” he says – but it is because of his good work on behalf of the planet and its least fortunate residents that Wavy Gravy has achieved his own brand of sainthood. His friend and satirist Paul Krassner has called him “the illegitimate son of Harpo Marx and Mother Teresa.” Wavy says, “Some people tell me I’m a saint, I tell them I’m Saint Misbehavin’.”

When you spend any stretch of time with Wavy Gravy, strolling around the Hog Farm during the Pig-Nic, hanging out with him at his “hippie Hyannisport” in Berkeley, observing him in action at a public function – you quickly discover that the man with the rubbery face and ever-changing costume is a walking public service announcement for positive social change and compassion. According to Wavy, his commitment to the kind of work he does was indeed a product of the ‘60s. “That’s when I knew this thing was real,” he says, “that it was the only game in town and I wanted to go to work for it, whatever it was. Once you realize the interconnectedness of all stuff, there’s no going back. I have an old Gravy line, ‘We are all the same person trying to shake hands with our self.’ Remember that the next time you say, ‘pass the gravy.’”

Press & Media

Wavy Gravy’s ‘Hippy Icon, Flower Geezer’ — SF Chronicle