via the Bertcast
If you look at Bert Kreischer—shirtless, squealing, usually holding a vodka soda that is mostly vodka—you probably don’t immediately think, “I bet that guy has strong opinions on the transition in ‘Tweezer’.”
You’d assume his playlist is strictly 80s hair metal and maybe “Tubthumping” on repeat. You’d certainly expect some Lynyrd Skynyrd—which he dubbed “the only name that was worth it” to headline his upcoming Full Throttle Daytona 500 festival. But if you think that’s where the list ends, you would be wrong.
Beneath the party-animal exterior beats the heart of a true, obsessive music nerd. And not just any kind of nerd—Bert Kreischer, especially, like many a bearded middle-aged man, is a Jam Band Guy.
I recently sat down with Bert to talk about his massive new Full Throttle Festival, a NASCAR pre-party taking over Daytona this February. He was passionate about the “Super Bowl of Speed,” insisting that “millions and millions of people cannot be wrong” about the sport. But because we are two hairy, middle-aged white guys with a propensity for over-talking, the conversation inevitably drifted away from stock cars and crashed straight into the rail at a Phish show.
What I found was fascinating: Bert didn’t just stumble into the scene. He brute-forced his way in. He treated getting into Phish the way some people treat training for a marathon.
“Can I be really honest? I had to work to get into Phish,” Bert told me, leaning in like he was confessing a crime.
It started as peer pressure. He saw the cool kids going to shows he didn’t quite understand. He admitted he tried and failed to get into acts like G. Love & Special Sauce, and he hilariously botched the name of another jam staple, telling me he “never could feed the Spaghetti Incident” (referring, presumably, to The String Cheese Incident).
Here’s the clip from our conversation where we discuss Phish. You can see the full interview over on my Substack.
But Phish felt like an intellectual hurdle he had to clear. “I didn’t get it… I knew they were smarter. They were like, Harvard-trained, Ivy League. I was like, ‘I’ve got to be able to get this.’”
As Phish nerds, we shouldn’t hold it against him that the band actually hails from UVM and Goddard College, not the Ivy League. But we can certainly agree that the music is deeply technical—especially the fugues in “You Enjoy Myself” and “Reba”—and requires a certain level of study.
This is a specific type of anxiety that plagues a certain type of man. It’s the fear that everyone else at the frat house understands a secret language that you don’t speak. This is a very relatable Phish fan phenomenon.
So, Bert did the work. He bought Billy Breathes (though he clarified he started with the first two albums) and put them on a loop.
“I just started listening over and over and over,” he says. “And then one night… I was high in my fraternity house, and ‘Fee’ came on. And I went, ‘I get it.’ And then ‘Bouncing Around the Room.’ I was like, ‘Okay, I’m in.’ I’m getting chill bumps telling you about it.”
Once you unlock the door with Phish, the rest of the house opens up. Recently, Bert has pivoted his obsessive focus to the Connecticut-based jam juggernaut, Goose.
He famously hosted the band on his podcast and at Red Rocks, but his fandom hit a fever pitch in a hotel room with his wife, LeAnn.
“We were in our hotel room… she opened a bottle of wine, and I turned on Goose and ‘Slow Ready’ came on,” Bert recalls. “It clicked. And we started making out. And I was like, ‘This is my favorite band ever.’”
Naturally, Bert being Bert, he couldn’t keep this intimate moment to himself. He immediately told the band.
“I told the band that we had sex to ‘Slow Ready,’ and they did not like it,” he laughs. “They were like, ‘Thanks, Bert… you’re my dad’s age.’”
The beauty of Bert’s fandom is that he applies this “Jam Band Logic” to everything else in his life, including NASCAR.
His new festival is designed to be the “Super Bowl of Speed,” featuring Lynyrd Skynyrd (who we mutually agreed are the “cheese and crackers” of racing—an elemental, perfect pairing) and Diplo. But I wanted to know if the jam scene could ever truly infiltrate the garage area.
I asked him a question I’ve been holding onto for years: Which NASCAR driver would be the perfect Goose fan?
Without missing a beat, Bert dropped a take so hot it could melt asphalt.
“I think it’d be Joey Logano,” he said. “He was the first driver to follow me… he was into podcasts before anyone. That makes me think he’s an out-of-the-box thinker.”
And the driver who would absolutely hate a 20-minute synth jam?
“It’s absolutely not Kyle Busch,” he laughed. “I love Kyle, but it’s definitely not Kyle Busch.”
This is why you have to admire the guy.
Whether he’s booking Skynyrd for 15,000 race fans on a February day in Florida or trying to convince a group of 20-something musicians that he’s cool enough to listen to their synth-funk jams, Bert is fully committed. He puts in the reps. He studies the tapes.
And if ‘Fee’ comes on the radio in Daytona this February, don’t be surprised if you see The Machine crying tears of joy into his BBQ.
Bert Kreischer’s Full Throttle Festival kicks off February 14, 2026, at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach. Tickets are on sale Dec 5 at FullThrottleFestival.com.
Brandon Wenerd is the long-time publisher of BroBible.com. Follow him on Instagram or Substack, where he frequently writes about music, including his recent discovery of a Frank Zappa record that belonged to a Rolling Stone writer from the 1970s.