WORCESTER—When Wormtown Brewery opened in Worcester in March of 2010, it quickly became a local success, expanding with a satellite operation at Patriot Place, and supplying its brews to package stores throughout the state (and New England).
The name, though, had been around a lot longer than the beer, and the weekday news magazine TV show “Chronicle” got in the dirt to dig for the nickname’s origin.
When David Fields came aboard as a founding partner, he didn’t embrace the name, he told “Chronicle” host Anthony Everett.
“My first impression,” Fields told him, “…you have to understand, I grew up in the Zip code we’re sitting in right now, and I had never heard the nickname. I said, ‘Look guys, it doesn’t really sound that appealing.”
“But he learned ‘Wormtown’ was spreading as a new nickname for his home city,” narrates Everett, “and today he is majority owner of the brewery and Wormtown’s biggest champion.”
Fields told Everett he “came around pretty quickly” and that the name is “the badge of honor our brewery needs and, more importantly, it’s the badge of the city I grew up in. Hardscrabble. We like to get our fingers dirty and we’re blue-collar.”
“But where did the term ‘Wormtown’ hatch?” asks Everett. “For the answer to that question, we are directed to Ralph’s Chadwick Diner, the city’s weirdly indestructible rock dive—and to local dignitaries and inventors of ‘Wormtown.’”
“I’m L.B. Worm, the inventor of Wormtown,” Leonard B. Saarinen (aka L.B. Worm) tells “Chronicle.”
“I’m Brian Goslow, the Wormtown minister of culture,” Goslow states to Everett, “and Wormtown is not a beer.”
Chronicle explores how Worm used the variant of his own nickname to publish the fanzine, Wormtown Punk Punk Press, in 1978 and called it a “hand-scrawled sheet of high-energy enthusiasm [for the local punk rock music scene].”
“No one was writing about it, so I figured I’d write about it,” Worm told Everett. “I called it the ‘Wormtown Punk Punk Press’ and it just started taking off from there.”
“They thought the local scene deserved more attention than it was getting,” said Everett on Chronicle.”Goslow spread the word on his radio show at the local university. Graffiti followed then an album featuring local bands.”
Not everyone liked the name, explains Everett, including then-Mayor Jordan Levy, but shows that “resistance proved futile” when a gift store popped up, followed by a musical festival and then a rugby team—all using the “Wormtown” name.
When Tim Murray, now the Worcester Chamber of Commerce’s president and CEO, came aboard as mayor in 2001, Chronicle says, “the war on Wormtown ended.”
“I was never offended by it,” Murray told Chronicle. “I thought it was kind of funny and interesting.” Murray formally proclaimed the name at a ceremony at Ralph’s shortly after becoming mayor.
Everett adds, “Nothing has spread the name more than the brewery. But don’t look for L.B. and the minister of culture there. Underground diehards to the end, the founding fathers of Wormtown are more at home where the suns never shine, in the murk and mire of dives like Ralph’s Rock Diner.”
Fields told Everett he had “never met any of those guys, but if they want to come down here, I’ll buy them a beer. And I’m always happy to tell the story that that’s where the name came from.”
“Chronicle” co-host Shayna Seymour wonders, would Worm and Goslow ever head down to the brewery for that beer?
Everett responds, “Well, there seems to be some sense of resignation that this whole thing has gotten way out of their control. They might be a little peeved but also proud of what they started. I think more importantly than anything to them, though, is that people understand the actual origin of where ‘Wormtown’ comes from. And now you do.”
Worm told the Worcester Guardian when asked about Chronicle and Everett’s summarization of their feelings on the matter, “That about sums it up,” said Worm. “It’s hard to ‘control’ something when no one bothers to ask me about using my intellectual property.”
Worm added that he hasn’t been contacted by anyone from Wormtown Brewery.
“They use the name, made their own version of the Wormtown sign, and even started an “Wormtown Underground ” series of beers after we’ve been Wormtown Underground Radio Network for years,” said Worm. “Maybe the new owners will step up and acknowledge it, but I’m not holding my breath. It’s all about money, I believe they don’t care about our history. When I started 46 years ago, I was young and only wanted to promote the scene. I had no knowledge of copyrights or the money for lawyers. Just call me the Harvey Ball of Wormtown….Oh, and they co-opted the Smiley Face, too.”
Goslow told the Worcester Guardian that he was happy to see a more updated history of the origin of the nickname “out there and in a format that can be shared that does a good job of the history of the name and the reaction to it.”
A bonus, Goslow said, was that Chronicle aired the piece nearly to the date (May 1) of the anniversary of the naming of “Wormtown,” and was particularly pleased that they delved into Murray’s embracing the name, and a Wormtown.org party at the Bijou Cinema that ultimately led to the birth of stART on the Street.
Goslow added that he’s also happy to “see the brewery create something that made people excited to come to Worcester.” And while he is not someone who regularly goes to brew pubs or bars in general, he has purchased a Wormtown Brewery original shirt that used the Bruins hockey spoke logo.
“LB and I tend to revisit Wormtown on the major anniversaries,” said Goslow, “and hopefully this can draw attention to the Wormtown Underground Radio Network where he and Mike and Heidi Malone have never stopped promoting Wormtown and the original spirit. The Punkcake folks are also planning something soon, too. Wormtown is never truly dead!”
Miss the show on Monday night? Catch the “Wormtown” episode of Chronicle here.
Charlene Arsenault can be reached at carsenault@theworcesterguardian.org
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