If Dave Williamson dies and goes to heaven, it will look something like this. It’s a Sunday afternoon at El Segundo’s Library Park, and one of the best pitmasters in the world is behind a Santa Maria grill, tomahawk steaks hanging over the fire above an assortment of peppers and onions slow-cooking in the live flame. A whole pig turns on a spit. Somewhere nearby, 2,000 chicken wings come out of a smoker. A hundred kids are packed into a gazebo, mesmerized by a juggler, while their parents stand around the edges with plates of brisket. Three full days of belly laughs are still resonating in Williamson’s heart, soul, and very innards.
He’ll know this is heaven, because he will have already been there — at his very own Gundo Comedy & BBQ Festival.
El Segundo has long held a spot in the comedic imagination as a kind of afterlife. Throughout the 1970s sitcom Sanford and Son, Redd Foxx’s Fred Sanford invoked the town in unexpected ways, and in one episode, certain he was having a heart attack, looked to the sky and told his late wife he was “coming to El Segundo.” Williamson — comedian, pitmaster, and El Segundo resident — has spent the last three years making the case that Fred was onto something.
The third annual Gundo Comedy & BBQ Festival returns to El Segundo June 25 through 28, and by Williamson’s own accounting it has outgrown its scruffier origins. It began in 2015 as a comedy-only festival, launched as a fundraiser for his son’s little league team, and ran until the pandemic put it into hibernation. It came back in 2024 reinvented — comedy and barbecue fused into one. What was once a grassroots fundraiser is now a four-day, City-backed event spanning a half-dozen venues, three comedy shows, two barbecue tailgates, master classes from world-class pitmasters, and a watch party timed to the World Cup. More is being added by the day.
“The angle this year is bigger and better, buddy,” Williamson said. “We were so overwhelmed with the support last year. It was amazing.”
The most visible change is the World Cup, which is being played across North America this summer. Rather than compete with it, Williamson and festival co-promoter John McCullough decided to fold it in. The festival kicks off Thursday, June 25, with a free watch party at El Segundo Brewing Company, presented by the City of El Segundo, complete with a 40-foot screen, a beer garden, pizza, and — of course — barbecue. The United States team plays Turkey at 7 p.m.
From there the festival moves through town. There are three comedy shows — Friday at the Old Town Music Hall, Saturday at the El Segundo Performing Arts Center, and Sunday at the Old Town Patio — alongside barbecue tailgates, two grilling master classes, and a pair of days at Library Park that culminate in a Sunday main event.
The Saturday show at the Performing Arts Center is, Williamson said, the biggest the festival has ever staged. The venue dates to the 1920s; the high school was later built around it.
“It’s really beautiful,” Williamson said. “We’re going to utilize that.”
The Sunday park day is expanding for a different reason. Last year it sold out, and organizers had to turn people away.
“There were a lot of people who were disappointed they couldn’t come in,” Williamson said. “So we’re going to try to plan for it to accommodate more people this year.”
The festival’s premise — that comedians and pitmasters are, at heart, the same kind of person — is one Williamson has tested for three years now and found to be true.
“Anyone who decides to do barbecue or comedy for a living at this level is the kind of person who likes to make people happy, do it for the love,” he said. “Both of them are a grind. It takes a long time to have some sort of success. There’s an equal admiration the pitmasters have for the comedians, and vice versa. There’s a lot of crossover in the journey of those two things.”
“Everyone’s got a joke, and everyone barbecues,” McCullough said. “But it takes a long time to get good at either.”
The comedy lineup features several performers with national credits. Friday at the Old Town Music Hall features Ryan Sickler, of The HoneyDew podcast and Netflix’s Bad Thoughts, alongside James Davis, of Comedy Central’s Hood Adjacent, plus Forrest Shaw, Jamie Kaler, and Caleb Synan. Saturday’s marquee show at the Performing Arts Center pairs Kira Soltanovich, a Tonight Show veteran, with Shane Torres, Will Burkhart, and an as-yet-unannounced special guest with Netflix and world-tour credits. Sunday closes at the Old Town Patio with Ian Bagg — a fixture on The Tonight Show, Conan, HBO, and Last Comic Standing — along with Jesus Trejo, of Netflix’s Mr. Iglesias, and Jetski Johnson, Nina Dicker, and Danno Carter.
On the barbecue side, the headliner is Mel Chmilar Jr., known on Instagram as Dark Side of the Grill, who is broadly considered Canada’s top pitmaster. Chmilar is returning for a third straight year, fresh off competing in the first-ever Open Fire category at the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.
“Guy goes all over the world — Australia, New Zealand, South America — doing demonstrations and competing,” Williamson said.
Joining him for the first time is Jody Flanagan, known as BBQ Dad Jody, who spent several years as the face of the grill brand Recteq before striking out on his own this year. Flanagan recently cooked on Heath Riles’ grand-champion team at Memphis in May.
The two will each teach a master class Saturday at WWOO Outdoor Kitchen — Flanagan on grilling, covering everything from tri-tip to steak to hot-and-fast searing, and Chmilar on smoking, working over a Big Green Egg. The festival has run master classes before, but this is the first time Flanagan has taught one.
The broader pitmaster roster includes 2019 World Chef Champion Matthew Statham, local legend Dustin Bartz, Chef Chris Binotto of BBQ Brawl and Beat Bobby Flay, Al Frugoni, Salvador Gonzalez, David Shade, Jason Hernandez, and Aaron Christensen, among others.
For all the national names, Williamson insists the festival is, at bottom, a local affair.
“Make no mistake, this is a completely selfish event for me,” he said. “I love barbecue, and I love comedy, and I love El Segundo, and the thing I love most about all three of those things are the community that’s involved with them. So for one weekend, I get to bring those three communities of people together in one big event.”
That impulse now has a year-round address. Williamson is a partner at the Old Town Patio, a downtown El Segundo spot that reopened in 2025 as a barbecue destination and served as a festival venue last year. It has since become something more.
“It’s definitely become a really cool headquarters for me, to have somewhere tangible in the community to keep the spirit of the festival alive year round,” he said. “Now my barbecue has a home where people can find it all year long.” A comedy show runs there every other Wednesday. “People eating good food and listening to jokes,” Williamson said, “and trying to forget about life for a little while.”
The local texture runs through the whole weekend. A children’s activation, sponsored by El Segundo Realtor Scot Nicol, brings back entertainer Michael Rayner — a juggler and magician who has appeared on The Tonight Show and gone deep on America’s Got Talent. Last year, McCullough said, Rayner drew about 100 kids to a big gazebo at the park, the children were mesmerized inside while their parents ringed the edges, plates of barbecue in hand, and face painters worked the crowd. Local restaurants get folded in too. Last year, a chef from Slice & Pint teamed with pitmaster Al Frugoni to make barbecue pizzas — using tri-tip — which Williamson suspects may have been the single most popular thing at the festival.
The sponsors, McCullough noted, are nearly all homegrown.
“It’s not like we’re bringing in DirecTV and these giant companies,” he said. “It’s all El Segundo supported.”
It is also, McCullough said, a partnership with the town. “I don’t know a whole lot of other cities that would be as embracing as El Segundo,” he said. His own son plays on the El Segundo baseball team; Williamson coaches water polo. The ushers at the comedy shows, Williamson noted, are his son’s friends from the water polo team.
McCullough was, famously, a reluctant recruit. McCullough is a vice president for a fast-growing regional restaurant chain, the event producer for the likewise always expanding El Segundo Art Walk, and a father of young kids. When Williamson asked him if he wanted to help revive the Gundo comedy festival and combine it with BBQ, his initial thought was “not really.” He had plenty on his plate without adding comedy and BBQ.
“John’s direct quote was, ‘Dave, I don’t know anything about either of those things, but you’re so excited, it’s kind of getting me excited,'” Williamson recalled.
It was a match made in El Segundo, which is to say a strange and unexpected combination — somehow uniquely Gundo-esque — that of course took off, wildly popular from the outset. It has drawn crowds, sure, but more than anything it gives the local community another reason to commune. Three years later, El Segundo arguably has the highest BBQ IQ of any small town in America, a place where home cooks are now well versed in the intricacies of pork belly and citizenry debate the variations of from-scratch wing sauces.
The friendships have outlasted the weekend, too — comedians turning up at pitmasters’ restaurants, pitmasters turning out to support comedians at clubs around the country, all of them having met in the fantastical kingdom of El Segundo.
“For one weekend, it becomes my Narnia,” Williamson said.
The Gundo Comedy & BBQ Festival runs June 25 through 28 at venues throughout El Segundo, including the Old Town Music Hall, the El Segundo Performing Arts Center, the Old Town Patio, WWOO Outdoor Kitchen, El Segundo Brewing Company, and Library Park. For a full schedule and tickets, see GundoComedyBBQ.com. ER
