Picking a Path at Bonnaroo
You've probably heard about Bonnaroo by now - in four years, this music and arts festival in Manchester, Tennessee has become the biggest thing going. For three days each June, a cow pasture becomes the 5th largest city in the state as about 90,000 music fans gather for three days of eclectic choices spread out over five stages, going all day and night. (Not to mention the DJs and comedy and movies and giant bobblehead dolls.)
But our theory at 'FUV is that there isn't just one Bonnaroo festival. As we've learned over the past couple years, there is just no way to see and hear everything - it's too big and you're always missing something. You're missing many things, in fact. So instead of stressing over the lineups and stages and options, we think the situation calls for a theory: Everyone has their own personal Bonnaroo. Pick your path and travel it, brothers and sisters, and don't look back.
Here are pieces of the paths of three WFUV personal Bonnaroos:
Rita Houston, 'FUV Music Director and Whole Wide World host:
My Bonnaroo was an inspiring combination of work and play. I was there to host many of the backstage radio sessions, do the Whole Wide World radio show on Friday nite and help with the Radio Bonnaroo program I've been working on. And of course, have some fun, catch up with some friends and most importantly check out as much music as possible.
The trip started with a leisurely 2-day drive to Tennesee in a 25-foot RV, with 2 stacked iPods and all the espresso I could ever need (I was travelling with my favorite new toy - a Nespresso machine!). My first assignment was on Radio Bonnaroo - we took over a local radio station for the weekend and lots of cool people were doing shows. I was on the air Thursday night, entertaining a captive audience as literally thousands were arriving in much traffic to the site, setting up camp, etc. There were speakers set up throughout Bonnaroo. I decided it'd be fun to do it as Tijuana Lady (an homage to one of my favorite rock bands - email me if you know who!). Tijuana Lady played everything from De La Soul to Townes Van Zandt.
The backstage radio area was really cool and where I ended up spending lots of time. Ray Lamontagne, Warren Haynes, Rilo Kiley, M Ward, Old Crow Medicine Show, Madeleine Peyroux, Matisyahu, Ollabelle, Widespread Panic, Herbie Hancock and more all came by for radio sessions. Here's a funny story: they needed more soundproofing for the radio stations, so a local farmer hauled in tons of hay bales to stack around the trailers - my friend Sean came up with that idea! The Whole Wide World live broadcast from those studios was a blast, with some great guests (you can listen in the WFUV Archives here: 32K Windows Media).
What blew my mind? John Prine, Brazilian Girls, Josh Ritter, Citizen Cope, Toots and the Maytals, Kings of Leon, My Morning Jacket - Bonnaroo does inspire some special performances. Perhaps it's the heat, the rain, the mud, the sun - whatever the reason, we got to have it all over the course of the weekend.
High points for me were fixing up a yummy steak dinner for Josh Ritter, watching Toots with Citizen Cope, making coffee for Ollabelle, learning how to scratch (as in DJ!), dancing the night away in the silent disco tent, and just generally walking around and experiencing the scene.
I could go on and on, but it's time to get ready for an entire summer of such fun at Summerstage, South Street Seaport, Celebrate Brooklyn, Newport etc., etc... See you around!
Laura Fedele, 'FUV Web Director:
It's not much of a stretch to say that nobody wakes up on Sunday morning at Bonnaroo feeling particularly good. To add to the general funky muddiness of it all, this year's Sunday morning lineup brought the biggest schedule conflict in a long weekend of schedule conflicts: Reggae greats Toots & the Maytals, soul-folk singer Amos Lee, the alt-ish country-ish Old 97's and Hasidic rapper Matisyahu. Among others.
Well, well, well - it seemed that 12:30 was the time to get into gear. Our RV was parked pretty close to the Old 97's stage, so we heard them kick in and caught the start of their set while drifting leftward toward the main stage. Texas gave way to Jamaica as we climbed up onto a viewing platform to dance with Toots and the early wake-and-bakers, then back across the field in time to hear the Old 97's Rhett Miller singing "I'd be lyyyyin' if I said I didn't have designs on yoooooou..." - that's not a bad way to start a day. After considering whether to zig-zag over to Amos Lee's tent, deciding there'd be another chance to see him soon in New York and offering a little apologetic prayer in his direction, it was time to zag-zig toward the Matisyahu tent. I'd never seen him perform and couldn't resist the visuals of a tall, skinny white boy beat-boxing for 10 minutes to a rapt crowd of a few thousand rumpled smiling faces. But possibly my favorite visual of the show was the Steal Your Face yarmulke on one of the tie-dyed fans.
Hydrate hydrate hydrate, then there was time to grab a spot and rest since Citizen Cope came up next on the same stage. (If only they'd staggered the times instead of ending them all at 1:30... maybe next year.) Cope was in fine form, and I was happy to see all the folks around me singing every word, to the songs from the Clarence Greenwood Sessions and the previous CD.
And how best to wrap up the early Sunday jaunt than to loop back around to the main stage for some Bob Weir and Ratdog, singing along with "Jack Straw" and plucking my way through the mud. As one of the many whose first big messy festival experiences were with the Dead, it always feels like coming home. "We can share the women we can share the wine..." Well, maybe no more wine today. Maybe a nap instead.
Chris Pergolizzi, 'FUV Jamboree host and Producer/Engineer Extraordinaire:
As soon as I heard about the first Bonnaroo festival in 2002, I was a desperate man. I had to go to that festival, and I looked everywhere for a way around the financial and logistical obstacles that a weekend trip to Tennessee presented. But it simply was not meant to be, and it would be four years before I was finally able to make my pilgrimage to the Mecca of the jamband scene. Bonnaroo has consistently offered the best lineup of any jamband festival since its inception, and the buzz surrounding the event simply refuses to fade.
This year was no exception. The buzz may have built up slowly, but by the time the entire lineup was announced, Bonnaroo had once again displayed why it is one of the biggest and best festivals in the Western Hemisphere. Headliners Dave Matthews and Widespread Panic were no surprise (they are staples in the jam scene) and there were a number of other Bonnaroo veterans back this year as well — Trey Anastasio, Keller Williams, and Gov't Mule to name just a few.
I found a ragtag group of FUV employees, fellow Fordham grads, and members of Fordham's Frisbee team, the Flying Jesuits, to accompany me on this crazy adventure and the journey began on a Wednesday night with 6 people packed into a Jetta (which sits 5 uncomfortably). We set out for our nation's capitol, where we would meet up with a friend who was renting a car. We stayed the night in D.C. and drove all day Thursday, arriving in scenic Manchester, Tennessee on Friday morning around 12:30am. We slowed to a crawl 2 exits from the campsite, where Bonnaroo traffic was in full swing. We made it to the entrance at around 2:30, tired, frustrated and with a dent in the rear fender of the rental car, having been rear-ended on the way into the grounds. Just as we were about to drive through the front gate, we were stopped by several local police officers who informed us that they were randomly searching vehicles and that our vehicle struck them as the type of vehicle they might enjoy randomly searching. So we watched wearily as they tore the packed car apart, apparently disappointed when they didn't find a shipment of contraband in the trunk. They reloaded the car and we entered the gates. We had finally made it.
After setting up our tents and getting settled in, it finally hit us that our long day of traveling was at an end, and we had an entire weekend of great music to look forward to. Our neighbors began introducing themselves and it was readily apparent that everyone was there to have a great time. No matter how difficult a day you might be having, it's nearly impossible to remain in a bad mood when you have 100,000 smiling people around you who are all having a blast. We got very little sleep that night, but that is apparently the way things work at Bonnaroo.
Friday was the real beginning of Bonnaroo, though the party had already been going for 24 hours. The music started at lunchtime, and we made our way towards the stage area. The stages were about a mile from our campsite, so we did a lot of walking that weekend, but no one really seemed to mind, as there was almost as much to see on the way to the performance area as there was in the performance area itself. Vendors were everywhere, particularly on Shakedown Street, the approach to the stage area, and they sold everything from vegan food to Bob Marley shirts and tapestries to original artwork. There were strange sights everywhere, and as I passed by a naked man flying a kite on Friday morning I began to realize how amazing this festival was. I live in New York, and I've seen some strange things, but I had never seen anything like Bonnaroo.
The stage area was enormous, boasting 6 different stages where there was almost always something interesting going on. Friday afternoon, harpist/singer/songwriter Joanna Newsom performed her unusual brand of pop music for a very relaxed crowd while Old Crow Medicine Show performed an old-timey bluegrass set to a surprisingly young crowd of hipster kids. Jurassic 5, however, may have stolen the show, bringing their throwback old-school style of four-part-harmony rap music to a crowd of thousands. The Allman Brothers followed and Herbie Hancock performed with his new Headhunters later that night.
Saturday was an even more action packed day, with M Ward, Kings of Leon, Gov't Mule, and Yonder Mountain String Band all playing basically back to back (and those were just the shows I was able to catch). Saturday evening offered a phenomenal show from the recently reunited Black Crowes, and a set from Jack Johnson to thousands of soaking wet fans in the pouring rain, a number of whom climbed towering trees to get a better view of the show. Saturday's late-night shows were perhaps the most memorable of the entire festival, with Trey Anastasio trying out some new material in front of a huge crowd. His collaboration with Hasidic reggae singer Matisyahu on Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" was interesting, and his collaboration with American Idol's Bo Bice on Van Halen's "Panama" was, while amusing, mostly a baffling disaster. But it was the smaller stages that provided the most interesting music on Saturday night. DJ/producer RJD2 kept the crowd enthralled, weaving together an extremely fluid and compelling set on four turntables and a mixer, while his slightly more sinister-sounding kindred spirit DJ Krush did the same in another part of the performance area. The night ended with old-school hip hop greats De La Soul playing to a still-lively crowd at 4am.
Sunday offered a wide array of options as well. A Bonnaroo attendee could wake up to classic roots reggae (Toots and the Maytals), new rock (Old 97's), the aforementioned rising star of new-school reggae (Matisyahu) or a quieter, singer/songwriter vibe (Amos Lee). If anything, the festival offered too many options, and Sunday saw a set from Bob Weir and Ratdog and the return of the instrumental gospel supergroup The Word (Robert Randolph, John Medeski, and the North Mississippi Allstars).
It was more than just the music, however, that made Bonnaroo such a remarkable experience. It was the thousands of people coming together all at once in a place which ordinarily would be quiet enough to hear crickets chirping; it was the fact that all these people were drawn here by a deep love of good music; that these people show up despite a complete lack of coverage from MTV, Rolling Stone, or Z100; that everyone stomps through acres and acres of mud for 3 days and no one can have a proper shower, and none of that seems to matter; that everyone seems to have a great time, and that there is an overwhelmingly positive vibration that hangs over the whole weekend. Bonnaroo is a place that people of every age, race, gender, and creed come together and celebrate together; where music is a tie that binds people together and creates an overwhelming feeling of unity and love. It's nice to be reminded that's possible, because that's ultimately what music should always be about.
