A podcast for Bonnarooians by Bonnarooians.

Hi, this is the What Podcast. I'm Brad. That's Barry.

That's Lord Taco. Uh, I feel like I haven't seen you guys in forever.

What's been happening?

You guys look fresh. You look clean. You look, I mean, Barry, you look terrific.

The hair is on it today. On point. Just got it cut yesterday.

Really? Yeah. How you guys been?

Anything, anything happened since we last talked?

Literally nothing. I mean, I haven't really been doing anything. Been pretty quiet.

Russ, still on the bus

Look where I'm at. We got the bus running. It's back home from the shop. 100% back in service.

When you get the bus running, how many miles do you think you put on in a year?

I'd have to look that up. This year, not very many. Last year, not very many.

Turns out not that many.

But you keep a log of it? Like a diary of your bus?

Yeah, I've got a maintenance log, I've got a fuel up log, mileage. You gotta keep track of that stuff.

Man, it's so organized. You guys, so organized. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about today, by the way.

Yeah, we do. I'm excited.

Are you?

I'm excited to be back talking. Yeah.

Yeah? Well, I know.

I know. I know you have some news and it's...

Well, we've got some news to share a little bit later on. We've got some personal podcast information to share.

And I think that's probably where we should start, Mr. Barry Courter.

You want to explain the insider podcast, what podcast family information we have?

Yeah, let's do it. Well, first of all, we're still here. That's amazing.

Yeah.

We went through a year without a festival and we still have a podcast.

Yeah.

It's incredible.

If we fight more often about what in the world we would talk about, then we'd probably talk about anything else.

Yeah.

It's literally just fighting. There's nothing to talk about. What are we supposed to say?

Well, let's be clear. Russ and I are all for it. You're the one who says no.

And I have to... Because you said we don't have anything to talk about.

And I have to remind you, you do fart jokes every day on the radio.

Yeah.

Your bar is not...

If that's what you want the podcast to become, I can very easily make that happen.

Oh, I got it. So you have your standards when it comes to the podcast. I like it.

Yeah. I try to give you guys my best. I try to give you my absolute best.

I mean, I can talk to you about how upset I am that Ja Rule was giving financial advice on CNBC

because who doesn't want financial advice from the Fyre Festival guy?

I can talk to you about how if you need doses to be given to thousands of people in a stadium parking lot,

then hire fish fans. I can talk to you about a bunch of stuff, like for instance, Reddit and GameStop

and how the GameStop nonsense has gotten completely out of control.

If you want that kind of stuff, Barry, I can bring that to you or you can listen to alt923.com each afternoon at 3 o'clock.

I think he made his point, Russ. What do you think?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. Let's move on.

Yeah. So the big news, as some of you guys who listen regularly know, we had some pretty cool T-shirts printed up

with the famous Ken Weinstein, Never Not Great quote, which he told us on this show.

Those T-shirts are awesome. We have stickers. We have koozies.

And Lord Taco, the lord of what? All the tweeting and communicating online. Did I say it right?

Online. That's right.

I nailed it. I got it right.

Created a website for us and we're going to be selling that stuff.

Yeah. Please go visit shop.thewhatpodcast.com. We've got our shirts. We've got our koozies.

And we've got stickers. If you buy a shirt, you get a koozie and you get a sticker.

And we're donating a portion of all sales to the Bonnaroo Works Fund.

So you'll be directly supporting the podcast. You'll be directly supporting Bonnaroo's charitable acts that they do there.

So and you'll help clean out Barry's garage.

Yeah, no kidding. We're selling CDs next after that.

So the point is here is if you want to grab some of the gear that we still have, you're more than welcome to.

And with all that being said, the reason why we've got more gear to come, we've we're going to load up the shop with a whole bunch of new merchandise.

And not just that, but some of that merchandise is going to be given to all new Patreon levels.

That's right. We've got new Patreon levels that we're going to announce in the coming weeks.

But, you know, first and foremost, get some of that 2020 gear moved and cleaned out so that we can give all fresh, new, brilliant, beautiful merchandise.

Now, once it's gone, it's gone because then we'll have room for a new merch.

So get it while you can.

That's your own product.

Yeah. So the the t-shirts about the Never Not Great thing, just to clarify, we don't think that we're never not great.

We're hardly great, but it's Bonnaroo that's never not great.

It's that mentality that's never not great.

We were useless half the time, but Bonnaroo, because Ken Weinstein said so, is never not great.

And then you had pizza and you've got a magical combination.

That's right. That's right. And they're great t-shirts.

They really they they wear well. They're comfortable.

They look cool. You'd be the first kid on your block.

A little bit of actual festival news happened in the last couple of weeks.

You have Coachella canceling and possibly moving to the fall, although I don't foresee that happening.

You've got Hangout canceling and possibly moving to the fall.

Don't think that's happening either.

We got news here in New Orleans that Jazz Fest and Voodoo Fest will all be in October as well as French Quarter Fest.

So, you know, if you want a festival world to exist, it's going to happen in the fall if it happens.

Am I missing any other festival that came through and yeah, some of the plug Summerfest, which is really I think it might be bigger numbers wise, though.

It's over three weekends in Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

It's also old. I told you the other day it's been around.

It's moved to first three weekends in September. It announces around the same time as Hangout did.

So this past week or so. So, yes, it's going to be a busy fall if in fact everything that is supposed to happen is allowed to happen.

Well, before I get into some of the information that I've I've gathered over the last few weeks, you tell me what your anticipation is, Barry.

What what how do you feel? What are your thoughts and how we're going to look in the next three to six months?

Oh, I don't know. I think what's your gut tell you?

Yeah, I think it's the same thing that we've sort of been saying is that we will when we start coming out, it's going to be small.

It's going to be local. It's going to be regional.

Definitely starting to hear some of that.

But three months, I don't think we're there yet.

Six months. Yeah, I think we're starting to.

But I hesitate because it's it seems so contingent on this vaccine.

And, you know, everyone wants to believe that's the magic pill.

And we're already finding out that it's not exactly it's not available to everybody.

There's still some question as to whether if you get the vaccine, does that mean you still can't give it the disease to someone else?

Yeah, some people want to believe that that's true.

And then now they're saying, well, we we did really test that.

So we don't know as a side note and not to get too political here.

But here's here's my guess. If you have a president that comes into office and his main goal, I mean,

he ran on and his biggest priority in office in his first hundred days is to keep a promise of a hundred million doses in a hundred days.

I can put every dollar that I have times two on the fact that that will happen.

You're not going to get a new president in a hundred days fail at his number one primary objective.

Now, granted, they might make the number up, but they will get to that number.

And it's going to make the public say, oh, we've got a hundred million shots in a hundred days, whether it's true or not,

whether you're right, left and different, it doesn't matter.

You're not going to get a president say, you know what, we failed on this agenda point.

And so it's going to ruin the entire rest of the term.

Right. It's going to ruin the entire whatever you want to do next.

Nobody will ever take you seriously again. So you will get a hundred million doses in a hundred days.

It's the next hundred days. If you can get to 200, 250 million doses by July 4th weekend,

I really don't think that and I'm saying this as a human being, understanding how under other human beings operate.

I don't see how the country with two thirds of it somehow vaccinated.

You don't get the the large swell of everything's fine now.

Mentally, I think the country will say, well, we got two thirds. Let's just open everything up.

And I don't know right or wrong. They're going to basically say to the rest of the country, too bad.

Yeah, no, I totally agree to say that.

But I don't think that the country as a whole is going to look at 250 million doses by July 4th or 200 million doses by July 4th in care after that.

If that makes sense. Yeah, no.

And I agree. And I think that's part of why I hesitate.

I mean, I think trying to predict it on February, whatever we want to, you know, this publishes as to what it will actually look like.

I don't know yet, but I know that mentally, I think that is exactly what's going to happen.

People all this many people are going to get the shot and feel like it's time.

You know, we we saw that over the holidays before the shots.

So I definitely agree that that's where people's mindsets going to be.

Now, if we backslide, all bets are off. Yeah.

I mean, you've got another strain coming that. OK, so sorry.

Enough with the politics and the depressing part of it.

Here's where OK, first off, I think that I'll go with the informed piece that I am going to add my gut feeling to.

I do not have this absolutely for sure, but I'm going to take a wild informed stab at Tame Impala Will Not Be a Bonnaroo

and a band that we have oftentimes speculated on being a Bonnaroo will be there.

I'll leave it at that. Now, let's just say I'll be happy with it, with the tame thing.

You know, I'm I'm reserving a little bit here because I think that tame.

I know that everybody's going to want to do the festival dates first.

The festival dates will be the first thing that come back because they're the biggest payday.

You get more money by a mile, especially the mid tier and up bands for doing festivals than you do arena shows or club dates.

So with that being said, they're going to try and make the first date.

The first festival dates happen. Secondly, the clubs, everything that I have heard are wide open come fall.

They are operating as if come Labor Day, everything's going to be wide open.

There's I mean, I'm talking not even capacity limits.

I mean, that might change, but you've got you have room after room after room on sometimes three and four deep holds for dates after Labor Day.

And with that being said, the point that I'm making and these are major artists that are buying these dates and holding these dates.

So the anticipation is that things are going to be a sieve come Labor Day weekend.

Now, whether or not that that continues, it's all back to Barry's point.

Does the vaccine and the political will all change by summer?

Now, October, November, December is operating as if things are back to normal.

And I hate to say it that way, but that's how they're going to operate.

And to the point, the venues would need a some sort of cover, some sort of legal cover.

They don't know yet. The deals don't necessarily look the same as before, and they don't quite know how that's going to shake out.

But as far as their culpability on somebody walking in and getting some sort of sickness from it, it won't be on them.

And from everybody that I've heard from, they're not going to require vaccine carts.

It's not going to be a show us your ID before you walk in.

No, you're going to walk in. You're going to see a sign that says you do this at your own risk.

And that's going to be about it.

And it's going to to what I was saying earlier, the political will slash idea of people just not caring anymore because two thirds of the population has had a vaccine.

Yeah, the rest of the third is going to take the risk if they want to be a part of it.

Now, that's for small venues.

I'm still not totally sure how that transfers to large scale events yet.

Now, you get you get a 2000 seat venue, 1500 seat venue. That's one thing.

I don't know if that translates to 80 K. I don't.

I haven't been able to ascertain if one has to do with the other.

And frankly, I don't even know my gut says about it. But what I do know is the industry slash the venues are operating as if come Labor Day weekend.

Everything is wide open.

The holds are three, sometimes four deep.

And these are not just middle of the road acts.

These are major acts that are, you know, signing up for three, four dates in some cities.

One other thing about the the the touring thing.

It's going to be country first.

And I sort of said that maybe a year ago that the kind of fans that country has, they're going to be the ones that are going to be more willing to go out.

Well, that's totally come true.

You've got Chris Stapleton absolutely doing a tour come May, June.

And it's going to be country and amphitheater dates.

First and foremost, that that get booked and that already have been booked.

And those dates that were missed in 2020, they're the ones that are going to and they're going to basically be the Petri dish, the test dummies, the crash test dummies of all of this.

Let's see if you know what happens when we put large scale events like this together, medium scale events.

I'm sorry.

Medium scale events together.

Let's see how that goes and use the country audience to, you know, be our guinea pigs on this.

So that's that's sort of the lay of the land and what I've gleaned from the last couple of weeks.

Well, several things.

I mean, we we did say that back start of the summer that it would be the country acts and we saw that with a lot of the drive ins.

It was a lot of country acts, drive in theaters, things like that.

And I think they feel somewhat emboldened that those worked.

They were able to perform from all I hear, except for a few instances.

Maybe they were pretty safe.

You know, they seem to work.

So that makes perfect sense.

The one caveat is that I'm hearing and I don't know about you guys, but, you know, for a long time you were hearing people say, do you really know anybody that's gotten the disease?

And then the last five weeks, people aren't saying that anymore.

Not only are they do they know people, they know people who have died from it.

So that that would be the one sort of thing.

If that continues, could put a delay, if not a hold on what you're talking about.

I talked to after you and I spoke and you told me this, I called our local theater people over at the Tivoli and auditorium,

which is our seventeen hundred and thirty seven hundred seat capacity venues.

And they're hearing the same thing.

Definitely September, October.

They're starting to book shows, booking shows beyond that even.

They don't.

We're a mid market.

So they're, you know, the idea of three and four holds per day.

We don't have that.

But what he did tell me and I found this interested interesting is they're very hopeful that because the acts have not toward,

which means they're not getting paid, their crews not been getting paid, you know, all of that down the line, like we talked about since March,

that instead of doing 50 days on a tour, they might do 80, which would be good for a Chattanooga markets our size.

And also because of our proximity to Atlanta and Nashville,

maybe we'll get some of those shows that want to come out and do a test before they go to New Orleans or New York or whatever.

So the the point that I took from our conversation, you and me and my conversation with the Tivoli folks is that finally there's real talk being had.

Real contracts, whether they're in pencil or not, are, you know, they're finally looking at it.

Now, my question is, they've been doing that all year.

I mean, there's a lot of those those two venues that I talked about.

They didn't take some of the shows off of their online schedules even for this past summer just because they didn't want, you know, they wanted to hold out hope.

So it sounds like I'm talking out of both sides and I am because quite honestly, nobody really knows.

We've been working with a moving target for the last six to eight months.

And and this very well might be another moving target.

But, you know, it does feel different.

The conversation feels different.

And you've got you've got when when you say hold, let me try to explain if you don't if you don't know what a hold is.

So Barry has a band.

He calls insert venue and says, I want this date.

Then Lord Taco calls and says he wants the same date.

And then Brad calls and he wants that date to Barry's one tacos to Brad's three.

Well, when Brad gets really serious and wants to start routing things, he's going to challenge taco.

And the venue is going to call taco and say, well, do you really want it?

If you really want it, then we need to see something in writing because Brad is pushing and he really wants the date.

That's when taco will either bow out and I will become to or he'll hold on to his spot thinking that Barry is going to back out.

So taco based on my pressure will then pressure Barry and challenge his date if he really wants it.

So is that jockeying for trying to get a certain date so a certain route can can work?

And that starts putting the pieces together as to how serious this becomes.

And, you know, I guess the thing that I was sort of more stunned by than anything is not just the talk and not just the holds,

but it was the level of artists that I was hearing going back out on the road.

I honestly and this is where I got it wrong.

I thought it was going to just be local bands at first.

You know, they were going to try and do small cap shows for, you know, some local and regional bands.

That's not what it's going to be.

This is these are major players doing major dates.

And, you know, I think that's the part that sort of took me by surprise more than anything.

One in particular in New Orleans, you know, it's I just can't tell you how how big the show is going to be.

You've got The Weeknd, who just announced his entire world tour a couple of weeks ago, which is absolutely going to happen.

I mean, if you get a level like The Weeknd investing this kind of time, energy, resources into putting a tour together.

Yes, that part, a lot of that work has already been done.

But, you know, The Weeknd stepping out and saying this is what we're going to that's a that's a big step.

So, yeah, it's the level of artists that sort of surprised me.

Yeah, I mean, in that, yes. And I think also the point about the numbers of shows like my Nick at the Tivoli told me was I hadn't thought of that.

And back to your point about routing, you and I talked about this a little bit the other day for people who don't know that.

I mean, try to picture a map and a manager, you know, he's looking at a map trying to figure out how he can travel down the highway and do a show every single night within usually 90 minutes of each other.

You know, they want to do one in New Orleans and then drive an hour and a half and be ready for the next night.

They don't want nights off and they don't want to drive, you know, eight hours one way and then come back seven.

So they try to, you know, make a straight line as they can.

And so when you said that to me about the holds, my first reaction was that's really good.

And then I thought that's really complicated.

You know, imagine, as I think I said to you, Russ's band really wants New Orleans and gets it.

And then the next night, the only one they can get because it's so complicated is in Milwaukee.

That's a long drive. It's a long drive. You know, it actually hit me.

You know, who would be interesting to talk to?

We need to get a booking agent on the Horn and talk about how that sort that that spaghetti gets unwound and put on the plate.

I think that'd be fascinating to hear how a tour is really put together, especially in a time like this.

I totally agree. Yeah, that's a good idea.

Remind me of that. Don't let me forget that idea because we can make some calls.

Another thing just to just to throw it in, because it's interesting, the Nick, who I talked to, they actually have three venues,

the Tivoli and the auditorium and inside the auditorium is a eight hundred and fifty seat theater upstairs.

And he's talking and hopeful that not only would they get, you know, one show every night, they might get two,

which again in a city our size, they do that every now and then, but they don't do it a lot because it stresses them staff wise, you know, and also market wise.

I mean, how many that's the other sort of question is, you know, there's only so many dollars that can be correct.

Correct. You know, and we all are ready to get out and do.

But can we afford, you know, to see every show that might be coming down the way in the fall?

Yeah. And we talked about that. I mean, there's only going to be, you know, there's going to be an appetite for all of it.

But, you know, you can't eat everything on the menu.

Well, and the other thing back to your point about like festivals and the cards.

First of all, I agree with you. I don't think the cards, the logistics of that are staggering.

Plus, by the way, you were 19. Yeah. You know how many fake IDs I had at 19? Exactly.

You know, easy. Just getting a fake ID was. Yeah. Mind you getting a fake vaccine card.

We could whip it up in 10 minutes. Well, that's right.

And the other is so, I mean, I'm not going to drive as some of our guests have told us 17 hours, you know, and then be turned away because my card is not legit

or I've got a slight fever or whatever the criteria is at that time.

I mean, would I even buy the ticket, you know, with the knowledge that I was going to have to drive 17 hours and hope that I don't get sick type of thing?

So, yeah, there's a lot still to be figured out.

Well, that's why I brought up the sort of political slash human reality at the beginning.

You know, if you know, it's going to be on you as a human being, I think once we get to 200 million people with a shot in their arm, are you willing now to risk it?

And at some point, you know, this the government can only protect you so much, you know, that I hate to be, you know, too harsh about it.

But, you know, I think that you're going to have to start asking yourself if this is something that you want to do.

Now, it goes back to, you know, Bonnaroo come October, September when when the Bonnaroo date is there and we're actually, you know, come August or July really looking at if this is a real thing.

I don't know yet. I don't know yet.

And I can't say with confidence that I would feel totally OK about it.

No. And that will be another guess that we will have.

And I've reached out. They don't have any news.

In fact, speaking of Ken, I talked to Ken knowing we were going to talk because I'm hearing the rumors that the lineup announcements are soon or some other announcements.

And he said that he doesn't know.

He's never led me wrong yet.

So if he doesn't know, I'm assuming nobody knows.

But that is the other thing that was going to say is we haven't talked to the Bonnaroo people yet to find out what changes they will make.

You know what I mean?

We've joked about it before that going in the past was suspect because of porta potties and the FEMA showers and and all of that.

Now, with this reality, you know, even the people that weren't germophobes or squeamish or whatever before, I'm going to guess have to at least have it in the back of their minds.

So that to deal with also.

So talk about going out of both sides of your mouth.

Follow me for a second here.

There was a part of me that believes that Bonnaroo is going to happen in September.

Then there's a part of me that understands the realities that festivals are going to be a lot harder to pull off than a show at the Joy Theatre in New Orleans.

There's just way too much planning that has to go into it for so many months beforehand.

And you have to be absolutely confident when you put a lineup out, when you put a ticket on sale date out that you can fulfill a lot of this.

Because how much how many times you going to ask somebody to go through these these things?

So you buy the ticket, hear the lineup, get canceled.

How many times that going to work? I mean, look at Hangout.

I mean, good, good for them. Lollapalooza.

You think that Lollapalooza, Lollapalooza needs to be happening now.

They need to be putting tickets out on sale now.

They need to have a plan for website exposure, artist planning, hotel holds, government contracts.

They need to have that right now.

Can I or six months in advance, we've also told pointed out that a lot of people have been laid off.

They're not working. That's right. And if you don't understand, I mean, it's a it's a three sixty five job to do one festival.

And I mean, Lord Taco might have a bus.

Lord Taco might have a bus in the garage, but the bus needs an engine.

They don't have the horsepower. They don't have the people that can pull a lot of this stuff off a small venue.

You know, they can do that and they can pull in people pretty quickly.

So there's a part of me that thinks that it's going to happen because the environment's going to look different come September.

But also there is, you know, months and months and months of planning that needs to be done before then that is going to be too confusing and too worrisome.

Whereas, you know, if the revivalists go on tour, it's going to be a little easier just to Taddy's.

It's not easy, but it's a little easier to cancel a revivalist tour than it is to start the process and to get the ball rolling at the festival and pull the plug on it.

So I just don't know. I really don't know. I think if he asked me two weeks ago if Bonnaroo was going to happen, I'd say yes.

Things have just gotten better and now I'm waffling on a little bit more.

Like I'm going back and forth and if I don't know, I don't mean to say it that way.

If I'm looking at the situation confusingly, I can't imagine what they're anticipating.

With no staff, by the way.

That's where I'm, I don't see it being an 80,000. I just, I don't see how it can.

I don't see how they can get the manpower together to do that. I don't think that's the case.

If that's the case, they're not going to do it. Well, you heard, you heard, well, you heard, say that Bonnaroo happens.

I'm paraphrasing Bonnaroo happens one way. Yeah, he did. All men or none.

They're not going to do a half Bonnaroo. We'll see. We'll see. I mean, what I was going to add to that is getting the manpower, getting 80,000,

and there probably are 80,000 people that would do it. Like you mentioned, there are college kids out there.

But also getting the bands. I think you and I, again, when we talked on the phone the other day,

we still don't know whether the European bands will travel.

Let me ask you this. Just a side question. If it was available to you and Bonnaroo happens in September

and it was available to you that you got a hotel, would you do it? Instead of camping? Yeah.

Well, that's a good question. I don't know. To me, camping is such a big part of the experience.

It is, but it's also a different experience this year. Yeah.

Well, by the way, I mean, that tacos got a moving hotel. I mean, he can just bus whoever he wants to.

Barry's a little differently. I mean, he's part of the 65 and older crowd that should have already gotten his vaccine.

I think. Not that old. It's a good question. And you can ask it a lot of different ways.

What sort of changes would I hope to see? What sort of changes will I accept?

You know, if they limit, I don't want to even try to speculate, but it would definitely be a different festival.

And then I would have to ask myself, well, if I'm just going to see live music, would I rather be going to a venue?

Or is it because they have a particular favorite band that I want to see? I think the question I'm actually asking is,

are you willing to do Bonnaroo different just to go? Are you willing to do it in a way that doesn't feel normal to you just for the sake of going?

And yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is for me.

You know, and it's a it's a great question. And again, it goes back to I'm 57 miles away.

It's a whole lot easier for me. I got 57 years old. I am 57 years old.

And you're in New Orleans. You know what I mean? So you can see the same band a mile from your house.

Do you want to go? I mean, that's a good question. It's a really good question.

You know, especially oh, by the way, the other thing is, you know, Jazz Fest is happening in October.

Voodoo Fest is happening in October. French Quarter Fest is happening in October.

If you think that New Orleans is the only town that is rearranging their schedule for the fall, every other town is doing it, too.

So, boy, if I've got a packed fall and I've got Bon Rue in September, you know, yeah, what is the appetite of doing all of this at once?

By the way, is it true? I think I heard how they're going to do Mardi Gras, decorate the houses instead of.

Yeah, we've got it. We've been going out every week. It's called yardy grow.

They decorate the houses. There's even one person in particular.

I saw this the other day that will put a temporary wrap on your car and your car can be its own cardi grow float.

So, yeah, the house the house thing is actually at first I thought it was really stupid and I thought, oh, this is just going to be for rich people.

But it's actually turned out to be really, really cool.

The crews, the way that a lot of the parades work is they're all every every parade is operated by a specific crew.

Right. Like the crew of muses is the girl or the girls that throw the shoes that they decorate out from the floats.

So like the crew of muses get all of their people to decorate their houses.

Now, they have to incur the cost just like they have to incur the cost on on shoes.

But more than often than not, if you've got the money to pay a crew to be part of a crew, then you've got a few dollars to spend on making a house.

So the crews, each one of them are organizing the different house floats, but they look great.

It's a ton of fun. It's a way to like get outside and feel like you're still doing something.

The problem is and it came out yesterday, our mayor is, you know, she is simultaneously the most frustrating and angering person on the planet.

And then at the same time, you're like, but man, she she really, really is keeping the city safe.

Yesterday, she came out and shut down all of the bars in New Orleans from Friday to Tuesday, Tuesday.

She's shutting down all the bars, all because Bourbon Street is making us look foolish.

We've got a lot of tourists that come in and hang out on Bourbon Street and just are packed.

It's packed down there on the weekends.

Well, she's really screwing over the rest of the city by shutting down for five days, Barry, five days a bar who's who's just now getting back to some sort of semblance of making money.

Shutting them down for five days before that Tuesday on the biggest day of the year, the day that they were trying to make their money back from, you know, the last three, four months.

You know, they've already ordered all the beer. They've already ordered all the drinks. And then they, you know, week out.

By the way, next weekend, you're all you're all shut down. It's horrendous, absolutely horrendous.

And it's set the city on fire.

You know, but but here's the thing, like people, I love this city because it's so reflective of the Bonnaroo spirit.

If I could tie it back to the podcast and that, you know, they're going to find a way.

Yeah, the city will find a way to celebrate life and to be happy and to and to essentially party just like Bonnaroo.

You know, we're going to find a way. That's why I brought it up.

I think that when I heard that, I thought that's a great idea.

And you said what jazz fest last year, everybody turned on their radios and open windows and one of the stations did a best of type of thing.

That's really cool. Yeah.

The jazz fest in place and to piggyback on that, and it's because they did such a great job of it.

Our station did, you know, Voodoo Fest at home. You do Voodoo with you.

So, you know, we're figuring it out. We're figuring out as a medium.

But more often than not, even the Bonnaroo community, when Bonnaroo didn't happen, look what happened, you know,

with with Bonnarooians and how they celebrated Bonnaroo weekend, you know, all together.

And we did it. We did something.

And this city is a good reflection.

I'm looking forward to talking to Jeff Cuellar.

You mentioned and those guys, Brian and Stephen.

And, you know, they've had time.

They've had nothing but time to think about how to come out of this and what kind of cool things they can do and will do.

So I definitely think it's going to be different.

There's a there's a want and then there's a cost.

Well, but the cost is going to be a problem because it turns out nobody's made any money.

No doubt. No doubt. No doubt.

But I will say after what, 20 years of this, they usually come through with something pretty cool.

I think that we should probably need to extend this any longer.

But we would have already had a lineup by now.

Yeah, we would have been long into season. Are we in season four?

Would this be season? We're in season four. Yeah. So we would long be into season four by now.

You know, this we would.

February would come and we would almost have lineup additions by now.

Yeah, that's fascinating to me.

And we still, you know, if I know people want to say that a lineup is close to being dropped, I'm putting my money on.

It's not even close.

I put my money on lineup and ticket availability is going to come probably June.

I don't I won't say when, but sort of given the information you just got with all these bands and holds, I'd say you're right.

I would say probably a lot of the bands would have reached out to Bon Roos and they're they're number one.

And then they're trying to look at all the other places they can go from here.

And but they're doing it with any other festival is coming up, too.

Well, that's a thing. I mean, you mentioned Hangout, which we they're not going to do.

But Summerfest is going to be the same. They're all going to need acts.

So it's good. Well, I'll tell you this.

Here's what I know that I'll learn more about what the festival landscape looks like over the next probably five to seven days.

So when I when I learn that, I will, of course, share it with you as soon as I know.

All right. How about that? Cool.

Make that promise. Cool. All right.

Patreon levels. We get those this week, too. New Patreon levels.

We're going to figure that out. Yeah, I think we can get that worked out.

New gear, new Patreon levels, new website store dot what podcast.

I come. Is that what it is? A store dot the podcast shop dot the what podcast dot com shop shop.

The What Podcast dot com. You know, it turns out I should have been listening.

Start now. Well, we'll have a link on the screen.

We'll have links in the description. We'll tweet it out.

You know, we'll try to get the word out.

And we're going to have a discount code for Patreons that if you want to buy a little extra merch or if you missed out, you can get a discount on the store.

Good idea. Good idea. Look at Taco being so like running a small business over there in that bus.

Trying to make some money. What else are you selling out there? Dryer doors?

What are you selling? Yeah, I probably got some stuff back here. Probably sell.

Taco, Berry and Brad, thanks for joining us on the what podcast. We'll talk to you soon.