At the end of the day, I walked away saying,

if you're going to travel for a music festival,

this is just as good a place as any.

Mexico City is a two-hour longer flight,

and everything is cheaper there.

Glad to see they're planting grass,

which I still think is funny to be talking about grass.

Not that kind of grass on the farm, but it's still funny.

I think they are probably going to be on the Bonnaroo lineup

this year, if not very soon.

Yeah, you heard it here first.

She's been saying this since the show.

The next big thing in pop music is this band,

which I still don't hardly know.

And the other big news.

We now know who the Thursday Night Headliner is.

Welcome back to the What Podcast.

I'm Barry. That's Brian. That's Russ.

That's Beth on the West Coast.

That sounds like a title.

Sounds like a name. Beth on the West Coast.

I like it.

Hey, guys, how are you?

Good. Good.

I had a show last night,

so I'm awake and ready to go on the West Coast.

Doesn't sound like everybody else is.

That was the quietest... I'm ready to go.

That was... Should we do that again?

I've been doing this for... Hey, guys, how are you?

Great. I was...

Listen, everybody's giving me shit for talking too much,

so I'm on my own.

I know, but I didn't expect that.

That was a thud.

It's like, did my computer just die?

I'm doing excellent, Barry, to answer your question.

Hooray!

I'm doing fantastic.

I know Russ is exhausted. I'm exhausted.

Russ is packing up, looking at me.

He's getting ready to move.

He's closing on his house on Monday.

I finally finished the bathroom this morning.

The ladder is down in the basement.

I'm never getting on a ladder ever again, but nobody cares.

So, anyway, that's what we got going.

The big news. Here's the big news.

We're going to talk about Bonnaroo.

We're going to talk about Ruse Clues.

We're going to talk about Mexico City and Corona Capital,

where Brian and Beth got back...

How long? Five days ago?

Six days?

Five days. Five...

Well, right out of week.

Right out of week, I guess, at this point.

Yeah, we'll just...

We'll jump into that in the second segment of the show.

Spoiler. It was amazing.

It was incredible.

I can't wait.

It was fabulous.

I can't wait, but the big news.

Bandanas are back.

We all agree, right? That is the big news.

Bandanas are back.

Yeah.

No, I'm kidding.

No, I mean, people are freaks for this stuff.

I'm one. I'm one.

Yeah. Listen...

Yeah, we did a whole episode on this, so we're excited.

Poor Brad.

Brad Parker, he's got to be so mad.

If I was a writer, Barry, writing a column,

I would already have it half, you know, two-thirds in the bank

ready for everybody complaining who doesn't get one

when they run out at the toll booths or get in late or whatever.

The box doesn't show up at Plaza Six or whatever it is.

That story is already on file and I'm ready to send it to my publisher,

because that's what's coming next.

And the trade value, what are they worth?

What are you trading?

I mean, it seems weird they wouldn't just toss it in the envelope

and send it with the wristband, but hey, I'm fine with it either way.

But somebody's not going to get one, and somebody's going to be angry,

and it's going to start a fire on Reddit.

You know, I mean, we're joking. I'm joking.

But to me, they are important because they are so symbolic of Bonnaroo.

So I'm glad they're back.

Oh, I love them. I love them.

You've been cleaning the bathroom.

Russ has been cleaning every house in the city.

And I've been in the garage. I found a stack of them.

And I thought, well, I can't wait to get mine.

I wear them. I wear them.

And the other big news, we now know who the Thursday Night Headliner is.

Yeah, we were told there's going to be just a low-key Thursday Night Welcome Party,

but now we're getting Skrillex.

Yeah, I think they, my guess is they changed on the fly.

And when we talked to Brad and Cory right afterwards, they didn't,

nobody knew anything at that point.

They were just starting to throw things on the wall.

And it sounds like, I don't want to say a hard pivot

because it sounds like there's still not a Thursday, which is a bummer to me still.

But pretty nice name. Beth, your thoughts?

I think they pivoted the same way they did with Luke Holmes,

that Skrillex said yes, and they didn't totally expect that.

It was a wish list item.

And so they're happy to have him and they're building it around Skrillex.

Legacy, EDM act.

That's what I think.

And I mean, not my particular genre, but I can't imagine anything bigger or better.

Yeah, it's almost kind of like going front to back instead of ending with a sort of legacy style artist.

It is kind of weird to say Skrillex's legacy, but he kind of is.

But starting with that, I think that's a good move.

I think that's a good strategic move to get early excitement before the lineup,

which we're expecting, I don't know, hopefully soon.

And I think that's a nice little bump of online activity,

buzz out on the proverbial streets.

And so, I think it's a very good move. Yeah, I like it.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to put myself on the farm on that Thursday.

I mean, we're not going to have Tuesday, Wednesday, right?

Moving in. Yeah, move in day, I guess.

A little bit. Wednesday will be for, you know, moving.

They're going to let campers in, but apparently they're going to put a cap on how many people come in Wednesday.

Right. And so, as they've said, nothing Thursday day and then a big blowout.

So, I mean, I'm just trying to picture what else.

I mean, everybody's going to be super excited is where I'm going.

And I can't think of a better blowout act maybe than Skrillex.

Part of it could be is if they're trying to feels like they're trying to restagger

the way that the flow of the crowd gets into the venue from the start, from the jump.

And if it's more Wednesday into Thursday, well, that gives people all that.

It's almost a new version of crowd control.

You get kind of a day and a half to get people in and then they can slowly at their own pace set up, get to the stage.

You know, half the people aren't going to make it to the Skrillex show.

I mean, that's just that's just the nature of Bonnaroo.

You have to I'm going to Skrillex.

A hundred million of us are all going and then only twenty thousand are there in the field because that's just how it works.

Not everybody's surprised Skrillex isn't the Sunday closeout.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's kind of backwards.

But I think it's a good move. I really do.

I think it's going to be great. We've had another some other recluse as well.

Mm hmm. Right. What else we got?

Yeah, I haven't seen this one. I don't know.

You want to go. You want to play it now? Let's please.

OK. All right. Hello. You've reached Bonnaroo Mystery Services.

Please hold while Bonaclare gazes in her crystal ball to see what's in store for you.

Mm hmm.

I see your sights softening while the world hums slow.

In your peripheral vision, everything glows a little bit brighter and turns a little sweeter.

You will lose balance for a second and then find peace in the sway. Embrace the dizziness.

Well, of course, I have no idea what I just heard.

Maybe pretty lights again. Pretty light swirls, right?

You probably already know because Reddit's told you what this would be.

Yeah, it looks like it's going to be turnover, which is another one I'm not familiar with.

Good old turnover. Yeah.

Wow. We're ready for June, baby.

Why can't this the Rue Clu ever be Fleetwood Mac? Yeah.

Or something. Yeah.

I had to check my notes because there was also turnstile was leaked from the owl as well.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I know that. I know that band name. Yeah.

Mm hmm. Well, I feel pretty certain that we're going to know all of this sooner

rather than later. All of the universe, the Bonnaroo universe indicates that we're going to get this pretty soon.

The other one I'm excited about is apparently Weird Al is going to be on the lineup.

Yes, I'm very excited about that. I've never seen Weird Al.

It's all shaky knees, right?

By all indications that he will be because he has a I just saw yesterday.

It's almost a hundred day tour next year. I mean, this guy's in his mid-

Yeah, it's a massive tour.

mid to late 60s almost at this point. Yeah.

And he'll be in Chattanooga, by the way, Barry. Maybe we'll go together.

Let's do it. I would love to see him in Chattanooga.

But that's not till the end of next year. It's almost a year away.

So the middle of the proximity clause, whatever that even is at this point in our lives, who really knows?

Sometimes it's not. I think it's out the window.

Yeah, it's mostly out the window anyway. But he's nowhere near the south in the summer and he's off in June completely.

So you're telling me he's going to be all over the country.

No, he does have a date in June and it says TBD.

Okay. Well, there you go.

Oh, even better. Yeah. All right. All right.

So not a secret they're trying to keep very, very well. But so that'll go over well. That'll be fun. That'd be really cool.

All right. Well, random out of nowhere. I know who I want to see on the farm this summer is Florence and the Machine.

I don't know if you guys have heard her new record, but it's so good.

And I've heard it and I've thought about it. And on my list, My Morning Jacket is the perfect Bonnaroo band.

But I think Florence and the Machine is right there. They're just such a great festival act.

So yeah, she hasn't been her and her band haven't been here in a little while.

It's been a while. So it should be about time for that. Yeah.

I don't know why I bring that up other than that's who I want to see.

Next time we talk, we might know. Now is the time to speculate.

I hope so. And we also got a little bit of video from your buddy Justin.

We kind of talked about it, Russ, and I did last week, his video of the farm, some of the changes and got a lot of comments.

Saw a lot of comments this week from people glad to see they're planting grass, which I still think is funny to be talking about grass.

Not that kind of grass on the farm, but it's still funny.

Well, if you love grass, you're going to love this one.

So one of the main things we did right away this year was we planted 135 acres of Bermuda around the Plaza 3 and Plaza 2 areas as well as down into the venue.

Hi, my name is Dale Green. I'm the head groundskeeper at the Bonnaroo Music Festival.

I've been here since 2001. Well, we used to have fescue and when it gets hot in the summertime, the fescue does not grow as well.

It goes in shock because of the heat.

One of the strengths of the Bermuda grass is that if we do get rain, it's ability to absorb water in its root system, because at that time of year, it's growing and it's thirsting for water.

Bermuda loves hot weather, so hopefully this is going to be a better carpet for people to be able to walk on and enjoy a whole lot more than what the fescue does.

Love it.

Mary, you're the home owner, fixer-upper guy. Is that right on the ground?

Absolutely.

Yeah, that's the better stuff, huh?

Yeah, and it's important as Russ and I talked about last week, we don't think about that until you think about it, because it's either muddy or dusty.

And they've thought about it and this fixes a lot of that.

Fescue is such a cool word.

Yeah.

I don't know what it means from one grass to the next.

It's more the carpet, as he said. Fescue, I think, is the one that turns brown in the wintertime.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it doesn't grow. It seemingly never grows.

It goes dormant. But it takes heavy traffic. So, pretty important. That's good stuff.

Well, they're doing all the right things. They're doing all the right things. If it rains like that, we're screwed.

It doesn't matter what kind of grass you got on the ground. If it rains like it did this past year, it's going to be a major problem.

Justin was telling me on the phone last year that it was a field of dreams.

I mean, he's like, man, I can't wait for you guys to see the place. So they're trying. Everybody's doing the right things.

We just need to make sure we don't, you know, we need to make sure like we have any control over it.

But you get that kind of weather and we're going to have problems. We're not going to have that kind of weather.

It's going to be a great year. It's going to be wonderful. I cannot wait.

Let's take a break and we'll be right back.

All right. So we're back. Literally, Brian, you and Beth are back. You've been out of the country a week ago.

You were in Mexico City at the Corona Capital Festival in Mexico City on behalf of the What Podcast as special guests.

Thanks. I know you're going to reach out and say thanks to Chris Vineyard for putting this together.

Chris and I go way back. He was like my first contact or second contact at Bonnaroo in 2002.

So I've known Chris a long, long time. Good dude. Did you write?

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Very, very right.

Before I take over here, Beth, you just open up here with your initial thoughts on the trip to Mexico City.

Well, one thing about Chris that I realized a little bit of trivia.

I searched my email for an Uber code on the last day and my first arena show that I shot, I actually went through Chris.

It was for Kings of Leon. And so I found an email from 2014 from Chris helping me get access to Kings of Leon.

So it was kind of a full circle moment with Chris. It was awesome.

I think the questions that I had before you left were how does it compare with any other festivals that you've been to?

But just also want to hear the highlights.

We'll definitely get to you. But first of all, we're bearing the lead here. Look at this.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I got my swag too. I got a free shirt. They left a shirt for us in the hotel room.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that in the hotel room. Look at this.

It doubles as a Christmas shirt. I'm an ugly Christmas sweater, too. I'm a Mexico soccer fan.

Just a fabulous trip all the way around. And if you are an audio only listener,

I implore you to to check out the YouTube and Spotify feeds of the video because there'll be quite a few shots of the grounds.

And if you are curious as to what this place looks like.

And, you know, we were talking with Ricardo Gomez, the talent buyer for the for the festival,

which all led to all of this. And one of us somehow we were talking about, you know, are you trying to get Americans here?

Is this a destination? Is this a place like you mentioned my morning jacket doing their destination weekend in Mexico City or other places many times?

And it didn't sound like that was the answer to him as much that it was I mean, it's a it's a city of twenty two million people Metro.

It's it's it's unreal how big this place is. So to get eighty thousand tickets sold seems like it wouldn't be that big a deal.

Mexico's a little bit of a different environment than we're used to.

But this the at the end of the day, I walked away saying if you're going to travel for a music festival,

this is just as good a place as any. If you're going to go to Chicago for Lollapalooza and say you're flying from Florida or wherever,

you're going to Mexico City is a two hour longer flight and everything is cheaper there.

Every single thing costs less. No matter what you're buying, it costs less.

And in America, we're so exhausted from price inflation.

Hell that we we deal with every single day of our life and they are too.

But it's just what I'll get to more specifics on numbers later.

Just just it's a perfect place to go see a festival.

Beth, what are your thoughts on that? And I'm going to interrupt.

Sorry, I can't help myself. How long was your flight, Beth? Five hours.

Five hours. OK, wow. Yeah, we direct five hour direct flight.

Aero Mexico, Aero Mexico is amazing, by the way.

They gave me food, really good food. So that was exciting.

I was like, I don't get pancakes. Then I got pasta on the way back.

They had a whole little kit. You never get the kit anymore with all the little food in it.

It was great. True VIP experience from beginning to end.

I got some chips, but hey, I thought I was living large.

The direct flight from Seattle, I think prices are actually pretty good on flights.

I mean, and pretty I would not say it's easy to get around in Mexico City because we the traffic is horrific.

Oh, God. Oh, God. And it takes a really long time to get anywhere in an Uber, but doesn't cost very much to do that.

So you get to see a lot of the city from cars. Yeah, about 20 bucks will get you almost anywhere within a 20 mile radius in an Uber.

But you know, you've seen it in some videos that you're watching on, I don't know, history or National Geographic or something where it looks like there's no lines in the road,

but there's cars going like this every single day. This is everywhere you're going.

I don't know why there's not a wreck every single second I look out the window.

Like, why is that not a wreck? Why did that not just turn into a snarled interstate or a highway?

It's just the culture of driving the chaotic nature of it.

They just know how to do it instinctively, I guess.

It's pretty impressive to see close to scary if I didn't know I was trusting the scenario we were in.

But a couple of things here just quickly to give it comparisons on the size of the city.

So New York City is eight and a half million city, 19.5 metro, 19.5 million metro, which is just bigger than you can even imagine.

Los Angeles, just under four million city, 18 and a half.

So Metro LA is big, but the city is much smaller.

Chicago, two and a half million, 10 million metro.

So about half the size of New York. Mexico is almost 10 million city, 22 and a half million metro.

So it's just, it's a sea from the air. It's something to see, too.

It's just beautiful and also not so beautiful, depending on how you want to evaluate what you're looking at.

Sprawling neighborhoods of neighborhoods we wouldn't normally be seeing outside of the city.

And so it's interesting to try to figure out how the culture works.

We didn't get to see much of the city. I mean, I'm complaining about spending an entire day at a festival is what it sounds like.

I promise you I'm not complaining, but we were there for 10 hours a day.

I mean, we were there all every single minute of the day, basically.

But I guess I'll quickly just start with, we'll throw up a few slides here as we go along.

The stages were so impressive, guys.

The Corona stage is enormous and the sound is distributed throughout the grounds so well, better than Bonnaroo.

Bonnaroo's just got problems because of the proximity of things.

And it's just they try to cram a lot into a small area, which they have to.

Here, this racetrack, it's called, do you have that, Beth? What is it?

Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Which is?

Or de Hermanos Rodriguez, which is Brother's Rodriguez racetrack.

Yeah, Rodriguez Brothers racetrack.

There's a baseball stadium inside of this racetrack.

Wow.

It is, I think Ricardo told us about this in the past that you can put like hundreds of thousands of people into this, to this venue.

And they used, Corona Capital uses like a third of it.

And so, and it's, you can't, it's just decorated beautifully.

Now, if if you are the type that hates to see the overload of of advertising and all that kind of stuff, which we talked about at length with Ricardo, you're going to hate it.

You're going to hate it because you're getting blasted in the face like LEDs, Times Square style, almost at night can hurt your eyes a little bit.

Like that was a little bit much, but we're talking a two hundred and forty four dollar festival ticket.

So I don't think their culture cares about those things.

It doesn't appear that they do.

But the just to get through the stages quickly, Corona Doritos, the Doritos stage, which sounds silly.

Right. I know it was a gorgeous stage.

Beth, you shot there from several times.

Where where where where did you where did you get your best viewpoints from the main or the secondary Corona or Doritos?

Probably secondary.

It was really cool to be in a giant situation like that with huge photo pit, 40 plus photographers.

I think I was the only person who didn't speak Spanish.

So that was that was really interesting for me to be in that situation because I speak a little bit.

But you're in a huge situation like at the what stage where it's just so wide and you have to compose to try to get everybody in a shot.

But and then the Doritos was more like the which stage.

But I think Doritos. Probably comparable size, maybe a little bit bigger than the which stage.

And then the smaller ones weren't tense. They were stages also.

Yeah, the the Doritos stage now would be or where the which stage is now.

Yeah, I'd say they're comparable. But where the which stage we knew for 15 years, this is way, way bigger than that.

Yeah. With big screens. Great. Just excellent sound as we know the which has always struggled with with sound mainly because it's a it's a built on location stage every time they have to start from the ground up there.

But yeah, the the Corona Sunset stage, which that sunsets is one of their newer beers.

The best looking third stage I've ever seen. Yeah, I forgot.

I forgot to get a good picture in the daytime where you could see it a little bit better.

This is the one you're see here is with the struts from England.

They're my new favorite band, Barry. I'm going to be obsessing over this band for a while.

Nice. You're going to hear about the struts a lot.

You're going to hear it. I'm always replaced with I know more.

You're more Euro trash in my life. I needed it.

And then by June of next year, you'll never hear me talk of the struts again.

But I met I met Luke Spiller, their lead guitar player, excuse me, lead singer, lead singer and primary songwriter.

And boy, couldn't been a cooler guy.

The whole band was they were doing the rounds with a lot of the I guess it's hard to tell.

Nobody spoke English, nobody except for the people who were are in our little caravan and Chris and then Manuel.

So I've got his name here. I'll get to it for you.

Mano Manuel. Outside of that, you're on your freaking own guys.

And so like it was hard to figure out exactly what you were listening to and as far as from the from vendors and those kinds of things.

But yeah, Luke did the rounds and and I just fell in love with the band.

But can I can I take you back a little bit and just talk logistics so you fly in right, which is different.

Typically, we would drive, right? You fly, you know, you do all that.

But you guys, so you had to fly and you get to the hotel.

What's that? What's the hotel to the event like?

How does that always it?

Well, we went on a bath. I'll let you take us over in two seconds.

We went on a Friday. We left it Friday at like one or two, which in major cities is all day.

Friday is a disaster that took.

It felt like forever. But pick up from there and talk about that travel in and out.

Also, I don't know if you want to go all the way to the beginning, but the Chapel Rowan story, too.

Oh, the airport. Yeah, yeah.

We I I half expected the phone call from jail from Brian.

I need you to get me out. There's a lot.

There's a lot of leads being buried here.

I can't remember. Yeah.

So speaking of celebrity experiences, so I'm in the airport and you have to.

So I had to check a bag side my camera gear.

So I get my bag and you have to check your bags going out of the airport, not just going in.

They scan the bags. They put it on a little conveyor thing and it goes through as I'm walking to this conveyor thing.

Somebody kind of he doesn't really cut me off, but he sort of runs in really quickly and apologizes and he's in front of me.

And I'm like, oh, no, no big deal.

And then I thought that he was going to let me go and I was like, oh, go ahead.

And then he pulled in this other group of people, which included Chapel Rowan.

So she is right in front of me.

We're checking our bags or we're just standing there waiting for our bags to go through the scanner together.

And we leave the airport. I meet up with Brian.

I say hi. And I was like, oh, yeah, Chapel Rowan was in front of me.

Boom. He's out. So I haven't seen him in months.

See Brian for two seconds and he's like off.

I just thought he'd kind of like, oh, look over and say, oh, yeah, there's Chapel, you know, like, you just be chill about it.

But apparently there was no chill whatsoever.

He just took off after and videoed her walking through the airport with all her bodyguards.

No, I. Yeah, it's just this is just funny.

I had a different I was like, yeah, I think that's Chapel Rowan over there.

I was like, what? Yeah, how can you say this so nonchalantly?

Hey, look, there's Chapel Rowan standing right over there.

Nice. I got to go.

And so, yeah, I run and chase it down.

Oh, half a million views on TikTok, guys.

Nice. Half a million video.

Half a million views on my paparazzi video.

Nine seconds with like a thousand comments all in Spanish.

No idea. Mostly saying you shouldn't have done that.

Yeah, mostly saying what's up with this with this.

Yeah, leave her alone.

It was so quick.

It wasn't that long.

It all just fell together.

But her story is correct.

Her story is correct.

I did run off from it.

It's like, oh, my God.

But anyway, traveling there and back, Beth.

So then we so we get to the hotel, which is gorgeous, by the way.

It's a 1968 beautifully designed.

I don't know the architect, but beautifully designed hotel.

And we it's 18 miles from the venue.

Took us an hour and a half to get there the first day, I think.

Pretty sure. So first day with the traffic, it took it took so long to get to the

festival, which is not the fault of the people who were helping us in

organizing this.

It was just traffic.

Another Friday in Mexico City.

Yeah. Yeah.

So we had a long time to kind of hang out in the Sprinter van with the other

journalists from different parts of the country and get to know them and get

to the venue and then after that, no problem.

After that, no real problems.

About a 20 minute drive, 20, 25 minute drive or something like that.

So that was really good.

As far as the festival, no issues.

Took a while to get credentials.

We waited.

We waited for quite a while to get that all sorted out.

I had to trade in my my pass for I had to trade in my passport to get a vest as a

photographer.

So I put on this press vest and then trade it back in for my passport at the end of

the day.

Yeah, I would have.

I would have a panic attack if you said hand me your passport.

I can't get home.

This vest won't get me home.

Yeah, no.

It's cool.

No comprende.

What?

But she knew what she was doing and it was it was all fine.

Yeah.

But to quickly run through the the sustainability, the kind of what we would

consider a media walk through.

It's a little bit more than that.

It was more showcasing vendors and they fed us at one of them for sure.

But Mindsurf does some mental mental health kind of mental wellness relaxation kind

of boost at many other festivals in Mexico City.

Burgerlandia, which is Marcela Lara curated that space.

Got a picture of him talking about I couldn't understand most whatever he was saying.

It was it was some English, not entirely.

The entire OSA host, which I bet Beth, if you have the full name of that acronym, I

don't.

But they're the OCCSA.

OCCSA.

O-C-E-S-A.

Yes.

Samantha Constat.

She's the one who took us around, showed us everything.

And in the end with the Burgerlandia thing fed us very, very well.

Beth missed that.

She was shooting some shots and composting, recycling a very like just very American

feeling, like very kind of progressive liberal feeling kind of festival.

And I don't mean that any other way than other than that.

That those kinds of things are on the agendas of that type of mindset.

And this entire festival felt that way.

It was very clean, clean, clean, clean, always clean, always clean, you know, even between

sets that they were they had people on the grounds seemingly walking behind you, picking

up after you.

And speaking of grass and different kinds, they had this is a racetrack.

So think of going towards like an oval and you got your two straightaways.

In F1 and Formula One, they have those those LEDs that go up over the straightaways.

And so they're able to have signage on those walk.

That's the walk in and out.

And then around the curve, around the turn is where the main main stage is.

So those concrete in and out straightaways were perfect for understanding.

OK, well, if I just keep walking, you're going to you know, you're going to find your way

back around everywhere else over the entire grounds.

It's covered with a I don't want to call it mesh because it's not mesh.

It's not like felt, but like really strong felt like felt coating over the entire ground.

And when we first got there, I was like, well, this is going to be shredded into nothing.

By the time, you know, tomorrow gets here, not at all, completely held, holds up the

whole time and just really makes for just a really level even.

It's even hard to explain how helpful it was, but it there was no grass.

There was no gravel.

There was in the middle.

There's some in the middle.

Part remember, because there's that there's a karaoke dome in the middle where people were

singing Amazing Karaoke and around that there was there was some grass in front of that.

But just in the middle of the racetrack, very, very little anyway.

And it was it looked good.

It held up good.

And here's what I found out as being I hate to admit it, I'm not proud of it.

I'm a vapor.

Long story, not proud of it.

Anyway, I get there.

Vapes are basically illegal in Mexico.

Really?

Yes.

They have a very strict legal.

Well, laws on smoking in public places and vaping at all.

Now, it's not illegal to have one in your pocket necessarily, but to sell it in the

In any kind of setting like that.

And nobody in this entire festival was smoking or vaping.

I mean, I think it's fair to say nobody.

No, well, I saw when I say nobody, it means like very few.

Qualifying a little bit.

I'm an English professor.

Well, in a world where literally is never right, it's not a legal thing.

It is very, very close to feeling like absolutely nobody.

And so there's not cigarette butts everywhere.

There's just a really, really interesting cultural way of handling that people

handle themselves.

Oh, Barry.

So you'll appreciate that.

I'm going to go ahead and say that.

So the bathrooms here, I don't want to spend a lot of time on the bathrooms, but

it's pretty similar to any festival you're going to go to.

The Port-A-Lettes, the Port-A-Johns, the Port-A-Potties, whatever you call them.

Well, if you'll see in the back of that row here on this, if you're watching visually,

there's the white, the white portion and not the blue portion.

Well, those white portions, which is about a third to closer to a half of all of them,

but less than half, those are open-doored troughs.

Yeah.

Like the old fashioned, any college football game you've ever been to in the 1990s, 80s,

67s, and all the way till still some now.

The troughs, which here in America, we don't really like those anymore.

Well, Russ, I mean, Shakin' Ease, Shakin' Ease had, I'd never seen, they had a section

that was, sounds like the same thing, troughs.

Really?

Yep.

They had an island, I'll call it, where you kind of walk in through a plywood wall type

of thing and there were troughs.

And then what I would call the porta-potties were actual seated toilets.

It kind of had the, this one's for the girls and this one's for the boys kind of vibe,

right, Russ?

They actually had this too.

I mean, I felt guilty going, at first, I walked into one of the porta-potties and I'm like,

yeah, you know, I don't want to be that guy that messes this up.

So I went and found one of the troughs.

So yeah, a different...

Well, in stadiums in America, we're doing away with those.

The troughs are going away and they're being replaced.

And so I haven't seen, I have not seen that at a current day American festival.

I also don't go to a lot of city festivals these days.

Point to this being no lines every time I needed to use it over there because I mean,

what's a better way to leave women to the women and the men to the men?

And you're flowing, except for Beth, I didn't know this.

Tell them about the toilet paper situation.

Yeah, two things about the bathroom.

So one, they hand you toilet paper.

So there were attendants.

There's men and women, the women's are all pink and they handed you a small amount of

toilet paper.

So it wasn't in there.

They go in and they kind of spray it down and clean it for you before you go in,

which so they smell great and they're very beautiful and clean.

But I locked myself in porta potties twice before I figured out that the media area had

our own bathrooms and I was able to use those after that.

So I could not figure out the lock mechanism.

There was something about it that the first time the attendant had to rescue me because I just

knocked on the door and she let me out.

And the second time I just leaned into it hard enough that it popped open.

But, you know, yeah, it could have been bad.

Yeah, they so they ration the toilet paper.

Yeah, sustainability is like they're very committed to that.

There's not just like three or four of them in there like we would see.

And then some asshole, you know, is going to, you know, throw it in this, you know, some be a jerk about it.

And and so I don't, you know, I think there might be better way.

They didn't give you much, right?

No. And I had some allergies, so I definitely needed more paper products than the average person that weekend.

But, you know, made it work.

Just a couple of things here.

The world, the group picture when we were done with Beth Sands, Beth, she was not there for that doing.

She was shooting a show.

But at the main stay or the main hello sign on one of those over of LED boards over the straightaways was

that was Saturday night.

And, you know, these things were like an hour that we did just walk around and get a better idea what the merch thing.

They have a whole bunch of recycle, reuse, refurbish kind of stuff with with the merch thing that Samantha was telling us about.

It was very loud. It was hard to to to gather all the information, but it was it was a good lay of the land.

And just some things that will pop up video of the main stage.

You can just see we'll get to VIP in a minute.

Master class on VIP.

We'll get to that here in just a couple of minutes.

But you can see and some of these were that there's the infrastructure is so perfect here because there's already grandstands.

There's already straight away like they call them cabanas, but they're really just more like big.

Think of like on the 18th hole of a major golf to golf tour, kind of the grandstand.

Yeah.

That kind of thing was where the VIP was to the left of the of the almost called it the what stage the Corona stage.

And, you know, just to speak to the to the sound again, like there was no from the main to Doritos to Corona.

So think what which no overlap at all.

So you didn't have to worry about that.

The other stages, the third main stage and then the two that were closer to tents.

The one actually was a tent were far off away from everything.

So no bleed at all.

And you did you could be 10, 15, 20 rows out like I was for Jerry Cantrell or you can be a thousand fifteen hundred rows out like I was by the end of garbage.

The band and it's just it's Chris.

It's it's I don't want to say it's better than the what because it's not nothing's better than the what.

But boy, it's close.

Right, Beth?

Yeah, it's pretty amazing the way they did all the stages.

Definitely for traffic flow, because it is designed for people to move around that many people to experience that place.

We also forgot to mention the mental health section.

They took us into a little kind of chill zone and they have actual mental health professionals available on site to support concert goers who may be overwhelmed by that amount of people in one place.

Yeah, I'm getting off track a little bit.

We've got a this is via the the Corona capital X account.

Just this beautiful aerial nighttime.

It was full.

It was impressively full.

I would say I think one of the nights.

Oh, I guess I'll pull it out right now.

Well, this is the final night.

The Excluser or whatever their paper is every that's the Lincoln Park New Lead Singer.

Every day they had full.

Well, there's one with chapel, but they had seventy eight thousand, I think, on one night.

And I think the biggest night was maybe Sunday over eighty thousand.

So it looked full and it was full, but it absolutely was not crowded.

That's OK.

That's my question.

You can move around.

Well, I'll take that.

Yeah, I'll rephrase that a little bit.

Mostly once you get up by the Corona stage, especially on Friday night when the Foo Fighters are playing, that was kind of like wowsers.

I kind of need to get out of here.

And I bet lines were really, really bad.

And I'm going to give you some prices on what things cost here in a few.

Probably then.

But everything leading.

But that's that's every major city festival you're going to go to all day leading up to it.

You never felt crowded.

You're you know, they are out vending in like the old school ballgames we would go to.

Barry, they still do that in America some, but not like they used to because of cashless payments and stuff.

That's much more difficult to have the vendors out amongst all the people.

They were everywhere.

Little Caesars.

Oh, my God.

They couldn't eat enough Little Caesars pizza in Mexico.

So getting food, getting drank, getting bathrooms at any time unless you went in the middle of the Foo Fighters set was was was quite simple.

I would say a takeaway from the overall what I from what I expected.

And I want Beth to talk about some of the shows she shot specifically here very soon.

But I thought the Chappell Rhone thing was going to be one of the biggest things I've ever seen.

I don't know why I had just kind of presumptive, assumptive that I don't know Mexico would just lose their minds for Chappell Rhone.

And they did.

A lot of people were very excited.

There was a lot of LGBTQ there, which was great to see.

There was a lot of people wearing the gear, but not really.

It really was just it felt like it was a bunch of rock fans who were there just to see what the fuss was about with Chappell.

Not like this big day of can you believe Queen Chappell's in our, you know, in our city and we're going to have this monster party.

They didn't care that much.

They cared enough to fill up the field and watch it.

But I didn't I didn't I didn't feel that that excitement.

It kind of felt like, well, when's this over so we can go back to a 90s rock act, which I appreciate it.

Yeah, let's do this.

Let's take a quick break.

And then I want to I want to get into the music specifically.

But before we go, Beth, you kind of alluded to it.

Was there a language problem?

Was it a problem at all?

Language barrier?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, luckily, I've I happen to have been doing Duolingo for most of this year for like three quarters of the year.

So I was able to translate for us a lot.

But in the hotel and the city and just going to ask for food on the street or pay for things definitely needed Spanish to be able to help me get around.

I think people would have translated if we needed it, but they definitely preferred that we speak Spanish, which is great.

Because a lot of times you go somewhere like you go to Europe and they just they just speak English at you because they know that, you know, you're an idiot and don't speak the language.

So I was lost when I was walking around this near the couple of mornings around the hotel and just vendors and stuff.

It's like they did like, what the hell's up with this guy?

Yeah, it was horrible.

I thought, who knows?

Yeah, just just speak loud, right?

Just loud and slow.

That's the way.

All right, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk music.

All right.

So it sounds like the stages and the lineup and everything else was pretty typical what we would expect.

Right. Am I reading into that?

Mostly typical, but just yeah, mostly typical, but really just I don't want to say better than I thought, but really, really, really good.

Just very, very good logistics set up.

And before we get out of here, VIP and a few prices.

But yeah, we're going to talk to you.

Yeah, yeah, let's yeah.

Yeah, well, go ahead and do that.

And then we'll get into the music because you said you were going to talk about that.

What were the prices like?

OK, yeah, we knock it out quickly.

So a slice of pizza, just to give you an idea of where the difference is on numbers, it's even if you once you pull it up on your phone and look pesos to dollars, it's still difficult to ever remember what 50 pesos is.

And you know, tell yourself basically it's three bucks.

Fifty is three bucks.

So that was my best way to do math.

But even like 200 pesos, like three, six, right, right.

Well, like every time it was.

But so one hundred and twenty five pesos is a six dollars and seventy seven cents slice of pizza.

Two hundred for a beer, which is ten dollars and eighty two cents, a twenty four ounce Corona beer for ten for eleven bucks.

OK, those are double that easily.

If not, fifteen dollars more than that.

If you're in Los Angeles, if you're in if you're in New York, if you're in Chicago, you're going to pay twenty six dollars for that ridiculous twenty four ounce beer.

Early tickets, as I mentioned earlier, the first wave were two forty four.

I went back and checked my Uber receipts.

Nineteen and we took basically the same the same amount each time.

Nineteen was one of them.

Ten seventy seven was another Uber ride.

And the shortest Uber ride I took all week was the one from Chattanooga Airport to my house.

And it was fifty two bucks.

Fifty two. I live ten miles from the airport.

Seven miles from the airport is fifty two dollars.

So 1911 and fifty two down.

Like, oh, my God. Wow. You should have called me.

I had to charge you twenty five.

Thirty five.

Midnight.

Thirty five.

And then from Chris Vineyard's email, who he did a little wrap up for us and his thoughts.

Nineteen dollar parking for the day.

You're going to get fifty if you're lucky.

Yeah. Around here, thirteen dollars burger and fries and most hotels and Airbnbs are going to be in the neighborhood.

If unless you're wanting we were in they treated us right.

They did us right.

Right. It is a very nice place.

You want to go a little less nice.

Hundred bucks a night.

Not going to be a problem.

So you ain't finding that Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Miami or anywhere like that.

So but that yeah, that's some pricing for you.

All right. And VIP.

Because yeah, the VIP.

So a couple of shots will throw up here.

They give it a kind of a look as we're as we're talking about it.

It's just beautiful. It's perfect.

It's on that straight way down the left for the main stage.

And it's just its own area.

And if you didn't know any better, you wouldn't know what it is, which a lot of the festival goers probably didn't.

And it's not in the way of the G.A.

Field at all.

And that's the biggest complaint I have with VIP.

I'm not mad about doing VIP.

People want like festivals that want to do it.

That's a great moneymaker.

Just don't infringe on your G.A.

Attendees.

Don't mess up their time.

Don't treat them like peasants.

Don't treat them poorly.

Don't make their sight lines bad because you got to make sure the rich people get their their better experience.

Do both.

Do both.

And they really, really did this well.

And the and they didn't really do the other stages.

Beth, help me on this right there.

They had a little bit on the Doritos stage of a VIP section, but not much.

And the other stages didn't hardly have it at all.

And so I felt like it was I'd never seen VIP done better for the people who were in VIP, which we were and the people who weren't.

It just didn't infringe on each other.

And I love that about it.

So, Russ, you remember we had a brief conversation with a couple of people at Shaking knees who did VIP and they were like, man, you know, didn't really get a much.

Right.

Got them a little bit closer, maybe a cleaner bat.

No, it's free water.

I think that was what they were OK with.

Right.

They otherwise they were like, yeah, I'm not sure I would do that again.

So I get what you're saying.

American festivals have not been doing well with VIP.

It's like they've been, you know, we're here in Chattanooga.

We don't do anything right.

But our last one was horrible.

And it's just I don't know who's planning these things.

And it's almost like they're just trying too hard to please the wealthy in this situation.

And a concert and a long weekend festival is not really a wealthy person's event.

It is.

They want to go.

They want to be a part of it.

But this is a poor man's event.

This is this is a young person's event.

This is a I'm I'm stretching my dollar event.

And I have not seen it done better.

And I and I and I I just marvel at how well they did it.

And and on that final night, we've got we we got the actual literal velvet rope VIP action.

Like, hold on.

We got to go get Manuel to to talk to this guy.

It was like, you know, get you out of here.

And they told us we could come.

And Manuel comes over there and talks it up and it's like, all right, opens it up.

It's like Wayne's World style.

You know, yeah.

Shut it on that.

That would be amazing.

And we get up there and it's it's it's it's fake plants and comfortable seating.

Perfect view of the stage.

Free drinks, the skybox, free drinks, free food.

This was only for the Linkin Park show for us.

I think some of them were there the whole weekend.

Me and Beth just didn't get the memo until the end.

Typical.

So that's different.

That's a whole different level of VIP.

That's like, you know, the people who run the place.

Yeah, I had to mention it because it was so wonderful and really amazing.

Great way to end the festival.

But yeah, if you're looking America, if you're looking to see how to do VIP, take a look here and take this model and and use it as a as a template.

They did, by the way, have it at that other stage because you mentioned they did have that big grandstand.

Kind of thing at the other stage that we were on for deftones.

That's right.

And they did have it for the sunset, too.

That's right.

Had a good one, too.

It was same deal on all of them.

They're just they're just they're not conflicting with each other.

And that covers most of them.

I got a few random thoughts on the way out.

But yeah, that's all more music than me.

Shocking, right?

Well, yeah.

So we're 50 minutes into this and we haven't really talked about music.

What was it?

What?

Tesla, about your favorite shows, surprising shows, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I mean, that's all I ever want to talk about.

All right.

So Garbage, Shirley Manson is amazing.

Still amazing.

Garbage was fantastic.

That was the first show I shot.

Franz Ferdinand was amazing to shoot, too, because very energetic, as good as ever on stage.

I got to do over on Queens of the Stone Age, which is great, because that was one of the ones I was really excited about for Bonnaroo.

We saw Cults Taco, so I knew that that was one of your picks for Bonnaroo last year.

So started Saturday with Cults.

That was really fun.

Yeah, that was fun.

In the daytime.

In the daytime, I think Oat and Freddie, which is an LA band with just a few singles, I think they are probably going to be on the Bonnaroo lineup this year, if not very soon.

I mean, I thought as good as Chapel, so going to be a big spectacle, awesome show.

And I think they're writers for other artists who now are doing their own project.

Yeah, you heard it here first.

She's been saying this since the show.

The next big thing in pop music is this band, which I still don't hardly know.

I just looked up and I was like, it's very spectacle visual experience.

Medieval kind of looking jester costumes.

Yeah, like jet, like what the heck?

But kind of 80s synthy sort of music and really fun, really fun party music.

So I think they're going to be really big.

Nice.

Yeah, they were on the main Corona stage too, in about four or five in the afternoon, probably.

Yeah.

I only saw them because the schedule shifted.

So I thought I was going in to see, I think, Mogwai at that point, but the schedule had shifted with a couple of cancellations.

So I was really glad I got to see them.

Yeah, Jelly Roll dropped. I was so bummed.

Jelly Roll dropped out.

Three people dropped out, but they really covered for it very well.

They just put people in and they changed the schedules and made that work.

I guess he shaved his beard off and he didn't show up, huh?

I know.

That was the big news all week, because he shaved his beard.

Yep, that was the big news. More so the kids.

And he lost a bunch of weight.

Yeah, he lost 200 pounds by exercising and eating vegetables. Sure he has.

Nice.

Continue, Matt, by that.

I think it is going to continue to be the year of what I call the Meet Me in the Bathroom bands,

because there is this great oral history of New York City rock between 2000 and 2010.

And those bands, Grizzly Bear, Vampire Weekend, TV on the Radio, were all here at this festival.

And I think we're going to see that on the Bonnaroo lineup a lot, too.

Interesting, because we kind of asked Ricardo who leads.

Do they follow American festivals or do American festivals follow them?

Interesting. So we can look for clues.

I think so. I think so. I think it's about time for that nostalgia to come back around.

Because you're looking at Jet and the Struts and they're in that universe also.

Yeah, I knew I had a kind of a reverse memory of being a Jet fan when I was 22, 23, 24, because I was into Oasis.

And then I forgot about them completely and didn't think about them for two decades.

And then I listened and thought, oh, wow, I guess I do like this stuff.

It's kind of trashy Oasis. They're Australian, but I call it kind of Brit, pop, rock.

And so I got reacquainted going into the festival.

The Struts, the Strokes, the Killers, the This, the That, the These, These, Those, just another one of those bands.

And I came away with that. And then Jerry Contrell was one of my favorite of the weekend.

I was going to ask both of you. Absolutely. That was amazing.

They played an Alice in Chains song while I was in the pit and I almost cried.

I had to refocus and say, OK, I got a job to do. I got to shoot this show.

But it was so exciting. Yeah. Love that.

Yeah. So I was helping her a little bit and seeing music.

I mean, I saw I mean, I was there all day. I saw basically every band that was playing at least a little bit.

But as far as full sets, Struts, Jerry, Jet, Weezer, and that's that's about it.

I mean, I saw the whole day as far as full, full sets.

Everything else was, you know, we saw the Shakes on a walk by Foo Fighters for a little.

Foo Fighters was just so crazy. Had to get out of there.

We didn't have VIP for Friday, so we didn't know.

We're like we're stuck with like now I'm like, God damn it.

Why was I over there on the right with all the anyway?

Sorry. I mean, it's not like Brad Steiner.

Heaven forbid. Who's also given me shit about the Struts, too, by the way.

Would you surprise none of you?

I was like, oh, man, I'm in love with this band.

Yeah, they've done every radio lame radio show in the last 10 years.

Where have you been? I'm like, just go away.

Move on. Move on. Love you, Brad. Go away.

What else? Anything else? Music wise, Beth?

AFI was my favorite to shoot.

That was that was really great.

There were catwalks going out into the crowd kind of set up for the chapel.

And then after that. Oh, and also we didn't talk about Lincoln Park, but we both fell.

I think Brian's finally a convert on this.

I think that Emily Armstrong was a really great choice to include not not to replace Chester,

but I thought it was a really smart move to not try to get another Chester because you can't,

but to go a different direction.

Female singer who can scream, can sing beautifully as great stage presence.

They seem really happy on stage.

Play his guitar. Play his guitar.

That was she was really great in that role.

So it was cool to see a band like Lincoln Park at a stadium show like that.

That was really fun. Yeah, I'm a convert.

I just generally don't like changing the gender of a band.

If it's a guy, I like it to be the guy.

If it's a girl, I like it to be the girl.

And so I was I thought maybe I don't know about this.

She's got a vocal range that'll blow your your mind away.

It is insane. And and Mexico City loves them some Lincoln Park loves them some Lincoln Park.

So like for everything I thought might be Chapel night, that was more like Sunday.

Like people couldn't wait for Lincoln Park.

It was it was it was pretty impressive.

So last couple of questions.

You guys obviously were treated very, very well.

You got VIP experience.

Thanks again to Chris. Thanks to Ricardo.

Thanks to everybody. And we're you know, we're very upfront.

You know, this was, you know, you got the you got the special treatment.

Would you go again? As just a regular GA?

And buyer in a heartbeat. OK, then a heartbeat.

I would I I mean, I just love shooting shows so much.

It's really hard for me to prioritize going to a show where I don't have a photo pass.

But yeah, I probably would, because I'd like to see more of Mexico City, too.

I would love to just experience more of that city. Ding, ding, ding.

That also I need to qualify it to.

I'm in love with the country of Mexico.

I love everything about the country.

And so I would do anything to go back to Mexico City or the Yucatan, especially.

So that's a little bit of a qualifier.

But as far as private, let's just say let's I'll reword your question, Brian.

If you're going to go to a big festival this year, would you consider Mexico City

and Chicago and L.A. and Miami and Boston?

And and and the answer is absolutely yes, absolutely yes, because you're

I didn't believe it at first. I thought this can't be that much cheaper.

It absolutely is. So if if if you're wanting a destination,

if you're wanting to see something outside of the norm,

which maybe Chicago is outside the norm for you, maybe L.A.

I mean, it would be for me, Chicago anyway, for a festival.

I've never been to Lollapalooza.

This is just as good of a of a of an option.

If you're in America, it's it's safe, you know, within the city.

It's a safe place.

If you're an American with money to spend, nobody's going to mess with you.

Now, brush up on your Spanish, because they don't care if you know or not.

If you go to Cancun and you go to some of those

Porta Morales and some of those places up in the Yucatan

and you're right there in the in the tourist area,

they're going to know how to speak enough language of yours, the English.

They're going to take all your dollar, your American greenbacks.

They're going to do anything they can.

They're they don't care.

They don't care about your money.

I mean, they'll take your money if you got it in your hand,

but they're not going to try to be fair about it.

Gotcha. But it's but it's not even that is like we deal in pesos.

We're Mexico City. We're not Cancun.

I'm talking for, you know, somebody who didn't say any of these things.

But that's how I was.

I mean, we shouldn't go in expecting them to cater to us.

Oh, I love that they don't.

Yeah. No, I one night I was I was almost like in tears.

I'm so hungry.

I didn't go with them. I was editing photos.

I should I should have gone along to translate.

It was a late night afterwards and things were closed.

And it is a big city at night. So when I say it's danger, it's safe.

It is safe, except in the middle of the night, potentially.

Like New York City is not safe at two in the morning to be wandering around.

Neither is Chattanooga. Yeah. Yeah.

And so like I'm like, I can't I can't talk.

I can't even like I don't know anything.

So, yeah, I mean, brush up on your Spanish.

But it's boy, it's a it's a it's a fabulous place.

All right. Well, good stuff. Glad you guys got to do it.

Russ and I are bitter. We're angry. We're hateful.

We'll get over it.

Let me give you just a couple of final random thoughts on the way out the door here.

Sure.

Sunday, I already mentioned, I believe that seemed to be the most attended for Lincoln Park.

Friday was probably second.

It was less of the soccer hooligan style thing that I than I expected.

I expected a little bit more with the Rock Axe to be more of a I don't want to say like the Oasis shows recently because that was a different animal in itself.

But it was it was less that.

And boy, for the Americans that hate people who pull out their phones at shows, which a lot of you do, and I get that it's annoying, but it's just part of our culture now.

And I do it, too. And I know I won't stop phones everywhere.

Everywhere.

Oh, wow. OK. But it looks cool.

You know, it's just like a bunch of lights in the crowd.

You just yeah, yeah, it looks cool.

And I have no problem with this. I think you should document your life.

You're given the opportunity to document your life.

You should. But there are there are some of those like I'm going to record and stand.

We disagree. I get it.

OK.

There was a ton, a ton of that.

Yeah.

And so I wrote here worse than Americans on quality and quality as far as their phones go.

Like I'm sitting there watching like it's one of these.

Put your phone away.

OK. I get it.

I get anything like.

Yeah, you're never going to watch it again.

No, no, no. Oh, and Lincoln Park.

I didn't know this until I read it later.

Nine new songs from the new album and they didn't play crawling or breaking the habit,

which are two of their bigger songs.

They have so many songs.

They have so much to work with.

It's a but I I'm with a festival set.

If you're not playing everything everybody knows, that irritates me.

Didn't know that in the time. Love the show.

Weezer, Jet, Chapel, Foo Fighters.

They knew the assignment.

They played every they played stuff that everybody knows.

And Lincoln Park didn't exactly.

But they rocked.

And that's cool.

I guess that's about all I got there.

But it's very easy to think that the entire country just loves this stuff because that's how I was like,

man, Mexico loves this.

And we were sitting down with we were calling him Max.

But that's not his real like full name at breakfast on the final day.

Yeah, I thought his name was Max.

Yeah.

Well, either way, he's a big wig and a lot of tourist stuff in Mexico City.

And he said Gen Z is into Latin, EDM, their own their own flavor, culture and version of EDM.

The kids love it.

And they couldn't care less about a Lincoln Park show.

So it's very similar to America on that.

So it's a lot of 35 to 55 year old Mexicans at this festival and very few Americans outside of our caravan.

I mean, very, very few felt like almost none.

But interesting.

Yeah, we wondered about that.

All right.

Well, good stuff.

Really interesting.

I'm sure we'll revisit as you know, in future shows as details and memories come back to you next week.

Next week is Thanksgiving week.

And then, like I said, we anticipate a Bonnaroo lineup very soon.

And then tickets, we got tickets to give away and we have tickets to give away.

We'll have a contest.

We're still trying to figure out the details for that.

We're still asking you guys to give us a call.

If you've got suggestions, thoughts, whatever.

Russ, what's that phone number?

423-667-7877.

Give us a call.

And yeah, we've already gotten some calls.

Yeah, we've already gotten some calls.

It's can't believe it.

It feels like it's on top of this.

I mean, man, we're going to be doing this.

It's right on top of us.

Real quick, let's mention because Beth will be here for this.

Main times 24 in Chattanooga.

December 6th.

Oh, yeah, if you're in the area, it's one of the coolest events that Chattanooga does.

Biggest party of the city of the year.

Cannot wait for that.

I'll be wearing my Mexico soccer jersey for my Christmas sweater this year.

There you go.

All right. Beth, thanks for joining us again.

Thank you.

Especially getting up early.

You could be asleep.

She's way on the other side of the country.

I have to get up at early to like 1030 in the morning.

Whatever.

I'm not hearing any whining from you.

You've had a pretty good year.

Damn right.

I have had a pretty good two years.

All right, guys.

Thank you so much.

Please subscribe and like and all that stuff.

It means a lot to us.

Thank you for listening.

And we will see you guys very soon.

Bye.