In my old age, I would have made fun of people for this 20 years ago, but a guided tour?

I'm a big fan of.

You love a guided tour.

I'm a big fan of a guided tour.

The guy owns the place and he stops in on the weekends for fun and does cave tours.

I don't want to go too far out here and expose the secrets, but another thing about this

venue is it's just so chill.

I mean, I know this sounds like a big fat commercial for the Caverns.

It kind of is.

And welcome everybody.

We're back with the What Podcast live at or recorded live tape, as I like to say in the

new age of the world of media.

It's the What Podcast at the Caverns.

My name is Brian.

This is Beth Thorpe.

You have, if you're a regular listener and watcher recently.

Oh, hey, I'm in the bus.

Yeah, you're in the bus.

And then Laura Taco as well.

Thank you for joining the show.

Sands Barry Courter.

He's texting us in the group text that he is experiencing FOMO.

He's got a lot of FOMO.

He wishes he was here.

And we do too.

Yeah.

And I had I had almost the same thing when you guys were in Shaky Knees.

I mean, actually, I totally had it.

But oh, you did.

But I got to listen to a bunch of bluegrass because I love it so much.

And then we got another bluegrass festival in Chattanooga right after that.

And then now I'm here.

I want to say, Kate, me and Beth have been talking about this.

Cave Fest.

This is this is not a bluegrass festival to me.

There's a lot of stuff going on here that doesn't have any bluegrass to it at all.

It's just a festival that has a lot of bluegrass.

Right. Yeah.

There's bluegrass on the lineup for sure.

But this is not a bluegrass.

Yeah. Well, I was curious because centric thing.

Yeah. Yeah.

It feels like it, because if you don't know any better.

But it's just a fabulous place.

You guys know that we gush over this.

And I know the cynic would be like, well, it's down the road.

You know, they're your friends.

And, you know, of course, you're going to say that.

Guys, I'm saying east of the east of the Mississippi.

You're not going to find much of anything like this.

Yeah. I mean, we joke that it's our second favorite place in the world.

First, of course, is Bonnaroo.

But no, this is legit.

I mean, we really love coming here.

It's yeah. It's not a joke.

It's for real. This place is fabulous.

And, you know, I know it hurts for Bonnaroo, people who are still

and all of us are crushed by weather and lots of events have had this all year.

Best weather in the history of the world.

This is a great weekend. Yeah.

Right now. Absolutely gorgeous.

Hot, well, warm sunshine day.

Boy, it gets chilly. That fire last night, Russ. Oh, yeah.

That was that was big time.

We had a big fire last night.

He was the fire starter.

Who's the fire starter?

That's the fire starter.

Yeah. For you, prodigy fans.

Beth, coming from Washington State for this short weekend.

So happy to have you here. Thank you.

We went on the cave tour.

There are multiple, multiple caves here.

We'll get to that here in just a minute.

We'll talk about a couple of things here on the front end.

This is basically the show this week.

We don't know how we're going to get together and do anything other than this.

And as far as I'm concerned, this is a good of a studio

and a good of a setting to do such a thing.

I looked at Bonnaroo's Twitter today.

I was just curious when the last time they tweeted.

July 24th. Wow.

And this is October.

That's how long it's been since there's been anything from Bonnaroo.

I don't know what that means.

It probably means nothing except for Bonnaroo for a while.

The last couple of years had really gotten into this almost NFL

National Football League style

approach to releasing information.

A lot of a lot of events, companies, people do this.

It's just it's just to keep to keep the discourse going,

to keep people interested.

Sometimes you can overkill because you don't have much.

Bonnaroo's usually got something and they usually they usually keep it in pockets.

And this is a long time for the for the the account to go dark.

It's a long time to be silent. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't think it means anything good, bad, right or wrong.

It's just what's happening.

And I'm guessing with some structural changes within management,

they're probably just like, let's just all shut up for a while

and and figure out what we're doing next year.

Yeah, I was going to say, even if they're quiet on the front end, in the back end,

there is a lot of things happening behind the scenes, a lot of restructuring.

We have a new director.

Yeah, lots of things are changing for next year.

So I don't think it's bad that it's silent.

No. And I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, wonder.

And there's, you know, rumors everywhere.

And that's what the Internet's best at.

But I wonder if if if a lot of this has to do

at all with an earlier than usual line up release.

And I've been wondering this for a couple of months now, because, well,

if nothing else, Coachella, you know, was so early, so early.

And, you know, when your rivals, which I know they're not really rivals,

but they're in industry business, they are competitive.

I wonder if that if that'll follow.

Usually we're looking at the first week of January for a lineup release.

You'll blink your eyes.

You'll wake up, you know, in a week and a half and it'll be January.

Oh, yeah, that's like tomorrow.

So I wonder if we get into December this year.

I have no idea. No, nothing.

I don't know. Yeah, I'm making things up and just wandering out loud

because it Coachella sold out in in a snap.

Right. Yeah, it's it's it's a complete sellout already. So

we're all waiting just like everybody else is on this.

And yeah, we have no information.

So we're just guessing just like everyone else is at this point.

Just having fun doing it. Yeah.

Speaking of festivals, I was just looking through

Festival, his his timeline to see what was just

that's the latest on anything in the last week or two is just festivals going on.

Were you aware of this Nine Inch Nails Festival?

No, you mentioned this earlier and I had not heard of this.

And you had no and heard of it either.

I don't know much, except it's been canceled already.

So in the in the last couple of years of seems like

half of everything doesn't end up happening. Yeah.

Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails put together this one day festival

for Los Angeles in November.

I don't know where I miss this,

other than I try to stay away from the headlines of all of our lives.

And therefore, I miss a lot of things.

But it was some kind of experimental, not necessarily screening of films,

but from what I could quickly tell through just some some

some quick Googling was it's a film music hybrid.

It involved John Carpenter,

oh, Danny Elfman, both of doing scores and film producers and makers.

Christine is Capnger the or Carpenter, excuse me, the Stephen King, Christine.

Yes. Elfman's done a lot of scores.

Weird Science, Pee Wee's Playhouse.

Oh, yeah. Danny Elfman's done a lot. Yeah.

And Tim Burton kind of stuff, that kind of thing.

So a bunch of weirdos all together,

Trent and these guys doing something a little different.

And so it intrigues me, except, boom, just like that.

And they canceled it.

So I don't know.

Hadn't I first of all, I was like, how have I not heard of this?

Second of all, wow, it's in a month. So I don't know.

Yeah, it's pretty bad when the first time you hear about an event like that,

it's canceled. Yeah. OK. All right.

Now, I have a feeling it might be a more of a West Coast thing.

That's why we didn't hear a lot of it.

It's a one day deal, one off thing.

So I don't know. Just all that.

Trent's been busy because Nine Inch Nails does the score for the new

Tron movie that's out now, I think. Really? Yeah.

I did not know that.

It also been busy because of this big this big tour they've been on.

Yeah. With Noise. Yeah.

And they're doing a lot of we mentioned it briefly.

We were talking 90s and stylejacks a little while back.

They're doing reworked versions of a lot of these songs

from the early stuff, from Downward Spiral, from Broken.

A lot of those kinds of things.

So that looks amazing.

We'd love to get to one of those.

That's selling out.

Nothing canceled there, but this thing out of nowhere.

So I was I was surprised. Yeah.

To hear that.

Well, speaking of tours that just came out of nowhere. Yep.

It was announced last week that Rush is going back out.

You know, the trio Neil Peart passed away.

Five years ago, and that pretty much did it for the band.

He was their drummer, songwriter, big part of it.

And forgive my ignorance.

I mean, I know Rush, but not not deep.

They've always been a three piece, right?

Always been a three piece. Yeah.

Yeah. You've got Alex Lifeson plays guitar,

Geddy Lee, he sings, he plays bass, he plays keyboards.

And then Neil Peart was the drummer and then big time songwriter, too.

So but they have found a German lady.

Her name is Annika Neeles, I think.

She apparently can play drums just as good.

So they're going out on tour.

They're only doing like seven cities.

This is not a big massive tour.

They're coming nowhere here.

Is it North American?

It's North American and Canadian,

which makes sense because they're a Canadian band.

But they are playing now.

It's up to four four dates at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Well, you know who to get a hold of on that one.

I've already reached out to our buddy, Brad, just to see putting out feelers already.

You never know with that guy.

You never know. Struck out at first.

But, you know, he's got a lot of different angles. He can work.

This is going to be, you know, late July, early August.

But if he can somehow come through with a ticket, I'll find my way up to New York City.

How many dates are you thinking that's on that or cities?

Should I say is you said it's four at Madison Square Garden?

Four Madison Square Garden.

They're doing like Chicago, Los Angeles, a couple of big, just basically big stops

and no chance of them come through the Bonnaroo.

I didn't think that would happen anyways. But,

you know, I'm a big rush guy.

I know you all don't really care that much. But.

Well, a lot of a lot of classic rock, what we would call classic rock music

got ruined for me 20 and 10 years ago in classic rock radio.

And when you hear spirit of radio. Yeah, that's every other day.

Yeah. For a decade and whatever other, you know, regulars in this in the in the

classic rock. Oh, they definitely have their share of overplayed radio songs.

I don't need to hear those anymore. Well, it's like, yes.

I mean, how many times can you hear round about?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

But they've got tons of of course they do.

Of course they do. And there's no new music, you know.

But this is they're going to do this just as a tribute to Neil pretty much.

And, you know, it was I was reading it was Paul McCartney

that kind of convinced them to go on tour and, you know, because they haven't

they haven't done this in their last tour was 2015.

So, you know, they haven't been on the road in forever.

And they're just feeling inspired, especially with a new drummer

that's that can kind of fill in.

Well, we'll see.

I've seen them 96 saw them in Atlanta 2012, saw them in Nashville.

So I figured that was it.

I figured I'd never see him again. But well, chance.

They're at the age that the next show could be the last for that.

You know, that you have the opportunity.

Oh, yeah, I pretty much think this is going to be it.

They're going to hit these cities and then they're done.

I think this is just kind of a one time thing.

So if there's a chance at all, I feel like I got to get up there and see it.

All right. Well, I know Brad sometimes hate watches everything we do.

Yeah. Hey, Brad. Yeah.

How are you doing? Hey.

Hook our buddy up over here.

Well, if he can get you to see Pearl Jam at Madison Square Garden

and sit there and play on his phone while you're enjoying the concert.

Yeah. He can do the same for me. So we'll see.

Yeah. The Oasis dream fell apart.

Oh, that's right.

But but but I had gone to Brad's well a couple of times.

So there's only so many times I can I can do that one.

Well, I haven't asked for anything in a long time.

So we'll see.

Well, not a lot to get to from a news perspective.

A handful of things I want to talk about, though.

And the first one is, first of all, we were me and Beth on it.

We won't bore everybody with the story, but we were driving around

middle Tennessee on Friday as we in preparation for for for KFest this weekend.

And we were listening to one on one five fantasy.

Well, formerly fantasy radio rooster radio in in Manchester

that was home for many years to radio Bonnaroo.

And first of all, it's a great radio station.

So good work, guys.

But Taylor Swift comes on.

So we start chit chatting about Taylor for a few minutes.

Well, that's the biggest news story in music.

Her new record, new music.

She does have a new album.

Have have how much has been sampled of the new Taylor Swift album

from anybody here, Savannah, even off camera.

She's shaking her head and nodding her head that it's bad.

I have heard zero. I have no idea what it sounds like to until I heard it on

on the station and then bad.

I haven't listened to it yet because last year Spotify made her my number one person.

And she's still mad about that.

And I'm mad about this because she wasn't my number one person.

So I haven't listened to her at all on Spotify,

because I'm trying to track and see what I actually listen to.

So I'm afraid to listen to it on Spotify, but I want to watch it on.

It's almost like when YouTube,

you to release that album and then showed up on everybody's iPhone.

Yeah, whatever. That's it.

It's like because you listen to Taylor Swift once.

Yeah. Spotify puts it at the very top.

Yeah. Oh, you like Taylor Swift. Here you go.

Exactly. Yeah.

God damn algorithm.

And I do like Taylor Swift. That's the thing.

It's not that I don't like her, but.

Well, it seems to be it seems to me that the the trend right now,

I'm not saying your opinion over there, Savannah doesn't count.

But it seems the one person who's listened to the album.

I'm just going on what I hear is what I heard.

This is what they say.

Anybody hear what they said yet?

They whoever that is,

it seems to be just shedding all over this album is what you're supposed to do.

But what do you think that that's what?

Because it sucks.

Because it sucks.

But the song we heard

sounded like a Taylor Swift song to me.

It's pretty good.

You know, those memes or those videos where you, you know, says,

this is what you think it's, you know, they think it sounds like.

And this is what it sounds like to me.

But that kind of thing.

Yeah, I don't know what her music is supposed to sound like

other than the big hits.

And most of the times I like them.

But one of these and we're going to pull the audio and we'll have a lot of things

to see on this week show if you're an audio only.

Doesn't mean the show is going to be any better,

but that's what we're going to try anyway.

And I ran across this thing where her song actually romantic.

It doesn't do us any good here talking about it right this moment,

but we'll add this in and you'll hear it here in a moment

that she has a song that the the the chord progression to open

is Pixies Where Is My Mind?

Oh, so you haven't seen this blurb anymore.

Somebody it's just in the last week.

I bet we might hear more.

But if you just Google that song quickly, that's that's what most people

have been talking about the last few days.

And I was first heard it and I was a little bit a little bit, I guess.

And then someone dropped it on top and it do do do do do do do.

It's like, that's the same song.

It's the same song, except it's not.

It's not the same song.

It is sort of the same progression.

So I always find this an interesting debate conversation about

what is and isn't sampling, what is and isn't plagiarism.

It's called and I've watched several videos on this.

I double checked here to make sure I get the word right.

Interlation, inter inter relation,

the insertion of something of a different nature

into something else is the exact definition of it.

But there's if you quickly Google it in interrelation

versus plagiarism, like that's the it'll it'll fill out the Google search for you.

It's a very, very, very fine line

between this interrelation word and straight up plagiarism.

Yeah. Yeah, I could see that.

I don't know.

But we'll play it and you'll hear it and you'll it's unmistakable.

The Wood Brothers were just in Chattanooga for our IBM

IBMA Friday Friday Headliners.

And I hadn't listened to the Wood Brothers since mid 2000s

when I was just branching out into all the the jam bands,

the new new to me jam bands, bands that might be in that orbit,

whether they were a jam band or not.

And the Wood Brothers are not a jam band, but they were in that in that circuit

in the orbit.

And so when I went out before the show in Chattanooga,

while you guys were at Shaky Knees, yeah, I I quickly went back

and and tried to refresh my memory on some songs in the first one.

Luckiest Man. You guys know the song luckiest man.

If you don't, you'll hear it.

And you'll be like, oh, yeah, that song.

It's Say It Ain't So from Weezer.

It is Say It Ain't So.

As soon as it started playing, I was like,

were they covering Say It Ain't So on the first song on the list?

What's going on here?

I mean, that's how noticeable it was to me immediately.

But it's not the same song at all.

It's the melody changes.

But it's that same four chord progression.

And I just wonder,

what are where are we at this point in the in the world of sampling, too?

And not that not that that's new, but with EDM culture and

and, you know, turntable mixing that I don't have all the jargon to speak

to to all these different styles of music and what I essentially think

is noise making sometimes.

But that happens a lot.

So I don't know, Beth, your thoughts.

Well, OK.

Well, we were talking also about Dope Lemon, who Dope Lemon

was going to be at Bonnaroo.

And I got to see him in Seattle.

And he shot the show, as a matter of fact.

Yeah, there's one song.

And I can't think of what the song title is, because I didn't

plan this. But there's one song where the riff from Layla shows up

partway through, and it's really unmistakable that it's the riff

from Clapton's Layla.

And we were talking about that.

We were talking about Radiohead and the Hollies, how

have you ever heard sued for that?

No, there's something else I need to go down.

Cree. Yeah, I hadn't heard this either until just like a month ago.

Yeah. The creep, the biggest song that nobody cares about anymore. Right.

It is absolutely a Hollies song.

Yeah. How did I go all these years?

And I never I mean, I know the Hollies.

I actually like the Hollies for music from that era. Yeah. Yeah.

And I loved Radiohead for a while.

And maybe we'll you know, can snip bit some of this in here a little bit.

We'll see. I don't know.

This is a lot of copyright. We got to try to.

We might get to go research this on your own.

Yeah. Taken down quickly.

But I don't find it to be like, well, of course I don't.

I'm a big Oasis fan.

They've been ripping off music their whole life. Yeah.

And I don't think of it as as plagiarism or ripping off bands.

Or one of the I think it's cigarettes and alcohol from Oasis.

They're it's it's very similar to T.

Rex, Banga Gong.

And Nolan, one of his interviews once someone who was like said something like,

you know, that sounds like T. Rex, like, oh, yeah, I've never heard Banga

Gong from T. Rex before.

Like he knew he knew exactly what he was doing. Yeah.

And if it gets to a legality, you give somebody a songwriting credit.

And then you move along.

Yeah. I think a lot of plagiarism from a legal

standpoint comes down to intent. Yeah.

That's really hard to prove.

Well, plagiarism is more of a malicious act. Yes, exactly.

Like I've got this.

Or I just wrote, you know, a film script that I just copied off the Internet.

Like that's plagiarism. So it did.

But there's but the definition wording is not much different

with some of these other words.

So I just I thought that was interesting.

On top of the fact that Taylor Swift's fans or

somewhat fans on the fence, fans are like this album sucks.

And I wonder, too, is it because all the rest of them are so good?

I don't know. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, she's got a lot.

Beth, you know her music well.

I mean, you're her number one fan on Spotify. Well, well enough.

According to Spotify, nobody likes it better than you.

Yeah. I mean, I think there might be some backlash because she's happy.

She's in a good relationship now.

So, you know, a woman songwriter, female songwriter who is now happy.

Her music must suck now because she doesn't have the angst

from all of these dramatic relationships.

I don't think that's unfair. I think there's something to that.

I mean, a lot of the best songs written in the history of the world

have come out of misery and anguish.

Yes. Right.

Misery. Right.

Yeah. And that's the real question is, can you write happy?

And doing songs about how great your life is pisses people off sometimes.

Yeah. Right.

Just I mean, people are just mad that people have good lives, period.

So how dare you write a song about it? Yeah.

That's an interesting psychological angle to that.

I bet that's a lot of it.

And anybody who has massive success,

you're kind of waiting for them to fail at the next thing. Right.

The Aris tour was one of the biggest things ever.

So, you know, the never ending Aris tour finally, finally ended.

Yeah. And you can never live up to that.

So, of course, it's going to be. Count me in the night.

You know, I know what the pushback is in the tired of the

the Taylor Swift, NFL, Kelsey,

the her boyfriend, Travis, Travis, Travis, whatever.

Yeah. Count me in the is one that's a little tired of that whole storyline.

I just kind of like watching sports.

All the stories annoy me a little bit, but I'm not a hater on the music at all.

Never have been, especially that I've gotten in more into pop music

in my older age. I mean, I can't like Chappell Rhone's style

and then tell you Taylor Swift sucks.

I know it's not the same thing, but it's it's pop music.

So I think also with a lot of her longtime fans,

they don't like the new albums.

It takes a while for the new album to grow on people.

And of course, Savannah's actually listened to it.

So I trust Savannah a little bit more on this.

But yeah, but Savannah is a professional hater.

I just feel like this seems to happen a lot with her albums,

because her albums are all so different that it's not what people are expecting.

And so it takes a while for them to grow on people.

Well, I just thought it was wild how that Pixie song.

I thought, oh, here goes another one that's just OK.

It sounds a little bit like it.

Sounds exactly like it.

I'm going to check that out.

I don't know what that means, but I hope it sells 100 trillion albums

because because I like it.

I like Taylor Swift. I absolutely do.

What I forgot to mention.

So best hat new from the 2025 collection.

And then I finally wore my this got the it's the 2025, you know,

one day a ruse or a bonnaroo shirt. Yeah, I like that.

Finally came.

I don't remember how much I talked about on the show months ago, but I had some.

There was a lot of problems with shipping right after

the disaster, which I gave and everybody, I hope, gave a lot of

a lot of extra patience with.

Yeah, because they probably had a lot of unexpected online orders.

Well, what happened was is I ordered this shirt and that hat

and before the festival.

So I've been told I'm a curse because of this.

Oh, it's your fault by her.

Actually, yeah.

You don't ever buy the shirt before the show, because then the show might not happen.

But this year, this doesn't have a flash of a picture.

It does not have the bands on the back.

It just has the year. Oh, OK.

Oh, really? Does it?

I can't remember. Oh, that's true.

It doesn't have the band. Yeah, I think so.

OK. So anyway, I don't know what that means. Just.

It's like buying the T-shirt of the World Series winner before the World Series.

Exactly. Well, yeah.

Yeah. But anyway, that's how I did it.

Well, because you guys know, we talked about this a while back.

I'm on still on a search for that soccer style.

I know rainbow colored striped twenty twenty four shirt.

Yes. And it sold out.

And to their credit, which I do like this other than I couldn't get one,

is it was a limited run. You can't get it now.

Yeah. Please, please contact Brian and send him a shirt.

Oh, I've had one person I do appreciate it.

Hit me up from eBay.

They're selling one for a hundred and fifty bucks.

I was actually I was kind of hoping somebody would give me one.

But I will pay you but less than one hundred and fifty dollars.

I don't need that much. But because of that, because of my disappointment,

I'm missing out on that shirt.

That's why I want to make sure you didn't go through that disappointment again.

Found the one I like about advanced.

Well, it never came. It never showed up. Oh.

And I I couldn't track it down. Right.

There's third party shipping and all that shop dot com and all that stuff.

So there's there's a lot of hands and all that.

And so I I send a through Bonnaroo to their credit.

I think that was in refund time.

And I think it was just let maybe even like a I generated all refund requests

except just like no questions asked.

We don't want to deal with it.

So I just said refund, please.

And it was immediately just OK.

Done. Like no questions asked.

No, anything. Here's your money.

Move along. Yeah. Then I ordered them again.

And then they came through. So new gear.

And that leads us to what has been the most fun thing so far this weekend.

I mean, we're we're just halfway through this thing.

We got Sam Bush tonight. Yeah.

Yeah. We're in a caverns head.

Did you pick that up this weekend to pick it up today?

Nice. We got leftover salmon Sunday night.

That's right. Also, to my, you know,

point that this is not a strictly bluegrass festival.

Yeah. Leftover salmon is jam grass all day long.

Barely, you know, grass, lots of drums, lots of keys.

And last night we saw cowpoke.

They are just a straight up country and western band.

I'm glad you remember the name because I didn't.

Cowpoke, I remember emphasis on the and Western

because they were in full Western gear.

They all looked amazing. They were dressed all alike.

Yeah. With the cowboy hats and the they were like Western Ken,

Western Ken dolls, Western Ken dolls.

Or like the Scooby Doo character that wears the thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like the bandana around the neck. Yeah.

It's it was the silliest damn thing I've ever seen in some respects.

And one of the more just well put together musical acts I've seen

at the same time, I was like, this is ridiculous,

but it's really good.

Yeah. Yeah. Incredible.

Wearing that and not back it up with the music.

And they did. They did. They killed it. Mm hmm.

That that was at the kind of like warm up early,

early entry kind of portion of it. Yeah.

But what Beth and I did, which will be the majority of what we talk about here

for the for the rest of the show today,

is the cave tours here.

Now, yeah, I want to hear about this.

Yeah. So and if you are audio only a lot of we'll have a little bit of video

and and and visual to show here.

It's pretty impressive.

And it does it shows well

through the shots we took during this this tour today.

And in my old age, I would have made fun of people for this 20 years ago.

But a guided tour.

I'm a big fan. You love a guided tour.

I'm a big fan of a guided tour.

Like, I mean, you can just make the story up.

You know, I was I was in the Yucatan being told all about the Mayans

and all this stuff. I'm like, that makes so much sense.

I like, of course, this is all true.

And this is the guy that doesn't believe you.

I won't believe if you tell me that it's, you know, sunny outside until I look.

And then I'm listening to ancient history.

I'm like, oh, my God, that's incredible.

That's probably not true, first of all.

But but so I really, really enjoy that.

And we had a we had a nice

guide and it was just a small, tiniest amount of us, four of us,

including two children, which were

behaved six, including two children, six, including two children.

Yeah, I saw the kids like, oh, no.

Yeah, I was. I did, too.

They were great, though.

We scream and run around.

No, they were they were they were great.

And it was nice to have that small size.

But most people that even just been here for a single show,

because there is a two different versions here, you can come here for the single show

that's a lot more traditional, like going to a regular show,

except for when you walk in to see the show, you're in a cave and then you leave.

But everything else is typical parking,

boost security, like none of that's that out of the out of the ordinary.

And then they have the festival set up where they have the amphitheater.

And that's much more of a of a Bonnaroo vibe.

And it is a very, very scaled down,

simpler version of the same kind of vibe as you can hear people starting.

Yeah. And I'm sorry if you can hear over the those are in the background.

We have neighbors who are belting out.

This sounds like a cover of a skinner.

Sorry, like a remix.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's it's freebird.

Yeah, yeah.

Could have done without freebird.

But last night, they were going deep on Skinner,

really deep on Skinner.

And I don't know how much they can hear me,

but they can come over and join the show if they'd like.

These guys had a great mix of music,

but they are Gen Z and Gen Z worldviews.

And they are wild.

They come together wildly.

I'll just say that it was kind of like and drunk.

I was like, I think I agree with every angle you all are taking.

But Jesus Christ, you're taking a weird way to get everywhere.

So but they're good enough neighbors.

So anywho, what we're talking about, the cave, the cave, the tour,

the children were not bad.

Where was I?

Children were great.

But so we go, we check out this case.

So most people that come here don't know that there's there's two other monster

massive size caves.

The cave that is the music venue is actually quite small.

And yeah, the just visually with no lights going and no show.

Yes, it's neat because you're in a cave, but.

OK, that's it.

Pretty much. And it was, you know, it is a natural cave,

but they had to excavate a lot of that to get the stage and everything set up.

Put in a wall.

And so but when it's lit up and the show's going and they got it,

it's a really, it's really, really cool.

But if you're just looking at a room that's a big cave, you know,

there's no tour.

No, you just stand there like, OK, I'm in a cave.

Here it is. OK, let's go.

Well, there's two more.

And the third one is more of involved with like.

It says, bring your your your trash clothes,

like we'll put some knee pads and hard hat on you, like you're

crawling here. It's like it's an adventure tour.

It's called. Yeah. I'm not ready for that yet.

But this one is what I would say is would be the more popular

and I think definitely the more popular one is the just the big cave tour.

And this thing is amazing.

And it's huge. And it's it's it's no crawling around.

I mean, I'd say seven feet high.

Yeah, seven or eight feet. Seven or eight.

Some places where all the the different car

you know, the way the the erosion over the 100 million years

or 10,000 or whatever the years are.

There it could be higher and lower.

But overall, you're walking all through here.

The the property owners, which are all the street names.

You'll see Charlie Roberts Road is the main road in.

So Robert's family that goes, but their family goes back to the 1800s, late 1800s.

And it was it was a party.

And the space and would just

the family would and before they Todd Mayo, the owner of the joint,

which I'll get to here in a minute, before they built the actual

easy walk into entrance, they show you the entrance.

It's just this hole in the ground.

Looks like it's a well that's, you know, goony style. Yeah.

You climb down and you end up in this, you know, in this big cave.

And there's some carvings in there of their their names.

In some years, one year goes back to 1930.

Wow. And the Robber's before I was born.

That was before you were born.

And you're old. Yeah.

Very was born before Barry was born.

Yeah. Barely. Yeah.

Barely. So there's there's all that in there.

But now, you know, I don't know how long ago, but probably quite some time.

These lands are protected.

You can't go in there and and carve your name in them.

Yeah. I don't know if they haul you out of jail or whatever,

but you're you're not by law allowed to do that.

So it's cool to see some of those

that that leftover from the old family when when they were here.

But a couple of things.

Sea shells in the ceiling. Yeah.

There's sea shells in the bed in the ceiling.

Yeah, these are sea shells.

I mean, they're basically fossils

from when the oceans were, I don't know, the continents.

And I mean, I guess I believe all the continents were once upon a time.

All together, they were Pangea.

I mean, I feel like I believe that they sure looks like it.

And if you put a map together, what if they told you on a tour,

would you then believe that I would believe in a million?

OK, all right. And she did on the tour, actually,

saying when the continents were together.

Well, then it's real. Right. Yeah.

But I have wondered in the past.

Anywho, over the years, when that's happened,

some of those sea shells are you can still see.

Not many.

You can still see in some of the the the ceiling,

for lack of a better way of putting it, a lot of different fossils

that she was taught our guide was talking about trying to find.

I mean, I even had to look up what cephalopod, their cephalopod.

This is why I needed you, because I need jargon.

What is that?

Well, she said she was looking for a cephalopod fossil.

What the hell is that?

She was saying something about how the octopus used to have more of a beak.

And then the beak was absorbed more into the octopus.

And she's been looking for the cephalopod

octopus fossil in all of these stories.

She should guide a tour.

Yeah, you could be wrong.

But that's what I remember talking about that.

So, yeah, I guess 100 million years ago, things like that were happening.

So but I had to look up a fossil.

When I think of fossils, I think of like just dinosaur dinosaur.

Yeah, like fossils equal dinosaur bones.

That's not that's not what fossils exactly are in the definition.

Past geographic geographical ages, preserved remains of all kinds.

So you can find a lot of that kind of stuff, not that you're allowed to go

in there, start digging around for shit or anything like that.

The stalactites, which was sort of their stalactites.

I think stalagmites.

Yes. And then they turn into columns.

Yeah. So one is from the ceiling.

One is from the ground.

I think stalactites come down from the ceiling and stalagmites come up in the ground.

Lucky for you guys, if I can't print Wikipedia, I just write it down on a piece of paper.

Great. Stalactites from the ceiling, stalagmites from the floor.

And then over the course of 100 trillion years or whatever it is,

they grow together.

Yes. And create what they call columns, which is a pretty pedestrian name.

But that's actually what they're called.

So there's a couple of those columns formed and and they're neat.

And then they show where, OK, in 300, 100 trillion years, these will connect or whatever.

So very interesting stuff to look at.

What else did I want to touch from there?

I guess that's basically about it.

What do you remember from it that stuck out to you?

Our guy's name was Michaela.

Shout out to Michaela. She was great.

She has a better memory. I've already asked four times.

But then after Todd came and did a tour.

So there was a giant tour right after ours.

Yes. Thank you.

So we're leaving and you guys hopefully listen and watch every single second of everything we do.

I know you do. I'm sure they do.

Thank you for that, by the way. Yeah, thank you.

So we talked to Todd last year inside the cave and that was the first time I had met him.

I think Barry goes back with him a little bit further.

It was the first time I met him. Yeah.

It's cool of a guy you're going to run into.

And so where we get back from the the the tour, which is it's.

Forty five minutes to an hour, not long at all.

It disappears in no time.

It's also very cool, very comfortable.

The lighting is beautiful.

They have they flip the lights on and on as you go through.

So back behind you pitch black the whole way.

And it's just it lights up as you go through.

And so we get out, we go back up to the to the main area now,

which is the Cavern Tavern, by the way, which is a new thing here at the.

Yeah, I want to check that out, too.

You want to watch the ballgame right now.

Everybody's watching the Tennessee Arkansas game.

Yeah, I think that's right. Arkansas.

Yeah. Most of our camp is at the Tavern right now.

Yeah. So. Yeah.

So and then Alabama game was on earlier.

So that's really cool. Big TV's up in there.

You can get drinks.

And that's also where the meeting points, the gift shop

and the meeting point for the for the tours.

And we get up there, we're done.

And I'm not sure what we're going to do with our day yet.

It's still morning.

And then I'm hearing what sounds like Todd's voice.

And, you know, he, you know, guy, guy talks, guys.

Yeah. Plenty to say very recognizable personality and voice.

Yes. I mean, he can't wait.

He's animated. He can't.

I mean, it's I don't think the guy ever gets in a bad mood.

And if he does, boy, he hides it and doesn't ever let anybody see it.

And so I see Todd.

So I'm like, I wanted to say hi to him.

Haven't talked to him since we were here.

So I mean, I just hey, Brian, what?

Nice to see you. And we start chatting it up for a few minutes.

And what are you doing?

I'm about to take a tour down.

You're you're taking a tour.

You're the tour guy.

Yeah, you're leading the tour for the for the

cave. I think what is everything all right?

Are you hiring? Are you short on staff?

Like, what's going on here?

And of course, surprise should be none of us.

No, I just like to do it.

Yeah, that sounds like Todd.

The guy owns the place and he stops in on the weekends for fun and does cave tours.

He is an author of the caveman Chronicles.

He did write a book.

Yeah, which you should check out if you're interested at all.

Yeah, I still don't know what it's about.

But I don't know how to read.

Just Wikipedia.

Well, I know just printed Wikipedia.

I'll print it off on Wikipedia and then pretend like I know all about it.

But I just thought that was wild.

And that is and and and he had a big group.

So it can get up to what would you do?

You you saw some of the second part of it.

It almost seemed like 30 or 40 people, if that's possible.

They had to really cram them in there.

But we got lucky.

Yeah, yeah.

I would have loved to be around Todd, not 40 people and Todd.

Yeah, I was wondering if we would see Todd this weekend.

I didn't expect him to be giving cave to you.

You didn't expect him to be here to work.

No, I figured he'd be, you know, out here with us.

Enjoying my guess is he's already at home.

He just came to work.

He came to work for the day and probably went home. Yeah.

But I thought that was wild.

And so we will have some video, too, that I did ask.

They do ask you not to not to do video when you're down there.

Just many pictures as you want, but not to do video,

just to preserve some of the surprise. All right.

Well, I snuck a little in, so you'll see it here. OK.

I asked afterwards. I don't tell Todd.

I asked for forgiveness, not permission.

OK. And man, it was so cool.

So it we're talking 20, 25 bucks, something like that.

So if you guys are here,

that is something I would highly recommend.

Go do a cave tour.

Come to Caverns, see a show, get a shirt, do a cave tour.

And what else is up on the

in our near future as far as fun things?

Oh, gosh, I have this was it for me.

I mean, end of the year, I didn't really have anything

look to look forward to, really.

I've got four posters on my fridge of lineups that I.

You're yearly.

Put them up and then take them down or X through them as you're done.

Yeah. Or as they get canceled.

Or as they get. Yeah.

So for me, it was a

cave jam, which we were here for in May.

Yeah, I was here for about four hours.

You showed up for the day.

Then Bonnaroo, then Shaky Knees and now Cave Fest.

Those were my four posters that I'd put up on the fridge.

That's all I've got for the rest of the year.

What is coming up? What is next?

I guess it's for everybody in the.

Well, a lot of Bonnaroo, not everybody, nothing,

but a lot of Bonnaroo, and Halloween.

Yeah, we should mention that.

Yeah. Halloween.

Hulu, I guess.

Shocking news, I don't like Halloween, so it sounds too much like it.

So I don't know a lot about it.

Yeah, because it's fun.

So you don't like that's why you don't like.

Well, Halloween, Halloween's for children, I thought.

But anyway, yeah, there's a bunch of Bonnaroo.

And set it down there.

I know Daniel is going down there.

A bunch of, you know, big crew from the Roobus and who Daniel is here, by the way.

We should also shout out some of our neighbors because we're not here.

Oh, yeah, my bad.

We're sitting right across from the church boners.

Yeah, Rick and Sean and a bunch of other people there, Josh.

And I won't remember all their names, but yeah,

large contingent of church boners here.

Yeah, they've got the the church lady, Dana Carvey.

Yes, I live church lady.

They got the the the Satan.

Yes. So as their as their their flag, they got their flag flying.

We've also got Beth is here, of course.

And then our buddies from Nashville, Jerry, Brad and Nashville dot com,

Nashville dot com and Mike, who will be here pretty soon.

As soon as it ends, he's going to show up right at the last minute.

Going we're packing up to leave.

So, you know, we we came down here with a pretty big group.

We just kind of all merged into one big

party here. So this has been great.

Yeah. The whole weekend here kind of make up for what we missed at Bonnaroo

as far as just the camping.

Mm hmm. A little bit of a of a do over in a sense to get a weekend.

You know, it does. It's just it's got it's got a lot of the same vibes.

It's it's I mean, I don't want to go too far out here and expose the secrets, but.

Another thing about this this venue is it's just so

chill. I mean, Bonnaroo is as far as security

and procedures and rules

and within center and within campgrounds and getting in and out.

I mean, for a good reason, it needs to be pretty strict and it needs to be pretty

not really budging on a lot of the stuff.

I mean, we got eighty thousand here.

I can't let you know, you know, we got to keep a tight ship here.

Yeah. And they run a tight ship.

And they run a tight ship.

But boy, it's like they're your friends.

I mean, it really is.

The people who work here, it's almost sometimes it's like,

yeah, we can make an exception.

I'm like, are you sure?

Are you sure it's OK?

Because I'm not used to that.

Very friendly. Yeah.

And, you know, whatever you think of Live Nation or Live Nation run events,

this is not live. Yeah.

This is an independently owned and run and staffed festival.

And I think that makes a big difference.

I'm really glad you said that, because I just

I'm just fearful of the day that this that Todd, you know, retires.

If that happens to be the case down the road, not an old man, but

or whatever the case may be.

And it gets sold to a bigger outfit, which would be, of course.

I bet he's already had offers.

Oh, Live Nation wants this now.

Yeah. Live Nation wants to ruin this now.

Yeah. I don't I don't agree with everybody that Live Nation ruins everything.

I think they ruin most things, not everything.

And they are a necessary evil to certain things like really, really

huge international size events. Sure.

And so without Live Nation, Bonnaroo can't survive.

And so I I I fully appreciate and respect and understand that.

But I also get every one of you that hates their guts

and hopes that for the for the worse for them.

I'm in the middle.

I don't wish the worst for them, but they they they annoy me a lot.

Yeah. But if you're one of these that you absolutely do not want to give

one more dollar to Live Nation, here's your spot.

Here's your spot. This is an independently owned every every dollar you spend here.

Stays here. I mean, everyone here is a local.

It's locally owned, locally run.

Yeah. And I mean, I know this sounds like a big, fat commercial for the caverns.

It kind of is. Well, yeah, it's pricing is

is so reasonable.

You need bags of ice. You need

firewood, ricks of firewood.

Is that what you call those ricks, racks?

This is not a rick. This is just a bundle.

Bundles. A rick would be like a big amount.

Yeah. But or Rick from church bound or Rick from church.

But anywho, yeah, not much money for any of these essentials

that make camping, you know, more enjoyable.

Even food, like they've got a bunch of food trucks in there.

It's all pretty reasonably reasonably priced.

And you bring anything you want, just like Bonnaroo,

except it's even easier. Yeah.

Then then that I'm not going to go any more detail than that.

But it is just as chill and as simple as anything you do.

So if you're in the southeast and there's any reason you want to talk yourself

into coming here and Bonnaroo is your thing, which clearly it is.

This is this is your place.

And and you know that your money is going to a community.

I mean, everybody who works here lives around here.

And there ain't a lot of work around here.

This is the the the the city.

Within. Well, I don't know about Pelham, because that's what it is.

Pelham is is the is where the like the address is.

Yes. This is Grundy County, Tennessee.

It's unincorporated in a lot of ways.

Like, there's not a student.

There's not a city body of like a county commission or a city council.

There's like 400 people within 30 miles that live right around in here.

Yeah. And you're not going to leave and go hit the Wal-Mart.

There's no Wal-Mart. Yeah.

The closest Wal-Mart is going to be Bonnaroo, Manchester.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

There's a Mexican restaurant that we that's where we met up.

That's the only other place in town.

It's not a Mexican restaurant.

It's a building that you can get some tacos in

and sit around and enjoy yourself.

But it's not what you're thinking.

Yeah, not what you're thinking.

So he's putting a ton of people to work here.

And again, not Live Nation. So, yeah.

I just I was I was floored when Todd was was conducting that that

that guided tour.

And I I bet it was as information loaded of a tour as you're possibly.

If he's doing if he's doing it, he's dropping a ton of info

because he knows everything here.

You were there when it started.

It was almost like he was like on it, like a sermon style up above everybody

before we go down. Yeah.

Anything profound said there?

Oh, I think from 100 million years ago.

Two things I remember is how well, I don't remember exactly how much.

I remember how much dirt they had to get out of the cave to make it a music venue.

But I don't remember how much, but it was tons.

It's a lot. They had to pull out tons of dirt.

I think he mentioned that on our show. Yeah.

And then he was talking about how they were kayaking in the cave

a couple of weeks before they started doing shows here.

So that's how much water was getting in.

Or they could kayak.

He had to hire like water flow experts on how to divert.

Yeah. What did he say?

I think he said he had to hire a lot of ists.

Yes. Yeah. Geologists.

Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of other ists.

Yeah. Yeah. Said that on the tour, too.

Did this. That's probably one.

He goes back to the well on that one.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

It is still fascinating to me when you see that cave,

any cave hole in the ground anywhere, it's not flooded out all the time,

especially when Tennessee gets deluged with with with rain and thunderstorms

like we get. But so far, that's not been a problem here.

And I didn't realize he bought this place in 2017.

And it was OK. Yeah.

We were trying to figure out which year it was.

He part the purchase the purchase.

And then I think it's a lot of work from to go from just purchase to opening.

He told us.

I don't know if you remember, Russ, I'm not going to say it,

but he told us how much he bought this land for.

I think I do remember.

And I was like, I think he told us I could have come up with that amount.

I know it's not as much as you think.

Yeah. But then he said, but I put that much gravel in the next day.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Just the land itself.

Well, you know, there's not there's nothing out here.

So the land itself isn't all that valuable until you do all that work

and put all the. And yeah. Yeah.

It's impressive stuff and really enjoyed it.

So I think that's about all I've got for you.

I've pulled everything out of my brain.

It's barely work. And I am in festival mode a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. I got to go to work.

I got to go shoot some shows.

Beth is going to shoot some shows tonight.

Shooting for Nashville. Skipping out of my job.

Nashville dot com and and for us.

Yeah, I guess that'll do it for us.

Thanks for listening, watching and being a part of this whole thing.

And we don't know when, but it won't be long.

And we'll be talking lineups and stick around.

Yeah, because the lineup is around the corner

and we'll be hitting the ground running right there.

So, yeah, thanks for listening.

And thank you. Thank you, Beth, for joining us.

Beth, joining us.

Thank you, Savannah.

Thank you for being our intern.

Taylor Swift expert. Yeah, Taylor Swift expert.

Thanks for subscribing.

Thanks for listening every week. We appreciate it.

We'll see you next time. See you guys.