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
Listen Via:
Bonnaroo, The Tour 2019, Barry Courter, Brad Steiner, The What Podcast, live from Camp Nutbutter.
A total dump.
It's awful.
It's a total dump, Barry.
The worst we've ever had.
Do you feel okay? Do you feel okay? I don't know if you feel okay.
Third World.
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!
Bryan Stone is very upset.
That's Bryan Stone, by the way, who's making toast in socks and...
What are those shoes?
What are those?
Irish, man.
This is exciting.
We're going to do something today that 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 hung out with all the Camp Reddaroo guys.
We hung out with those guys at their beer exchange.
We also saw just how big it is back there and how many people they fit back there.
There's this thing in my mind where I thought it was going to be a lot more organized and done up.
Then I realized, oh yeah, why in the world would you do that?
How long did it take us to find them?
45 minutes.
We had help.
It was a map. Even that didn't work.
But this is first world problems, man.
You walk around GA, you do this every day, but we don't.
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 Centeroo yesterday, today, Thursday, whatever we're doing this, Thursday.
And that beer exchange, what a cool event.
It is an absolute massive operation.
The guys that organize it from Camp Reddaroo, they do such a nice job for having to organize so much chaos.
It's a free for all.
It's really well done.
The guy walked in with an itty bitty face and a long... never mind.
He walked in with two pallets of beer, essentially.
He basically walks in and trades everything that he has for something else.
What was it, 16 people that first year?
They expect anywhere from 500 to 1,000, did he say?
I thought 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, a Bonnaroo beer for repeat, repeat, and then a mad tea party from Pontoon Brewing.
What I find was fascinating is you can just bring a beer, take a beer.
And as you walk through the line and walk through the crowd, the beer that you took, you can then trade again.
And then you just keep upgrading and upgrading and upgrading.
Yeah, the idea is that people come from all over the country, so bring your local beer and trade and try.
Alright, so this was us at Camp Reddaroo just moments ago at the beer exchange.
Let me say too, it was cool seeing Bonnarooaster and the Bonaroovian 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.
Hi, guys! Hello!
So, 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 brand. 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 potti?
Don't eat anything. Never eat.
How did you decipher brand that quickly when you're in the porta potti?
Fiber. Lay off the fiber.
You see here in group camping...
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...
Wait, what's the name of that?
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 brand issue.
The magic of editing.
We did that thing beforehand. Remember that?
Don't you remember? We just did it.
That was Kevin.
What's amazing about this is that...
When I was in group camping, or 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?
We're with Camp Ritteroo.
We've been in group camping since they started out in 2012.
Steven 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.
The common thread is Reddit.
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 can Bible a lot.
And I've started to learn things about them as I've been Bible 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 came, 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.
Do you remember any of the beers?
Yes, Florida Cracker is actually...
Florida Cracker from...
Tallahassee Brewing, 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 HL, from 16 people, this is pandemonium.
So it was 16.
And what I love about it the most, HL and Rob, 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 does pretty well.
Yeah, it's definitely trial and error.
Like every year we've learned something different to do.
You know, you can see the crowds out here like of the different type of trading methods there are.
There are some people that bring a lot of beer.
There are 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 actually have a committee.
We have one of our leaders overseas kind of it.
And she kind of takes...
This is like a business expedition.
We have a Slack channel and we start planning generally around January, February, whenever the group camping opens up.
There's swag. Yeah, you just said that, right?
Swag.
We have committees that have merch.
We have... delegation is absolute key.
Because this is my vacation too.
And it's fun herding cats, but it's a lot easier if the cats herd themselves.
And what's even better is that there are 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 Shakedown 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.
It's like, what beers do you have?
Because, 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 we're talking about that. Go back last night.
You guys got in Wednesday night. Did you do anything Thursday? Who'd you see? What'd you do?
Okay. Let's see here. I went to the Grand Ole Opry and I enjoyed every single bit of it.
Wow.
I loved it. And then we camped this stage, me and my crew, the whole night.
For what?
It was all the witches, Rolling Coast, The Blackout Fever, The Common 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.
Yeah, thanks.
The pineapple is actually the first pineapple of his family to go to college. We're proud of him.
But we found out that Palliope was doing a pineapple party this year.
And about two thirds of the way through Sun Squabby's set, we noticed that Palliope's cranking up.
And I'm like to my fiance, Sarah, I have a pineapple and that's not a big crowd.
I think I got a good chance of getting on stage. Go over there. And I got on stage.
Nice.
There's some freaky people dancing out there and I got to dance with them.
All right. So what did you like? Who did you not like?
The Comet is Coming through it.
Was it good?
Damn.
That was great.
Who do I not like? People that crap on the scene.
I was really bummed out yesterday.
And I'm glad that you said what you said about Grand Ole Opry because if there was a beer,
there was a show I was more excited about. I couldn't find one other than Grand Ole Opry.
Yeah.
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.
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.
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. 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.
But this year...
Yeah. We call it Thursday Vibes. 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. I was like, 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 they were going to be.
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 me...
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.
Yeah, 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.
But 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, that was too beautiful.
It's day one, dude.
Thursday vibes, man. Thursday vibes.
Yeah, 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, that's RooBus.
RooBus is in the house over here.
I see you, Daniel.
Also, we got Tyler from Bonnarooian is here.
Oh, yeah.
I feel like it's a live Reddit thread right now.
It really is. It's like the who's who of Bonnaroo.
Someone's going to insult me about Mac DeMarco. I know it.
Someone's going to say something shitty.
Mac DeMarco is great.
So 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 Bushy Branch.
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. We're going.
You're that guy.
It took about five hours to get from Huntsville, Alabama to Manchester.
We're not worried about your...
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... Wait, wait, wait. What happened to your generator?
Oh, dude.
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 OK.
It's been like 75 degrees in the day. So we're OK.
We gave them our generator.
The first thing that came through 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 OK. We're here.
I'm just glad to be here. The bus is here. All of us are here. It's Roo. I'm just happy to be here, man.
We're already 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 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 Relics yesterday and she said I said is Mike here and she said everybody's here. It's Fish.
Yeah, I mean, everybody's here. I think Fish is a real big reason the numbers really spiked.
I mean, we saw the same thing back when the Deddon company were here too. Like it spiked a little bit.
But when you look at the really 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 Redwood. That's kind of what why we do certain things we do.
We have DJs that come in all weekend long. We throw theme parties. And the reason why we do that is because we were trying to create an outside experience in the campgrounds.
We did the party with Repeat Repeat last year with the Roo Bus. It was about creating an outside plaza campground activity.
And then I think Bon Roo 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. Yeah, they still are branding.
They sell everything. It's gone if you'll notice. The podcast is gone.
I'm at the podcast. It's us, man. Custom. 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.
And when I look at all the combination of things like that, these other festivals don't have that.
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 is a getaway. So 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.
So 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. You OK with it?
Yeah, it's really delicious. It might be the most crushable beer. I'm a big sour fan. I mean, that's why I love our beer that we eat.
I love our beer that we collaborated with PondToon. I'm a big Goza and sour fan. This one is really like you said when we started drinking earlier.
Like it goes down so easy. So tasteful. What a hot day is amazing. So the guy that works there that I know, his name is Nelson.
He said, what time are you doing this? And I said it's about 1130 or so. He goes, oh, wait, I've got something for you.
Is there anything taste more like 1130 in the morning? The lavender lemonade. This is better than like the mimosa in the morning.
This is like the craft beer of mimosa. So what? I feel like I'm going to have an artisanal shit after this.
I want to hear your Bonnaroo routine in the morning. Like what is like you woke up this morning on a regular Bonnaroo morning. What do you do?
Well, usually I don't wake up, though. I didn't. I was at Calliope until pretty much sunrise right now.
So I'm going to sleep. So I typically don't go to sleep.
So 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 and usually what I'll come do is I'll come in, go in the grove and take an afternoon nap in the shade on the hot years.
It's been it's been tolerable this year, but I usually go in the grove and I usually take a nap for about four hours and then I'm wake up and refresh.
Okay, I like that. I like that routine. So I have to endorse. I do not know the exact product. It's called a solar shield and I spent fifty dollars on Amazon and I cannot endorse it enough.
It lets wind in, but not light. So what is it? It's a mesh screen. Okay. It's a reflective graffiti wall pretty much. No kidding.
And you cannot see in as long as the light source hitting it and it lets the wind in and I get to sleep three extra hours. That's a pro tip right there, man.
Yeah, if you come by my campsite, it feels comfy like a living room. It's always breezy. It's always is this a pickup line? I already have a lady, but I can pick you up to and that had anything as possible.
That's a pro tip. Mitchell over here is the most prep Barna Rubian I have ever seen. I will run into him everywhere and he has like a backpack full of every possible thing.
As if Barna Rubian is going to break out anywhere else in the country. I have a bar in my trunk and board games in case fun's not where I show up.
I like the idea of like on October 12th. I just run into Mitchell and he's like, I'm ready for Barna Rubian. You can do anything right now. What do you need?
That's why me and Mitchell are such good friends because I'm the probably less prepared. I tend to do my best work on the fly. So when I come, I usually am like packing last minute. I know I've forgotten things, but I just kind of go with the flow.
Like, you know, and I'll come to Mitchell 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're just kind of go with it.
I think the winter's always coming. So I got to squirrel away some acorns sort of. So do you think that you are like the like when it comes to organizing your insert camp here, or do you feel like you're the navigating bodies like no joke? I map out all of this and park all of us. Have you ever missed something? Absolutely. Do your do your ass on campmates yell at you for missing every little thing? Yes, I got yelled at twice last year. Let me just say he has.
He has he has one nickname. No, he has many nicknames, but the one that sticks is one job. One job because I don't have one job. I have 1000. No, no. Always everything else. One job. And he always mess. I feel like you've dropped the ball and I don't know what the ball is. I've dropped about 300 balls.
Yeah, so the funny thing about me and Mitchell is, you know, you guys know because you all prep for boundary 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? 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.
I never rely on Brad. Here's a lesson. We played golf three times recently. He's forgotten every single time. So we have to call him from the T 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. I'm having heart palpitations.
It's okay. I'm good at hurting cats. We got really good at hurting cats a few years ago. But I mean, we do everything from all the food. We, you know, 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 boner dreams have come true. See what are we? I am Pamageddon. 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. That's what I'm saying. I couldn't go from like a top one because there's probably five. But for me, it's the right shoe.
It's the right shoes and sock combination. And it's baby powder because the older you get that. Yeah. 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 your whatever you put on your feet. Your feet. Yes. That's right. You know, I always see like you always see the new Rubies every single year and the people that are first year. I forgot. Tasty's number one thing. I need Tasty's. There's so many rave babies this year. Yeah. You know, so you know,
you always see I always get a kick out of every year. You know, when you look around and you kind of people watching camp, you see everybody that's got the new the new stuff on. It's like, you know, the new festival goers are kind of like emulating that Coachella look where like what you have on matters. And here it really doesn't matter. But I always see people like with brand new kicks on and stuff. And I'm like, those are going to get so dirty. Those white sneakers. I'm so glad you said that because we have a guy in camp. He's actually where is Nick? Hey, all right. He's walking around somewhere. He specifically bought white shoes this year so that he could see how dirty
they would be. He's taking photos all throughout every day. He's walking through as he's a great idea yesterday. He's like, yo, everybody here thinks I'm such a noob. I think I think Kevin, what something you said a minute ago about nobody cares what they're wearing. I mean, 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
that are like, I do it for my people. If you like it, if at the moment you wear. Yeah, I think at Bonnaroo, you know, like 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, you know, it was more about who you know, what you look like and what you match with people. And what I've always loved about Bonnaroo and out of all the other festivals I've been that, yeah, you have people that like to dress up and fun stuff and some people are comfortable. Like, I just feel like there's it's not really
a fashion contest at this festival like it is at other festivals. Like when you go to like Imagine in Atlanta, which is an EDM festival, you have more the rave style. You have like you have like half that are like that truly like 90s rave style and they have the others that they just don't care. They just have shorts on.
So when's Thursday morning, I wake up, it's it's 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. I've got my walk around nothing but hat and shoes. I had underwear.
I think you should rearrange that outfit.
Underwear and shoes hung over just like I got to get to the bathroom. I got to get to the bathroom. This guy just like the necky cowboy from New York's like, no shit, dude, you're my favorite costume I've seen so far. And I'm like, thanks.
Yeah, this is every this is every day.
It's not about that. 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, 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 has 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 that is cool. It's like it's like basically.
That's very cool.
When he retires, they're probably going to have to put archivate in the we're in the woods.
They can get up on top of the squarch.
The squarch. Have you guys been to where in the woods where they have all the old boner?
We have. We've had a moment.
I've painted the cat.
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 long damn story.
I'll tell the right story later.
But you go ahead, Brett.
I talk for a living. I'm prefacing this for a living. I talk for a living. I do radio. This is all I do.
You talk pretty.
Most of the time, I'm just talking and I don't know what the hell's coming out of my mouth.
Most. All right. So we're going to shut it. So there's the white shoes, by the way.
There are white shoes. If you want to notice what white shoes look like on Thursday, Friday morning, a new.
All right. So so we're so we're driving through what we're in the woods and I see the Mr.
T installation, the classic mystery T installation that is part of the parade.
And I'm and I'm not 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 that's my life.
Hey, is everybody doing?
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.
All right. And don't don't don't let's just let this breathe.
Let it happen. Count it down.
I can't. I said we are driving by as a.
Oh, cool. You guys brought Mr. T. Oh, sorry.
Oh, guys, you guys brought Mike Tyson.
All right. 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 the 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 you can hear giggling and then just shut up.
Just shut up. This idiot.
It was Mr. T. Mike Tyson.
It's a pretty good giggle.
I completely get it, man. My my brain runs about.
It's like, can't you guys?
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, oh, shit.
Yeah, yeah. I 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 it.
All right.
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.
So I'm 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, obsessed with the repeat, repeat beer you guys did.
That is so good.
Yeah. And to get you get the flavor you got out of it,
not use lactose is unbelievable.
Yeah, we said they're completely vegan.
This is our second beer.
Glazed is the second beer we've done with repeat, repeat.
They'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, the what I'm meeting 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 doing.
But how in the hell did somebody know how to 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 Rhetorah.
Sean actually came to our beer exchange by himself, not for the brewery in 2017.
That's all of the experience so much that he contacted us next year.
That's all for the repeat, repeat.
That's awesome.
And so and so then you decided to come do this
and when it all materialized 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 Rhetorah people's ideas.
Daniel Sage gets the credit for that.
Daniel Sage has Instagram.
All of us do, but, you know, Daniel gets a little shy.
Hang on a second.
So from the birthing process to the execution, to the art, to then the sampling on site,
everything is about Bonnaroo.
Everything about Bonnaroo.
We've got the Bonnaroo logo thrown on there.
That is so dope.
Yeah, yeah, we're 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.
Yeah, yeah.
And Sean gets a lot of credit for it.
He he's been gung ho about all this and he is actually expecting a child any second now.
So he could not be here this week.
Is she giving birth here?
That would be really weird.
Not. But I heard that 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 so what I was rules.
So what I was really surprised about from 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. And we became really good friends with them.
You know, 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, you know, anytime we do that, every year that we do the beer exchange,
we always reach out to breweries, you know, ask for donations and ask for, you know,
stuff to give away. You know, we try to like be a platform for breweries.
And we also want to provide options for campers that aren't maybe not coming from
different areas. And so one of the cool things was like.
After we met repeat, we repeat and they had a collaboration beer.
We're sat here and we were like, I know, Carrie, you know, we've talked and joked
around about it for years about we just at this point, we just need our own beer.
At this point, we just need our beer. And then what's funny, because
we're surprised that Bonnaroo hasn't branded a beer.
That's really important. Yeah, that's great.
And the funny thing is, when you get that ad dollar from PBR, you don't really want
to divert the attention, if you know what I mean.
And the one 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. Yeah.
And they gave us their blessing to use it.
This is the first official it is.
It is. And I don't want to say it's endorsed by them, but it is approved.
We're very similar. We were in the same boat.
We had certain limitations, but they're all in.
Yeah. And by the way, I want to say repeat, repeat is the first act to do a on site
camp nut butter or nut butter.
This is stunning. Is it?
It's 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. 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 a great relationship that we've had with Shannon and Sean.
I mean, from from the whole process, from start to finish, it has been such a just
amazing like collaboration.
It like we went down for their Memorial Day release party.
And, you know, you can just tell how great and accepting it.
And like, you know, they're getting their foot in the market.
But, you know, this, you know, they didn't have to do this for a camp, you know,
at Bonnaroo. It was just something that the relationship was just great.
And it was something that we like we felt really good about the beginning.
And, you know, 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.
And I mean, they're selling it in Georgia.
They're distributing at their brewery.
So it's getting outside of just the Bonnaroo community.
And even better, 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 we had it was it was fantastic to see all of them
come out on Memorial Day.
We have 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 I'm getting nothing but lots of hearts from Jared and Kristen right now.
As I text and they're very, very happy about it.
Tom, good luck on their tour.
Yeah, their next show going on tonight.
All right. So there's Bonnaroo Sir in 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 is 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. Yeah.
How do you feel? Comfortable.
I mean, the weather was fricking awesome.
I'm a rooster. Yeah, who do you like?
Nut butter last night.
We had a visit for a little bit. Yeah.
We were there last year.
I tell you what Bonnaroo Sir does is what he's really good at.
He comes to camp and drinks all of her fucking beer.
I don't know what happens, but he's always drinking.
So OK, so let me ask you.
Do you stop drinking at some point?
You guys, did you get both of you have the lavender lemonade?
Brian, we know how to brand of that.
Get a picture of all stories.
Yeah, it's great.
Look how look how adorable they are.
It's the cutest couple of Bonnaroo.
They are winning.
Give them a sash.
You can call us a couple, but we're both power switches.
My dude. So TMI.
All right. So let me ask 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 the weekend like?
So I wish that I could tell you many, many details,
but I am 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 Kikagaku Moyo on Sunday at 1230.
And I know them because they're the only show I'm leaving camp before 5 p.m.
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 these guys get drunk early.
No, no, no, absolutely.
I'm not guilty.
Me and Mitchell, like, we're both like.
I had Nicky Timo in the lawn this morning.
In my first couple of years, I was like out there in the hot sun.
Like, you know, it's like seeing Chris Stapleton at 2 p.m.
and just like bacon in the sun.
Like it is like the older you get and the more experienced veteran of Bonnaroo,
you get, you realize that the hot shows during the day aren't worth it.
So I'm the same way.
Like, I don't really go out into the afternoon like trampled by turtles on Sunday.
It will be like my only daytime show that I plan to go to.
That is amazing. Everybody knows it different.
I've never heard that before ever is because, you know, of course, we're over there.
We're in a different world.
But, dude, like some of my favorite shows I've ever had at this thing is at two 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.
And I have to have such a callous to the sun at that point in time because.
Wow.
I don't know how much I pay for here, but yeah, like when I heard me yet.
Oh, OK, sorry. I get a huge case of the fuck. It's once it gets above 90.
Yeah, I'm a big unfreeze McGee fan.
And when they when they had their two sets a couple of 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.
Like if I can go out three hours in the sun or six at night is really how my clock works.
Yeah. 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, to me, like the show that I've said over and over and over that I will not miss today is Cherry Glazer.
Like how in the world would I be OK with myself if I said, no, it's just not going to work.
Gambino for me. Gambino today is the big one. He's on his last tour.
He likes he likes in cabs. So this is it. This is it.
This really frustrates me. Like if I did that, I would miss Cherry Glazer, Parquet Courts, AJR, Ava.
They go to the OK. 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 I 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 but I'm just saying, like, if I didn't move until five thirty, man, the things that I would miss, the absolutely amazing things that I feel.
Yeah, I get it. I get it. You understand what they're saying.
Yeah, there's some great sets that are, you know, in some years you really pick your battles like if there's a if there's a name that I want to see that I haven't seen live, like I'll definitely venture out.
But I'm coming right back afterwards. I'm not I'm not sticking around in center.
There's not enough shade like those trees that like you just see like the slum of people just surrounded the trees.
Yeah, it's like the it's like all the people is the sun's refuse.
Yeah. So to me, you know, with my bald head and everything like that, like I just the sun just doesn't trickle.
Well, all right. So if you don't do the midday stuff in the afternoon stuff, when you get to center sometime in six o'clock, right?
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.
And if you just take an extra 20 steps and go a little bit to the left, there's always a good vantage point.
More pro tips. You know, there are 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 matters never tell us.
There's bees, guys. We have no one.
You can swat them. We always designate.
We always designate the back left side of every stage for our campers.
We say, you know, hey, if you want to find somebody, if you're solo in and center or you had to go back to camp or you're venturing and by yourself, you can always find somebody in Camp Ritteroo on the back.
As a group camper ever felt limited because of group camping. Never.
Have you ever felt like, OK, well, we're going to go to a show.
But oh, but we got to wait for people if they ever want to meet us at back left. I really want to go up to 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 that I'm bringing tape.
There's no reference points here that that blade of grass is about that level.
Yeah, but I don't think we've ever felt like we've ever been like are missing out because as large as a camp we are and we've been Bonnaroo's largest camp for like this year is the first year we're not.
This year is the first one. And how do you know it's by choice. We did it by choice.
Yeah. 350 who got cut, who got cut and why they get cut. Well, so some strangers from the internet. We're sorry.
Strangers, the mad tea party, spill the mad tea party who got cut. So nobody's like just 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 of 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 rhetoric 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 is 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 three hundred three twelve three fifteen like we have in some years, it gets a lot.
I can only juggle about three hundred 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.
That's awesome.
You organize your chaos up front.
You can spill after.
I love it. Hey, thanks for having us.
Thank you guys very, very much.
Cool thing you're doing.
Thank you.
Thank you.
