Brad and Barry join the annual beer exchange with Camp Reddaroo, one of the largest camps in Groop camping. With special guests: Roo Bus, Bonnarovian, Bonnarooster, and more. It's like a live Reddit thread!
Topics: Bonnaroo, Roo Bus, Camp Reddaroo
Guests: Daniel Horton, Kyle, Jay, Mitchell Padgett, Kevin Barnes
Journey through the stories that define the artists 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. Bonnaroo 2019, Barry Courter, Brad Steiner, The What Podcast, live from Camping Up Butter. A total dump. It's a total dump, Barry. The worst we've ever had. The worst we've ever had. Do you feel okay? Do you feel okay? I don't know if you feel okay. Third world. Third world stuff. You were slumming it. Yeah, the Bissell didn't work well. Our vacuum cleaner is not working. I'm very upset about this. It didn't pick up anything. I had to wait an hour and a half for my Bloody Mary this morning. My vacuum cleaner hasn't worked. The weed eating hasn't been done. There's laundry piling up. This damn toaster burnt my toast. It burned my toast. Brian Stone is very upset. That's Brian Stone, by the way, who's making toast in socks and what are those shoes? What are those? Irish, man. That's okay. All right. This is exciting. We're going to do something today that I haven't done, and I said this during it, I haven't done in 15 years, which is go to GA in the daylight. I've never been to GA in the daylight in 15 years, but we did it and we basically hung out with all the Camp Retoroo guys. Hung out with those guys. They had their beer exchange. We also saw just how big it is back there and how many people they fit back there. Yeah, and there's this thing in my mind where I thought it was going to be a lot more organized and a lot done up. Then I realized, oh yeah, why in the world would you do that? Wow. How long did it take us to find them? 45 minutes. We drove around 45 minutes. We had help. Yeah, it was a map and even that didn't work. This is first world problems, man. You walk around GA, you do this every day, but we don't and we found ourselves in group camping at spot 80A. I didn't even know that happened. Yeah, 80A. That means there's many before and many after. All of the 144. What did you see out in GA that you thought was interesting? How big it was, how packed in it was. We talked about there's 80,000 people here. It sold out. That was proof. It felt like it in Centauru, well, yesterday, today, Thursday, whatever we're doing this, Thursday. That beer exchange, what a cool event. It is an absolute massive operation and the guys that organize it from Camp Retoroo, they do such a nice job for having to organize so much chaos. It's a free for all and it's really well done. Guy walked in with itty bitty face and a long, never mind. He walked in with two pallets of beer essentially. Right. He basically walks in and trades everything that he has for something else. What was it, 16 people that first year? 16 people the first year. I suspect anywhere from 500 to 1,000 did he say? I know there was 300 there when we were there. Are you kidding? No, that's what he said. We also learned what I thought was really cool, a brand new Bonnaroo beer. Yeah, Bonnaroo beer for repeat, repeat and then Mad Tea Party from Pontoon Brewing. What I find was fascinating is you can just bring a beer, take a beer. As you walk through the line and walk through the crowd, the beer that you took, you can then trade again. Then you just keep upgrading and upgrading and upgrading. The idea is that people come from all over the country, so bring your local beer and trade and try. All right. Pretty cool. This was us at Camp Retoroo just moments ago at the beer exchange. Let me say too, it was cool seeing Bonnarooaster and the Bonnaroovian were there and all these people that we know. It was a real life Reddit thread. We could not believe. We were in a subreddit. We were literally swimming in a subreddit. It was the strangest feeling in the world, but here it was just seconds ago. Hey, talent, Brad, it's your show. Oh, hi guys. Hello. It's very exciting because this is the first time in 16 years I've seen GA in the daylight. I've never seen GA in the daylight past the age of 22. Is this the most amazing thing in the world? I just wanted to say that I just came from the porta potties and everything we said in the do's and don'ts, spot on. What about the porta potties? Don't eat Bran. Don't eat. Are you inspecting the fuck a porta potties, Barry? Somebody's gotta do it. Did you dip a head in the porta potties? Don't eat, don't eat anything. Never eat. How did you decipher Bran that quickly when you're in the porta potties? You know, fiber, lay off the fiber. Stay away from the leafy greens. You're pulling your daily route around the route of the vehicle. Absolutely. No, this is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. So the year that I GA'd was the most, we've already set it up. We did that just a second ago. This is group camping, not GA. I was probably in there with the Bran issue. Well, no, we did it in this thing called the magic of editing. We did that thing beforehand. Remember that? Don't you remember? We just did it. That was Kevin that was just... So what's amazing about this is that this, when I was in regular camping 15, 16 years ago, it never felt like there was this type of community where you take something from the outside world and bring it in and then make it a thing, a communal thing, right? How long have you guys been doing this? So we've actually been... We're with Camp Redaroo and we've been in group camping since they started out in 2012. Stephen Polowski set us up at the time. The concept was, since they're letting us camp together for just a little extra fee, why don't we set up a burn structure inside of Bonnaroo to begin with and have our own little community of friends? And we're all, the common thread is Reddit. And we thought, since we're all friends from the internet, why not make it open invitation? Are you guys beer guys to begin with? Yes and no in that I imbibe a lot and I've started to learn things about them as I've imbibed them. And how it affects your body. It affects it well. Well, you look good. Thank you, thank you. I rolled out of bed. My dad and mom gave me the seed money, but I grew this myself. So Mitchell, did you ever envision this? We did not. I actually have a Polaroid of the very first beer exchange. The reason why we did it is because this guy posted on the subreddit for Bonnaroo that he wants to trade beers. And since we had a group camp, we were like, well, why don't you just meet at our place and it'll be fine. So we set up the time. We only had 16 people show up in 2014 for the first beer exchange. I have a Polaroid of all 16 of us besides myself. And it was- Do you remember any of the beers? Yes. Florida Cracker is actually- Florida Cracker from the- Tallahassee Brewing. Yeah. Cigar. Cigar City. Cigar City. Yeah. And the only one I found this, the guy that set up the whole thought process, we told him to show up at 12 p.m. Seven hours later, the guy whose brainchild this was shows up like Atlas carrying this giant case of beer, like a giant cooler. And he goes, is this where the beer exchange was? And we're like, yes, sir. And he goes, my friend made me try something for the first time and I've been wandering for hours. Please just take beer. And he plops it down and he literally just starts pointing at people and saying, what's your favorite beer? And then he pulls out an amalgamation really close to what their favorite is from some local Florida brewery. And he's my little, he's my hero. This guy didn't even come to Bonnaroo, by the way. He wasn't here. He just was walking around with a giant thing of beer. Like no joke from the sounds of things. I think what he did was he lugged this cooler for three hours to no avail, went back, put it down, went to sleep for two hours, picked it back up and then found us finally. And he just kept the whole beer. So Brad, this is nuts. I mean, but from 16 people, this is pandemonium. So it was, and I love it. What I love about it the most, Hates and Rupp is how organized it is. Yeah. Well, that's a trial and error. As much of a disaster as it is because there's so many people, how can you, it's, it does pretty well. Yeah. It's definitely trial and error. But we've all, we've, we've learned something different to do. We've, you know, you can see the crowds out here, like of the different types of trading methods there are. A lot of, there are some people that bring a lot of beer. There's some people that only bring a six pack. So it really became a, okay, what do we do to accommodate this? How do we get these people in? How do we get this, how does we get this many people in this little bitty space? So over the years it's, yeah, it's really just trial and error, but we, we actually have a committee. We have one of our leaders at overseas kind of it. And she kind of takes, this is like a business expedition. We have a Slack channel and we start planning in generally around January, February, whenever the group camping opens up. There's swag. Yeah. You just said that, right? We have, we have committees that have merged. We have a, we delegation is absolute key. Cause I, this is my vacation too. And it's, it's, it's fun hurting cats, but it's a lot easier if the cats heard themselves. And what's even better is that they're, they're actually pretty good beers here. And if I would have known beforehand how this was all working, I would have figured this out because you basically just bring one, leave one, or you can trade on the street. Like, you know, humans should do. This is like shake down street just came to you. Yeah. The whole concept was, I mean, the whole concept was, you know, when I'm coming from this part of the country, you're coming from that part of the country. And it's like, what beers do you have? Cause you know, a lot of people aren't fortunate enough to travel and go and try new beers and stuff. And so like this community was about, it really was for beer lovers. And it's really became something special to where it's like every year that you come, a lot of these guys that are here are veterans that we see the same faces for the last five, six years. And I always talk to some of them and they always say, well, next year I'm going to get a beer for somewhere I haven't got a beer from. So it becomes like a game every year. All right. So now you're talking about that. Go back last night. You guys got in Wednesday night. Do you do anything Thursday? Who'd you see? What'd you do? Okay. Okay. Let's see here. I went to the grand Ole Opry and I enjoyed every single bit of it. Wow. I love that. Okay. And then we camped this stage, me and my crew, the whole night. For what? It was all the witches, rolling coast, blackout fever, the comet is coming, sun squabby. But half with, we purposely bring a pineapple each year just for fun. His name is Spike. That seems very repeat, repeat of you. The pineapple is actually the first pineapple of his family to go to college. We're proud of him. But we found out that he was doing a pineapple party this year and about two thirds of the way through some squabby set, we noticed that he's cranking up and I'm like to my fiancee Sarah, I have a pineapple and that's not a big crowd. I think I got a good chance getting on stage to go over there and I got on stage. Nice. There's some freaky people dancing out there and I got to dance with them. So nice. Nice. Nice. I think the pineapple is coming through it. Damn. Was it good? That was great. Who do I not like? People that shh. I was bummed out yesterday and I'm glad that you said, well you said about Grand Ole Opry because if there was a beer, or beer, if there was a show I was more excited about, I couldn't find one other than Grand Ole Opry. Holy shit, did I not want to take a nap. I mean I was watching TV half the hour. It was a little slow for a lot of people. I liked it. I'm older. I liked it. I got it. We debated last night in camp whether the rap was good or bad. I liked it. I liked it. I thought it was appropriate. And then Saba was a total, what a womp womp Saba was. And I love him. That album was so good. It was over modulated. The sound was terrible. It was a tough first day. Yeah, they had a lot of sound issues last night. I know the others. Are you noticing how bad the tent sounds are? Yeah, yeah. The tent sound does not make sense. It's all muffled. It's low. The levels are all wrong. It's made for the first 30 people in line. That's exactly right. That's what it sounded like. You did it because you camped out at this the whole day. But if you went outside the tent, you couldn't hear a thing. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's been a very weird first day. We went over to the nude party and we were just back across the road where that little road crossing is just outside the tent. Yeah, and it was really faint. It sounded like, and it always seems like on Thursdays where you get some of those issues. This year, we call it Thursday vibes. Yeah, we got a new thing this year. We started looking around. It's like Thursday vibes. Every time you look around, there's something wrong. Well, let me ask you guys because we're all experts at it. Is there a breakout act from yesterday? Rolling blackouts. I thought rolling blackouts was great. That's the breakout. That's the one that moves forward. You're not talking straight. That was good. They were better than I thought they would be, honestly. And then even before that, when Peach Pit, I thought was much better than I ever thought. Excellent. Peach Pit was terrific. I caught the tail end of that. My fiance went in to go do a henna crown on somebody in there and a buddy of mine found these. She went in to do what? She does henna. Oh, okay. She's been a cake decorator for decades. I wish you would have said that beforehand because that sounded really dirty. Apologies. Apologies, yeah. She's into some stuff. No. We're at Camp Nut Butter. And then she found out that people are just giant cupcakes and henna's in a piping bag already and got into that. I was walking in to catch up with her at the end of Peach Pit and a buddy of mine, Max Farber, is walking out and he's crying. He's like, oh, that's too beautiful. It's day one, dude. Thursday vibes, man. Thursday vibes. Let him go. Let him go. So we got a special guest that just kind of joined us over here. This is Daniel from the Roobus. Oh, there's Roobus. Roobus is in the house over here. Also, we got Tyler from Bonarovian is here. Oh, yeah. Sorry. It's a live Reddit thread right now. It really is. It's like the who's who of Bonarov. Someone's going to insult me about Mac DeMarco. I know it. Somebody's going to say something shitty. Mac DeMarco is great. How's Roobus doing? You had some trouble. Oh, we're doing great. You had a little trouble getting up. We actually drove it up Sunday. We parked it. Oh, it's been a while since I've been on radio. We actually drove it up Sunday. We parked at a buddy's house that is right across I-24. So we got here Wednesday and was able to just take a shortcut and roll in on Bushey Ranch. But your bus had a problem for like three days before you were to leave. Well it's topping out about 40 miles an hour right now. My dude. But we're going. You're that guy. It took about five hours to get from Huntsville, Alabama to Manchester. We're not worried about- I was in front of you. We're not worried about drugs, officer. We just can't get any higher than 40 miles an hour. No, I certainly got that question. We did get pulled over in Winchester. What happened to your generator? Did they take your generator? Yeah, man. So we've taken that same generator with the Roo Bus in for like three years and they quoted some imaginary technicality I've never heard and swiped it. But that's okay. It's been like 75 degrees in the day. So we're okay. We gave them our generator. It was like wait, their generator got stolen? I'm good, dude. A lot of things have happened like in a crazy way at this Roo. But I'm okay. We're here. I'm just glad to be here. The bus is here. All of us are here. It's a dream come true. I'm in heaven. Let me ask Kyle. They could have crashed his bus and he'd be like, I'm just happy to be here. Let me ask Kyle. And I want to ask everybody too. But the crowds are huge again. Why do you guys think so? Everyone wants to know, is it one thing? Is it a bunch of things? It's a bunch of things for sure. I think Fish brought out a really big crowd. But acts like Cardi B, that's going to sell a lot of tickets. There's a lot of hype. Yeah, all the additions to the plazas around the campground and in the venue as well. And this has been a season for where festivals kind of fell off and Bonnaroo kind of stepped up and really accommodated to all the festival goers this year. I kind of think that like the festival bubble has popped a little bit and Bonnaroo survived and now it's back and bigger than ever. I couldn't agree more. That's been our theories as well. Do you guys agree it's multiple things? Kevin and Mitchell, multiple reasons. I would like to say that there's multiple reasons, but I know one really giant reason is Fish is here. And Fish has got a cult. They're a wonderful cult, but they're a huge cult. I talked to the guys from Relix yesterday and I said, is Mike here? And she said, everybody's here. It's Fish. Yeah, I mean, I think Fish is a real big reason the numbers really spiked. We saw the same thing back when the Deddon Company were here too. It spiked a little bit. But when you look at the one thing I've been impressed with in my five years is that the plazas, right? The new plazas that they keep adding and everything they keep doing to bring the experience. That is one thing we always pride ourselves on in Camp Breedero. That's kind of why we do certain things. We do, we have DJs that come in all weekend long. We throw theme parties. It's really tight, dude. And the reason why we do that is because we were trying to create an outside experience in the campgrounds. When we did the party with Repeat Repeat last year with the Roobust, it was about creating an outside plaza campground activity. And then I think Bonnaroo took note and they kind of copied us because then all these nice plazas popped up. And the Wear in the Woods is really nice. Hey, let me be honest with you. I've lived, I've done this for 19 years. Take every credit for somebody stealing something from you. Yeah, listen, we are. That's all I ever do. We are. We're taking credit for the design of the poster with the dripping butter on it. That's us. Come on. They sell our branding. They sell everything. They tried to steal the podcast from you guys last year. It's gone, if you'll notice. The podcast is gone. He's talking about the podcast. That's us, man. Custom. But yeah, I think when they keep adding these experiences, when the average festival goers looking at festivals to attend, whether they've not been here before, they look at it and they say, OK, well, I've got XYZ on the lineup. Maybe I'm not a fish fan, but I really want to see Gambino because we all know this is going to be his last festival or maybe last music for a while. But when I look at all the combination of things like that these other festivals don't have, that contributes to why I want to spend that money for the ticket. I know for me, that's what I look at. I don't look at just a lineup alone. The experience and the people, it's a getaway. I come for the people and stay for the music sometimes on some years because the experiences really make it what it is to me. Speaking of experience, you create this beer exchange. That thing that you're sipping on right now, I got to say, our guys at Odd Story in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Odd Story is this amazing local brewery. They've been around for about a year and a half. They wanted us to specifically bring the lavender lemonade just for you guys because you guys invited us to the beer exchange. I hope you enjoy it. Are you OK with it? Yeah, it's delicious. It's really delicious. It might be the most questionable beer. I'm a big sour fan. That's why I love our beer that we collaborated with, Pontoon. I'm a big Goza and sour fan. This one is really, like you said when we started drinking earlier, it goes down so easy. It's so tasty. On a hot day, it's amazing. The guy that works there that I know, his name's Nelson, he said, what time are you doing this? I said it's about 11.30 or so. He goes, oh wait, I've got something for you. Is there anything that tastes more like 11.30 in the morning, the lavender lemonade? This is better than the mimosa in the morning. This is like the craft beer of mimosa. I feel like I'm going to have an artisanal shit after this. I want to hear your Bonnaroo routine in the morning. You woke up this morning. On a regular Bonnaroo morning, what do you do? Well, usually I don't wake up though. I was at Calliope until pretty much sunrise. You're dead right now. You're still dead. I'm going on about two hours sleep. I typically don't go to sleep. Wow, that's a long weekend. My secret is, I haven't done it yet this year, but typically I am a late night Calliope. I love the late night dancing. Usually what I'll come do is I'll come and go in the Grove and take an afternoon nap in the shade on the hot years. It's been tolerable this year. I usually go in the Grove and I usually take a nap for about four hours and then I'm waked up and refreshed. I like that. I like that routine. I have to endorse. I do not know the exact product. It's called a solar shield. I spent $50 on Amazon and I cannot endorse it enough. It lets wind in, but not light. What is it? It's a mesh screen that's a reflective graffiti wall pretty much. No kidding. You cannot see in as long as there's a light source hitting it and it lets the wind in and I get to sleep three extra hours. You look like the guy that invented this product actually. That's a pro tip right there, man. If you come by my campsite, it feels comfy like a living room. It's always breezy. It's always shady. Is this a pickup line? I already have a lady, but I can pick you up too. And that had anything as possible, sir. That's a pro tip. That card's right. I got to tell you something, Mitchell over here is the most prep Bonnaroovian I have ever seen. I will run into him everywhere and he has a backpack full of every possible thing that anyone would need. As if Bonnaroovian is going to break out anywhere else in the country. I have a bar in my trunk in board games in case fun's not where I show up. I like the idea of on October 12th, I just run into Mitchell and he's like, I'm ready for Bonnaroovian. You can do anything right now. What do you need? What do you need? That's why me and Mitchell are such good friends because I'm probably less prepared. I tend to do my best work on the fly, so when I come I usually am packing last minute. I know I've forgotten things, but I just kind of go with the flow. I'll come to Mitchell and be like, hey, what's going on? And we'll just kind of go off each other and be like, all right, you do this, I'll do this, and we'll just kind of go with it. I think the winter's always coming, so I got to squirrel away some acorns sort of mentality. So do you think that you are like, when it comes to organizing your insert camp here, do you feel like you're the navigating bodies of this? Like no joke, I map out all of this and park all of us. Have you ever missed something? Absolutely. Do your asshole campmates yell at you for missing every little thing? Yes, I got yelled at twice last year. Let me just say, he has one nickname. No, he has many nicknames, but the one that sticks is OneJob. OneJob? Because I don't have one job, I have a thousand. No, no. You've got one. OneJob. And he always messes with me. I feel like you've dropped the ball and I don't know what the ball is. I've dropped about 300 balls. The funny thing about me and Mitchell is, you guys know because you all prep for bonnery yourself, so when you're prepping just for yourself, there's a lot of work that goes into it like what do I need to buy, what supplies do I need, who's going to bring what, maybe like you don't want to rely on Brad to bring something because he might not bring it. Never rely on me and never rely on Brad. We played golf three times recently. He's forgotten every single time. So we have to call him from the tee and say, where are you? So the fun thing about this camp is we have to do that for 300 people. And it really is. Oh God, my heart. I'm having heart palpitations. It's okay, I'm good at herding cats. We got really good at herding cats a few years ago. But I mean we do everything from all the food, like I went to Sam's Club, I left Knoxville Tuesday morning, I went to Sam's Club on my way out and packed out, I think I left Sam's Club with about 145 pounds of meat, so Boston and chicken. And I just packed out my Jeep Liberty. And I mean it's like now I'm on the road to Manchester. You understand you bought one of me. Pretty, yeah. Pretty well. We're eating you this weekend. Wow. Well, finally my Bonnaroo dreams have come true. See what are our, I am Hamageddon. Have we ever talked, Brad, what is our priority? What is the do not forget this? Liquor? Beer? No. Gin? Liquor? No. Beer? Ice? There's just too many to name. I couldn't go from like a top one because there's probably five. But for me it's the right shoes and sock combination and it's baby powder. Because the older you get that, oh God. Gold bond, rubbing it between your thighs. I felt it when I woke up this morning and I said oh no. I tell people my number one essential is whatever you put on your feet. Your feet. Yes. That's right. You always see the new Rubies every single year and the people that are first years. I forgot, Tasty's, number one thing. I need Tasty's. There we go. There's so many rave babies this year. You always see, I always get a kick out of every year. When you look around and you kind of people watching camp, you see everybody that's got the new stuff on. It's like the new festival goers are kind of like emulating that Coachella look where what you have on matters and here it really doesn't matter. But I always see people with brand new kicks on and stuff and I'm like those are going to get so dirty. Those white sneakers are going to get so dirty. I'm so glad you said that because we have a guy in camp. He's actually, where is he? Nick Gay. Alright so he's walking around somewhere. He specifically bought white shoes this year so that he could see how dirty they would get. He's taking photos all throughout every day. As he's walking through the server yesterday he's like yo, everybody here thinks I'm such a noob. I think Kevin, something you said a minute ago about nobody cares what they're wearing. They do kind of but it's funny at this festival. You get to that point where if it's comfortable it works. They care what they look like and they don't think about what they're going to feel like. That's right. That's a really great way of putting it. Yeah I think you have some people. If you like it, if at the moment you wear it. I think at Bonnaroo, I've been to other festivals and we were talking about Coachella last night with some friends where they went for the first time because they always heard these things and they were like, oh it was more about what you look like and what you match with people. What I've always loved about Bonnaroo and out of all the other festivals I've been to, you have people that like to dress up and fun stuff and some people are comfortable. I just feel like it's not really a fashion contest at this festival like it is at other festivals. When you go to Imagine in Atlanta which is an EDM festival, you have more of the rave style. You have half that are like that, truly like 90s rave style and then you have the others that just don't care. They just have shorts on. Thursday morning I wake up. It's time to drop the kids off the pool. All I do is put a hat on, put my shoes on. I'm starting to walk. Wait you walk around nothing but hat and shoes? I had underwear. I think you should rearrange that outfit. I'm walking around in hat, underwear and shoes hung over just like I got to get to the bathroom. I got to get to the bathroom. This guy dressed like the necky cowboy from New York is like, no shit dude, you're my favorite costume I've seen so far. I'm like, thanks. This is every day. It's not about the, I feel like a lot of people do it for fashion but most people just do it because they want to be fun. Yeah right. You know how you have the guy that, the guy Fieri sort of visor. You could have the Mitchell hat with the red hair coming down. Mitchell's hat is pretty legendary. That thing, I mean this thing's been around as long as I've known him and it's got the bandana from every year and all the pants on. It's like, it's like basically. That is a definite art piece. When he retires, they're probably going to have to put archivate in the, where in the woods. They can put it up on top of the squarch. The squarch. Yes sir. Have you guys been to where in the woods yet where they have all the old Bonnery? We have. We've had a moment. I've painted the guy. We've had a good moment. So this is going to come up and I'll tell you guys this before anybody else gets to this point. I'm going to tell it later again. I'll tell the right story later. But you go ahead, Brett. I talk for a living. I'm prefacing this for a li- I talk for a living. I do radio. This is all I do. You talk pretty. Yeah. And most of the time, I'm just talking and I don't know what the hell's coming out of my mouth. Most of the time. Alright, so we're gonna- shut it. So, oh by the way, there's the white shoes by the way. They're white shoes. If you want to notice what white shoes look like on Thursday, Friday morning, a noob. Alright, so we're driving through what- we're in the woods and I see the Mr. T installation, the classic Mr. T installation that is part of the parade. And I'm not listening or thinking. I'm just talking, you know, because I'm just trying to keep the energy up. That's my life. Hey, how's everybody doing, buddy? Get amped. And so I let out maybe the dumbest shit that's ever come out of my mouth. Just one. We go- and we're going to recreate this. And Barry, you can be Jeff Cuellar from AC Entertainment. And don't- let's just let this breathe. Let it happen. Count it down. I can't embellish it all. We are driving by and said, oh cool, you guys brought Mr. T- oh, sorry, hang on. Oh guys, you guys brought Mike Tyson. Alright, internal brain is going one, two, three, four. Now Jeff is thinking, do I correct him? Do I call him? Do I embarrass him? We get to 13 seconds and Jeff says, no, it's Mr. T. And the whole cart kind of starts giggling. And the funny thing is- My only response was shut up. Well, because the girl that was with us, Bradley, is recording it on her phone coincidentally. And so we played it again the other night. Over and over. And you can hear giggling and then just shut up. Just shut up. This idiot called Mr. T Mike Tyson. It's a pretty good giggle. I completely get it, man. My brain runs about- See, he gets it, why can't you guys get it? My brain runs about 20 miles faster than my- I'm sorry, my mouth runs about 20 miles faster than my brain. And by the time I've signed the check, I'm like, aw shit. Yep, yep. Already done it. Yeah. We have another guest, right? Yeah, we have another guest that just joined us. I'll let her introduce herself. Boy, I love the new host. You love him. It's his party, man. It's his party. Hey, I don't care. Hey guys, how's it going? Who are you? Get it up close. Hey, my name is Shannon, I'm from Pontoon Brewing out of Sandy Springs, Georgia. We got to work with Camp Retoro this year and made the Mad Tea Party the official beer of Camp Retoro. I'm obsessed with the Repeat Repeat beer you guys did. That is so good. Yeah. And to get the flavor you got out of it and not use lactose is unbelievable. Yeah, so they're completely vegan. This is our second beer, Glazed is the second beer we've done with Repeat Repeat. We're great friends of Sean, the owner, and we're really excited to be pouring both of those very specific Bonnaroo beers at the Brewers Festival this year. And it fits the, you know what I love about it? Both of the, especially the Mad Tea Party, fits the time, the space, the weather, what I'm needing at about 1230 in the afternoon. Yeah, I mean the Alice in Wonderland theme just lend itself to this fantastic tea Berliner. It came out super refreshing. It's what I've been drinking. How the hell did somebody, how the hell did Pontoon run through this group? How did it happen? Beer exchange. So Sean was here last year with you guys. This is my first year with Pontoon at Bonnaroo, but he was with Repeat Repeat, met all these guys at the beer exchange, and then Kerry approached him to be the official brewery for Retoro. Sean actually came to our beer exchange by himself, not for the brewery in 2017. That's awesome. He loved the experience so much that he contacted us next year for the Repeat Repeat. That's awesome. And so then you decided to come do this and win it all, materialize and become a real thing. So we've been working on this for a couple months now. We've been talking with Kerry and then we set up some competitions for the Mad Tea Party. So the name and the art for the can were both Retoro people's ideas. Daniel Sage gets the credit for that. Daniel Sage has Instagram. All of us do, but Daniel gets a little shout out. So from the birthing process to the execution to the art to then the sampling on site, everything is about Bonnaroo. Everything's about Bonnaroo. We even got the Bonnaroo logo thrown on there. We're pretty proud of that one. Personally, this is my favorite beer and can art that we've had to date. So I'm really excited. But how long have you guys been a brewery? So we've only been open about a year and a half now. We were contract brewing before that, but Brick and Mortar, brewing our own beer on our own location a year and a half. So we're pretty new here and being able to come here has been an awesome experience. I mean, it's a marketing strategy to tie yourself into something like that's pretty smart. It's pretty smart. Yeah. And Sean gets a lot of credit for it. Sean's been gung ho about all this and he is actually expecting a child any second now. So he could not be here this weekend. Is she giving birth here? That would be really weird. She is not. But I heard there is... Couldn't commit. I heard there is a Liam O'Keefe in the Camp Rutteroo. So I'm convinced that the baby's already out wandering around the second Liam O'Keefe. I have always had a rule about Bonnaroo. It's like if somebody walks up to you with a baby and then throws a baby at you, you just swat the baby. Swat the baby because you don't want to go home and be stuck with a Bonnaroo baby. It's a weird thing, but he's not kidding. That is his strategy. So what I was... One of his rules. So what I was really surprised about from our point of view, and this is when we had... So we had Repeat Repeat here last year and they did the Roobust party with us. We became really good friends with them. In our conversations to even have them play, we had talked about them bringing pontoon with them because we knew that they had a collaboration beer. And we were like, anytime we do the... Every year that we do the beer exchange, we always reach out to breweries, ask for donations and ask for stuff to give away. We try to be a platform for breweries and we also want to provide options for our campers that aren't maybe not coming from different areas. And so one of the cool things was after we met Repeat Repeat and they had a collaboration beer, we were sat here and we were like... I know Kerry, we've talked and joked around about it for years about, at this point we just need our own beer. At this point we just need our own beer. And then what's funny because we're surprised that Bonnaroo hasn't branded a beer. That's really important. Yeah, that's a great point. And the funny thing is... When you get that ad dollar from PBR or Light, you don't really want to divert the attention, if you know what I mean. And the one great thing about this whole process is we went through the proper channels, we asked Bonnaroo for permission to use their likeliness and their logos. No shit. Yeah, and they gave us their blessing to use it. This is the first official. I don't want to say it's endorsed by them, but it's approved. We're very similar. We were in the same boat. We had certain limitations, but they're all in. And by the way, I want to say Repeat Repeat is the first act to do a on-site camp nut butter... This is stunning actually. This is really cool. This is... I want to just say this real quick. Because we reached out, this is the first official use of Rufus and all of the Bonnaroo copyrighted information for a beer anytime so far. And it blows us out of the water because that's not what we were expecting. That's pretty awesome. Is that mine? We thought they'd give us permission, but we didn't know that we were the first to get permission like that. That's really awesome, guys. That's the great relationship that we've had with Shannon and Sean. From the whole process from start to finish, it has been such an amazing collaboration. Like we went down for their Memorial Day release party and you can just tell how great and accepting and like they're getting their foot in the market, but they didn't have to do this for a camp at Bonnaroo. It was just something that... The relationship was just great. And it was something that we felt really good about at the beginning. And we wanted to do something because we knew it would be... We thought it would be successful already, but you just never know how successful something is going to be. I mean, they're selling it in Georgia. They're distributing it at their brewery. So it's getting outside of just the Bonnaroo community. And even better, you guys are right down the road from us and I don't even know it. So thank God now that I know. It was fantastic to see all of them come out on Memorial Day. We had people coming from pretty far, also pretty close. Even since we started putting out on social media, the beer, the feedback, the engagement, and just everything with all these guys has been fantastic. We felt welcomed before we even met them. Well, I'm getting nothing but lots of hearts from Jared and Kristen right now as I text them. They're very, very happy about it. Tell them good luck on their tour. They've got their next show going on tonight. All right. So there's Bonnaroo's shirt and the most overdressed shirt of anything that I've seen. What are you wearing? What is that? This is like the red carpet of Bonnaroo. It's like people are walking through and we're just checking out what they're wearing. That looks great. We have some cool people stop by. Yeah. That's a great shirt. Do you know what's even better about this shirt is that the man, it's going to be 85 degrees and you're still wearing an undershirt. You're still doing the undershirt. Something's got to catch sweat. That's really impressive. Welcome. How was your Thursday, by the way? Pretty good, man. Pretty good. Yeah. How'd you feel? Comfortable. I mean, the weather was fricking awesome. Yeah. Who's your like? Bonnaroo's was in Camp Nut Butter last night. We had a visit, right? For a little bit, yeah. Yep. We were there last year. I'll tell you what Bonnaroo does. He's always drinking some beer. I don't know what happens, but he's always drinking. Wait, do you stop drinking at some point? Since you guys... Oh, by the way, we have the Lavender lemonade. Hey, Brian's on there. We know how to brand. Take a photo of that. Get a picture of Akshuri's thing. Yeah. It's great. Look how adorable they are. It's the cutest couple of Bonnaroo. They are winning. Thank you. Give them a sash. We're the couple, but we're both power switches. My dude. TMI. All right, so let me ask you this. Now, the rest of the weekend, what do you got? What are you looking forward to today? It's Friday. Then you have... My Saturday is wide open. I've got nothing. So what do you got? What's your weekend like? So I wish that I could tell you many, many details, but I'm the person that plans everything beforehand and I have a sheet of paper that tells me where to be each day. And I don't know who's on which days besides Kikugaku Moyo on Sunday at 1230. And I know them because they're the only show I'm leaving camp before 5 PM for because I'm a day walker ginger and the sun is not your friend. It wants to cook you. Wow. You don't leave camp until 530 every day? Somebody has to be dad around here. And these guys get drunk early. No, no, no. Absolutely. I'm not guilty. Me and Mitchell, we're both like... I had Nicky T. Mow in the lawn this morning. For my first couple of years, I was out there in the hot sun. It's like seeing Chris Stapleton at 2 PM and just baking in the sun. The older you get and the more experienced veteran of Bonner you get, you realize that the hot shows during the day aren't worth it. So I'm the same way. I don't really go out until the afternoon. Trampled by Turtles on Sunday will be my only daytime show that I plan to go to. That is amazing. Everybody does it different. I've never heard that before ever. It's because... Of course, we're over there. We're in a different world. But, dude, some of my favorite shows I've ever had at this thing is at 2 o'clock. Oh, don't get me wrong. I do love shows that early and I like the bands, but you got to be so talented. You just pay for it. You got to know them. And I have to have such a callous to the sun at that point in time. Wow. You just pay for it. I don't know how much I can cuss here. Have you heard me yet? Oh, okay, sorry. I get a huge case of the fuck-its once it gets above 90. I'm a big Unfreeze McGee fan and when they had their two sets a couple years ago, it was like I went to their night set and I loved it, but I was like, you know what? I'm drawing the line there. As much as I love this band, I'm not going to their daytime set because it's just too hot. No, I get it. I get it. And I didn't think about it. It just takes so much out of you. It really does. I can go out three hours in the sun or six at night is really how my clock works. And more often than not, I'm going to find some person out of their mind at two in the morning and make a friend. To me, the show that I've said over and over and over that I will not miss today is Cherry Glazer. How in the world would I be okay with myself if I said, nah, it's just not going to work at 2.45? Gambino for me. Gambino today is the big one. He's on his last tour. He likes in-cabs. So this is it. This really frustrates me. If I did that, I would miss Cherry Glazer, Parquet Courts, AJR, A-Vets. They go to the, okay, they know what the genres are. They know what your tastes are. And they put three people you like at the same time so that you don't show up to all three. I know. Well, this is what we talk about. Crowd control. It's what we talk about. Jeff Quay are. And it changed our entire perspective on this. They create lanes for you as a Bonnaroo participant. They know exactly where you're going for the headliners and they're going to create lanes for you to get through the entire festival until then. But I'm just saying, if I didn't move until 5.30, man, the things that I would miss, the absolutely amazing things that I would miss. I feel you. Yeah, I get it. I get it. You would have missed one tree if that was the case. I understand what they're saying. Yeah, there's some great sets that are, in some years you really pick your battles. If there's a name that I want to see that I haven't seen live, I'll definitely venture out, but I'm coming right back afterwards. I'm not sticking around in the center. There's not enough shade. Those trees, you just see the slum of people just surrounded the trees. It's like the penguins. Yeah, it's like all the penguins. It's the sun's refuse. Yeah, so to me, with my bald head and everything like that, the sun just doesn't trick me well. All right, so if you don't do the midday stuff and the afternoon stuff, when you get to Centauroo sometime in six o'clock, what is your plan for the people you want to see? We go to the left side of every single stage where the quote unquote bees are, because everyone's a lazy person and they show up and pull on the right. If you just take an extra 20 steps and go a little bit to the left, there's always a good vantage point in Centauroo. More pro tips. You know, that is a great pro tip because no matter what stage you go to, whether it's this or that, the left is always the money. That's why we tell our campers, that's our... Oh, and Dan is mad at us now for telling us that. That's our like... There's bees. There's bees, guys. Don't worry, you can swat them. They're poisonous. They're poisonous. We always tell back lefts out of every stage for our campers. We say, you know, hey, if you want to find somebody, if you're soloing in Centauroo or you had to go back to camp or you're venturing by yourself, you can always find somebody in camp rhetoric on the back left. Have you as a group camper ever felt limited because of group camping? Never. Have you ever felt like, okay, well, we're going to go to a show, but we got to wait for people if they ever want to meet us at back left. That's a great question. I really want to go up there at the front. I will say this. Another large part of why I don't go in before five is because I am camp dad. And if somebody shows up to park and I've got people that are just, you know, they've made a parking space out of bag chairs. No joke. I move people's camps when they're not here, like two, three foot to the left and just fit people in and they show back up to neighbors because I got to pack people in. They don't know. They're going to be drunk. And they're like, wait, wasn't that three feet that way? And they didn't bring a tape measure. There's no reference points here. That blade of grass is about as long as that one. Yeah. But I don't think we've ever felt like we've ever been like, or missing out because as large as the camp we are, and we've been Bonnaroo's largest camp for like, this year is the first year we're not the largest. This year is the first one. And it's by choice. No, it's by choice. We did it by choice. Yeah. 350 cats. Who got cut? Who got cut? And why did they get cut? Well, also some strangers from the internet. We're sorry, strangers. Spill the mad tea party. Spill the mad tea party. Who got cut? So nobody's like just people. It's open. It's open. So basically what we do every year is we've always kind of, because we are based off the internet in a way, off Reddit, where it kind of started from, we stay true to that and we allow, we specialize, our specialty is that we specialize in taking in solo campers and small groups. So every single year, like the growth of Redaroo has always been very organic. It turns out it's like friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend told me about you on the internet. And then that's how we get new campers. And like the people that come in and stay for years, like they'll tell their friends and they're talking to somebody at the coffee house and they'll tell them. And it just becomes one of those things where their growth has been organic. But the cool thing about that, and it's never, this is, I guess a good complaint to have is we we've had years, the past four years, we've grown a lot and we continue to grow. And when you get to 300, 312, 315, like we have in some years, it gets a lot. I can only juggle about 300 people's happiness at any given weekend. And I figured that out last year and I don't want to ruin the other 20. So I'm just doing it for them. Man, you guys did a really fucking great job. This was awesome. Pandemonium is better than I ever would have thought. Great job. Organized pandemonium. This is so much fun. If you organize your chaos up front, you can spill after. I love it. Hey, thanks for having us. Thank you. Yeah, thank you guys very, very much. Cool thing you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Journey through the stories that define the artist playing Banneru. 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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