On the final podcast before Bonnaroo, Brad and Barry are joined by a surprise guest - First Aid Kit! Plus we talk to Brandon from Bonnaroo365, Kyle from The Bonnaroovian and listener Parker to get their Roo picks!
Topics: First Aid Kit, Bonnaroo
Guests: Johanna Söderberg, Klara Söderberg, Kyle, Brandon, Parker Reed
Welcome to the What Podcast. This is a podcast for Bonnaroovians by Bonnaroovians just two weeks away from the magical, magical opening of the gates of Bonnaroo. That's Barry Courter from the Chattanooga Times Street Press. I'm Brad Steiner from WDOD Radio, HITS 96 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Barry, we are, as of right now, we are nine days away from walking into camp. Yeah. We get there on Wednesday. Yeah. Already starting to pack. Are you really? You've already pulled everything out? That's today. Pulling that out, but I'm picking up the generator today and... Well, you're a generator guy. We're going generator this year, huh? We're gonna try. Now, can you take a generator in GA? I don't think so because you're not supposed to take gas. Oh, good point. Well, why are we doing it? Because we can. Okay, alright, good. For the fans, if nothing else. Just, yeah, because we are prissy, prissy men. Now, we've got a little bit of a surprise for you today. We thought that this was going to... And I really do think this is probably the last podcast for Bonnaroo. I think so. I don't think we're gonna have ability to get anything together for next week. So, we thought we'd surprise you a little bit. Not only are we gonna do some listener picks, we did my picks, then we did Barry's picks last week. This week, we're gonna do your picks. Some of our listeners submitted some of their picks for Bonnaroo 2018, so we're gonna call them and talk to them about the bands and the shows they really want to see. But something fell into our lap earlier on last week that we couldn't say no to. Exactly. Something that we've been trying and hoping to get from the start. And the more I listen and think and after we've talked to them, I know that's a tough night. They're up against... They got a tough draw. They got a tough... But I'm betting I'm over there. Really? At least for a good while. Okay. I really, really like them. We lucked into getting the girls from First Aid Kit, who I absolutely fell in love with at ACL Fest. They've got the sweetest, sweetest sound. They just have something unique that you just didn't know would ever come from Sweden. And I don't hate to belabor this point because I talk about it all the time. It just does not make any sense. The math doesn't equate. It's Sweden just off I-65. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Laverne and Sweden. It's essentially the same place outside of Nashville. Every bit as Nashville is. Anything Nashville's putting out. And I love it. And so we're gonna talk to First Aid Kit, the girls from First Aid Kit here first, and then we're gonna go to some listener picks. Let's jump into it. We talked to... What are their names? Joanna and Clara. And Clara. That's right. Joanna and Claire from First Aid Kit on the What Podcast. Hello. Oh, hello. How are you guys? We are good. We are good. This is very good. Enjoying the sunshine in Stockholm. When we started doing this show, we identified the artists that we really wanted to talk about on the air, and then we started trying to pinpoint the artists we really wanted to talk to on the air. And you guys were at the top of the list because I find you guys have such an intriguing story. I love your live show so much. The way that you guys harmonize to me is as good as it gets in the business. And you guys do something so interesting with your harmonies. It's like you choose different ways to say simple words. You figure out very interesting ways, and phrasing is very very important to you guys, isn't it? I think so. I mean it's something we do sort of very intuitive. Like it's not something that we design or like put any real... Real thought into it. Yeah, it just kind of comes. It sounds like it's too easy, but it's, I don't know, it kind of is. It's true. Yeah, it's true. I'm glad he asked it that way because a lot of what I hear has a very Nashville, a very country sound. Nashville is two hours from us. You guys are obviously not two hours from Nashville. So how do you get that sort of... Because it very much is obviously intuitive and ingrained in you guys. So where did that come from? I think just from listening to that sort of music from a very early... I mean not very early, but from our early teenage years. Yeah, exactly. You know, I think there's an age like when you're around like 12 to 14 where like the music that you get into then becomes really important to you. Like it shapes you. Yeah, and like those songs will always be really special to you, and that's the music that we listen to at that age, and I mean still do. And I think for us it was just so refreshing to hear. Like we grew up listening to like mostly pop on the radio, and then we heard that kind of music, and it was sort of a revelation. Like it felt so simple and so real, and there was so much emotion in it, and that was what inspired us to want to write. The startling part of it is that you guys are from Sweden. I mean if it was something like from somebody in Missouri that would make sense, but you guys are from Sweden. I guess I've just... I didn't think it would take two very, very pretty Swedish women to bring back the steel guitar. How did you guys find American music to begin with and not like the stars of Sweden when you were a kid? You're talking about being 12 years old and you're into like Emmylou Harris type stuff and Patti Smith. Right. That's more 16, you know, angst, not 12 year olds. Yeah. Let me pile on to his question. Well, I think we're pretty premature. Like well we wanted to be like older than we were. Like we didn't go through like the regular like sort of teen angst. You did a little bit. I mean a little bit. It was very short-lived, but we were sure like let's be grown-ups and like be serious, very fast. Although I will say like I mean the band that we started listening to was Bright Eyes and there's definitely a lot of emo. Well, I think the answer for you is the internet. I mean the internet just doesn't... borders don't matter. Borders don't exist on the internet. You can find any kind of music. And we found it, you know, we just started searching for that kind of stuff. And to us it was very exotic. You know, it wasn't what we... I mean we grew up with American music, yes, but that was like Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, you know, which is actually written by Sweden, so I'm taking that back. But yeah, like you know, it's very exotic to us and it didn't have like... I think if you grow up with country like in America, it just has to like a totally different kind of like... you just have a different attitude towards it. And for us it was super exotic and like interesting and I think we just like we're very objective in our way of listening to it. Like yeah, we just came from a different perspective and I think you can like tell how much we love it when you listen to our songs. Like it's very genuine. Well yeah, it's incredibly refreshing too because when you run down the list of artists from Sweden, there's a trend. Avicii, you know, Leaky Lee, Axwell. And this is a lot of... Zara Larson, these are... this is electronic pop and the fact that you guys decided to do something so completely different, it's not just refreshing, but you do it really, really well too. I gotta ask, what was the... you know, going back to Patti Smith, what was that like doing Dancing Barefoot with her in the audience? It's an amazing version you guys did, but what was that like? Thank you. I mean that song, I mean we grew up with Patti Smith, like our mom is like the biggest Patti Smith fan in the world. Yeah. So it felt like, like you know, really performing something from our childhood that meant so much to us and I think that she could tell, like again, like I just think it's shown through, like she could tell we were sincere and really feeling the song and I mean we were shaking so much. I was nerve-racking, I was so, so scary, but she has this... she just like exudes warmth and when she comes into a room and I think you could kind of feel that, like yeah. It's like more welcoming. Yeah, truly. I think just because we knew how much we love that song, I mean of course there's a part of you that's like, oh my god, what if she absolutely hates this, but then there's also just this deep kind of feeling. Connection. Yeah, connection with a song where you're just like, well I love this song, so I'm just gonna sing my heart out and hopefully that will come through. Who chose it and was there much debate? Was it pretty obvious from the get-go that that was the song you were gonna do? We were originally gonna do a song called Frederick, which is another favorite of ours, but then like I don't know. Well no, we were playing both of them and we were like, well we really want to do Dancing Barefoot, but this other band, we want to do it. And then we actually asked them if we could switch and they were very kind and said that they would switch with us, so we were really happy about that. We love both of those songs, but Dancing Barefoot, we just felt a special connection to. Now this is of course primarily a show about Bonnaroo, the festival in Manchester you guys are gonna play here in a couple of weeks, but you guys, after I guess 2010 and everything sort of exploded for you, I mean it felt like probably out of nowhere overnight, you know, you got Jack White attention and then Connor Oberst, etc. You go on to do festivals around the world. I wonder since you guys are, you literally travel to every country on the planet, do you see a difference between international festivals and American festivals? Yeah, there's definitely a difference. I think American festivals are usually very well arranged and planned. It's very nice to be an artist. There's a really cool artist VIP area, you get to go on the golf trolley. Yeah, golf carts. Golf carts all the time, love that. I don't know. We're very easy to play. Good catering and golf carts. All the perks, the perks of being a big time artist. The perks, yeah. I think American audiences are really just good at, I don't know, I feel like when people arrive at shows and festivals in the US, it's a really good mix of like a party, but also like, yeah, like the people are attentive but also ready to party. And that's a really nice combination and makes for a really like fun energy. It's a very responsive crowd. Yeah. And you feel like they're there with you. Yeah. Sometimes like at shows you just feel like you're like working, like they're not with you, like you're like trying to like cross the barrier, but you can't. It's like you're on another part of the world, like they're there, but they're not really there. Yeah, not in America, I would say, in general. Between like a club show and a festival show, do you guys prepare differently? Do you walk onto the stage with a different mindset? Are you trying to accomplish different things between a club show versus a festival show? I mean you sort of like at a festival you kind of just have to like roll with it because it's not as prepared. Like you don't really know, like you don't have time to like sound check and sort of, you know, you don't really know what the crowd's going to be like because they didn't pay tickets just to see you. So you kind of have to like just have fun with it. Like, and in a lot of ways it's not as much, the pressure isn't on in the same way. So I think it's more relaxed. And yeah, so it's a very different mindset and you kind of know like people could leave at any moment. So you have to like step it up to, what do you think, Claire? Yeah. I think there's something quite nice about playing a festival because you just, yeah, you can't care as much. Like you just kind of have to go for it and just know that a lot of people probably won't have listened to your music before and that's kind of a fun challenge. You know, to see if they'll stick around or not. Well, it's not fun to play a show if you're not. Well, if you're half-assing it. Yeah. We never do that, honestly. Like never. Even if we're like so exhausted we can barely stand. Like we still give it all until we change. Yeah. But I think it's gotten easier for us because when we started it was just like the two of us with like an acoustic guitar and it was really hard to play festivals. People would just keep talking and you know, now we have a big band and we can rock out. It's a totally different thing. How has that live show changed for you guys since 2010? Have you all won it? Because you guys are so intricate. You have such intricate sound and you guys care so much about harmonies. I always thought that you guys would want to keep things very close and tight and small, but it sounds like it's just getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, it is. It's getting out of hand. You know, but it's like once you start building up the band it's really hard to scale it back. But it's not like crazy. We're a five piece. We're a five piece. It's not that blue sky. It's Beyonce, like 200 people on stage. But I think for us, I mean the harmonies are like they're the thing that we work on like the least. Like they're so just... We kind of take them for granted. Like they're always there. Yeah. You know, and so more just, it's just so fun. It's just so fun like playing with amazing. We have such a great band and they're just wonderful people and the best musicians. So it's just so wonderful to share that and to share like a diversity like in songs. Like it's not just like singing like prettily like with acoustic guitar. It's like we're rocking out. You know, there's just a lot more going on. But our harmonies kind of carry it all. Like that's like the red thread throughout the show. Going back a little bit to the Nashville thing, because you're going to be basically an hour away, does that have any special meaning? Have you been to this part of the world? Or do you have you built in time to see Nashville, to do Nashville? See, you know, anything at all special? I mean, we love Nashville. We've been quite a lot, I think. Yeah, you had to record a third band for a while, didn't you? That's right. Sorry. We did. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we met Jack White there. We see him sometimes. Yeah, I mean, we played the Ryman twice. We love that place. I mean, it's just, you know, obviously, you don't need to explain why that's the case. It's just so special and we're just so lucky to have been able to play there. I mean, we played Bonnaroo too, as well, before, so it's going to be really fun to come back. What was that first Bonnaroo experience like? Wedding. Very funny. That's the first. You and me both, sister. You and me both. Yeah. It's going to be that way again. I really love the South. I just think there's a special, oh, I don't know. I don't know what it is. It's unlike any musical experience that I've ever been to or had, and I'm not an artist, so I don't know what it's like on your side, but on our side, we feel as though that you guys, as a community, put everything that you have into the Bonnaroo show, and that's why we continue to go 15, 16 years. Yeah. Are you guys sticking around for Bonnaroo at all? Are you going to be walking around and seeing anybody? Is there anybody that you've actually caught your eye or ear? I mean, we'd love to. I think we will. We did last time. Yeah, definitely. I remember we saw Phosphorescent last time. They were playing on our stage later on, and we love those guys. Yeah. I don't know exactly who's playing on our day, but I'm sure there's tons of bands. Wait, I'm going to check out. Wait, I'm checking it out right now. Yeah, let's do it together. Why don't we all just do this together? Bonnie Bear. Hello. Yes, Bonnie Bear is on our day. Really? Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, Bonnie Bear's got two shows. I also love Nile Rodgers. You got two shows of Bonnie Bear. Oh, that's so cool. And here's the problem. The only problem that you guys have is that you're up against Anderson Paak. You're going to miss the Anderson Paak show. But you guys, as soon as you're done, you get Bonnie Bear once, and then you get Bonnie Bear again later on in the night. Oh my God. Wow. I'm even more excited. Right before you, Sylvan Esso. You guys got to be a big Sylvan Esso. Oh yeah, I've heard them a little bit. Yeah. You'll love Sylvan Esso. Cool. We're giving you picks right now. We're giving you Bonnaroo picks. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, we'll see. How about Mavis Staples earlier in the day? Classic soul singer Mavis Staples. Yeah, it's a good day. It's a very, very good day. You guys are looking. And we're starting our day with Davey, an unknown guy that we discovered because of the show. We just spun the wheel one day and we said, hey, who's this Davey guy? We started playing him and now we're in love with him. So we'll take you around the festival. We can tour the festival together in a golf trolley. Yeah, let's do that. Please. Yeah, we're down. Just a couple of weeks away. Try and build a hold up all the AC you can in your body. All right. Yeah, drink water. Yeah, we'll try. We will. We will. Oh, and by the way, they broke news today, Barry. These girls, they're so wonderful. They broke news today. They will not be doing Beyonce's stage show. Oh, man. I know. It's such a disappointment. No, no, no, no. It's fine. It's much better this way. Some people, I just want to hug, you know, and I think that I want to hug them and I want to hug Paul Janeway. These are the people that I just I need physical affection from. I want to. I mean, that kind of is a good segue. This will be our last one. We'll probably do a follow up after the festival. I'd love to do a follow up. That's the plan anyway. Maybe two or three follow ups. Speaking of Paul, I've reached out and I was very, very honest that I'm being very greedy and that we want to meet him. Sure. And hopefully we can and speak to him. That's him calling now. Hey, Paul. But I just wanted to. This has been a lot of fun. What a surprise. I don't know about you, but everybody's been so open from Paul to these to Clara and Joanna to the listeners, to Jim from Columbia Records, from Columbia to Ashley Caps. It has been a taxi revivalist. I mean, I am and I'm glad you're doing this in memoriam right now, but I am when we started doing this, we thought we would just be two guys talking about Bonnaroo because we really wanted just to talk about Bonnaroo. I and I think I probably speak for you. I'm stunned that it has been as well received as it has been because I do this for a living and nothing I do is well received. I do fart jokes for a living. I've never gotten the love and the outpouring of support like we have in the 12 weeks we've been doing this. I haven't gotten an 18 years doing radio. No, no, nor have I. I think over 12,000 downloads in 64 countries last time I looked. Sweden? Is Sweden one of them? Sweden is definitely one of them. That must be the girls from first aid kit. Like I said from the start, we're huge in Korea. It's so weird. But yeah, and I don't know that it's because we've done anything spectacular. I think we obviously a lot of people like Bonnaroo just like we do. Yeah, I mean, that's the including, you know, hearing Jim talk about it and Ashley talk about it and Paul talk about it. I think everything that was said was sincere. You know, it wasn't blowing smoke. I feel like I feel like we've been talking to our buddies. Exactly. I feel like no matter who has written us, no matter what artists has called in, no matter what industry person we've talked to, I feel like we're talking to old friends like we've known each other forever. And I have to thank you for that for listening and making us part of your Bonnaroo experience. And I hope to God that we get to be part of yours coming up in the farm in a week and a half. Week and a half. All right, so we started with Bonnaroo 365. And some of the main drivers to the success of this podcast have been a few Twitter accounts and of course the guys on Reddit, we really appreciate them. Our buddy Lord Taco has been diligent in this. But the Bonnaroo 365 guy has been really, really championing the podcast and so has the Bonnaroovian. So I thought we would call both Brandon and Kyle and talk to them about their Bonnaroo festivities, what their plan is for the 2018. Yeah, thanks to them. They're a great example of what we're talking about. I forgot to mention Mike from Relics. Oh yeah. He's another one like the Bonnaroovian and Bonnaroo 365. He reached out to us. Yeah, within a week and a half for the podcast. Yeah, it was awesome. What a thrill. So everything has been really, really cool. All right, pick number one. Listener pick number one from Bonnaroo 365. Hey, buddy. Hey, what's up guys? Brandon, Brad Steiner, Barry Courter, how are you? Pretty good, how about you? Oh man, we're doing so well. And first off, thanks for chatting with us on the What Podcast. But not only thank you for chatting with us, thank you for being one of the very first and most avid pushers of the What Podcast. If it wasn't for guys like you and Bonnaroovian, we would just be two dudes talking to each other. It would just be camp. Thank you. We're a free tweeter. Your support is very appreciated, man. We really do appreciate it. So what are you excited about this year? Tell me about your festival plans. Well, I picked out three artists to tell you guys about because I hadn't heard them mentioned prior. Really? All right. First off, I'm going to go with that. By the way, this is official Bonnaroo 365 predictions at Bonnaroo 365 on Twitter. This is big news. This is big news, Brandon. We're getting the secret stuff here. I got the ink pen out. Somebody tell Reddit. My first choice is going to be Alex Leahy that I hadn't heard you guys talk about at all. Anything about Alex Leahy? She's Australian. She's got kind of like the Courtney Barnett sound going on. But she kind of sounds more like she grew up in the suburbs listening to Blink 182 and All Time Low. That's Friday morning on the What. Friday morning. She's on the What stage? Yeah. Wow. Is she a bigger deal than I think? When I first listened to her, I was like, this chick's a really big deal. But then the more that I looked around, I couldn't find her mentioned anywhere. She's not really popular at all yet. This is crazy. She's really good. It's like we talked about this a couple of weeks ago with the guy named Rich Brian. How do these people find their way to the What stage? I have no idea. We have really tried to figure out if this is strategic on their part or it's just all they got. They're smarter than we are. Yeah, that's definitely strategic. I can answer at least half of that. Yeah. Yeah, this is a big surprise. That's a good one. First out of the gate. Pick number one. Pick number two. Official pick from Bonnaroo365. Pick number two's definitely got to be right you are. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we have pretty much slept on the comics this year. We tried to reach out for a couple of them. And I've said this before. I don't really know how this is going to go. I don't really like the idea of comedians in the tent. I don't know if it's going to be either. That is how comedy is supposed to be absorbed. Frankly, what are they doing with the comedy tent? What are they doing with that space and that air conditioning? Are they going to pump the air conditioning into the tent? I don't know. But Reggie Watt is a good pick because he's so musically based. I mean, if anybody's going to work on a stage in a tent, it could be Reggie Watt. Exactly. I've seen him do like musical stuff just via his phone. Like he'll record beats into his phone. He'll track something, just some random sound in his phone. He'll track that on top of it and then he'll sing along to it, record it and then play it back to you. It's really crazy. The kid is really, really a creative genius, man. That's cool. He also just put out like an EDM album with some other guy. I can't think of his name, but it's called Wajata. No way. It's really good. You got to check it out. You got to check it out. I wonder if he's going to bring a full fledged Conan did one of those type of stage shows or if he's just going to stand up there and just three wheel it. And now you've got me interested and intrigued by this Reggie Watt thing. When does Reggie play? Saturday morning on that tent, I think. I'm not sure of the time. Yeah. And again, Reggie Watt only doing one show. So it's going to be a full fledged show. This is not going to be a comedy show where they do two, three sets. You're really curious about how that's going to work. Yeah. Again, we have to figure they know what they're doing. So there's a plan. So there's Reggie Watt. And then number three. My third pick is kind of off the wall pick. It's Tyler Childers. She's the singer songwriter, country artist from Eastern Kentucky. You're the second. Go ahead. He went to the hospital in the county over from the hospital that I went to. Back there, it's like really kind of close to me. I've seen him play like dive bars and stuff, and I've seen him come to Lake it quite a bit. And I can't remember which one who sent this the email, but said the same thing as you did it, that he sells out shows all over Kentucky and kind of a hometown guy and everybody's proud of him. Yeah, I'm not a country guy, but I'll check it out. Yeah. What does he sound like? What is what am I hearing? It's deep storytelling, whiskey bar type of stuff. Am I right? Is it more outlaw than a Sturgill Simpson? It's more dirt floor. Yeah. Yeah. Is that fair? Yeah, that's definitely fair. What a weird way of explaining that. It's more like a dirt floor. I know exactly what that sounds like. It's peanut shells and dirt floor. Oh, okay. So it's an outback steakhouse. I tell you, there's a Sturgill connection to Tyler because Sturgill produced his album. There you go. Okay. That's not a bad start, Brandon. I really appreciate that, buddy. So what about you? What year is this for you? What festival is this? This will be my sixth year and my fourth year as Bonnaroo 365. Yeah. What made you want to start the Twitter page? What got that? What was that inspiration for? Actually, I have an Instagram account that's a whole lot larger that I started a whole lot longer before. And I just kind of created the Twitter account just to connect more with people. But like my originally started the Instagram account because I didn't have any friends that liked Bonnaroo and I wanted some friends. Wow. I wanted to grow my group based around that. So yeah. Well, you did. You sure as hell did that. Yeah. So where are you coming from? Where's home? Lexington, Kentucky. So it's not that bad of a drive for you from Lexington? It's like four hours. Not a bad drive. So I was in Nashville one day doing an industry thing, and I won't bore you with the story, but essentially I got into an Uber and the hotel was like 45 minutes away from our place that the industry event was. So we get into the Uber and we're driving, we're driving, we're driving. And of course, it's 40 minutes to the hotel. So I don't think anything about it. I'm in the back seat in the front seat. The two guys are yelling at each other and fighting the whole way back. I don't know why they were fighting, but they were fighting about something. He finally shuts down the argument and says, I don't want to argue anymore. No more talking. I'm done with this conversation. I'm like, oh, God, thank goodness this car ride's almost over. I look up and as we literally drive by the sign, welcome to Kentucky. We have gone in the complete wrong direction of the hotel, 40 minutes out of the way with an Uber driver that want to scream at us. Nice. Yeah, there you go. That's my Kentucky Nashville story. Here you go. That's my connection. Thanks so much, Brandon. Hopefully we'll see you at the farm. Okay, sounds good. All right, Brandon. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much. Good picks. Thank you guys. Good picks, by the way. Thanks, man. So we got the Bonnaroo 365 picks. Now let's get to the Bonnaroovian. Bonnaroovian, another famed Twitter account, at the Bonnaroovian. Let's get his picks now. Hey, buddy, how are you? Hello, this is Kyle. Kyle, Brad Steiner, Barry Courter, how are you? Hey, doing great. How's it going, man? I'm doing great, man. We're so glad to talk to you about Bonnaroo. Man, where are you coming from this year? Oh, my girlfriend and I were driving down from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. All right, Philadelphia. Very nice. What kind of drive is that like? Well, we're going to break it up, actually. We're going to actually drive down the Blue Ridge Parkway, so it's going to be a really scenic route. Great pick. It's like 10 to 12 hours, but it's actually going to be like a whole day for us. Good for you. That's a great idea. So how many Bonnaroo's does this make for you? Well, this would be a fourth Bonnaroo. OK. First off, we want to say thank you so much for being such an amazing supporter. If it wasn't for you, specifically the Bonnaroovian, what's your Twitter handle, by the way? The Bonnaroovian? Yes. OK. At the Bonnaroovian. If it wasn't for guys like you and Bonnaroo 365 Brandon, I don't know if this podcast gets to anybody. You have been a very, very loyal listener, and we can't thank you enough for that, man. We really can't. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Oh, thank you very much. Yeah. I appreciate that a lot. You know, I try and live by the Bonnaroovian code as much as I can on and off the farm. Good for you. You got to stay true, Roo. That's my dude. Give me some of your picks this year. Who should we listen to that we haven't gone through yet? Oh, well, I told you guys I'm from Philadelphia. OK. So I got a couple of artists on there. I definitely got to go with Sheik. That's the one that I scored as soon as I saw him on the Roo clues. Like, that was my ticket. Sign, seal, deliver. Send it out. You're going to do the dance thing? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm definitely. Yeah, I'm learning it. I have two left feet, so I'm very uncoordinated, if you know what I mean. But I'm really going to cut a rug when I get out there. But yeah, back to my picks. All right. Thursday, definitely going to go with the Philly native Ron Gallo. Absolutely. The kid can rock and roll. Man, I can't tell you how excited I am for Ron Gallo, and I feel like I'm showing him off to my camp. And I think that they're all going to thank me after the festival is over. He's going to be one of these that's going to make you look a lot smarter to all your friends and family. Like, hey, by the way, you need to go see Ron Gallo. You don't know who he is, but trust me on this one. I can't wait for that show. What else you got? A Friday. I'm actually going to go with the wild card. I'm not going to the muse set. I'm actually going back to the campground for a little cinema to check out the dark side of Oz. Now, this is not something that we have talked about. We tinker talking about the pod stuff and what you can do inside the campsites and various pod activities, the one that is dedicated just to Nashville. But I don't know anything about Dark Side of Oz. In Plaza 3, 11 o'clock, tell me about it. Growing up, I was very fortunate to listen to a lot of classic rock and roll. So this is inspired by the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon album, and they're going to sync it up with the beautiful Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. It should be a trip. Yeah, I'm seeing that. But they're doing all kinds of cinema in that plaza throughout the weekend. There's a David Bowie thing they're doing too, aren't they? Yeah, I believe so. And I think the Caliope stage is going to play Elf. I'd love to see Will Ferrell on the farm. Why in the world are they playing Elf? I have no clue. I would like to see it in the Christmas bar, and I think that would be pretty dope. That would be really sweet. That would be good. All right, that's a very interesting Friday pick. Let's go to Saturday. Saturday, I'm actually going to go with another activity. Wow. After Brockhampton, I have to run back to my Bonnaroo locker and grab my robe for the robe rage at 3 in the morning in the Christmas bar, Snake and Jakes. All right, now, is this something they've done before, or is this brand new? Yes, this is fairly new, but it's kind of a secret set. Not too many people know about it. It's very unique. I'm very festive. I love Christmas, you know? So it was just one thing that I had on my Bonnaroo bucket list that I had to check off, and I thought that I could get it done on Saturday. All right, so at 3 o'clock in the morning, you're going to go to the Snake, the Jake, or the Christmas bar in a robe. Yep, absolutely. I'll have some shorts and a T-shirt on above that, but if you don't have a robe, you can't get in. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. I don't care if you're wearing a Christmas cloth set. I don't care if you're Bad Santa. I don't care if you're St. Nicholas. You can't get in unless you have a robe. Barry, we need to do this. That's hardcore. We've never, you know what? And now that I think about it, I'm such a loser, I've never done one of these activities before. We haven't even done the Silent Disco for Christ's sake. I know. I think we've got to go robe party. All right. 3 o'clock in the morning. Which robe? My leopard skin or the... Whichever one's tight. The tightest one. And then finally on Sunday, let's wrap up your festival on Sunday. I'm actually just going to play it by ear. Nothing too eventful. Definitely repeat, repeat on the Who stage. This is a very fine tune. This is a very fine tune. Repeat, repeat. The more I listen to them, I sort of like this. It's a little poppy for me, but I'll give them a shot. I mean, I can give them 20 minutes. Yeah. I like it. I like it. I'm glad you brought it up because I wanted to apologize to Jared for playing something ugly last week. I shouldn't have. You called him ugly. I called him on a track. You called him ugly. You called somebody you don't even know. I saw a bad picture. Music is awesome. I love it. I'm glad you picked him. If that's him, I don't know what the hell you're looking at. The picture I saw, he looked like he came out of a corn mine. That is one pretty man. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Nashville's own surf candy. Repeat, repeat. Man, Bonnaruvian, we can't thank you enough. Thank you so much for your support, and I can't wait to meet you on the farm. Yeah, thanks for your time, man. I'll see you guys. I'll probably see you guys on Saturday. Or no, what set did you say you were going to be at on Sunday morning? Davey. Davey. Sounds good. But I'm sure we'll find you at Ron Gallo. I'll be in the Leopard Skin Probe, man. I'll be easy to find. I would like to formally invent you guys to one of the events that I'm hosting on Friday. What is it? Okay, well, this was actually a stroke of drunken genius. Okay. Back in January, I applied to attempt the Guinness Book of World Records, most high fives in 60 minutes. Wow. Back in 2015, eight-year-old Bonnaruvian Squish set the record. However, in 2016, a passionate high fiver in India broke the record. So I'm taking it as my obligation to bring the title home and back to the farm. You're out, you're setting out to break an eight-year-old's heart. No, no, no, no, no, no. His record was broken in 2016, so I'm bringing the title back to the United States and back to Atomland on the farm. Win and wear. Win and wear. Let's do it. This will be in between 1 and 3 o'clock. I'll be at the Arch. I'll be at the entrance just waiting for Bonnaruvian. But yes, it's a whole ordeal. I have to document the whole thing and get footage of every high five. It'll be exhausting. Every high five has to be above my head. My arms are going to fall off from exhaustion. Dude, we will be one of the- What's the number? We will be there. Yeah, how many you got to get? 2,415. All right. So, number 14 and 15. How about that? Yes, yes. So, it averages out a little bit less than one in a second. Okay. I think we can get it done. We can do it, man. I can't wait. Thanks for your time, man. Absolutely. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. We'll see you on the farm. Happy Roo. I think it's really cool that their picks, well thought out, obviously, as you'd expect from those guys. But they went, especially Bonnaruvian did with the- With the robe party. Yeah. I want to do the robe party. The robe party is unbelievable. I just, and I said this to him just a second ago, I have blown it on the events around the festival. I've totally blown it. Yeah, I walk around them all the time. I know, and they just go in one ear and out the other because I'm so hyper-focused on surviving. Because I'm so prissy and I'm such a diva. The heat really gets to me and the dirt really gets to me and I just need to go shower six or seven times a day. I miss the really fun stuff that makes it so unique and it really stinks and I want to change that this year. Well, confession for us, I think part of, and this is again those first world problems, but because our camp is maybe a little closer than say that poor guy who's way, way out, it's relatively easy to go back and forth. When it is hot, I'll wonder, I'll sit in camp and think, I can't be sitting here. I'm at Bonnaroo. Then I'll go out in center Roo and think, man, there's beer back at the kitchen. I can't be sitting here at Bonnaroo. And then we get to Bonnaroo and he's like, boy, I can't be at Bonnaroo. I got to go back and sit down. I can't go sit down where it's cooler and there's a beer. So it's constant back and forth. Yeah. Well, I want to change a little bit this year and because of the listeners and because of everything that Bonnaroo has done and changed from pod to pod, the GA activities are out of this world. I cannot believe, I can't wrap my head around them. It's a very different world than when I accidentally, I was in GA one year and I accidentally, this is 15 years ago, I actually took a wrong turn and I found myself next to a car that was on fire and a guy peeing off the top of an RV. So just a tad different. Was he trying to put the fire out? The hose wasn't working as well, if you know what I mean. So who's the next listener calling there, Barry Courter? Let's call Parker Reed. Parker Reed. Hello? Parker Reed, Brad Steiner, Barry Courter from the What Podcast. How are you buddy? Hey, great. Welcome to the What Podcast. No way. Thanks so much for listening and supporting this dumb little venture of ours. We cannot wait for Bonnaroo, literally a week and a half. What's your festivities like this year? Where are you coming from? This year I'm coming from Des Moines, Iowa. Oh wow, that's a drive. That is a drive. How long is that going to take you? It takes about, depending on how lucky we get, first year it took us about 13 hours, last year it took us nine, so I don't know how that works. Interesting. So what's your route? What cities do you go through? We go through St. Louis and we usually go through Metropolis, Illinois so we can see the big Superman. Okay, yes. How many people are you bringing? This year one other for sure and then we have one person on the fence and I'm telling him he has to make up his mind within the next couple days. So this is what I always wonder about somebody who's traveling a great distance because most of the time that we think about Bonnaroo we think of us in Chattanooga or somebody in Nashville or in a small distance, but how do you pack all the stuff that you need coming 13 hours away? Because I have to have extra people bring things for me. I've got such a big, I'm so needy and I'm so desperate to have creature comforts from the house, how in the world do you fit it all into a car? What are you driving? Great question. The first three years, this will be my fourth coming up, and we drove a big Chevy Tahoe, so it has crap ton of room in the back. Yeah, that's huge. This year it's only me and one other person so I think we're going to take a sedan. I thought you were going to say like a Chevy Volt. Good luck. Yeah, thanks. It's tough for me because I've got a tiny little GTI and I've got to rely on Barry to carry all my gear. Barry, can you carry everything for me? It's true, I have the truck. I need my 600 square feet of carpeting, I need my 10 by 20 wedding tent, I need everybody's giant cartoon head on a stick, we need our lit marquee that we pull. I can't fit that in my GTI, I need hair product. Parker, one year, and this is no joke, I thought he and his wife were going to fight over a hula hoop. She didn't need that hula hoop. That was the last thing and he was not sure it would fit. There was no more space. I could not fit a hula hoop into the car. Yeah, so he almost didn't make that truck. Barry, the hula hoop almost took her place. That's true. It also helps with multiple years. The food you know you don't know what exactly to bring and you refine it. Right. You learn what you really need. And what are those essential things for you now that you've been doing it for years? Oh, God. Our camp is not anywhere nearly as refined as Camp Nut Butter. I know, it's stupid. So we're kind of boring. We bring bags. You know, we bring a big stereo speaker or whatever. So not a bunch of fun stuff. We just like listening to Radio Ru and drinking some beers, I guess. I tell you, I was reading Reddit and somebody said this on one of the threads and I don't know why I didn't think about it before. Why am I not just putting up a pop-up tent and sleeping on a cot under the pop-up tent? Because the regular tents hold so much heat and you're dying by 730 in the morning. It's so much more refreshing. I mean, who needs privacy at this point? What do you really care? Modesty is out there. You forget it. After about Thursday afternoon. Who cares anymore? Having done it a few years, we talked about this just the other day. There's plenty of food there. There's plenty of water and drink. So yeah, I don't even bring food anymore. Yeah, I was panicked about having enough. Oh my God, the first year you always bring food to grill. Who is grilling up food? Like there's somebody at our camp made eggs one year. It was amazing, but I ain't doing that. I ain't bringing the grill. I'm not bringing the George Foreman. I forgot about that. Yeah. I'd love to go through some of your picks for the festival. You've been there four years. I want to hear the best show that you've ever seen of Bonnaroo in those four years. Oh, wow. Well, I think LCD Sound System is a for sure standout 2016. Me too. I think it's one of the great highlights of my life. Oh, God. Yeah. Last year, Portugal the Man, Late Night was pretty insane. Yeah. I do love that show because it was the precursor to them having maybe the greatest year of their career. And they've been on the farm five times and they started in the Miller Light Lounge. You know, a few months after that, they have a number one single at Top 40 Radio. That just doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen at all. And yeah, I got a chance to see them in Iowa and I think they're coming back. So they got me for life. What are some of your picks this year? Let's hear who Parker's seeing. OK, this year, one thing that I think the entire community is sleeping on is Paramore, to be honest. Hmm. Interesting. Do tell, Parker. Do tell. OK, so I think a lot of people are viewing them as kind of a middle school-ish emo pick. But I mean, their last album that they just put out last year is this great New Wave inspired pop album that, you know, very critically regarded. And it's won over a lot of fans. And that's mostly what they play in their set these days. It's got a... It's got an 80s vibe to it, right? It's got this very classic 80s, like you said, New Wave sound to it. It's a very different, very different departure for them. So I think people will go expecting just to hear Misery Business or something. And I think they'll be delightfully surprised by the variety that they come in. They have some new doubt or no doubt, like inspired tracks and stuff like that. All right. I'm not going to argue with you. It's not on my list, that's for sure. I work in Top 40 Radio. I'm about Paramore-ed out, if you know what I mean. Yeah, I got you. Besides that, Everything Everything is playing, I think, that tent on Friday right before Japanese breakfast. And these guys are from across the pond. And they're... As with Alt-J, rocked a little harder and didn't have quite as zany vocals. I'm pretty excited for them. OK, so I keep coming back to Everything Everything. Every time I go through the list and the schedule about things that I may or may not have missed, Everything Everything always comes back. And I don't know why, because I know nothing about them. But I hear people like you talking about them every time we bring this topic up. So I must have missed something in this. Something has gone right by me. I don't know. The first couple of times I heard them pop up on my playlist, I was kind of polarized and didn't dig it that much. But I think that'll be a really fun set to see right before Japanese breakfast chills out. So what do you got on set? Yeah, that's really early. You're right. That's 1.30 in the afternoon on that tent. And then, yeah, right before Japanese breakfast. I don't know. That's going to be tough. That's going to be really tough. Because that Friday is going to be a long day. It's going to be a long day. I got to pace myself. Remember, Saturday is going to be such a monster. What about your Saturday? What do you got Saturday? I think STS-9 is Saturday late night. And I'm pretty excited about that. I'm going to need somebody like you to explain to me what in the hell STS-9 is. OK, so they first played my first year when I was in 2015, and I didn't go see them. But they're kind of just like one of those late night jam bands, you know, with a little electronic influence. And I think they're going to be absolutely prime late night at one of the tents. I forget which one. Well, yeah, it's on this tent at 115. When I think of STS-9, tell me if I'm wrong here. But I think Lasers and Red Rocks. I feel like the only shows they ever do are with Lasers and at Red Rocks. Am I wrong about that? I won't lie to you, Brad Steiner. I don't know that much about them. OK. Yeah, that's one you want to go check out. That's the idea. It's a tough poll because it's up against Boney Bear. You're choosing STS-9 over Boney Bear. Oh, shoot. Boney Bear set. No, it's definitely after that. OK. All right. I think they're playing a little bit after Boney Bear, so that's definitely after the second set. Well, Boney Bear is 1225 to 155. STS-9 starts at 115 and goes to 245. So you got a good 45 minutes. So you have 45 minutes to check them out with the rest of them. I think that's fine to just walk over, dance for 45 minutes. Right. And then make your way to the Robereage, which is later on in the night. I got to go to this Robereage, man. We got to go to the Robereage. I got to remember to pack a robe. All right. And then you're wrapping up on Sunday. One of my hardest conflicts is Thundercat against AllJ. I'll probably go AllJ. OK. Let me tell you. I might have told this story before about Thundercat. Now, Barry, do you know anything about Thundercat? No. This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. He is so earthy and strange. I was at ACLFES with an industry guy. He had some women with him and he wanted to impress them. And these were young women who were they were more wanting like Bruno Mars. Just to be honest, right. And so he goes, you got to go see Thundercat. We're all going to see Thundercat. Come on. He brings him to Thundercat. He didn't know who Thundercat was. And these three like 19 year old girls, their jaws dropped watching this old man play jazzy, weird sounds with instruments that he's just made up. They were baffled. And he looked at me. He whispered, this is not what I thought it would be. That's exactly right. He had no idea what to expect. Be prepared when you show up to Thundercat to be like what in the world is going on. It's so fun. It's really interesting. We stopped by. We went and saw Bad, Bad, Not Good last Sunday last year. You know, obviously they're not going to be the exact same set, but I would imagine a similar sort of tone. They were also kind of off kilter jazz inspired stuff. Right. His latest album, Thundercat, has 25 tracks. He's got 25 tracks on an album. He'll be there for a while. He'll be there for a while. I like it. It's a great way to finish, man. I can't wait to meet you. Hopefully we run into each other. Literally, we'll be there next Wednesday. So hopefully we'll see you then. Yeah, I think I'll run by Davey to say hi to you guys. Please do. We'd love to. Please come by and say hi. Absolutely. Shake and howdy. And let's be honest, and we want to make this clear. We like Davey, but we think we've oversold him a bit. We may only be there for 15 minutes. Okay. To be honest. You hear testify and you get out. Yeah, that's right. Please do. Thanks so much, Parker. We'll talk to you then. Thanks, man. All right. So we're going to go ahead and get started. I think we've got a lot of questions. I like all three of them. They all provided something very, very different than what we've been portraying. Absolutely. And I think it further illustrates the whole reason this idea came up is it's a diverse schedule that we honestly, you may know more than me, but there were a lot of names I didn't recognize and so that was the whole idea is let's see what we can discover. I feel like I'm going to come back on Monday and I'm going to be beat up. I have a bad feeling about this year. Yeah. I think you were talking about them being on the Miller Lite stage. Yeah, Portugal the Man. Portugal the Man. I think that's what we've emphasized every week is all of these bands start small sometime. Well, unless you're Dua Lipa. Unless you're Dua Lipa or Basi. But the whole idea is if people have gone multiple times is you get to see an act you didn't hear or you've never heard of on a small stage and then you get to watch them kind of develop and blow up or whatever. To me that's a lot of the fun part of this. Well especially the ones that grab you and he's exactly right. I mean Portugal was that for me. The Shakes were that. Alabama Shakes were that. Shakes, Courtney Barnett. Courtney Barnett. That afternoon set. Courtney Barnett. Jungle was that a couple years ago. You feel like you've got something that's just for you when you find something like that. And then when Portugal the Man blows up like they have in the past year, you're just looking around saying where you guys been? Yeah. Where you been? Like for instance, Bon Iver, like we talked about this a few weeks ago. Bon Iver wins Best New Artist. He had already put out two albums. Yeah. You know where have you guys been on this? And it's a total music snob thing because you get to say yeah I saw him. I saw him before they were anybody. That was my fifth time. We had a, there used to be an old music venue in the city called The Bay and years and years and years before he was anything Kid Rock played The Bay and it's the running gag in the city that I was at the Kid Rock show. There were seven people there. But everybody in the city was at the Kid Rock show. Chili Peppers, Red Hot Chili Peppers were at a club called The Nucleus years and years ago. Here? Oh yeah. I've never heard of The Nucleus. Oh yeah. That was back when I was in college. We're talking 30 years ago. Really? Was our campmate Brian Stone singing into a water bottle? Stone was probably there. I think he was six at the time. But it's the same thing. There were about a dozen of us and it's like 5,000 people say they were there. I did not know that story. Yeah. I remember they pulled up in a van. This was the uplift mofo party plan era. Well for instance, the band that is his, Portugal Demand, is My Spoon. I had learned from them from the TV show The O.C. And I was like, oh man, that's a great song. And I wanted to see them at Bonnaroo. There might have been a hundred people at that Spoon show. And I've talked to Britt Daniel about that. And he said, yeah, nobody knew who we were. We were shocked. That's the best. We were shocked that anybody showed up at that Bonnaroo show. And now 15 years later, 13 years later, I'm going around the country following them around. That's the best. It is so good. Let's wrap this up. We had brought up something in passing and Reddit was all about this. And I guess we've been proven wrong. I have had this theory that the sets seem shorter this year. When Bozzy gets 30 minutes or when Anderson Paak only gets an hour 15 or when Muse only gets an hour 15, something doesn't seem right about that. But across the board, if you look at the mid-level, the mid-tier of the schedule, they're only getting an hour. I don't know. I didn't go back and look and check this, but that just seems short. Right. I didn't either. But we do this, as we've said many times, because we are fans, but we're also professionals. So after we take that last week... I don't know about that. You can claim that title, man. Not me. I thought, why don't I call somebody who can actually answer this for us? And I called Jeff Cuellar at AC Entertainment. And he said, no, absolutely not. That in fact, some years ago, the bands came to them and said, we don't have enough time to really do what we want to do. So the push was to find ways to make the sets as long as they needed to be. And he said, that absolutely has not changed. And I said, well, is it maybe because it used to be jam bands and they tend to want to go longer and now you're booking more pop or whatever? And he said, no, there's just not been a change. So I don't know if it's us, us being Reddit, us being fans who are looking for something, which we want to do. Yeah, we do. We want to do that. But he said, no, nothing has changed at all. Yeah, I mean, my first reaction to that would be, well, I mean, are there less artists playing? Because I feel like there's more gaps in the schedule than before. And I think that somebody fact checked that a while back and said, no, there are essentially the same amount of artists. I even asked, I asked specifically with all of the emphasis on the activities in camps, is it that you've scheduled in some open time for people to do that? And he said, no. In fact, this was interesting. He said, they know that 20% of the people who go hang out at camp except for the two or three main headline. Wait, say that again. I'm confused. So except for the headline, when they're performing, about 20% of the attendees stay back at camp. Okay, so if I go to any show, there's a good chance that 20% of the population is not even in center room. Yep. Yeah. According to their research. That's actually lower than I thought it would be. At any given time, I would probably say 50-50. At any given time. Yeah, the Saturday night is always, I mean, it feels like everybody, it feels like all of Tennessee is in center room on Saturday night. But the last couple of years, it seemed like Thursday has been pretty crowded because everybody is so excited to get it going. There was a time when Thursday, it was just us. Exactly. I felt as though that we owned the place. We could have walked on to any stage we wanted to and played a few songs if we wanted to. Now it is slammed. Absolutely slammed. Yeah, and it's because people start getting there earlier and earlier. It was 2 a.m. on Thursday was open time and now the Manchester and the state police have said let's get them in there. We don't have to deal with them. Right. We've opened the gates earlier in our year. Well, I can't, I'm literally gnawing at the bit. Yeah, I'm ready. I am so damn excited about this year. And we're so damn excited that you found this podcast and you have enjoyed it and been a part of our little Bonnaroo ride. This is essentially what we do when we're not doing a podcast. And in the weeks that lead up to Bonnaroo, this is what we talk about. This is what we do. And we're glad to be able to share the conversation with you. And I hope to God that you join us for the first 15 minutes of Davey. We'll be there at some point. And maybe if we can make it work, we'll swing around and try to meet everybody before that. If you want to share something with us, write it on the website, thewhatpodcast.com, and we'll try to connect with anybody that wants to see a show or two with us, thewhatpodcast.com. Or follow us along at Twitter at the what underscore podcast. We're going to pretty much do most of our updates through there. So follow us, DM us, and we'll try to connect at some point before Davey. Because Davey's what, Sunday? I think it's Saturday. We didn't want to wait that long. Well, yeah, we'll figure something out. We'd love to meet you and say thank you for enjoying the podcast and being part of our Bonnaroo experience. I guess that's it. I guess we say goodbye to our Bonnaroo 2018 world. I don't know when we'll follow up. We'll have to figure that out. Oh man, I'm going to be beat for a while. I know, right? I want to do it fast, and I'd like to get some people on the air to talk about it. In fact, if we run into you at the festival, maybe we'll record and talk to you about your weekend and get some stories from it. Absolutely. That's what I want. Some of the stories, the best things you've seen, the funniest things you've seen, the best things you've eaten, whatever. And if anybody, I swear to you, I will give you $100 to anybody that finds Barry Courter with painted boobs. That is my promise to you. I'll give you $100 to not find it. That's The What Podcast. We'll see you on the farm. Peace. Hey, hey, hey, hey. How y'all feeling? Journey through the stories that define the artist playing Bonnaroo. Who are they? What are they? What will you see? The what? Which bands? This year? That matter? With Brad Steiner and Barry Courter.
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