I was jumping around rocking out like I was 20 something years old.

And like you just didn't care.

Well, jumping around like I just didn't have open heart surgery.

Am I going to die?

Yeah, I'm going. This is it.

That's the place to go.

You're going to a music festival that is anyway, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah.

That would have been on point for me, though.

Yeah. Dying at a festival.

Welcome back to the What Podcast.

I'm Barry. That's Russ. That's Brian.

We're a couple of weeks removed from South Star, the festival,

the brand new festival in Huntsville, Alabama.

We are going to continue to talk about that a little bit this week

and then probably again next week.

The reason that I want to we want to continue to talk about it

is because of what happened.

And on this show, this is the What Podcast.

We'd like to take a deep dive into music festivals.

We started to talk about Bonnaroo.

That's the reason we started this show in 2018.

And we realized we really excuse me.

We really like the sausage making.

We like we like looking under the rug.

We like figuring out how people put these things together.

We like talking about why we love them so much.

And we like having other people on to talk about them.

And later on, you're going to hear from a friend of ours, Jim Stryker,

a guy that we've Brian and I have known for decades.

Russ just met, which surprised me.

I figured you knew each other.

But Jim has been a club owner here in town in Chattanooga for many, many years.

He's also been a promoter. He's put on events.

He's also a fan.

Goes to Bonnaroo, goes to all kinds of festivals.

So he and his lovely wife, Heather, went down to South Star.

And I wanted to get their take because he and I talked before, during and after the event.

And so to me, just thinking about South Star and

it just everything and encapsulates everything we love

and don't love about these type of events.

Right.

Yeah, I've gotten to a point where I'm getting really tired of my outdoor events

getting ruined by the weather. Exactly.

I mean, this brand new phenomenon, weather messes up outdoor events.

Yeah.

A well laid plan gets thrown out the window very, very, very quickly when

when you got to deal with with with those kind of conditions that

the all the all the South is still dealing with in many respects.

I'm let me jump.

I'm glad you said that, because last week, I feel like I sort of over overlooked,

if that's the right word.

We spent so much time talking about South Star and our own first world problems, literally,

when people up in East Tennessee and the Carolinas are suffering.

And I didn't mean to just sort of slight that and, you know, talk about us having muddy boots.

Sure. Those guys, those guys are dealing with real problems.

And if you guys can help, there's you can go online.

There's all kinds of ways to help.

But, you know, I just didn't want to overlook that.

Sure. But if you can, the show needs to go on if you can.

And that was what they attempted to do.

And good on them for trying it.

Yeah. So that's the that was the point.

We've we've sat on here several weeks.

And this is a perfect example.

Brian, you and I, just to recap, we all three were going months and weeks ago.

This was for sure. This was on our calendar.

There's no way we're missing it.

And then Russ had a family member decide she's going to get married in Florida the same weekend.

A hurricane comes. Brian, you and I, you know, we're going Saturday.

We're going Sunday. We're going overnight.

Russ's wedding plans got changed.

He ended up going. Brian went Saturday.

And we'll talk about that a little bit.

I ended up not going because of just circumstances.

So that's what can happen with a family member.

And to me, that's what that's what's so fascinating about this whole thing is all the different elements.

Do you go? Do you not go?

Why do you go? Do they cancel?

And of course, they canceled on Sunday. So pretty crazy.

Yeah, I saw somewhere. I wonder if this is true.

Certainly could have tried to do some fact checking on it myself and Will over the course of the however long it took.

The answer to this doesn't need to be this moment.

But do we know if this is a multi-contracted deal with the city and a festival?

Because it's a three year contract. OK, I did.

I thought I saw that somewhere, but I didn't know where it was coming from.

So I wasn't going to be parrot guy on a podcast or on a social media saying, well, at least we get two more years.

Like, I wasn't for sure about that.

So that's good. That's good for everybody involved that they because that's not I wouldn't call that super normal to schedule.

I mean, we did it here with this here in Chattanooga with this bluegrass, the Bbma, the Bluegrass Association.

That's a little different than than your average festival.

So good on them. At least we know or they know everybody involved knows that they get another couple of cracks at this.

Yeah.

And I think even despite the weather issues, I would say overall it was a success.

I mean, from a production standpoint, I don't know what what ticket sales are like.

Obviously, they're refunding Sunday only and they're funding half if you bought a whole weekend.

So that's the right thing to do. But yeah, I mean, I think they're definitely there's enough for them to want to move forward and try again for next year.

Corey said he was already excited about what they've got planned for next year.

Corey Smith with C3.

People putting it on. Yeah.

And that's again, we're going to have another guest next week.

We're going to get into more of the city's side of it.

But that's the other we talked about it a little bit last week when we had Russ, a group that you were staying with, sort of the community side of it.

And we talked today.

You'll hear our guest, Jim Stryker.

He and his wife went down and I wanted to have them on because I talked to them, as I said, before, during and after and they were having a great time.

That was that was and that's no small thing.

People made the best of it. Right.

So that's that's one element element.

The Saturday shows were great from all reports.

And even the people who were there Sunday.

Part of the reason that Huntsville wanted to do this was to show off the city.

So it's more than just, hey, we're having a concert.

You know, hey, guys, come come watch the music and then go away.

It was designed to show off the city of Huntsville.

And I mean, I you have to say that was a success.

I mean, everything, everybody that I've talked to said, you know, they spent Saturday night after the last note.

They went out and shut down the town and then they got up Sunday.

And, you know, I won't say who, but I talked to somebody who was involved and they went out Sunday night and the bars were packed and the restaurants were packed.

And they were asking the bartenders and the staff, are you guys typically this crowded on a Sunday night?

And they said, absolutely not. Yeah. A bunch of people needing something to do.

That's a big deal. Yeah.

And the city of Huntsville is a pretty easily navigable city in the super trends among certain types of the walkable nature of everything and keeping things in a real tight knit kind of thing.

And that's a fun kind of fanciful kind of way of envisioning a community.

Yeah, it's a driving town, but so are most cities in the south and across the country.

And really, it's just very easily to navigate.

Huntsville is just plug in where you want to go.

And it's not very the terrain is is very simple to understand.

So, yeah, it sounds like people made the best of it because hell, you're already there. And if you already got a room, you're staying on Monday. What are you going to do? Right.

Well, hang out in Space City, you know, and not the overstate.

I mean, we're not I don't work for the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce, but the reason we do this show is the talk about the elements of festivals.

And the reason they did that festival was what we're just talking about, even though it got rained out.

The hotels and the restaurants and the bars made good money, it sounds like.

Hopefully, you know, anything.

Same thing happened here in Chattanooga when Sunday got canceled at Moon River.

I mean, every bar and every restaurant, every shop, you know, downtown was packed with people that were in town and had nothing else to do.

So, yeah, yeah, it definitely shows off the city.

So, again, no small thing.

So, all right, we're going to we've got an interview again with our friend, Jim Stryker.

I wanted to have him on because, like I said, he and his wife went down.

Jim, I've known forever bar owner.

So he offers that sort of perspective club owner promoter.

He typically goes to Bonnaroo, as he said, he does it the bougie way.

He's a you know, he's the RV guy.

But this last weekend, they were, you know, ankle deep or knee deep in mud like everybody else.

Yeah, you can't VIP your way out of mud.

No, mud comes for all levels of ticket buyers.

Yeah. So we talk a little bit, Brian, you mentioned and we'll probably get into it more next week.

Your experience and again, well, no, let's go ahead and do that.

Your experience to me is my nightmare.

This is what I this was what I just the nightmare.

Hey, you do the festival you're talking about?

Yeah. Yeah. Do I go? Do I not go?

You get in the car, you tell you.

Yeah. So I you know, we were communicating a bunch that morning.

And this is very, very reminiscent of that Sunday here in town.

A few years ago, the Moon River, we had interviews set up that day.

Brad from Band of Horses, which I spent a lot of time on that got axed.

And then this one, we had the same kind of deal.

So we didn't know when to leave. And this is certainly a case where you don't want to leave too early.

What are you going to do if you get there too early?

A lot of variables here.

So I ended up going around two o'clock rather than around 10 a.m. like I had planned.

And, you know, it was just as soon as I walked up, it was.

I mean, I don't want to badmouth the organization because I wasn't there long enough.

When I mean organization, I mean the organizational structure.

I don't want to speak to it much because I wasn't there enough.

But it had a lot of its same typical festival stuff where everybody you ask a question, they don't know the answer.

They either don't know the answer or they're plain dumb.

There's a certain level of human psychology to where you don't self preservation, where you just don't want to tell somebody the truth.

Right. Because you feel like that's the bad news is going to, you know, it's this weird cultural thing in southern America anyway.

And they'll always wanting to be friendly, even when it's being friendly is not the best thing to do.

And I when I was trying to find a place to park, I had three different people that I was sternly polite with.

Polite, but stern.

And like, hey, man, I'm looking for parking.

You got and I tagged at the end of it.

Same thing. I can't be the first person who's asked you this today.

And well, hmm.

Up that way, just say there's you're you're on your own, bro.

Just tell me something that makes rather than well up this way, maybe.

Come on, man. If you don't know, just say you don't know.

And if there's no parking and you're on your own, just say no parking.

You're on your own. And three different times I would find somebody and they gave me the same very, very, very, very polite, but not helpful.

Polite, but not helpful.

That was that was annoying.

That's anecdotal. Doesn't have anything to do with anybody else.

But when I got up to the gates, it's just it was so clear that this was going to be a muddy slop fest that I was going to just have a story to tell that wasn't that good, you know, that I went in.

And so that's why I decided with what looked like thousands deep to try to get in.

I wasn't going to go pushing my way through to be like, hey, look, you know who I am or people are waiting on me or I got deadlines here.

I wasn't going to do any of those kinds of things.

And then I just said, I'm going to take it back to the house in an hour and a half.

I can be standing in the mud watching Tom Morello or an hour and a half.

I could be sitting on the couch watching Indiana, Michigan.

I don't know, make up a name, make up a terrible college football game.

And that's what it was. So to me, no big deal.

It's an easy drive. But yeah, it was it was. Yeah.

It was the anxiety of making the wrong decision.

One of these is going to be the wrong decision.

I don't want to make that. But yeah, what are you going to do before you went home?

You could have gone campus eight or five. You could have gotten something to eat.

Green Bus Brewing is in Huntsville. I mean, countless things I could have been doing.

Just turned around and went straight back home.

You could have said, well, you know, if I'm not getting in here, at least I could, you know, bum around Huntsville for a few hours.

I'm I'm good at just cutting the cord, man. Just we're done.

We're done here. Snap. See you later.

It's kind of where that was.

That's why I wanted to. I just think it's such a display or whatever of all the different ways to do this.

To try to make it work. Right.

And you're going to hear as part of our as part of that, the interview with Jim and his wife and then Russ, you know, everybody who was in,

it was muddy up to their ankles and hips or knees, but having a blast.

So it's kind of that when you're in, you're committed, had a blast.

The music was great, you know, type of thing versus that anxiety of do I go?

Do I not? Do I stand in line? You know, that kind of thing.

So it's all I don't know. I don't know what the answer is.

There is no answer. I just think it's all kind of a this is what happens type of thing.

So all right. Anything else? Oh, I know we got a couple of news items.

Did you get your Oasis tickets or no?

Yeah. So I this is one of those, you know, me and then also me like the memes you see like me.

I want to get healthy and then me. Also, I want to eat tacos.

I kind of think my twenty twenty five was me not don't do anything.

Keep it. Keep it chill this year. Just do the normal Bonnaroo.

Keep it simple. And then also me. Which destination city, you know, internationally hubbed?

Do I want to go see Oasis? You can't have it both ways, dude.

So I had some friends talk me into looking into this.

They announced the five North. I think it's five North American dates. Mexico, city, Toronto, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles.

That's it. Going on memory. And I talked about this a little bit on some local stuff here.

These pre-sales, Barry and Russ, man, they're driving me nuts.

Like the complications of ticket purchasing.

I haven't had to buy tickets to a high demand event in years.

Bought plenty of tickets to events, but super high demand.

I haven't had to deal with. Man, those are hoops. I don't want to jump through.

And the the pre-sales get annoying and confusing.

And I sat around online in queue 30,000 deep and eventually got through.

And then it was absurd prices in absurd sections, offensive setup for the whole purchasing project.

And I X, X, X, X out. See you later.

You know, I'll rely on somebody maybe to help me out when it gets closer to the time frame.

If it works out, I tried to be a regular guy. I tried to get on and buy some tickets.

I was going to pay whatever it costs. And it just it was like the process was so discouraging.

It felt like you're not getting tickets like from the jump, from the start, from the emails, from the the the you're accepted for the pre-sale to every step of the way.

It just felt like get ready to waste your time, dude. It ain't going to work out for you.

But get your hopes up and have fun anyway. That's what it felt like. And that's what it was.

And so I walked away very disappointed from that.

What's the over under the two? Don't beat the shit out of each other.

That's a good question. It's a running question, running theme.

And it's and it's fair. But the only thing I would say to that is, is that Noel Gallagher, the older main singer songwriter brother, not the lead singer Gallagher,

he's a really pragmatic guy and he's a much smarter guy than anybody gives any credit to.

They fought a bunch of young people. His brother is a dope Liam.

He's a dope. He says stupid things all the time.

He's just a troublemaker. He is not highly intellectual type.

He just got a great voice. Noel's a really smart guy, writes all the music and he's a business guy.

And he's been saying for a decade and a half, y'all offer me 200 million. It's done. It's done.

Like he says that jokingly, but he'd be like, you got a couple hundred million? Then we'll do it tomorrow.

What's the stupid number? Yeah. And eventually it's now a couple hundred pounds, a couple hundred million pounds.

You're getting paid for this. He ain't going to let a fight with his idiot younger brother mess up his hundred million dollar payday.

I feel confident in saying that. I've been following this band long enough. I believe that's true.

He doesn't care about his brother enough to get into a fight with him is where I think that is because this is there's talks, there's numbers.

That show that they will outpace their earnings from the 1990s in eight months. Yeah.

You know, like those, those are real numbers based on everything you can start guessing.

Yeah. You're going to make more money real quick. Yeah.

The more money you made in an entire decade of your height of your popularity, they'll get along.

They'll figure it out. If I'm wrong, it'll be a funny story and we'll talk about it. Exactly.

All right. And real quick, because we teased it before, Chappellrone, your new favorite, your fanboy.

Yeah. She's canceled some shows. She's canceled some shows.

It kind of same thing with Jane's Addiction and Oasis.

I mean, celebrity, it's a heavy burden, man. She's dealing with it.

The rise to fame has been something for the record books to be talked about.

She's being pretty typical Gen Z ish about this in a lot of ways.

But you know, you don't, I don't want to be that guy, but there's a little bit of that.

I think it's kind of funny. I saw the show once. I probably don't need to see it again.

There was this great TikTok. I wish I could, we could regurgitate it on the show.

We really can't where it's somebody coming in. It's just dressed like it is a daddy.

Open the doors like Chappell. You have a show tonight, honey.

I don't want to play. I don't want to. My, my, my, my art is my like all this typical stuff.

Like, well, okay, sweetie, well, I'll go make you a little bowl of cereal when you're ready.

Come play the show now. It's so unfair, but it had millions and millions and millions of interactions.

It was quite funny. But hey, you know, what are you going to do? What are you going to do?

Oh yeah. I'm not judging her. I'm not in that space. I hope to never be in that space.

I'm not going to endorse anybody, dad. You don't have to endorse anybody.

Stop looking at me. They're looking at me. Why are they looking at me?

Why are you looking at me? I don't know. You dress like a clown on stage. That's why they're looking at you.

Exactly. Exactly. You get up on stage and sing and you dress like a clown.

You put on a clown suit sometimes.

Again, not making fun. I get it.

Love, hurt, and death. You know, if you're around here at all, you know I'm a chapel guy.

But I'll also laugh at people who look and sound silly. No problem with that.

All right. Anything else, Russ?

What's your next big...

Well, actually, this weekend coming up, I'll be at Cave Fest.

Cave Fest coming up.

Cave Fest. This weekend in Chattanooga.

Only because there's so much talk about festivals and crowds and everything.

This weekend in Chattanooga is the Three Sisters Bluegrass Festival,

which is a huge, wildly popular event for the last 17 years, as well as a hip hop summit.

So there are things happening.

You know, it just depends on where you are and what you're into.

So all right. So next, what we're going to do right now, we're going to do this interview with Jim Stryker.

Again, I appreciate him coming on.

It's just, you know, one more opinion on how South Star went and how much fun he had.

So here we go with Jim.

All right. Here we are. We're back. I'm Barry. That's Russ. That's Brian.

And we're here with Jim Stryker.

Just to sort of like I've said before, we like to do the sausage making.

We like to look under the rug. We like to see how the milk got in the coconut.

As my friend said, I still don't know 100 percent what that means.

Yeah, I don't know what that means at all, but I love it.

It just sounds funny.

We all kind of know each other. I thought Jim and Russ knew each other, but it turns out they don't.

Brian, you know Jim from way back. Jim is the guy.

You know, I worked at the paper for 30 something years. Jim owned bars during all that time.

Is that right?

About 25 of them, probably.

Okay. And there were two people that I always could go to. You and Mike Doerr.

Mike Doerr, who's a Camp Nut Butter founder, actually, if we're going to be honest about it.

But Jim and Mike were the people I would go to and say, hey, man, what's happening in this bar business universe?

And you always had the right answers.

But the reason you're on here is we're going to continue to talk about South Star because you went and you have a unique perspective, I think.

And again, going back to the we like the sausage making type of thing.

So I wanted to hear you were there with your your lovely wife.

And so we're going to get your perspective on how it went, why you went, what would be done differently and all that.

And plus, you and I talked several times over the last two weeks. You guys had a pretty good time.

And so first impressions, what do you think of South Star?

Location was great. I mean, besides the mud, of course.

But every everything seemed to run pretty smooth from the time we got there.

Had to park, you know, parking was fine.

We were fortunate the general mission parking was sold out and we were fortunate to find some outside parking close.

We walked up to the front gate, took me five minutes at will call to get my wristbands.

And then we had to stand in line and they had a separate line for those that, you know, either had media or VIP passes.

And we went over there and actually right next to the VIP, there was a line with about five people in it for general mission.

And I looked at the longer line and I went, hey, let me jump in this line.

And then this lady screams at me and VIP going up and sitting in line for an hour.

I'm like, well, you weren't smart enough to get in the short line.

I'm sorry. Let me ask you, Jim, just to get specific to that exact moment.

What time of day would you say that was Saturday?

I have a reason for asking because I want to correlate it with time that I showed up.

What time would that would be?

The gate right when the gate first opened, which what that day they did it at two to two thirty to thirty.

It was supposed to be earlier.

Yeah. Yeah. But since I postponed everything, what?

Cut a couple of acts started a little bit later with the gate, but shoot, it was exactly two thirty.

And the reason I ask is I've been absent from the show from the last week or so just because of scheduling and there's all the upside down planning we've had from the weather and everything.

I got there around two thirty myself, which in hindsight was probably not the best idea.

I probably should have got there a little earlier than the time on the ticket said.

But when I got there, it was one of those classic cases of and I know you've dealt with this from venues and events you've been to where no one really knows where the line is.

And some people are standing in a line five thousand deep when there's a line over here that's two hundred deep.

And it's not because people are being jerks. They don't know.

And I think that's just a victim of the situation, especially everybody trying to get in.

But I had a nightmare trying to get in. Oh, did you really?

With the mud pits trying starting to build by the second.

So I did notice. So I was looking around like that line with the five million people in it.

That ain't really the line. I don't think.

But that's just the natural herd mentality of the situation.

But it sounds like it worked out better luck wise for you than.

Yeah, I guess in your situation, it probably could have been well suited to have maybe some additional security posted up there, maybe correlating and corralling each line might have been a little more efficient.

Probably. I think I think there was just a lot of oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. We got to get this thing going. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

And so I don't blame anybody for the situation. I just I was curious that we were there about the same time that different experiences.

Yeah, and that's that's really why I wanted to do this sort of group thing, because I know, Brian, you had your experience and Jim, you had yours and your your wife.

That's what we want to talk about. To me, this is this this particular festival.

And this is the reason we're going to talk about it this week and next week is because it just encapsulates to me.

The festival, it's what can happen, right? I mean, it's a little bit of everything. Yeah, yeah, it's we've been all we've been to so many festivals and mainly, of course, through.

I mean, we've dealt with it in every kind of situation over the years. You know, big mud piles to pay everything went really smooth to dust bowls. Yeah, the way.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you bring an RV some years and some years. Have you always done RV?

I have. Yeah, I guess I'm bougie. Yeah. Shocking news on the web. I guess Jim Stryker goes a little bit above the norm.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've got my fire stick and I'm watching Netflix shows. I'm in the air conditioner.

Watch out. Reddit's going to have fun with this one. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I bring. That's why we had you on.

We had you on for the bougie crowd that, you know, listens to this podcast. I can't I can't I can't do a swamp ass.

But you did. And that's the reason you're here today because you and your wife, Heather. Right. Right.

I talked to you Saturday. You were driving up because I got I got the message that our interviews had canceled.

And I I thought, well, if anybody knows what's going on, because Jim and I have mutual friends that are involved in these types of things.

And I thought, well, maybe he knows something. And I called and you were like, no, we're almost there.

We're going. And I said, well, are you going to stay till tomorrow?

And I could hear Heather in the background. We're seeing Blink 182. Yeah. Yeah.

I was like, oh, that means I'm not going to get home. I was going the timeline in my head going, OK, it's 11 o'clock there when they'll finish.

It's our time. It's going to take an hour and a half to get out of the festival.

Yeah. People get so mad at me, Jim, when I travel to Central Time and then I spend my entire time doing the math in my head like every time.

It's like three o'clock. What time is three o'clock? No, no, no, no.

It's four o'clock if we subtract the one and add three.

And then like I start doing that from the time I get there.

People like, dude, would you just shut up about the time already?

Well, going from Eastern Time is great because you're like, I got an extra hour. Oh, my God.

This is amazing. I got plenty of time. And then, yeah, you got to give it back when you travel home.

But it was just so funny. Oh, yeah. Yeah. She's the boss.

Yeah, that was like I'm going to be in bed Sunday evening after dinner.

And she was like, no, you're not. Well, to Heather's defense in this in this specific festival, if you're you know, Blink 182 is the star of the show.

Yeah. Whether I like it or not, they're the star of the show.

And but it didn't get well, it didn't get there. So yeah, unfortunately. Yeah.

All right. So you guys got in and then you had to I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth.

What happened the rest of the day? You know, the distance between the stages.

So, you know, essentially you go in and you and you find your area you're either going to hang out in.

We fortunately had VIP tickets, which they had a section for it.

Well, you go inside the VIP. Of course, it's it's muddy, too.

They did have a big, tinted dry area that you could hang out in. But I guess because of the inconvenience,

they allowed you free beer and sodas backstage.

So the friends that went with me, of course, were big drinkers.

And they're like, this is the best thing ever. And that, you know, I don't drink anymore.

And I'm like, OK, well, glad you guys enjoyed it.

But, you know, you find your little area and then you go back and forth between the stages, you know,

and you didn't have much time. You know, once one ended on one stage, the next act was up.

I mean, up and going right. And you probably if you were at one stage,

you probably missed the first song walking back because it took you a little bit longer because of the mud.

You know, so if we would have been on the right side of the stage,

we wouldn't set up and we had to walk all the way across the entire mud field of the main stage and get to the VIP area again.

And that put us up close to the front of the stage. So where were you guys at?

They were at home. I was there. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, I was trying to get in and I was. Yeah, I'll let the driveway.

I'll let Russ continue in a second real quick for anybody because I wasn't on with you guys last week.

All that that I started with with the line and all that to get to get my wristband and everything.

None of that was as smooth as it was for you, Jim. I didn't go in.

I took a trip to Huntsville, walked around the place, grumbled to myself a little bit and then was home in time for,

you know, whoever the Vols were playing that night. Like it was it was a disappointing run for me for sure.

But so you just did a road trip down and back. I mean, it's an easy drive, as we all know.

You don't want to take it for no particular damn reason.

But yeah, it was it was just not where I could get a good idea of what was going on inside.

And I was only going for a few hours anyway. I said that up front, especially once the weather rolled in.

And so, yeah, it was a disappointing day. That's for sure. You know, but hey, you know, yeah, it's happened before.

This is kind of and we're going to talk next week. Well, I was there. I know you were.

I'm going to come back. I'm going to come back. All right. Well, you were asking. I just think this is such an interesting,

again, the microcosm of this is what can happen with festivals.

That's why I wanted to have Jim on and and the and the four of us talk.

I mean, you know, we do the deep dives. We talk about Bonnaroo, obviously, mostly.

We also talk about we've talked about the city festival versus the camping festival versus, you know, the whatever.

And this was to me such a great example of what can happen and what did happen.

Russ wasn't going to go. Yeah, Russ was the one not going at all.

He was not going anywhere. Ended up having the whole weekend.

Jim, well, half the weekend, half. Well, yeah, but you ended up having a weekend.

I was going all three days, Brian saying or one day, you know, it's just this is what can happen.

And that's why. But the thing that continues to stick out to me, except for Brian and his, you know, there and back.

Most people had a really good time. Yeah.

You weren't going to miss any of the shows, I mean, because the stages were so close in distance.

Russ, what do you what do you think that it made it really nice?

I mean, it was literally over a hill and that was it.

And then so, yeah, you know, some festivals or stages are so far apart that you're you spend half the next act walking to it.

Yeah. Trying to figure out where to go. Yeah, Russ.

The layout was great. I mean, pretty much from anywhere in there where you stood, you could look out and see everything.

OK, here's this stage. Here's the other stage. Here's food.

Here's restrooms. Here's this, you know, it was really easy to navigate and get around.

And, you know, like you said, yeah, as soon as one band ends on this stage, you got to be at the other stage.

So you're either missing part of the end of one set or you're missing the first song at the other one.

But yeah, you got in there early, right?

Russ, you got a pretty good look at things early on and you got a full day of it, right?

I got there. Yeah, I had a pretty full day.

I got there about two thirty or so.

But our Uber driver dropped us off at the at the back entrance, not at the front.

There was a little bit about where the drop off point was.

So I got a little confusion there.

But yeah, yeah. And since I had a media wristband, they let me on through at the back.

But then once I was back in the backstage area, back of house, I guess, there was no real way to get into the venue.

I had to walk all the way up across the fence, almost to the very front.

And I finally just saw kind of like a little break in the fence and I snuck in, came in behind somebody into the festival.

He already has credentials to. Yeah.

People turned around and looked at me that like we're working that booth or whatever.

And I was like, no, I'm supposed to be here. I own the place.

Whatever. Yeah. He must be important.

He came in the secret way. Yeah.

So that's how I got in. And yeah, Jen Blossoms saw them pretty much stayed the whole day.

And of course, it was muddy. It was muddy before anyone even set foot there just because of how much rain it got.

But yeah, it was great. Well, let's let's go ahead and do this because you brought it up.

But talk about your highlights. Both of you.

I know, Russ, we talked a little bit with the show we did last week about, you know, the day.

But we didn't get into the music because I wanted to wait because I know Jim and Heather saw it and he had some thoughts on it, too.

But what were the highlights? I mean, well, let's say it this way.

First, it sounds like everybody who was there had a blast. Right.

I mean, the shows were right. The Tom Morello we're going to talk about.

Stefani, everybody, you know, she really came and put on a great show.

So, I mean, TLC, I heard was great. So you guys tell us what was the event.

You know, when you go to a show or you're at a show or, you know, producing a show

and you hear everybody just singing one particular song, you know, the whole crowd singing.

Well, it seemed like, you know, every act.

Well, it was every act they had on. Yeah.

Every it was sing along time with every single band that played.

There was a number of songs for each band.

So, you know, of course, with, you know, Gwen Stefani and Shinedown,

those two acts having probably the most hits. Yeah, it was more prevalent.

But gosh, yeah, it was it was what I say to you, Barry, it was it was a stall.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a lot of fun.

My favorite act, of course, are the Rock acts because I've done so many of those.

And almost every act on that first day's bill had played for me at one point.

So, you know, it was always for me, it's always great to see Shinedown.

And then the bonus was seeing, you know, I was really disappointed about Jane's Addiction breaking up right before.

You know, it was kind of like I finally got tickets to see Earl Smith in Knoxville.

And then I tell my wife that afternoon and then, you know, at eleven and then two o'clock that day, they announce, you know, they're breaking up.

But, you know, and so entering those ages, Jim, you know that, you know, I was super excited to see Jane's Addiction because who doesn't want to sing Jane says, you know, right?

Yeah. Ben caught stealing was the one for me, man.

And for all of us that didn't do it for the last 30 years, yes, we all definitely wanted to.

I'm 100% the same boat as you.

So, but then they announced Tom Morello and I was like, well, what's Tom Morello going to be like by himself?

Oh, it was awesome. I was about to say pretty awesome, right?

Y'all answered that question. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It was definitely a highlight for me too.

Yeah. It was, I don't, it was my favorite set just because he went through a medley of rage and it was like.

I told you guys two weeks ago, I didn't spoil it on the show, but I was like, I'm seeing what he's going to do and it's going to be good.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I hate that I missed it, but yeah, it was, you know, you know, I was jumping around rocking out like I was 20 something years old.

Like you just didn't care.

Well, jumping around like I just didn't have open heart surgery. Am I going to die?

I'm going, this is it. That's the place to go.

You're going to go to a music festival. That is anyway, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. That would have been on point for me though. Yeah. Dying at a festival.

Yeah. And the mud.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

What I love about this is this, just this idea is, you know, you're there, man.

You're muddy. Let's go. Right. Oh, that's what I sounded like. Everybody. Yeah. That's what I heard, Russ.

Yeah. I mean, at this point, I mean, it was early in the day and you know, we just didn't care about the mud. It was, yeah, it was muddy.

And you know, watch where you step and you were getting dirty, but Tom Morello, I mean, come on. So yeah, yeah. It was still pretty early though.

Was it like this when you first started walking in the mud? You know, we, I mean, I knew to wear, you know, mud shoes or shoes you didn't really care about.

But at first, when you take those first few steps, you're like gingerly walking in it. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's like, yeah, what am I doing?

Yeah. Yeah. Five steps in, you're like, yeah. Right. You're like, you look down at the shoes and you're like, yeah, they're ruined forever.

And then, you know, you just don't care anymore. And, you know, and then the whole time I'm seeing a couple of people fall here and there.

And I'm like, I'm going to be so pissed if I fall in this. Well, and that was one of the problems I had when I got there is I didn't know how far I had to walk.

I had to park pretty a little ways off and I didn't want to wear my galoshes, my boots, my festival boots, because they're not the most comfortable things in the world.

So I thought I'll just I'll walk up here and see what it looks like. And I estimated that if I went 50 more steps, just 50 more, just no matter how big they are, that many steps, these shoes were going to be covered and caked into the ground, into the earth, which I wasn't ready for.

So then when I went back to get the boots, that was when the rain came harder. And I said, you know what, guys? Yeah, I'm out of here, man. I wasn't proud of it. I didn't do it and laugh. I didn't do it mad. I didn't do it angry. I just said sometimes the first text, just not the cards for the day.

The first text I got Sunday morning was from Jim, probably about nine. Bring shoes you don't give a shit about. I got them.

The cool thing about and anybody festival goers will know because this is all part of the festival experience is the weather and it can go any number of directions. But when you're in it with the people, whether you went with them or not, Jim and Russ were both there. They didn't go together, but they were all in it together.

And if you do it right, which most people who are dedicated to do that do do it right. You know, you guys had fun. You guys mentioned it yourself, Jim and Russ and me and Barry from the outside have heard many talk about how, man, it was a lot of fun. Boy, it didn't look like it.

If you were just taking pictures and saying, check this out, guys. But that's a unique thing to the festival experience. Yeah, the rain wasn't, you know, fortunately, it wasn't like one of those rains that was coming down. It was just like a drizzle all day long.

An annoying mist. Yeah. Yes, exactly. And the weather wasn't cold. No. So it wasn't bothersome. You know, it was just there. And of course, it made the ground just it.

The further in the day, the mud got thicker and thicker because of all the people's tromping on it. It just made it a huge mud soup. It was. Yeah, it looked pretty dangerous. And that's why they didn't have a second day. Jim, I know you're a sports guy.

But at least you have been over the years. Did you did you go to the this? What did they call the All-Star Lounge area where they had all the games on? Was that still going as per plan or maybe it wasn't because of the weather? Did you see that?

You know, outside of Russ, go ahead. I'm sorry. No, they had the tent going. And I think that was a pretty popular option because it was one of the only places that had cover where you could actually come in and get out of the weather.

And yeah, it was a little drier in there. Did you see it during the Alabama game? How many people were inside there? It was packed pretty much all the time. Yeah, it was a show in itself. It was. Yeah, it was a good thousand plus people watching that game.

Yeah. Yeah. So that we need to point out for Russ, who's not a football fan. Alabama has a football team and they're doing what they were until they were until yesterday. Is that what they were playing? OK, I couldn't figure it out.

Sorry.

So yeah, before we move on to rugby game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The band. We're not talking about the country band.

So yeah, so Saturday was fun, right? I mean, you both I know I got a text from Russ probably whenever it was TLC was playing and you were like TLC is playing. They sound great. I'm cold. I'm wet. I just kind of want to go home.

It was kind of sound like your son trying to get home. It never really poured down rain. But yeah, eventually you just got soaked from all the drizzle. And as soon as the sun started to go down, it did get a little cold. And of course, the mud was getting worse.

By the time we stayed for about three Gwen Stefani songs and then decided to head out. But by that point, I mean, it was so muddy everywhere you looked. You had to watch where you were stepping. And at that point, it was kind of like, yeah, I'd be surprised if they're able to open this back up tomorrow just because of how muddy and how wet everything was Saturday night.

How are you looking at it Saturday evening, Jim? Were you making a day of it? Did you have a weekend plan that you had to then just readjust into Sunday? How was that going for you at that moment?

Well, let me remind you, he'd already been told by Heather, they were staying for Blink. Oh, that's right. I forgot. Yeah, I knew. My bad. I was too. No, no, I say that because I want to ask about Sunday too. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If yeah, if they would have been open, I would have been there.

I would have had no choice. Mud or no mud, whether I liked it or not. But yeah, I didn't mind it. Just, you know, walking out, like I think, you know, of course we had to see the entire ending. And, you know, I'm the old guy going, let's go a little bit early, trying to beat traffic a little, you know, but sunny. And she's like, no, we came all this way.

We're good. Yeah. Yeah. And so for her, good for her. Yeah. Yeah. Glad she's not here. It's a partnership. Yeah. But yeah, it took a little bit more to walk out because it had gotten so bad at that point. Yeah. Like Russ said, yeah, I would have been surprised if they would have been running Sunday because it was it was bad. I mean, the later it got, the worse it got.

Cause it just compounded by rain and more people stomping through it. Yeah. It was tough. But then, you know, for me, I kept thinking, who's got to pay for their repair on this? I mean, I told you, Barry, I was like, man, this is going to cost somebody. Oh, I can already hear you doing it.

I know. Yeah. Whoa, man. That's side. That's the promoter stuff over there. The promoter. Who do I know can cut me a break on this? Yeah. Who's my insurance guy? Who's paying for this? Yeah. Russ, I'm going to hold off on Sunday. We'll talk maybe next week, I think, and get your, what you did Sunday. But I know Jim, because you had a kind of a cool moment that you did Sunday.

And I think that you told me about that. I think several people did. And this is the other part, I guess, that I thought I found interesting about this festival. It was a lot about Huntsville itself. Right. The reason we, and we talked about it months ago and we had Corey Smith on from C3.

And we talked about it when we had Mayor Tim Kelly from Chattanooga. The fact why in the world is Huntsville now have a festival. Well, a lot of people don't realize Huntsville is now the biggest city in Alabama, it's growing. And this was their effort led by the mayor to, you know, bring young people make it hip, basically, I mean, I don't know how else better to say it.

And I've heard from several people who were like, I had no idea Huntsville was this cool. I had no idea Huntsville had this kind of thing. Did you guys go out Saturday night or did you go back to the hotel and shower and get cleaned up? And I know you did go out Sunday. And I know you ended up running into somebody you had hoped to run into. So I kind of want to ask you about Huntsville and Sunday and how it hosted this event.

Yeah, yeah, of course, once once we found out that, you know, the festival is off. And we had already planned to go eat lunch somewhere. Of course, you're Google searching places to eat, we came across a place called Connors. They have one in Knoxville. We've been there before. So we're like, yeah, let's go to Connors and eat. So you know, we travel to the location and we come to this big area that

kind of it's, I guess like a mall situation with eateries and shops. But it was really nice. And I looked at my, you know, wife and I said, Hey, this is like something I'd see in Florida and like Naples or West Palm. It was a really nice setup. Then of course, we went into Connors, we're standing in line and then up from behind me

comes Zach Myers, the guitar player from Shindown. And, you know, I had posted a little story, you know, when I come to festivals, I'm always really fortunate to like you kind of have like a media type pass or, you know, somebody that's been in the business pass to be able to allow me backstage or in certain areas. And I was like, man, I hope I run into Zach because over the years, Zach truly was that guitar player.

in the band that was just really super nice. Hey, Striker, have you met my parents? You know, Hey, do you want to come on the bus? You know, that kind of situation with Zach. And so, you know, he's always been really cordial. And you don't expect people to remember you from years gone by because they meet so many different venue owners or promoters or media people. But Zach has always went, Hey, Striker, Hey, Striker, and you know, he's been a really nice guy.

And you know, and run into him there and you know, got to catch up real quick with him. And he was the one guy I did want to catch up with because he's been so nice. And you know, and he told me that, you know, this was the last show for the band. I was like, really? He goes, yeah, we're gonna be in the we're gonna be writing until May. So you know, probably not going to hear much of Shindown until May. Until festival season rolls back around.

Yeah, it's just, I love that story. And but I'd also talked to some other people that were involved with the festival who were like, I had no idea Huntsville, you know, I want to go back just as a visitor. So it worked, apparently, you know, even with the cancellation on Sunday, and that it sounds like the idea of bringing eyeballs and people to Huntsville.

Well, let's get did it. Let me do this real quick, guys. Bear with me for a second. So we're, we talk a lot about Huntsville on this show and others about their efforts to, to create a better live scene to bring more hip cool factor to the city in different different ways and primarily using live music and live entertainment as a way to do that.

Jim, you you know, you've been doing this virtually your entire adult life starting with or at least from my earliest memory here in the city of Chattanooga, an old club called the Bay, which did just extraordinarily well from meeting from a patron going, I never saw your books, right? Like, I don't know.

I don't know how your end of your year look like. But from a patron as a young person going, it was it seemed like a success, but that was a very different Chattanooga then. If somebody's looking, you know, you as a promoter, you as somebody who's looking to be in the business or are already in it, what do you see from city governments that could make you be enticed to to do more business, to promote more shows or to open a place like the Bay in a city, let's say Huntsville, let's say Chattanooga inserts.

Springfield, Illinois, wherever. What can end what can governments do that would make you say, well, hey, I had this grand idea of bringing bands like Shine Down and Kevin Kitting, Driving to Crime, my buddies from, you know, other bands from Athens, Georgia, wherever it might be. What would what do you think about that dynamic from 30 years ago to today?

So we've had a little bit of technical difficulties. So we're going to try to reset this. Jim can hear me, we can hear Jim, but he can't hear the other two guys. So the question Jim was about when you were booking the Bay, which was a club you had what 2025 years ago, could you do that today? And if so, or if I guess more, what's different?

What might be different versus today versus them?

Yeah, I think, you know, as far as, you know, Brian was talking about finances on it. And, you know, what could a city do to help facilitate this? You know, the the big thing for an independent promoter like myself, essentially, when we're doing shows, they're almost like one offs.

It's not like, hey, we've got multiple shows with multiple artists and multiple towns. So if you take a hit in one town, you may do phenomenal in another town, it kind of offsets and balances out in the end to where you do make a profit.

So we're always taking a big risk. Every time we book a show, whether it's local or you know, people have to understand there's a cost with everything. You're, you're paying security, you're paying advertising, you're paying all those things that add up.

So, I don't know what a city could do unless it was, you know, there was some kind of financial tax break to help a venue out in the end.

You know, like they do in movies, you know, you film a movie in Georgia, you get a state tax break.

Would it help independent promoters to get some kind of tax break? Sure, anything's going to help that bottom line. And of course, you know, you hope the venue is good enough to where it's going to draw in itself to where you've got a good base to pull from.

So you really got to know your audience. I don't know if it's great for a venue to be all over the place, you know, doing heavy metal and then doing pop and then doing this.

I don't know. It's tough nowadays to really kind of figure it out. I was, you know, I knew my genre was mainly rock. So, you know, if you went to the Bay, you knew you were going to see the new up and coming rock acts.

I was stuck to that. And of course, you know, I lived by it and I also died by it because when rock started to drop off, you know, of course, I seen my finances drop off and to a point where, hey, look, it's time to shut this venue down.

I'm not making money at it anymore.

One of the things I always respected and the reason that I always reached out to you is, and you know, we've had this conversation for decades. You book the bands that bring crowds, you didn't book the bands that you liked right that was the that was the one conversation

we always had. Because I've had so many people say well we need more hip hop we need more this we need more whatever and clubs should book local bands.

You guys are business people right you book what makes money.

Yeah, you've got to, you know, you would like to book, you know, it's that that that kind of thing that gets you in trouble as a venue owners, you're not booking enough local, you know, and why aren't you booking all the local bands.

Well, you know, it comes down to a number of things. You would like to book all the local bands because you like the people in the bands, you know, because most of them are patrons to.

But you can't you can't afford to have a bad night.

When you're a venue running on margins like that.

Especially, you know, on the weekend that's that's your bread and butter.

To offset it years ago.

You know I would switch to a dance club after the band was over the last hour and a half, instead of closing down right after the band ended I'm like, look, I've got another hour and a half two hours sometimes to keep creating revenue.

So let's put a DJ in, you know, and that that helped some and.

But yeah, it's like, and to the point of you can't book what you like, because, you know, it's it's that thing you always hear about drug dealers if you're a drug dealer better not do your own drugs.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think, bring it back to Brian's question. Did you ever feel like the city was helping. And by that I mean like the visitors Bureau the city to the chamber.

Were they doing anything to say come to Chattanooga and, you know, go to Rock City but also we have nightclubs we have live music venues we have restaurants type of thing.

I didn't work with them ever really, but you did hear once in a while they, they would talk about the nightlife you know the love and support that I've got mainly came from, you know, people like Brian and you, you know, media of some type and it was radio or the newspaper.

And that's where I got most of my support and, you know, call you up, hey you want to do an interview with whoever you know and and then Brian talking about shows.

You hear him talk about shows, you know today, what's going around town so you know that's that's where my support came from and I think that's where you find most of the support.

Interesting. All right, I know you can't hear Brian you had a question, and I'll pass it along.

You know, just some people that over the years that have stuck out the most to him coming through the Bay and other ventures he's had I know he talked about see there, Kevin Kenny is a local guy I know everybody knows just just some name drops if he wants to.

Oh, he's asking about some of your favorite shows that you booked.

Kevin can see there's yeah some of your favorites.

Oh gosh.

Finger 11 is always my favorite thing.

Yeah, yeah, I love those guys.

You know, there was so many gosh I mean there's acts I couldn't even I couldn't remember that they even played I had so many acts. Somebody goes yeah I love doing I seen 30 seconds to Mars there and I'm like, I have 30 seconds to Mars.

You know, like and then I'd go through and Google search I'm like, that's what the Robert Krieger. Yeah. Oh yeah, Brian wants to know about Robbie Krieger doors from the doors.

Yeah, yeah.

He's old.

He's always been old.

That's what somebody always asked me about Alice Cooper said you interviewed Alice Cooper's, how's he look does he look old I said he looked old when he was 22.

Right.

George Clinton and P funk, you know, and you always hear stories about George Clinton P funk and George Clinton comes there and, you know, you hear stories about how musicians were broker went broke, and then he shows up with two tour buses 30 musicians and I'm like, no wonder he went broke.

Still broke.

He was at the time, I think under the influence and no, it's 245 and you're looking at the tour manager going hey he's got to get off the stage. I'm like, he's going to get off now I've got to close down you don't understand the beer boards gonna, you know, yeah, site me.

And they're like turn the power off I'm like what you can't just go up there and tell them to turn the power off. You know.

Yeah, you go tell him, you go tell him, you know, Prince coming into the venue, you know, just, there's so many great acts.

You know it's like Nickelback we had those guys played for years. You know those guys were tour dogs before they broke people don't realize that they had probably played the bay.

And they were famous at times before they became famous. And their tour, their tour manager, his name's nicknames chief Kevin's Eric.

We were talking this past year and he was like, you know, we knew we were going to become famous. The last time we played your place that was the venue that told us we were going to, because the line was down the block.

And it's being able to reminisce with some of these tour managers or artists about, oh wow you do remember coming to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to a little, you know, hole in the wall place called the bay.

Wow, you do. Yeah.

Well, it's funny, you know, I say this all the time, every band started somewhere. I don't know of one that just, you know, from the shoot was all the sudden superstars so they had to play the bays and then, and whatever around the country so that's why it's always fascinating.

All right. Jim, man. Thanks for your time. Thanks. Yeah. Yep. Thanks for putting up with this technical difficulty. We don't know what happened. Hopefully this work but always fascinating to talk to you, man.

Thanks guys. Appreciate it. Good seeing everybody. Russell. Hey, nice meeting you.

Talk soon. Next time we'll run into each other and tromp through the mud.

Sounds good.

All right, so there you go again. To me the takeaways from South Star were, it was fun to get out there and sing along to all these songs you didn't know you knew but you knew. People made the best of what they had. And Huntsville, despite the rain kind of showed out and presented itself very well. I mean those are my takeaways. What do you guys think?

Go ahead, Russ. You were there. No, I agree. I think it, despite the weather, it came out good for Huntsville showed off the city pretty well to a lot of people who probably would have never considered going to Huntsville or anywhere near there. Like I said, I had a last week.

I had a couple friends from Vancouver, Canada, who made the trip down because of South Star and they were blown away with how cool the city is and how neat Huntsville was. So yeah, I think and like I said, we've got a three year contract, I believe, for this festival to be in Huntsville. So, you know, they're already planning next year, I'm sure.

Yeah, that was the biggest takeaway was getting the confirmation that there was the contractual agreement, which is nice. So happy to see they're giving another try. Put in August and September, you might run into the same problem next year. We all know that.

But yeah, Huntsville is a cool city. And the only thing I did on the way back was like, I need to make sure I do something different here. Did you know, I guess you know, because you've driven that way recently, at least you have Russ, there's a Whataburger in South and Scottsboro.

I heard that in Scottsboro. So there I'm not a big fast food guy or want to sit around and talk about it all that much. But in and out burger and Whataburger down here in the south, we've been hearing about the other these western Midwest west side of the country.

Fast food joints. Well, there's one in Scottsboro of all places. So I was like, well, if I'm gonna do something, I might get a Whataburger on the way home. Wow. Place sucks. Somebody get lost. Oh, there it is. Somebody driving to Gold Shore and got lost. I don't know. I don't know what's going on over there. But they've got a Whataburger and it's just another crappy fast food joint. So that's the thing.

You didn't even stop at Buc-E's. Hell no, I didn't. So there's no Buc-E's on the way there. I'd take a hard left and head to the other side of the state. All right. All right, guys. So next week, like I said, our plan is to have some officials or at least one official from the state.

We're going to continue to talk about South Star a little bit more. And after that, I don't have any idea what's gonna happen. We'll figure it out as it goes along, I guess. We might take a break. Yeah, I mean, we're hopefully close to a maybe a Shakin' Ease lineup drop soon. And then, of course, January is right around the corner. We'll be talking Bonnaroo 2025. We'll be too long before that stuff starts to happen. We still got a little bit of lull, but we'll figure it out. We do have some special guests lined up for the end of the month. But I don't know the details on that one.

So anyway, if you guys are still listening, thank you so much. Like, subscribe and do all that stuff. And we'll be back. Thanks.