Bonnaroo 2024 is in the books.

You are listening to The What Podcast.

I'm Barry, that's Lord Taco, and that's Bryan.

Lord Taco and I clearly got the memo about t-shirts.

If there was a memo, I didn't get it, yeah.

We're gonna get into that in a little bit for several reasons.

Never Not Great has become a theme, which, if you're new, we'll explain here in a little bit.

But first of all, guys, we, let's play a little word salad or something.

Words that come to my mind for Bonnaroo 2024.

Amazing, unexpected, affirming, reaffirming.

Reaffirming's a good one.

Yeah, I'll cut right to it.

I'll just say best Bonnaroo ever.

Best Bonnaroo ever, he did it.

Taco went right to my favorite thing ever.

It's the best one after all these years.

It was pretty good.

It was completely unexpected, though the T-shirt tells it all.

It's never not great.

Let's go ahead and I'll recap that real quickly.

One of our many guests is Ken Weinstein.

Ken is the, he's with Big Hassell Media.

He is the guru when it comes to media at Bonnaroo.

He's been with it since the beginning.

You can go back to our podcast and find out his history.

I mean, it's such a great story.

The founders with Superfly and AC Entertainment found him, called him and said, hey, we're doing this festival.

We don't even have a name yet.

And it's going to be in the middle of middle Tennessee.

Do you want to be involved?

And he has been ever since.

And yeah, it's a really good story.

That's how far back it goes.

It didn't even have a name yet.

He's not a founder, but he's damn close.

He's the next guy in the room.

He's the first guy they called.

That's right.

And during one of our conversations, we talked about the 2016 festival, which was one of the lowest numbers ever and not that great a lineup.

Most people would agree, but Ken nailed it and said it was still great because it's never not great.

So that's the history of the T-shirt.

It comes up in a couple of other episodes that we'll get into later.

But reaffirming, Bryan, you, me and Russ, sitting in Russ's bus, what, Friday night or Saturday morning during one of our conversations about the event and this show, we all agreed, that was the word, right?

This is reaffirming.

We love it.

I'm already planning next year.

I can't wait.

Yeah, I'll go first on it.

It's like anything in life.

You're not gonna do it forever.

You're not gonna do everything forever.

Everything ends.

And so I always, as I get into middle age, I think about that a lot more.

Sometimes I think, is this the last time I do insert whatever this is?

Whether it's a concert or seeing a great-grandparent or grandparent or whatever it might be in your life, there's always a time when it's gonna stop.

And I started to think about that because a lot of different reasons, some that are boring that I won't go into on a show like this, and some of them are just the grind of doing stuff like this.

And we'd even kind of, but whether we spoke of it out loud, we kind of implied that we'll just reevaluate after this year and we'll just kind of rethink of where things are gonna go because why not?

I mean, you should always be kind of evaluating what you're doing.

Yeah, I'm glad you called it a grind because it really is.

I mean, we put the show out every week and sometimes we record, we love doing it week to week, but sometimes you put out that episode, it seems like it goes into the void because you don't get that instant feedback or instant satisfaction of putting it out.

So yeah, I mean, and it all came flooding in, what, Friday, Saturday when we were there, just hanging out, so many people would come up and say, oh, really enjoy the podcast, your episode helped me with this, I learned that.

So it was like, okay, that's the reaffirming part of all this is okay, now we actually do see that a lot of people, a lot of y'all do listen.

Every bit of that is true on top of the fact also of just do we keep going to this event every year?

And because it is hard, it is hard.

It's more than just a few days of preparation and everybody who goes, it's the same for everybody.

And it reaffirmed me, like it was barely a couple, a day and a half in, I'm like, pfft.

It was more like two hours.

I think, I'm not going to do this?

I'm not going to do this anymore?

It was two hours for me.

It was when Tuba shouted out and we'll get into that.

It's a good call on that.

Yeah, absolutely.

But that's a little anecdotal.

Overall, I think a lot of people had the same thoughts of what and why would I ever not come to this wonderful place?

Let's set the scene a little bit.

And I've thought about this for days.

We could each do an hour individually.

On my local show, I already did.

I know you did.

And it was great.

And I recommend, go to stonenaonair.com.

Yeah, podcast, stonenaonair.

And Bryan does a full recap on his.

It's very anecdotal.

It's very specific to my exact steps of the farm.

It's not exactly what we're going to get into.

But we could each do it.

But just to set the scene.

Bryan, as we've said many times, has been every year since 2002.

I went to the first one and then did not go until 2007.

I've been to every one since.

Russ started in 18, right, coming.

Yeah.

And that makes this one my fifth.

Yeah, when we started this podcast.

When you subtract the two that didn't happen.

Exactly.

So we have history.

Our camp, Camp Nut Butter, at one time had as many, I think, as 30 people.

It was a big, big thing.

We took over an entire space.

We had all kinds of friends, people we didn't know until, you know, us.

The three of us met, basically, become friends through Bonnaroo.

So we have a lot of history.

This year, Camp Nut Butter, as we were packing to leave, we all sort of realized was going to be just the three of us.

From 30 to 3.

30 to 3.

That was another part of the questioning.

Like, all right, well, we don't have any campmates.

100%.

Do they want to spend four days with me?

I mean, I get it.

We all have those questions.

I stare at y'all enough every week.

You've heard all my jokes and my stories.

But, and this is a big part of it, we started randomly camping next to some really cool people from the Nashville area three years ago.

And I've thought about this a lot.

I'm sure, you know, Russ, you met them because they parked next to you in the bus, so you got to know them a lot better than Bryan and I did.

Two years ago, I think I came in Thursday night, maybe Friday night.

I don't even remember when I got there.

And, you know, didn't know them.

Me and Nate Gale, our friend came in, and Nate's a talker, I'm a talker.

I don't think those folks from Nashville ever had a chance to put a word in.

I feel bad.

So I never really got to know them.

Tell these Chattanooga Loudmouths, shut up.

No kidding, came in like, here they are, these guys taking over our space.

And I apologize to Mike, Brad, Jerry and Beth.

But thank you.

They parked, they camped next to us again last year.

And I know I came in Saturday morning and it didn't stay long, had long issues.

Last year they were close.

They were a little bit down the line from us.

But this year we actually made a plan.

Okay, they're coming in.

Let's save some spots together.

And we actually got...

Saved our camp, really.

Made it worth having.

That's my point.

That's my 100% point.

I think the three of us realized, you know, the camp nut butter as we know it may be over, but it's transitioning.

And thanks to those very, very cool people.

And we all got to spend a lot more time with them this year.

And that made it great.

I mean, if our camp, if camp nut butter was Spartan, we didn't have the fence, we didn't have the Bloody Mary tent, we didn't have...

We didn't have the podcasting tent, which we don't need anymore.

You know, all of the kind of things like that.

Oh, the mailbox.

I forgot about the mailbox.

Yeah, we were just sort of, let's do this.

But those guys, man, they bring everything.

They had the grill, the hanging shoe thing that had all the condiments.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's like a pantry, a traveling pantry.

It was unbelievable, unbelievable.

And that really made the space great.

And as we traveled around and I've talked to people, it's amazing to me how many people have those kind of experiences...

Oh, yeah...

.

beyond us.

Yeah, nothing unique.

Nothing unique there.

Correct, right.

Nothing unique at all.

No, but it's such a big part of Bonnaroo, right?

Everybody has their travel mates.

There are people they park next to, the friends that they meet.

Everyone has a unique story, but there's so much commonality.

Absolutely.

That's the thing that, man, I just kept thinking about that all weekend.

The more we ran into people.

And Russ, you mentioned it, and this was such a big part of the weekend, and I know I'm bouncing around because there's so much to try to get to, but we kept running into people who would come up and say, thank you for the podcast.

You helped me get through the year by doing it every week.

You kept me energized, but you also the do's and don'ts and the tips.

I mean, how many people came up and said, I had everything packed, and then I heard your show and I unpacked and redid it, you know, based on the tips and thank you.

It wasn't just, and I think Bryan, you said this at one point, it wasn't just like people coming up and say, hey, you know, I've seen you on YouTube or whatever.

It was a genuine thank you for the help.

Thank you for the show and thank you for the information.

Yeah, it's pretty remarkable, really, and so cool, beyond cool.

Thank you so much for that, too, for you, the listener, the viewer, for doing that.

I mean, selfishly, it does bring validation.

It does, but it's also cool.

It's just neat.

We're not doing this just to sit around in an echo chamber.

We want to put out interesting information and discussion and stories, and that's what makes, that's what, you know, you can't, well, I think you can't.

You shouldn't anyway, maybe, do a yearly podcast on Lollapalooza, right?

Like, it's a great festival in Chicago, but I mean, come on, it's just not the same thing.

It's a legendary brand, but it's, this is different.

This is community.

This is friendships.

This is stories that can come from every nook and cranny.

You don't have to have special access.

You don't have to have a great campsite.

You don't have to be important people to have important times and important stories.

And most people want to hear them because they're unlike you'll hear anywhere else, anywhere else in the world, anywhere else in the galaxy.

And I mean, I'm a crusty old salty guy, but you get me on that farm, and I'm just like giggly.

Come on, and it's just weird.

It's transformative, like on the spot, not necessarily, well, for my life too, but meaning transformative in the moment.

Moment to moment can be transformative by the people you're around and the things you're engaging in.

I'd sound like a dork.

No, no.

It's so wild.

It never, the, I don't want to call it, what am I trying to say?

It's not surprising.

There's no element of surprise here, but it still blows me away.

And that goes back to the reaffirming thing.

It never stops.

That part is always consistently true and real.

And it's important and it's strong, and everybody feels it.

Everybody that I talk to feels it.

So as part of our job, we'll call it a job, as if going to Bonnaroo is a job, is to interview bands.

And you will hear probably next week, I think our first band interview is going to be with Say She She.

And all three of us were just blown away by Pia.

New fan right here.

Yeah, new fan of the band.

But Pia, one of the members, just went on about a five-minute narrative about how Bonnaroo compares to Glastonbury and the community.

I mean, we all sat there with our mouths open, and I think at one point I said, you just wrote the marketing campaign for Bonnaroo for the next ten years.

You know, I mean, she's just nailed it.

You're going to hear that.

You never set foot on the farm here, and then she's talking like that.

Yeah.

She said she figured it out in what, an hour?

Hour and a half of being on the site.

So you're going to hear that.

It's essentially what we're saying.

And then Romy, the person who works for Bonnaroo, who was kind enough to drive us out to the beer exchange, echoed those sentiments, and you won't hear that for a couple of weeks.

That'll be probably one of our last ones.

But to your point, Bryan, and it's kind of what I'm saying, we keep hearing that kind of thing from everybody who goes on the regular and in their camp.

They all have, again, a unique experience, but it's so much commonality.

Just this feeling of welcomeness and positivity and all of those sorts of things.

It's pretty incredible.

Yeah, I didn't spend a lot of time on the social threads.

Reddit really is kind of the place to go to get the best discussion points on social.

Not that any of them are that great, but immediately following, you're going to get a lot of negativity because you always do in any major event, and there's plenty of that.

And those are some small stuff we can discuss over the course of the offseason.

Don't need to talk about them a lot today, but there are, you know, it is a very difficult weekend.

It is very hard to do well, and even if you do it well, it's still hard, and that heat did kind of come in and knock some people on their ass, me included.

Yeah, I'll go ahead and, I mean, my weekend, every intention of staying through to Monday, we had such a great Thursday and Friday, which we'll get into here in a minute.

I woke up Saturday morning and thought, I've had every, everything that I hope to do, I've done times a thousand, and I really don't want to ruin it.

And so I hung around and hugged everybody and said hi, and then I left probably one o'clock Saturday, and I don't regret it at all.

And I kind of figured out, I don't have to do the whole slog.

I mean, the one day thing, we've had campmates that would come and stay a couple of days, and that just seemed so foreign to me.

I'm planning on the whole time next year.

I'm so excited.

I'm re-energized.

It wasn't that I left because I was not having fun or anything.

It was just I did everything I wanted to do.

Yeah, and that heat.

It was hot.

You know the story of the frog in the pot of water that you slowly turn the temp up.

I use that example many times in my life, Russ.

That's what it was like this year.

I mean, it was every day.

The high was a little bit hotter, a little bit hotter, and I just, yeah, I mean, by the time Sunday came around, I was...

Yeah, even you left a little early.

Yeah.

Even you left a little early.

I was planning to stay till Monday, but not Sunday.

Anything before Monday morning is damn early for this guy.

Russ, yeah, the joke.

But it really was, I mean, it was a really mild week before in Tennessee.

It's the hottest week in the history of the world right now.

And so while we all knew it was coming, it kind of snuck up on everybody because the week started off mild, and then it got, as Russ just said, a little hotter, a little hotter.

Holy geez, by Sunday and the Chappell Show, Chappellrone, I mean, I could barely keep it together to make it through that.

It was a, it was an oven, it was a blazer.

And then there's some weather came in.

I was gone by Sunday evening, by about six o'clock on Sunday evening.

And oh boy was Sunday just, I mean, so that's what a lot of the immediate negativity was is this sun, I mean, this is dangerous.

And it is, it can be, it can be.

And I think that kind of caught everybody off by surprise because they were so settled in to cool nights, warm days, cool nights, and then all of a sudden Saturday rolls around, it's like, phew.

Yeah, yeah, it was bad.

This is brutal.

Tuesday and Wednesday were perfect weather-wise.

I mean, not too high.

I changed into jeans and a hoodie, like Tuesday, Wednesday night.

Yeah, had it been five days earlier, it would have been an unbelievable weekend.

So pro tip, hydration, 100% do it.

Also, start walking weeks and weeks and weeks before Bonnaroo.

That's me pointing at me.

I did not.

I still don't do that, and I know that it's important because I've been sore since.

I did better than I should have, given the non-exercise that I did, but that is no joke.

So that's sort of the negative.

It was hot, nothing you can do about it.

I thought the organization, we commented several times, everything just seemed to go so smoothly.

I know there were glitches.

I know there were some security issues.

Some guys were arrested for going through people's luggage and wallets and stealing, you know, as they were going through security.

I saw a little bit of that on some of the Reddit stuff, and God, that's just, it sucks to hear, but it happens because you have to farm out so much of this help in so many different ways, from volunteer to just secondary companies, that there's so many people's hands in it.

I'm shocked they pull it off ever, ever.

To me, it's all, I always, you know, when I was doing restaurant reviews, you know, restaurants are gonna have a bad day.

You're gonna have a bad, you know, the stove's not gonna work, the chef's having a bad day.

It's how you deal with it and handle it.

And I've always felt like Bonnaroo handles things like that pretty well.

Oh, going back to the word salad kind of thing, I did wanna say, I got a text from our friend, Bad Parker, who actually runs the Bonnaroo Festival just randomly the other night.

And he's like, I can't wait to hear your recap.

And I'm like, what did you think?

And he said, I'm calling it Renaissance Roux.

He said, we feel like we've, it's a new day.

It's back.

It's back.

For real this time.

Yeah, and that's kind of what we're saying.

And I meant to say that at the beginning of the show because that was unsolicited.

Obviously, you can be cynical and say, well, he puts it on.

No, he's a fan.

He started as a volunteer.

He gets it, he knows.

And I don't think he'd lie to me.

There's no benefit, so.

It's all a couple of that same kind of sentiment from others that we were around close, involved with the festival too.

I didn't think of it in those terms, but it's just because I just didn't.

But now, it resonates.

Because it is kind of a, I mean, it's just like anything else from the pandemic shift.

Things change and things change a lot.

And we're getting settled into those changes.

And before we get out of here, the census thing, the survey polling they sent out, we can spend a minute or two on that.

If that's just as much reason to understand that things are gonna continue to shift and change as they play around with things and try to see what does and doesn't work.

Because not everything does work perfectly.

It never will.

And like you said, the response is what matters the most.

But being back is something I heard more than a few times.

And I agree with it.

And let me ask you guys to this point, because I was sincere two weeks ago when I said for this Bonnaroo, my goal is hugging howdy.

This is the hugging howdy, and it's kind of a funny, sound like I was being facetious, but I wasn't.

My goal was to literally hug and howdy people that we have gotten to know either through this show or online or whatever, and I did that.

And it wasn't about the music.

So when we say, and when even Brad says Renaissance Rue, how much do you guys think it was music and how much was it what we're just talking about, this whole community thing?

I know in my mind what it was.

It's not the music.

Russ, go ahead.

I, yeah, I actually saw less music this year than any other year, I think.

And part of it was the heat.

I was trying to be selective in the shows that I go out to see, cause it was damn hot.

But also, yeah, we spent so much time just hanging out with people and talking to people.

And it was, yeah, it's kind of weird to say at a music festival that the music is secondary or background noise, but that's pretty much what it was this year.

So I absolutely.

Yeah, I agree with that.

But I'd say that many years.

I mean, the running joke always was that I didn't ever go see any music at all, which is never true.

I always did.

But somebody we talked to, which you'll hear down the line in the Roobus, said I would pay to be here, whether there was a band, one single band playing or not.

Yeah, I could feel that all day long.

I've thought that over the years many different times.

Like, no matter what it was, insert what I was doing, I was like, this isn't as much fun as anything else I've ever done and doesn't have anything to do with a band.

Right.

So as far as, go ahead, Russ.

Well, I was just going to say, those two years that were canceled, that's exactly what we did.

You know, we got together just as if there was a Bonnaroo.

There wasn't really any music.

We might have had a couple bands play, but you know, those years to me felt just as much like Bonnaroo as actually being on the real farm.

That's a great point.

Yeah, I totally agree.

I'd pay to do this even if there was no music, just to hang out with y'all and them and everybody.

So to that point and my thoughts on it, did it have anything as much to do, what did it have as much to do with?

The cop-out answer is it's sprinkled around pretty well as far as what made it great.

But I think the music did have a lot to do with it.

I was pretty surprised with how well things sounded, how things flowed.

I saw a lot of music this year, especially for me and my record around there.

I think that the music might have had a lot to do with it.

The Post Malone Show on Friday was as awesome as a thing, and I mean awesome in the way it's more defined as anything I've ever seen in a live setting.

Not the music, not the, I don't care about, I still don't care about Post Malone today any more than I did a week and a half ago.

But the show, the spectacle was, whoa, look at this.

Look how heavy this hits, and we just got here.

This feels like this should be the finale.

And it was the opening of the headlining anyway.

And so I think that had a lot to do with it too.

I think people are really enjoying the music, and I think the chapel story is gonna define a lot of this.

Every year you kind of think, what is that moment?

I think that's one of them.

So to recap that, and Brad in our conversation mentioned that.

So that's one of those things where Bonnaroo listens.

You mentioned the census.

We'll get into that here in a second, because it's important.

But for people just sort of joining in who kind of don't know the full story, Chapel Rowan is this year's Noah Khan.

Mumford from 15 years ago.

Yeah, they signed her whenever, probably a year ago.

And she's blown up.

And it was pretty clear to everybody that one of the tents was not going to be big enough.

And so the chatter was, I'm not going to be able to see the safety issues, whatever.

And they moved her to the witch stage, which was not every festival is nimble enough to be able to adjust like that.

I thought it was one of the coolest things of big corporate America I've seen in a long time.

And I didn't think it was going to happen because I didn't think it was logistically possible.

Yeah, there's a lot.

Four days, three days.

Right.

And we know because we got a little bit of the, you know, sausage making inside baseball stuff.

It's not just a matter of somebody saying mover.

You know, there are contracts, there are agents, there's labels, there's egos.

There's egos, yeah, Green Sky Bluegrass.

You think Green Sky Bluegrass wanted it with, they're an old school band, they're old guys, they probably got it better than anybody.

I'm just using the name people might have heard of.

You think they were like, yeah, sure, we'll go play a smaller stage, all good with us.

No, they're set to play the secondary main stage on the Sunday, they're one of the most well-known names in the new grass space.

They don't want to do that.

No, but they've also been around well enough to know that there's something coming back for them on the back end.

Probably the worst example for me to use from the ego standpoint, but they didn't just move green sky, they moved three or four.

This was a moving daily grind of a process that I just didn't think they were gonna be able to do and good on them for doing it.

But that's the kind of thing, and we've talked about it on here, Russ, you and I especially remember Moon River, the festival here when it got rained out and they immediately shifted over and put a concert together in our local municipal theater.

Those are the kinds of things that stick with a fan, right?

Those are the kind of things that say, they got my back.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's a good way of putting it.

This place, these people, whoever they are, are looking out for me.

Exactly, as a fan.

Yeah, they're not just refunds, okay, well, cool, that's a good start.

But that's not, that's just, that's formality stuff.

But then to shift, pivot, and still try to do something for you from an inner, just not leave you hanging out there.

Right.

That goes a long way to me.

Exactly, it kind of has that feel like, if I were a fan, what would I want to happen?

And typically, they try to do that.

Now, the cynic would say they had to make the move because of the safety and the logistics.

The cynic would say this was less about the fan and more about practicality.

But I think it was both.

Well, here's the reality.

So here it is a week later.

And instead of us sitting here saying, I only went to see Chaperone and I couldn't get close enough to even lay eyes on her.

It sucked, I hated it.

I'm saying, that was cool.

They did the right thing.

So, good for them.

Yeah, you're right.

You can look at it all kinds of ways, but the reality is a week later, we're talking about, it was a good thing and not that it sucked.

So, good for them.

Let's recap real quick.

So, again, as I said, our work, our plan was Thursday to do as much work as we could.

We had interviews with Happy Landing, Gwar, Say She She and Michigander.

All very cool.

All fell together so well.

But the day started as a, I don't know, just great for us.

We had gotten word that there was gonna be a panel discussion with Ted Heinig, friend of the show, longtime friend for many reasons.

He's the president of AC Entertainment.

And I don't know Tim's last name, Tim Tuba.

Did you guys remember my bad?

Tuba was all I got.

That was the first thing that was funny.

He was like, oh, a guy named Tuba?

There might as well be a guy named Taco.

What kind of hell name is that?

What kind of name is that?

I mean, we can assume he probably was a Tuba player, but I mean, that's an interesting...

I was thinking, thank God he didn't play Bassoon or something.

But anyway, he's the head of all festivals for C3, presents, and they were talking to the students from Belmont and Tennessee State and MTSU.

MTSU had a big presence there.

I was pretty surprised to see how many kids were there, college kids, for their programs.

Tim Smith is Tim Tuba Smith.

So this was like a...

Bonnaroo University.

Yeah, an orientation of sorts, industry panel kind of thing.

Yeah, Bonnaroo University, they're there for the weekend, learning how to put on a festival type of thing.

But anyway, one of the questions from one of the kids was, tell us about one of your big failures and one of your big successes.

And Tuba shocked us by saying, well, since I see the guys from The What Podcast in the back of the room, I'll have to fess up to the scorch.

To the scorch.

He was responsible.

I'm sure I wasn't around on a daily basis during the scorch years on this show, but I'm sure there was some negativity about that.

And if anybody asked me, I would have shared my negativity about the scorch.

Well, he fessed up.

It was funny.

But getting a shout out from him was great.

And what a great way to start our day, right?

The fact that he knows who we are was kind of cool, but we talked to him after, and I've heard from others that he thought it was kind of funny as well.

But so to recap, the arch, as we know it, at Bonnaroo is an iconic part of the festival.

It's on all their posters.

It's the image, and it rotted.

I mean, what I had heard was full of bees and rot, and they burned it.

And-

It's just made out of wood.

That's it.

It looked like it was more than wood, but it was just wood.

And they burned it, what, about three or four weeks before the festival, and the internet blew up.

Lost their mind.

What are you doing?

I did think, like, can't you just tear the damn thing down?

Yeah, give us a piece, save it, sell it, you know?

Not when it's infested with murder hornets or whatever it was.

And so Tuba came up with the idea of a square, a rectangular version with video screens, which I thought was a good idea, especially at night.

It's pretty cool.

They could tell who's coming, show pictures, whatever, but it just didn't go well.

It immediately was called The Squarch and lasted about a year and The Arch is back.

It actually looked really cool at night.

And when we first saw it, it was in the middle of the day and it looks dumb as anything we've ever seen.

And I mean, just because it was so primitive to what the vision was.

They wanted to do something with The Arch to make it more technologically advanced and more sustainable.

Long before they did, it's just one of those kicking the can down the road things.

I mean, I can invest in something that would...

It actually had, I've seen the inside of the old wood arch.

It has electronic insides that were built in, but that's it.

Outside of that, the rest of it's just old wood.

And so it was a really cool evolution of it, because now it's, my God, it's a sight to see.

It is amazing.

And real quick, while it's on my mind, is back to talking about a lot of negativity that people are gonna have that you just can't get away from because somebody's gonna have a bad weekend, is that this festival is so, it's got so many iconic visuals that the pictures and the memories and the moments are so easily preserved, even with bad photography and bad phone pictures and bad one-use pictures back in the day, even the worst of them preserve the greatness of, it could be the worst weekend of your life, but the best part, you didn't get a picture at the arch when you were having a bad day.

Like, you were having the best part of your day when you said, hey, take a picture of us at the arch.

You don't think like, oh, I hated that day, it was so hot.

You think, no, I love that day.

Look at that beautiful arch or that beautiful fountain or that beautiful what stage.

And that's, man, that stuff lives on for decades now.

And that arch is, so that was a necessary evolution of that.

And yes, I'm sure this show was like, the hell are y'all doing?

Oh, we were, yeah.

Are y'all crazy?

Yeah, you did what?

Yeah, so, but it was fun.

The good news is the new one is metal.

And he said it has a certificate, which means that it was actually designed and built.

And it's architecturally and engineering-wise.

Oh, yeah, up to LED codes and all these things.

And it'll live for a long, long time now.

But yeah, that's a fun story.

And that is, it looked great.

Beautiful, beautiful as always.

So he will hopefully be a guest on our show coming up.

And I guess that's sort of where I wanna go.

So those bands that we interviewed, I think we have an order.

I won't put them here, because things may change, but in the coming weeks, we'll have our interviews with Happy Landing, Gwar, which was one of the coolest, funniest, that'll be a whole episode.

We'll talk more about that.

There ain't much there, but there's plenty to talk about with those guys, what they are, what they do and the show itself.

I look forward to like dissecting that entire show.

I mean, the entire Gwar show and experience.

And I know they've been there before, but they really put a lot of effort into publicity this year.

And they did a lot of little videos for online.

They did the, did you guys see the, they took over the video truck and like killed all the guys in the Bonnaroo video truck that they made for their soldiers.

We'll get into all that during the Gwar episode.

But it was like a never ending PR weekend for them.

And it was great.

Yeah, two things that I will sort of tease.

We have a great story that involves Beth, our campmate, and Gwar, which we'll detail when we do the full episode.

But just to show you, I thought it was so funny.

I didn't know about them going into the media thing, but somebody said they saw posters or an invitation to have tea with Gwar.

Tea?

I just think that's so hilarious.

There's gotta be some hidden something in there.

Well, it's just if you know who Gwar is, tea with Gwar, I can't think of anything funnier.

That ain't gonna be what it's gonna be.

Little pinky up.

And then hit you in the face with it.

Yeah, cut a limb off and have a spot of tea.

That was really cool though, because the first time around, I was like, oh yeah, that crazy Gwar band's here.

And this year, I paid a lot more attention because they paid a lot more attention.

They gave so much time.

We'll get into that.

And I went for the whole show, that whole set.

Yep, and got what?

One speck on the back of your shirt, right?

Not even once.

So disappointed, it didn't get covered in fake blood.

I was like, get me away from that madness.

20 feet away was our buddy JB, who wore an all-white suit and shirt, and he got covered.

And I'm just 20 feet away.

If I had just been, I was up close, I was on the rail, I was on the rail, but I just wasn't quite far enough in.

20 feet is all it took.

It's like a summertime Tennessee southeastern storm cell.

It can get you right here, and over here, you don't get a damn drive.

It's never across the streets getting soaked.

Like I said, we'll get into that, in the probably next episode.

Now we're gonna do, well, like I said, I don't wanna tie us down to the schedule, but we're gonna have those in the coming weeks.

Hope to have Tuba on, hope to have Brad and Corey from C3 back on to sort of recap what went well, what didn't.

I know obviously they're excited about next year.

And then Friday, and this was, I said number one on my to-do list, and I meant it, and it worked out amazing this year, the beer exchange.

Thanks again to Ken Weinstein and Romy Ken for allowing Romy to drive us in a golf cart because we had felt like 400 pounds of recording equipment and beer and whatever else to-

Not to mention beer.

And to mention beer to trade.

And it's fun riding on a golf cart in that place.

And it's just cool.

We feel, yeah, we're big time.

We come rolling up like we're somebody.

But Romy is so cool, and we'll have that.

She's part of our interview podcast, and that will probably do that, our last show, recapping 2024 will be an interview we did on the Roo Bus with the guys who sort of help, not sort of, they do, Mitchell and Kevin, who put on the beer exchange.

Daniel from the Roo Bus was kind enough to let us gather in his air-conditioned bus.

And what did we have?

A dozen people in there.

Kyle, EDM Kyle was in there, and it was very cool.

That was my first experience with the Roo Bus, and it is something to be seen.

While we're talking about iconic things you see at the festival, I mean, they've been around long enough, it's starting to fall into that category as well.

So that was really neat.

And the last time I had been to anything that they had done was like five or six years ago.

Like the very first time, Taco, I don't know if you were there, maybe you were, but...

And okay, so that's the first time I went, the last time I went.

And boy, as it exploded in popularity and size and circus tent kind of size thing, and it was neat, man.

People were having a big time.

So we roll up with Romy, just has the best attitude.

I just, I like her so much.

She's so cool.

She's just like, whatever.

And she stayed with us for the whole two hours and got into trading beer.

And I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, getting her in trouble, but she's just cool.

And that whole event.

So we roll up, and like you said, they've got the circus tent, and I didn't look like you could get another person inside of that tent when we got there.

And we got there, what, 11, 15?

I mean, it was just-

It was pretty early, and it was a bright, sunshiny day.

The heat wasn't quite where it got yet, but it was starting to build.

But it was still, to me, pretty comfortable, because I didn't spend any time under the tent, didn't really feel like I needed to.

But it was, yeah, it was about 11 o'clock.

We all went right to the Monkey Bar first, which was attached to the bus.

That's an impressive setup over there.

It's a full-on bar, isn't it?

It looks, yeah, I mean, it's got a feel of you're right next to the ocean.

Yeah, that's true.

Like that walk-up tiki bar kind of thing.

That's true, that's a good point.

It's got like the big cylinder things, like you're pouring on the drink.

It was really impressive.

It's legit.

That's Dave and Richard that do the monkey bar, and of course, the Roobots, they help out too, Brooklyn and Charlotte and all them.

But yeah, Dave premixes, he makes special Bonnaroo cocktails for the weekend.

What was that, passion?

Bonnaroo passion or something?

Something.

It lit you up.

It was strong, yeah.

That was a bit of a struggle day once I got to the cocktails.

As you said later, let's bring the recently sober guy to the beer exchange.

Yeah.

What a good idea.

Which in the beer thing, I don't care about, but boy, those cocktails are screaming at me.

I was like, I'll go over here.

But so you mentioned Charlotte.

We got to see Charlotte and Daniel, Chloe, Evan Bonnaroo.

Skyler.

Ben, Evan, other Ben and Evan, right?

Two Evans?

No.

Yeah, I think so.

Ben and Eric.

Eric, excuse me, Eric.

And of course, I was so happy the guys from, as I called them, RooHammbus, because I'm good at malaprops, RooHammbus.

Parker, Jake and Michael made the walkover and gave me a hams.

And we got to hang out with them finally.

We have been ships in the night for what, four years or so where it's been like, hey, I'm in Centauru, where are you?

I was just there, I'm back at camp.

And I felt bad.

Parker was texting me almost hourly certain parts of the day, cause he was like, hey, where are you at?

I'm in Centauru, I'm here, I'm there.

And I'm like, we just missed each other.

So we finally got to link up at the beer exchange.

Got the hug and howdy.

And that was number one on my list to do.

And it was great.

And had a good yuck with those guys and got to watch Jake.

They bought a shotgun gun.

Did you get to see this thing, Bryan?

I guess not.

So it looks like a giant squirt gun, right?

But you pop it open, you put a 12 ounce can of beer and you ratchet, it pokes a hole in one end and then you pull the trigger and it pokes a hole in another.

And then you shotgun.

Oh my God.

I didn't know, I did not see that.

It was so funny.

So like super soaker looking kind of thing, feeling kind of thing.

And then, wow, okay, all right.

No, I did not see that.

Yeah, Parker, I brought Hutton and Smith.

And so he shotgunned a good shish, which is a pretty high gravity beer.

So I can't imagine how bad it is.

It kind of feels like that thing's a bad idea.

I kind of wish I'd hit it, though I did have a shot of Malort thanks to Mitchell.

And it tasted, let's see, I described it as if you varnished a tabletop and then licked it.

That's pretty much what Malort tasted like.

Yeah, it was all horrible.

Who the hell were y'all hanging out with?

Where was I?

Oh, I think you had just met Evan Bonnaroo.

Yeah, you were still inside the...

So we were talking Pearl Jam and Grateful Dead.

Yeah, we were being old men together.

That's right.

And we were doing shots of Malort.

Yeah, it was one step above diesel.

I mean, I used to joke, I would drink motor oil if it'd get me drunk.

So I guess I at one time would have been happy to have tried it.

And so Russ and I were out there handing out stickers and meeting people.

And that's where a lot of people were coming up and thanking us for the show and everything.

And I wanted to share, I met, and I don't remember his name, and I apologize, he'll remember he's listened to the show.

He's been listening for a long time.

I was so stunned by what happened.

But we're handing out The What Podcast stickers and Russ and those stickers of all of our heads.

And we would hand them out and I handed one to this guy, and he was with a woman who's about my age, and I handed her one.

And she looked at it like, and said, what's this?

And I said, that's me.

And I could see this look on her face that was-

What am I supposed to do with this?

Yeah, what am I supposed to do with this?

And you don't look anything like this.

And I said, well, that was me 15 years ago and a hundred pounds ago.

We were much younger.

And as we were leaving later, I walked by and she said, thanks for the sticker.

And I was like, damn, that hurt just a little bit.

Well, it is an odd promotional item, right?

It's hugely arrogant.

It doesn't say anything on it.

It doesn't have a web address or a QR scan code.

It's just a picture of your damn face.

Who walks around handing out pictures of themselves?

And I go, oh, she crushed me.

It was brutal.

Well, I had a pocket full of them and gave a couple out too.

I didn't feel as weird as I probably should have.

Nowhere else on earth could you stand around and hand out stickers of your face.

Of your face.

And it be acceptable.

Here you go, you want this?

Yeah.

No.

She was just mad you didn't autograph it for her.

I think I joked later, we'll probably see that in a journal somewhere.

But hey, that's fine.

You get a lot of views.

Get a lot of views there.

Just put it right.

Yeah, some guy said he's got me on his water bottle somewhere.

Whatever works.

It was just funny.

And so, yeah, so stickers, we were giving out stickers.

I got several bracelets.

I got one that says Camp Dad that I got from Chloe.

I got one that says What?

And I don't remember, I'm so sorry.

I don't remember who gave me that one.

And of course, Mitchell, a friend of the show, Mitchell, who's so funny, very kindly said, Can I give you drugs?

And he gave me a bracelet that says drugs.

I'd like to have that.

That is something I have never been gifted or been around the exchange of the bracelets.

It's just one of those.

It's just happenstance deals.

I've never had one.

I've never been given one.

I've never worn one.

And I see them every year.

I'm like, wow, those look so cool.

And everybody's gifting and sharing, and somehow that's one I've missed out on every single year.

I've never had a bracelet.

Yep.

And then you see me next year.

Bring me a bracelet, please.

I feel left out.

Give Bryan a bracelet, please.

I feel left out!

You know, the cool thing is they put in the time.

He'll give you a sticker of his face.

I'll give you a picture of me.

Yeah.

They put in the time to make those.

I mean, that's really, really very, very cool.

I got one that says PBR.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've never gotten one, man.

Oh, to the beer exchange.

So I brought Hutton and Smith, which is a Chattanooga brewery in Delicious.

And of course, Russ, you were very diligent in picking out six of your very best PBRs for that day, right?

There was a lot of angst over which ones to take.

The freshest ones available.

Well, I ended up drinking them all.

No PBR for you.

No, all for me.

But what a cool event.

I guess we should recap.

If you didn't make it, the beer exchange, I think, started what?

11, 14 years ago, something like that.

One guy said, can I bring some beer to the Mitchell and Kevin?

And they're like, sure, we like beer.

And the guy didn't show up for 14 hours because apparently he stumbled into a mushroom field or something.

And happens, happens, and then walked up that night.

Is it too late?

And so anyway, it's gone from-

Carrying a huge cooler full of beer, too.

As Mitchell said, walked in like Atlas, right?

Yeah.

On his shoulder.

What'd he say, 11 people that first one?

Or am I getting my 11s and my 14s?

It was very-

Not many, anyway.

Yeah, and this last time was packed, massive.

That was very, very, very nice turnout.

And just their overall, that's over in group camping, which I had never seen before.

Sorry, Barry.

I was just gonna say, am I not right that it sort of led to group camping?

The fact that-

Maybe.

I think so.

Yeah, cause I mean, group camping hadn't been around that long.

Yeah, I think Camp Reteru was a thing even really before group.

That's what I'm saying.

I think Camp Reteru-

Self-assembled, yeah.

They organized as a group, and again, the Bonnaroo people saw a cool thing happening and said, this is a good idea.

Let's, how can we help?

Well, the what they've got going on over there.

I don't know what the rest of GA looks like, but that is impressive.

And the amount of-

It don't look like that.

The amount of organization and the amount of cooperation that must go into something like that.

We talk about camp, not butter.

Camp, not butter, ain't nothing, nothing.

We've had the worst campsite you've ever seen compared to what these guys are doing, and we've had some pretty damn good ones.

So this is really cool stuff, really cool stuff.

And that's why it was so high on my list, that and to see everybody.

And if there, there aren't, I don't have too many regrets, too many I didn't get to do.

I didn't, we didn't get to hang, I didn't with Repeat Repeat, Kristin and Jared were there Saturday, I think.

Yeah, I texted him and could never meet up with him.

I looked for him.

I went to the Jive Talk Show, which was a highlight for me.

We'll talk about that later.

But yeah, I wanted to see Jared and Kristin.

And Bryan, you've got a great story on your podcast about the beaches that was high on your, that went from bad to good.

We'll circle back around on that one eventually.

But yeah, I was borderline stalking them on the farm.

I had a little intel as to where they might be from a couple of different people, Taco being one of them.

That was wild and really, really, thank you.

And really, really fun.

But go ahead, Barry.

All right, so yeah, I'm just, you know, I'm just trying to think what else I've missed.

I made a bunch of notes.

Let me go through here real quick.

Just cause I think it's funny while I was going through the Reddit, I was seeing all these people.

And again, it kind of recaps what I've been saying this whole time is everybody has their unique story, but there's so much commonality.

I saw a great post from a father and son who've been going every year for 10 years.

And apparently people call them church boner.

And I mentioned that just because I grew up Catholic.

And as soon as I saw that term, I'm like, okay, but I've never heard it.

No, church boners is there every year.

Their camp is right across from the arch.

I don't know how they managed to get that spot every year, but they're always set up there.

Church boners are there every year.

So yeah, two things that just, again, another story similar to we've heard 100 times, but church boner is funny.

And now I can't unsee it kind of thing.

Our friend, Bronaruvian, did the run, which I think is just about the stupidest.

Why do you want to run at Bonaru?

But they do.

The more I get to know runners, the more I understand it a little bit, because I have a lot of friends that are really crazy running people, and I do somewhat understand it, but not really.

I'm teasing.

I know they do it every day, and it's like a drug to them if they don't do it.

It's great.

I mean, I only understand it because they tell it to me like that.

It's not like I identify with it.

Oh yeah, they're like vegans.

How do you know somebody's a vegan?

Oh my God, I haven't run today.

Well, good, right?

It's a good day then, right?

They're gonna tell you they're a vegan.

But he signed up to run and got their first in line, and his number was 420, which was so funny, and he was so proud.

Only 666 should have been better.

Good for him.

For picture purposes.

We got to hang out in a different way this year with the Vlans.

Kai and Tara have been on our show a couple of times.

I don't think Joe has actually been on, though he might have once or twice.

But...

And Joe ain't much into stuff like this.

He's kind of like, likes to just take care of all the important stuff and go sit on the lawn chair.

But they did, they had to camp in GA, though they had guests, they didn't have a camping pass.

So they came and hang out, hung out.

Kai has been going since she's 11, I think.

She's, if she's not 18, she's almost.

We're gonna have her on again because she gives us such a great perspective.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that because this is her first time in GA.

And she's been going, I think you're right about that, 11, I mean, a long time.

And that's just a perspective you're not gonna find very often, just those ages, period.

That's right.

So let's leave that part out.

And then also she's had a very, you know, a very cushy kind of existence on the farm.

And she's very used to things being quite simple.

And this was, boy, I know her, I mean, I know her as much as you can know a teenager who's growing up around you.

I know she'll say the right thing and she'll think about it and craft it as well as she possibly can.

But I know she was like, this sucks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it's just such a different, if just nothing else, you know, waking up and eating a port-a-john quickly.

And that'll be fun to just see.

But I know she had fun because I was around him.

Oh yeah.

And I watched her have fun.

So you don't have to have VIP, you know, whatever you want to call that, to have fun at this.

And matter of fact, VIP sometimes is bad.

Shout out to her boyfriend, Julie, and I think it was his first Bonnaroo.

Yeah, he's a cool kid.

Yeah, her boyfriend.

So from that perspective as well, she was a...

Cool kid.

You know, and I don't think I'm telling tales because I don't know the person's name and I won't say it, but she came with a friend last year who didn't make it past, what, day two.

This year, she was with her boyfriend and it was his first time.

My point in saying that is Bonnaroo is not for everyone.

It is not.

They had to drive out and take her out because it was like, this isn't working.

No matter your age, 70 or 17 or 27, it doesn't work for everybody.

I'm looking forward to getting her take again.

What else?

Those are my main things.

Yeah, I've just got a few things I jotted down.

I wanted the attendance appeared to be very healthy.

Very healthy.

Great point, I brought that up.

I'm not good at estimating crowds and I get really irritated when people try to.

We know here locally that happens terribly within our media, but it was not light.

It was not light.

It was very healthy crowd.

I mean, I would guess 70 plus strong, including like everybody on the farm.

70, 75.

Yeah, I was told, I don't know if it was official or not, but the source is solid, 70, and that was a day of.

And that's one of the things we want to talk to Brad and Corey about is again, the day passes.

There's no question we were told by Brad that, he was told on our show, said they were not gonna do day passes and then rescinded that within a couple of weeks.

And I don't, again, I don't think I'm talking out of turn.

Day passes saved them.

Yeah, regardless of your feelings on whether they should have done it or not, it definitely increased sales and it saved them.

It would appear that's true.

And after reading something I've heard before in the past, recently regarding the Black Keys failed stadium tour here in the States, that for most people's measurements, that if you don't sell 20% of what you're wanting for your event, so 20% to capacity, in the first couple of days, then you've got a failure on your hands if you can't knock out a good solid 20 to 25% of your entire attendance initially.

And my guess is, is they didn't reach whatever that number was they needed to be, they didn't get anywhere near it.

And quickly going to those one and two days, I believe gave a second, kind of a second lifeline of, all right, well, now we get to try again.

And they might have reached that number, maybe far surpass that number.

And then as things go along, you know, then the sales turn into whatever they turn into.

But I felt like it was not a crowd that was too much, and it certainly wasn't too light.

I've been there when it was 90,000, 90 to 100, on record, that would be like 2006 or five or something like that early on when they tried to boost the sales.

And it was noticeable.

It was like, there's too many damn people here.

Yeah.

Yeah, can't get around too many lines.

That was not the case here.

Yeah, there's lines, yes, you're gonna deal with lines.

But I thought it was a very healthy crowd, and I think very wonderful for the bottom line.

Yeah, you said you had a couple of notes.

Attendant, well, prices on concessions, nothing new we haven't already talked about.

I thought it was pretty interesting, the $5 mystery beer line.

Do you guys see this?

I wanted to get in there and try it, see what it was.

Everybody else did, too.

I know, couldn't even get close.

It's amazing the line that people will wait in to get a $5 beer.

Can you imagine if you didn't sell $16 Coronas, disgusting Coronas, that most people, that was a thing I read, you gotta really sell this garbage Corona?

Sorry if you love Corona, but imagine if you just.

I really love Corona.

Sold a Corona for not $15.

How many more of those you might sell?

And this is to every festival, and this is less industry talk and more like festival industry talk and more alcohol industry talk, which I am very involved in and know a lot about.

And I think they're the biggest culprits of the problem here.

But a $5 beer, boy, you thought they were giving them away.

The line over there.

And I think that's all the proof you need to show you that you're going to move product quickly.

If you drop the damn prices, guys, you're already making a ton of money.

Spicy pie, Nova, all these were up a little bit.

But as far as I'm concerned, if I can get fed and I'm good for most of the rest of the day for 10, 11, 12 bucks, whatever, like whatever it is that I just purchased, there's no $5 lunch anymore, all right?

It's a $10 lunch.

If you can get lunch for 10, 12 bucks, then that's fine.

You're not eating 10 pieces of pizza.

You're not eating three pieces of pizza.

You might want three coronas though.

So I really wish festivals in general would take a look at this alcohol pricing and just realize you're hurting yourself.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You're hurting your sales and because you're charging too much and you're hurting your vendors who are trying to, you know, hey, 15% tip, no.

You know, like, come on.

How did you guys think Thursday?

Pretty lights on the wet stage for the first time on a Thursday night.

Thought it was great.

Yeah.

Thought it was great.

I just did about an hour and a half of it probably from a pretty solid distance to the left over by the bees.

We've talked about the bees on here.

You guys know what the bees are, right?

Yeah, the stay away from the left side of the what stage cause the bees will get you.

Brought that up to us.

I was with somebody till a little bit on the regular podcast.

I won't go too far into it.

And she was like, we were on that left side.

She's like, she's on the phone.

How do I explain to them where we are right now?

I was like, do they know about the bees?

She's like, the hell are you talking about the bees?

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

It's like the bees.

Forget it, forget it.

Just tell them they're never gonna find us.

Sunny.

But that's about where I was for Pretty Lights on Thursday night.

And it was just, it was basically exactly what I expected.

Music that I didn't necessarily need a whole lot of, but boy, did it look and sound great.

Yeah.

Also, while I'm thinking of it, she's okay, but another tip, I mentioned the hydrate and walking, but if you're gonna bring a propane cooking device, be careful.

I heard y'all talking about this.

What did I miss here?

So I got back to camp Friday, was it Thursday or Friday?

I think it was...

I think it was Friday.

And one of our camp mates was going over to basically gather up what was left in a friend of his daughter's camp and put it in a car to secure it because a propane cooktop exploded while she was trying to use it and she was airlifted to Vanderbilt.

Oh, wow.

Blew up the tent, blew up their chair, burned everything.

By the next morning, she was home, so she was okay.

But...

Yeah, I miss this one 100%.

Glad to know she's okay, but also be careful if you've, you know, kind of goes to that, our tip of try all your stuff before you get there.

You know, put your tent up so you know how.

Make sure you know how to turn these things.

I don't know what happened.

I'm just assuming.

Could be something with the heat, but those things are built to to with stain the elements.

Yeah, but they, you know.

So that probably was some operator error.

That's what I'm saying.

If you've never lit a propane stove before, maybe try to read up on how to do it safely, you know, and follow all the steps.

Things like that.

So, but what a nightmare, but she's okay.

So, yeah.

Barry, I think you and I saw that.

Well, we listened to the Pretty Light Show from Kent, but I didn't go to it, but you could hear it pretty well.

And I just was, you know, again, that Thursday night, first time on the What stage.

I didn't.

Yeah, that Jolene grabbed my attention.

I figured it probably would grab yours, Barry.

That little sample that was in there was pretty cool.

But that's, you know, that's the kind of stuff he does, does that, you know, all that.

Yeah.

Through the sunrise set, tons of that kind of stuff too.

So that was pretty cool.

Cool.

All right, Russ, what else is on your list that you wanted to get to today?

A lot of, you know, we have so many stories that we'll share when we talk about these other interviews, but anything specifically today, the recap that you wanted to talk about?

Thursday, you know, we did see Michigander a little bit, caught his show since we also interviewed him, so we'll talk about more there.

I saw a little bit of the Francis Comes Alive show, which I thought was really good.

Do we want to talk about Monrovia?

I was gonna say, yeah, two things about that, and I'll let Bryan address it.

Monrovia is a Chattanooga guy, played with Carl Caldwell, Summer Dreggs, and Tyler Martelli, very, very, very talented musicians, an interesting trio.

But Bryan, I'm gonna guess you have a tip for any local musicians who are gonna be playing Bonnaroo in the future.

Yeah, tell us you're gonna be there.

How about that?

How about that for a tip?

Let somebody know.

I mean, my God, I mean, these are friends of mine, one of them in any way, Tyler, Quaiten says the others, and yeah, I see on Facebook or wherever it is on Thursday or whatever morning, Friday morning, hey, I'm playing Bonnaroo today.

Tyler!

I mean, this is kind of like, you know, focused brain type kind of thing, narrow casting, you know, so focused on what they do.

You know, the last thing he's thinking to do is, oh, hey, Bryan, you need to make sure and give him a ring.

But come on, maybe a little, you know, come on, just a little bit.

It's a, and we joked about it and had fun with it.

But yeah, that was fun.

That was neat.

I mean, everybody from the city of Chattanooga was at that show, it felt like, and it was light tended, and while we're there, the Who stage is a considerable upgrade from anything I've ever seen.

And maybe this isn't brand new, what they're doing there, but it is just like a scaled down, this or that.

Yeah, it was great.

It's exact, it's just, if you didn't know any better, you've never seen it, take that, scale it down to 80%.

And it's got great, it's got video boards, it's got great sound.

Now, the sound guys are struggling on a few of the shows.

We won't, no reason to dig too far into that.

But it was a really nice looking stage.

Like that was nothing to sneeze at.

Like, oh, you're on the little tiny stage.

Cause we've seen, remember the Miller Lite True or the Bud True Music Village or whatever?

Man, you didn't play, you didn't play Bonnaroo.

You brought your guitar to the middle of the dusty dirt worth five people.

Like to me, I would have been disappointed as a performer.

This stage now, this is a really cool little stage.

And if you're playing on it, you should, that's something to be proud of.

It was cool.

Good for them.

And Monrovia is, where is he from?

Liberia?

Yeah, that's a story I still need to get around better.

It's cool.

My head around better, but that was neat.

And it was a sleepy, you know, a little slow.

Kind of set, but that's what he does.

And it was fun.

All right.

As far as list stuff, though, this census, we want to submit a couple.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Good, thank you for bringing that back.

My biggest thing to just start with before, when we don't need to go too far right now, but is I just, my disdain for polling.

I just, I could go on for a while on that one and I won't, but I just think, I mean, tainted and slanted polling tends to be where I, most of these go, which always just, it irritates me because there are real questions and there are, there are, there's information to be gathered from polling that's important, clearly.

But when you like, I just took a screenshot.

It's very short if you want to take it.

And I suggest everybody here does.

But this is just a 10 to 15 question.

Who do you want to see?

What do you think here?

But stuff like this.

When it comes to main stage headliners, do you prefer more current acts or legacy acts?

Right.

A or B, legacy or current?

That's your only choices.

Bro, I don't have an answer for that that way.

We can discuss this a long time, but it's not as simple as that.

Right.

First of all, it's both.

It's both, legacy and current.

I think everybody would agree with that.

It's just, that's a perfect example of just a junk data question.

Like to me, you're not gonna get any answers that matter from that, and maybe people smarter than me are doing it.

What's another one, just real quick?

Do you prefer?

Yeah, well, I don't need.

Well, one of the things that sort of got me was, and I tend to agree with you, Bryan, I'll use the example.

Years and years ago, a Catholic high school hired a new principal, and he kept hearing from people that they wanted uniforms.

They wanted the kids to wear uniforms.

I mean, it's all he could hear.

And he did a survey, and it turns out it was only like 10%.

It was just some really, really loud parents.

The rest of the people.

Yeah, what kid wants the uniforms?

Well, I mean, it wasn't the issue.

My point is, that loud vocal group can sway things.

Like one of the questions on this survey is, if it was two weekends, would you go?

You know, and my fear with stuff like that is, you can get, you know, say 90% say yes.

That doesn't mean 90% bought tickets or will buy tickets.

They just have a strong opinion about that.

There's so many ways these pollings are just junk data to me.

And that was the most polarizing question on there was the two weekends thing.

Let me just stop right there.

Just stop, shut that down.

Just stop.

Yeah, don't.

Just stop with this madness.

Please don't.

When Coachella started doing this, or when I first found out about it anyway, I don't remember the history of Coachella.

I don't study it.

But I was like, two weekends?

Yeah, who can do that?

Who the hell's doing this?

Who wants to do that?

And we live an hour away.

We are the people who could do that.

But I mean-

I'm not going to two weekends of Bonnaroo.

Bonnaroo, don't do it.

How is Beth, our Beth, who comes from Washington State, she didn't make it to staying in Nashville for three days.

I don't truly believe that they have any interest in doing that.

I think they're just feeling it out, and that's fine.

But boy, did that get all the socials going.

And that is a quick, just hard knock.

That's just, what are you doing?

It's already, Jesus, I mean, you've already made it upwards of five days, which is now people have settled in too nicely, and it works pretty well for a lot of people.

So Russ, am I wrong?

If you subscribe to their mailing list, you can get this survey, they'll...

Except for Barry.

Except for me.

Well, this was not just to people who attended.

This was to anybody, whether you've been to Bonnaroo or not.

They put this out on social media.

I mean, they linked it everywhere, so you can go find it and take it, and it doesn't matter if you've been or not.

Well, that goes to Barry's point.

Do we want people who don't go having an opinion on this?

So I asked Brad about it.

Depends on who you ask.

It is the first time they've done it, where it's to everybody, not just, they've done polling in the past, but it's typically that year's attendees.

Yeah, ticket person.

So this is anybody and everybody, number one.

And everybody does that.

If you buy something, they're gonna send you additional surveying.

I mean, that just happens.

And I won't say the number, but he had a number that they're hoping to get, and they were already a quarter of the way there by half of the first day.

So what they do with it, I don't know.

That's something we'll ask him.

You know.

Yeah, that'd be a fun conversation.

The idea of asking people their opinion, I think is a good one.

It's how you do it that's always worrisome.

And I even said to Brad, you know, you always get, I love the people, and Bryan, we've seen it with Riverbend.

You know, every time Riverbend comes up, how many times on the socials would you have somebody say, I've never been, it sucks.

I mean, I love those people, but you know, but they gotta offer their opinion.

You never been, never gonna go.

They're the loudest, they're the loudest.

Amazing, so.

All right.

One other thing real quick, guys, as far as the list goes, because I did have a couple people, one in particular who had said, I hope you guys talk about this, and I didn't get into the weeds too much, was trash collection and just the cleanup of the festival all the way around.

It didn't appear to me that Clean Vibes is any more involved with this festival.

I don't know if that's 100% true, but it didn't look like it.

But I just heard a lot of people talking about just kind of place being a little bit trashed.

I didn't quite see that as much, but I also wasn't there like I've been early sometimes on a Sunday or a Saturday morning when I can get a real view of what the place looks like.

And then the amount of trash left after the festival, I think was the main point that I was, that somebody was asking me about through direct messaging on social.

And I just think that's a thing every year.

This idea that leave it like you found it stuff, that's fun to say.

Yeah, that's not a thing.

I mean-

I always try.

I will say the shower situation.

Well, I do too.

And I think some do also, but also when you've got people who feel like they've been being ripped off, and that's gonna happen, and you've been beat up by the sun, and you've had all you can take in your five, six, seven hours from home, you think you're gonna mess around with that pop-up that cost you $79?

No.

You know, that's not happening.

And I'm not gonna blame that person for that, because there's somebody paid to come behind you and clean that up, and then we sell it to other people in Chattanooga.

So it's kind of an old ecosystem.

Yeah, shout out to the Gear Closet.

They always come in and clean all that up, and then they resell it, and then the proceeds go to Charity, to My Waterways, which we've talked to them on the show before, which is pretty neat.

Yeah, she's great.

So I didn't see it myself, as far as the place not being cleaned up after as much, but some people were concerned about that, so I figured it was worth mentioning.

I can see that.

Yeah, I can see it worth mentioning.

But I did see after leaving The What, because I left The What twice after full sets, after Chili Peppers, and after Pretty Lights.

I think I stayed till the end of that.

And the people out there running around with the bags, grabbing garbage, they were there.

I saw them with my own eyes.

I can't tell you if they did a good job or not, didn't see the finished product, but they were there.

Sometime one of these shows, maybe on down the line when we've got time and no topics, I wanna talk about technology and how they've changed over the two decades that we've been going.

But I have to say, the shower situation was awesome.

It was really nice.

This year for us, anyway.

I mean, it's always been pretty good.

Better than most, but it was great.

This is pretty good.

And then just quickly, I just wanted to throw out, without any in-depth preview or recap or review, I saw a lot of full sets this year, all of Post Malone.

I was with people who I had just mostly met, and one was a mild acquaintance, but never really actually met with, so it wasn't like a total stranger.

But it was a, hey, Bryan, listen, and I'll be like, oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.

And half of them, including really pretty girls, left.

And I was just at, I was in such a good spot in enjoying the Post Malone show so much, I didn't leave.

And I couldn't, you know, I never thought I would have said that going into it.

So I saw all the Post, I saw all the Chili Peppers start to finish.

Boy, did it pour the hell out of me, just like I knew it would.

Just like I knew it would.

But it sounded great.

And if you loved it, then it was exactly what you were there for.

All of Cage, the Elephant, oh my God, what a great rock and roll band.

I mean, just what a great 21st century rock and roll band.

All of that, all of the Beaches, all of J-Rad, and all of Chapel Roan.

And the Beaches show, I mean, you could see it in it.

They were waiting for Chapel, just like everybody else.

They were just like, let's burn through these songs.

Everybody that was at that tent, this tent, this, was just waiting to just shift and go over to Chapel.

And they even said like, all right, well, on to Chapel.

They jumped off the stage, and I saw them posting on their socials.

They're out in the field like everybody else.

Quickly what popped into my head here too, quickly, quickly, the platinum seeding areas in the tents, feel like they gotta go.

Yeah.

They're not getting used from my experience, which is limited, which is limited.

I'm sure there's a few tents that had big shows that got filled up with platinum members.

The ones I was at, I was 40 rows out just to get as, and I am there early because that damn platinum thing is taking up space that nobody's using.

If it's getting used, I'm not going to have much to say about it.

That's fine.

Yeah, people pay, well, this guy, he's platinum wherever he goes.

Some of us aren't that slick, Taco.

And it just, I don't know, it really took away from the gathering up front.

We're going to have VIPs, we're going to have exclusivity that you can purchase.

And I'm okay with that.

But if it's not getting used, you need to try something else.

Well, and it's not a good look for the band if there's a photo of the crowd and the whole front is empty.

That was the Beaches show.

I was on the rail, but the rail was three rails back.

Oh, wow.

I didn't see anybody using the VIP seating either, the chairs.

Oh, the bleachers?

I think we talked about it.

Oh, the hill?

No, not the hill, out on the right side to like The Witch.

They had a whole platform.

I didn't pay attention.

To me, it just looked like a giant skillet.

It looked so...

Oh, yeah.

Oh, you're talking about the bleachers, yeah.

The witch, yeah.

I couldn't even imagine how hot that was aluminum.

I'm not saying don't sell exclusive ticket tiering and options.

I'm not.

But I think that the way that that is carved into those tents, those are already really small.

And I forgot this is considerably smaller than that.

See, thank you.

The tents.

Thank you.

I've asked that.

Jeff Cuellar said, no, they were the same size.

And I'm like, no, they're not.

That is a...

It's...

They might have been in the past, but they tear those down and build them every year.

So maybe they build them differently.

I think they used to be...

And this year, I was like, this is very noticeably smaller.

Yeah, it is smaller.

But either way, it's not that big, is my point.

So when you take away so much space in such a premium spot, that's a little annoying.

I agree.

Those screens didn't do a hell of a lot of good in some settings either, but I'd rather have them than not.

So I'm not going to complain about that.

I'm glad you mentioned the platinum thing because I caught about three shows of Post and then went straight to this tent for the Mars Volta.

I got right into the platinum area, and it wasn't heavily attended.

And while I was waiting...

That was a great show, by the way.

I'll stay for the whole thing.

And I guess it kind of worked to my favor that Thundercat and T-Pain were at the same time, because it really wasn't heavily attended, probably as much as it would be.

But while I was sitting there...

No, keep going, sorry.

While I was sitting there waiting, David Bruce walked up, and he actually came in the area and asked, hey, is it okay if I come in and take photos?

And they initially said, no, no photos.

Apparently the Mars Volta management or whatever requested no photos at all.

So he was originally turned away, but then she saw his crew chief wristband.

I don't know how he got that.

But she pointed that out and was like, oh, why didn't you tell me you have a crew chief?

You can go anywhere you want.

So he got in and got into the photo pit to take photos.

And after about three songs, he said he looked up and probably either their manager or somebody off to the side pointed at him and said, you know, waved no photos.

So he, you know, okay, sorry.

So he was the only photographer for that show.

Well, that's the thing.

I don't want to spend a lot of time on here because a lot of people won't know what it means.

But who can go in those little side sliver things?

Bonnaroo has spent 20 years, and I ain't figured this out.

You can be the, you know, the band's manager, and they won't let you in.

And then you can just be some jackass who just walks right in and it's no problem.

But that's, you know, that's not that big a deal.

I'm glad you mentioned T-Pain.

Boy, if that, to me, that felt like the biggest buzz of the weekend before Sunday got there, is that that T-Pain show was at night, and it was really cool, and it was huge attended at The Witch.

I wasn't there, but I was earshot.

Boy, people seemed to be crazy excited for the T-Pain show, and it sounded like it delivered.

But you were off doing your Thundercats and Mars Voltas, right?

I didn't see Thundercat.

I was there for the Mars Voltas the entire set.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah, speaking of that, Super Jam.

Did either of y'all do that?

Another year and another year without a Super Jam for me.

I didn't go because I went to the Boot Scootin Boogie Nights show.

I think you made the right decision.

I think I did, too.

I did walk past, and I did hear them.

They were doing a cover of One-Arm Scissor by At the Drive-In, which I thought was cool.

Yeah, the fact that it was emo was the main theme.

It wasn't going to do a whole lot for me.

I could have had fun with it.

I certainly could have.

And somebody could have talked me into it.

I stayed for a couple of minutes just because I heard that song.

But then I did go on to the Who stage for Boot Scootin Boogie Nights.

And I'm glad I did.

I got right up front.

I know Cory saw me.

And that was such a fun show.

And this was not...

You know, we talked about it.

It's 90s country covers.

Did they play Boot Scootin Boogie, the song?

I hope so.

They played like three sets over the course of the weekend.

Yeah, they were everywhere.

This was the only one I caught.

But yeah, it was like something unlocked, because suddenly I knew all these words.

I knew all these songs.

Of course you do.

That 90s country boom was...

It's infectious.

So in our face.

Yeah.

That was one of my favorites.

And then also Jive Talk on the Who stage.

I think that's my new favorite band.

Seriously, they were great.

I was told, go see Jive Talk.

Oh my God.

That's the one our friends, Repeat Repeat, what, they produced one of the songs?

They produced their latest album.

The whole album.

I think.

I was hoping to...

Actually, I went hoping to see Jared and Kristen, but I watched the whole show.

And it's just...

I don't know.

They're just weird.

It kind of reminds me of like Devo.

They came out in these like weird costumes and sunglasses and it was very theatrical and kind of over the top, but I loved it.

Yeah, like a set.

Do they have a 70s disco-ish sound in there during some of it?

Yeah.

That's what somebody was telling me.

I don't remember when.

I wasn't even at Bonnaroo before I got there.

It was like, yeah, you got to go see Jive Talk.

They were fun.

The singer, he come out to the crowd.

He like sat down on the ground.

He was kind of singing with the crowd.

And you just felt like they were putting a lot into this performance, probably because it was their first Bonnaroo.

So you spent a lot of time at the Who stage, too, then.

Yeah, I saw three shows at the Who stage, yeah.

Nice.

Cool.

So for people why I keep talking about Repeat Repeat, they are a theme song that you hear every week, as Jared and Kristen did for us exclusively.

They are, and we're going to talk later with Say She She and Happy Landing and whoever else, but Repeat Repeat are a classic Bonnaroo-type story for us, for me anyway.

They were the first band to come to Camp Nut Butter to do an interview.

We've followed them ever since, become friends, and I just, I love following the career arc type of thing.

Yeah, they came and played Chattanooga one year, and they rode in the bus after the show.

We went somewhere, and so they've been in the bus.

Yeah, I love that kind of stuff.

So, all right, guys, another long episode.

Well, we've not even gotten to Sunday yet.

Oh, yeah, you're going to recap?

You want to keep going?

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Well, you mentioned the chapel thing, which was huge, and I didn't stay much for that just because of the heat.

And, but the one show I did see on Sunday that I loved was Bad, Bad, Not Good.

What's that?

Where were they playing?

They were in that tent.

So the tent, that tent.

No, this tent.

Well, I can't remember.

One of the tents.

Yeah.

But they had a kind of a 16-millimeter film camera set up projecting behind them, and it had a lot of weird trippy visuals.

It was really cool.

And yeah, then after that, I think I went back to camp, and that's about the time that they had that rain delay during Carly Rae's set.

And kind of had to pause for a little bit because there was some lightning in the area.

And then they finally restarted, and Megan Thee Stallion got to go on, and that's about the time that I said, I think I could leave and be good.

About three hours before that is when I was gone.

Yeah, you had left a little bit before that, but yeah, I wasn't too far behind.

That was the plan all along, and yeah, my Sunday went well.

But The Chapel Show was not anything special from what she's been doing.

So she didn't do something at Bonnaroo that was so much different than what she's been doing.

But that doesn't mean anything other than I'm trying to get away from best show ever guy.

But it was awesome.

It was awesome, and I can't believe how many songs.

I knew every song she played.

I'm like sing along.

I am a pink pony girl, man.

I am in this Chapel Rowan universe.

I watch her now, and I'm like, the way I'm starting to understand the Taylor Swift mania, because I'm feeling that a little bit with Chapel Rowan, and I mean, I'm not saying she's going to be Taylor Swift, but her ascension near the Apex, there's a lot more to go here.

She's just on Fallon the other day.

She just ended her tour.

The last show was the Bonnaroo Show.

So they're taking a little bit of time off.

I was surprised with how many instruments are on stage.

It's a band playing music, as opposed to sometimes a pop star like Taylor Swift, where you hardly see any band members.

You just see this elaborate dance show.

Well, you get a little bit of both of that with this.

I am hook, line and sinker on the Chaperone stuff.

I can't believe it, but I can't wait to see where she goes from here.

And I hope she's young.

I hope it doesn't eat her up.

I hope the massive stardom explosion doesn't somehow become a problem, because that's a story as old as civilized time.

But it was really, really good.

It was really good.

You left too early Sunday, because I got in the pit for Milky Chance, and they brought out one of your girls from one of the beaches.

I knew they would, because they have a song together, and the beaches clearly were making a weekend of it.

And that was tough to pull away from, and then Isbell that night is one of my favorites.

If you saw that set list, snooze fest.

Thank God I didn't stick around for that, Jason.

I thought you were going to start rocking a little bit now that you're a single man.

Boy, he played a lullaby set, and it's fine, he's great, but I was happy to be at home.

I was watching it on Hulu.

We'll talk about this down the road.

That Hulu stuff, we talked a little bit about, somebody had asked us, do we think they'll be doing some streaming, doing some more comprehensive coverage?

That ain't going to work, Bonnaroo.

That ain't going to work.

That was awful.

I signed up for Hulu for a month, so I wanted to watch everything while I was at home, and it was like...

Yeah, I watched some of it.

It was bad.

So we'll circle back around that.

That's more of a Hulu thing than it is a Bonnaroo thing, but they do need to get together on that and make that...

If you're gonna do it, do it better than that.

That was bad.

Yeah, a couple other highlights for me.

I saw John Baptiste on The What and Brittany Howard on The Witch.

They were both very good.

Very nice.

Yeah, I caught a little bit of Renee Rapp as kind of a walk-by.

Yeah, I got some walk-bys, Renee Rapps.

She had a big crowd.

Cigarettes After Sex.

Talk about sleepy, though.

They sounded exactly like you expected they were going to, and I was like, this is fine, but I'm good with just moving, making that a walk-by.

Nice crowd, though.

Nice crowd.

Yeah, Teske Brothers are really good.

I missed Interpol.

That's the one that I'm kind of mad about that I missed.

I don't remember why.

I think I was either too tired or went to go do something else, but that's the other one I wanted to see, and I didn't make it.

All right.

What else?

Take that back cover.

I just put down my full shows and just going on memory on walk-bys.

There's walk-bys I don't remember.

I can't remember who I saw on Friday.

And then we'll go into...

When we do the Guar Show, we will spend some extra time on that because that was...

That's a highlight of the weekend.

Didn't talk about that one, but yeah, we'll get into it when we do the Guar Show.

Yeah, that was great.

That was good stuff.

I think I got everything up.

Barry keeps trying to kick me off, so I guess we're done.

Well, I'm looking at the clock.

We're an hour and 40 in, so...

Yeah, I think that covers just about everything.

Things will come up, and this is not something we can do in one sleuth.

No, but I mean, to recap the recap, I can't wait till next year.

I'm literally already thinking about camp, I'm already thinking about how to build camp.

A friend of the show, correspondent Trevon Bernarding, has already reached out.

Can he be with us next year?

Come on in, yeah.

Come on, yeah.

I think he'd be a perfect fit.

Me too.

We're going to talk about Bath.

Bath is just cool.

Those guys and their story.

Jerry, Mike, and Brad and Justice.

I think that's Brad's son that was there, right?

It was his nephew.

Nephew, sorry.

You guys were gone Sunday.

I had one of the best dad jokes for Father's Day.

We were sitting around and Justice was there.

Justice is probably about 20-ish, wouldn't you say?

Maybe early 20s, 21, 22, somewhere.

But I just turned at him and I was like, can you see?

And he was like, what?

Yeah, I can see.

He was like, you can see just fine?

And he was like, yeah.

And I said, well, I always heard that Justice is blind.

That's terrible.

He said he'd never heard that before.

I was shocked.

I was like, come on, you've got to hear that all the time with a name like Justice.

Well, that makes the joke even worse.

He didn't even get it.

Almost as bad as my hippie.

Why did the lifeguard let the hippie drown?

Too far out.

It's a little better.

Let's get the hell out of here.

Let's get out of here, guys.

Love you.

Glad we all survived.

Glad we made it.

Glad we're energized and looking forward to next year.

We've got a lot of shows coming up, coming out of Bonnaroo.

So thanks, everyone, for listening, seriously.

And thanks to everybody who came up and said hello.

Yeah, we tried to get names and where you're from and all that, but there's no way we can remember all of the names.

Man, it was just so crazy.

Yeah, you know who you are.

You do, and we appreciate you.

Yeah, you meant the world to me.

Alright, thanks guys.