Photo courtesy Deb Stevens
Six years ago, Deborah Stevens didn’t know what Bockfest was. Now, she’s the reigning Sausage Queen of the citywide celebration. As she prepares to pass the crown at this year’s 33rd annual Bockfest, she sits down to dissect her 2024 win, the new community she’s found, and the importance of letting your inner diva shine.
How long have you been involved with Bockfest?
The first time I competed for Sausage Queen was 2023. Not being from Cincinnati, I wasn’t super familiar with Bockfest—I only started going in 2019. I heard about Sausage Queen two days before it was happening in 2023. A friend called me and asked if I’d ever thought about being Sausage Queen, and I was like, “Excuse me?” I put my act together at the very last minute. I wrote a parody of a song during my lunch break that Friday, threw together a costume, and just went out there. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I had a blast. Last year, I knew what I needed to do; I had a little more time to prepare and enter. I competed in the prelim at OTR StillHouse, was crowned Princess there, and then went on to do the final and won Sausage Queen at Rhinegeist.
Tell me about how the competition works.
There are three phases in the prelims and finals. The first round is “personality.” You are simply asked why you deserve to be the Sausage Queen. It seems simple, but that’s your first opportunity to really make an impression on the audience and judges. So [it’s] being creative, but more than anything, being heard is important, because you might be in a loud, crowded bar. The second phase is the “sausage presence.” That is your ability to present a platter of sausages with flair. Last year, I recruited my boyfriend to help me—he had a fishing pole that he had cast a smoked sausage beef jerky link on that I was trying to catch. Don’t drop the sausage. If you drop the sausage, you can’t win. The third round is “talent,” which can be anything you want it to be. Queen Kim one year actually cooked a sausage on stage because she’s a fire-breather.
Walk me through what the competition was like for you.
So I have a theater degree, and I was very inspired by showgirl outfits. [In _The Producers], they have these showgirls that come out, and they’re wearing sausages and basically next to nothing underneath. I wanted to create a similar kind of feeling. I’m not very crafty, but I have a friend who is, and she helped me create these sausages that hung in links like wings underneath my arms. You’ll see a lot of different outfits. Over the years, you have queens who’ve gone the more traditional dirndl, and then there’s Queen Betty, who just wore a hot dog costume.
It’s a big difference between the prelim and the final. The prelim is in a bar. The final is at Rhinegeist, they set up a huge stage, and I think there were 1,200 people in there. It was crazy, very high-energy, everyone was really amped up and excited. You have the judges sitting right behind you on stage, and you have to try to play to both.
How do you get a crowd of a thousand people amped up?
Trying to be loud and animated. I tried to project as much as possible, using my body language and sausage wings to my advantage. I also brought a bunch of my friends and made posters for them to hold. Use your friends to help get the crowd excited—it’s actually very encouraged to do that.
What was your reaction to winning last year?
I was so shocked. It was so loud at Rhinegeist, and I was singing for my talent, and thought no one was going to be able to hear me. It’s funny, because my friends were like, “No, the whole crowd went quiet the moment you started singing. You captured a room full of a thousand people.” That’s how you win. When they called my name, I was so excited.
I love the concept of the “diva” of it all, of letting that shine. How are you a diva in your everyday life?
I can be very dramatic—I have a theater degree, so I think that kind of lends itself that way. I still perform, I sing with a group called Young Professionals Choral Collective. I also love karaoke. Recently, a friend rented a private room at Tokyo Kitty for her birthday, and she’s a big fan of _Wicked. She’s like, “We have to do ‘Defying Gravity.’” It got to the point where I climbed up on top of the seats in the private room because we’re committing to the bit. I commit to the bit, that’s how I’m the diva.
How are you going to be involved in this year’s competition?
I will be helping judge the prelims, and I will be performing at all of them. Of course, I’ll be at the final, and up until then, of course, I’ll be at Bockfest. I’ll be doing all kinds of things—the beefsteak dinner, the precipitation retaliation, the goat rodeo at Rosedale, and the parade on Friday.
What advice do you have for this year’s Sausage Queen contestants?
Be creative—if you’re concerned that what you’re thinking of is too weird, it probably isn’t. Don’t be afraid to try something new and step out of your comfort zone, because this competition has been happening for 18 years, and in that time, they’ve seen a lot of different things. The more creative you can be, the more likely you are to stand out.
What’s something really creative you’ve seen in the past?
Last year for her presence at the finals, Princess Rhonda rewrote the lyrics to the song in Flashdance and had her friend record it for her as her backing track, then she came out in leg warmers and was dancing and stretching—she even had someone pour a bucket [of water] on her too, to simulate that part of the movie.
You’ve mentioned previous Sausage Queens often. Is there a sort of sisterhood that comes with being a Queen?
100 percent yes, the “Sausage Family,” as we call it. That includes not just queens, but people who have been crowned princesses. We have a Facebook group where we all communicate, and a lot of the past queens and princesses are involved with helping plan the prelims and making sashes and crowns and hosting the competitions and helping recruit people to come in and participate. It’s cool, it’s a community of really creative and supportive people that I would never know if I hadn’t jumped out of my comfort zone and tried this two years ago.
What are you looking forward to at Bockfest this year?
This is my one year where I’m the reigning queen, and I’m excited to be part of it all and share that joy and that excitement with other people, getting to try all the beers, getting to pet the goats, getting to help bless the kegs and all the food.
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