Casey Orr was a fan of GWAR for years before taking on the role of Beefcake the Mighty in 1994, a character introduced in 1987 and portrayed by bassist Mike Bishop until Orr took over, and by Todd Evans in the early 2000s.

“I was one of those guys that when I saw GWAR I was like, man, that’s what I wanted. That’s what I was standing in front of the mirror mimicking Kiss and that what I wanted to do. I wanted to do the whole full show. And when I saw GWAR for the first time, I was just standing there with my jaw open,” the bassist recalls, who has been back as Beefcake since 2008.

“I saw the potential for GWAR. It’s got a life of its own, you know, it’s more than just us, the guys in the band, or whoever is in at any given time. We don’t get the credit as musicians as maybe we would like or should because we’re in costume, but it’s part of the job,” he shrugs. “The costumes blind some people to the fact that the guys involved are actually writing music. Then again, if we weren’t wearing the big rubber suits, maybe nobody would be listening.”

I’ve heard many different variations on how the band first got together, but I’m more curious on how you ended up in the mix.

I was in a band called Rigor Mortis and my guitar player, Mike Scaccia, had gone on to do some work with Ministry and Revolting Cocks. (Ministry frontman) Al Jorgenson had, at one point, mixed a couple of GWAR songs and when Dewey Rowell, who was Flattus Maximus, left, they were looking for a replacement and they contacted Al to see if Mike or anybody he knew was available. Mike knew a friend of ours from here in Texas named Pete Lee and he joined the band. Several years later, when Mike Bishop left, Pete said, “I know the guy; you’ve got to call this guy.” He got them to call me, they flew me up, and the rest is history.

Did they make you audition?

They were planning auditions, and they did audition a couple other guys, but of course when I got up there the decision was easy. No, actually, I had to learn 30-some songs, and when I got there they were so out of practice and only knew four or five of them (laughing). We just fit together really well right off the bat.

Was there a huge learning curve in terms of stage presence for you?

I think I’m just naturally a ham and a performer and it just felt like that’s what I always wanted to be, so I just embraced it. I actually put on Mike Bishop’s old costume for the first tour and it was weird and uncomfortable, but I got used to it. But I remember, I put on the helmet going into the very first show on stage and sweating this sort of reconstituted old sweat. I remember this black water pouring into my face and realizing it was his old sweat, and I thought if could survive that and finish the show without gagging, I figured I could do anything.

What kind of personal touches did you make to the character when you first joined the band?

Before I joined, the character was sort of a namble perverty kind of boy-toucher kind of character. He was very flamboyant; he was kind of creepy. He was very Roman decadent. When I joined, I brought a little Texan to it, and he sort of became more of just a loud drunken Roman.

And is Beefcake’s bass playing style all you, or did you adapt it to the character?

I think it’s all me. I play more like Lemmy in a sort of rhythm guitar sort: lots of chords, a lot of progressions and runs that maybe a schooled bass player wouldn’t play. Mike Bishop played an extremely different style than I do, and he’s brilliant. He plays with his fingers; I play with a pick. I just play different. I mean, I sort of learned – in Rigor Mortis, it was just one guitar and bass and Mike did tons of lead, so I learned how to be a rhythm guitar player as well as a bass player. But as far as GWAR, I made it my own and I pretty much just play the way I play. I tried to play the parts as written as much as possible, but I didn’t hobble myself to it. I took a lot of leeway with the part.

That’s cool they were cool with you making it your own.

Yeah, you know, the thing about GWAR is whenever we take a break and then come back to get ready for a tour, everybody kind of takes a break from playing all these songs and everybody comes back and we sort of relearn them and they morph a little bit every time, so the way we play a song from say Scumdogs of the Universe [Metal Blade, 1990] now may be very different in many aspects from the way it was done on the record. And it’s just a natural thing. It keeps the song fresh for us because some of the songs we play are almost songs we can’t get away with not playing and they go stale, and it’s also part of not sitting with the record and trying to learn it verbatim every time.

What is your favourite GWAR song to play live?

That’s a really hard question. GWAR itself is really all over the place as far as style. If you play every GWAR song randomly, there’s country and punk and metal and there’s symphonic bits. It’s insane. It’s really crazy, and most artists don’t have that luxury of being able to play really heavy song and then a really goofy song about barnyard animals. But a lot of people who are fans can’t accept that. They’re just like, “Oh, they’re nuts; they’ve lost it.” But our fans are counting on us being nuts and losing it and they stick with us and it’s incredible. They love it. They love the silliness, but they also love the heavy stuff and the songs that show we can really play. And it’s like, “Thanks!” because a lot of people won’t notice those.

What are some of the downfalls to that kind of luxury?

There are reviewers that obviously don’t listen to the record when they write about the show or an album review, and it’s frustrating, but we know it’s just part of the gig. People will look at the costumes and the show and it blinds them to the fact that there are guys involved actually trying to write riffs and music.

It must be fun writing your bass lines.

It’s a blast. We all work really well together. This latest album, during the writing cycle, somebody would come up with an idea or we’d come up with something while we were jamming and everybody would put their two cents in and we would kind of just write and rewrite until everybody was happy. It really felt like a cooperative effort on everybody’s part. And it was a lot of fun. Everyone is really fun to work with and they’re great musicians. They’re some of the best musicians I’ve ever worked with.

And you’re very much a do-it-yourself kind of band, is that right?

Everything is all do-it-yourself. We didn’t have any label money, we never have. We built everything ourselves, and we do all the artwork ourselves. From time to time, we get people to do videos or artwork and stuff, but it’s a very DIY operation and even still, as a fan, I can step back and I’m just amazed that these guys started something out of paper maché and a punk rock band, crammed it all together, and for the last 25 years have made careers.

Beefcake the Mighty and the rest of GWAR recently brought their live show through Alberta. Check out our review and photos from the Calgary concert in The Pit Stop.