Superfly was just over five years old when co-founder Rick Farman and three of his former college buddies and fellow co-founders decided to create what became Bonnaroo. Farman joins Brad, Barry and Lord Taco of The What Podcast to talk about why they wanted to do it, and why they thought it might work.
In addition to discussing the history -- and future -- of Bonnaroo and other Superfly events, Farman digs into their newest venture: Superf3st. A Web3 community-based experiment, Superf3st aims to build an event from the community up, giving members a chance to make decisions and influence the direction of the festivals itself.
Listen to the episode now, and check out video of the whole chat at Consequence. After that, make sure you review, like, and subscribe to The What at the links above or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow the Consequence Podcast Network for updates on all our programs, and grab the "Radiate Positivity" T-shirt at the Consequence Shop.
Topics: Bonnaroo, Superfly, SUPERF3ST
Guest: Rick Farman
| 19:45 | Superfly's Rick Farman remembers being on stage with his fellow co-founders in 2002 as the first Bonnaroo came to a close and thinking, "What were we thinking?" |
| 23:29 | Was it hubris or naivete that led the founders of Bonnaroo to think they could present a festival that would draw 70,000 people to a farm in Middle Tennessee? Rick Farman shares his thoughts. |
| 55:30 | Superfly/Bonnaroo co-founder Rick Farman joined to talk about the origins of Roo, but also to talk about a new venture called Superf3st that will be created and curated by fans. |
The What Podcast? Which fans this year that matter? Looky, looky, looky. The team's back. We got Brad back. Barry Courter, Brad Steiner, Lord Taco. Thanks for dressing up today. Yeah. And we got a lot of cool fans. We got some cool people. We got some cool people. So we're going to go ahead and get them on the show. We're going to go ahead and get them on the show. We're going to go ahead and get them on the show. Thanks for dressing up today. I put on pants. He's got that 70s, what is it, aerobics collar thing going. Did you cut that yourself? Yeah, but he's an aerobics collar. 80s, whatever. Did you cut that collar out yourself? When I think of Lord Taco, I think of aerobics. He's a maniac, that guy. What are you guys been up to? I haven't seen you forever. Missing you? I'm missing you. Maybe missing you. You're all moved in. I'm glad. Do you like the new set? I love it. I feel like Oprah. And I've got a brand new set to show off. I love it. Love it. Yeah. Glad you guys are sold. What if it's all just a green screen? I made this up. And just like Taco, it's not even real. This is a green screen. Yeah. How's everything in New York? You know, it's getting there. It's been a tough landing, to be totally honest. The move was a little stressful. The getting the stuff was a little stressful. But nothing will top the stress of bringing in two dogs to a city and one of the dogs not knowing how to shit on a leash. Yeah. We had several discussions. Can I tell you the stress and the worry and the anxiety of every moment that you're in this house, he's going to take a pill. Do you want to shit on him? And then you take him outside. He's got so much ADD because he doesn't know what in the world he's sitting in. Nothing around him is new. He's a southern dog. And you move him up into the big city. He's a New Orleans dog. Took babe into the big city. I took babe into the big city. Yeah, that's what I did. So that was a little strange. But I feel like last weekend, we finally got our feet under us. We live right next to Prospect Park, which is this beautiful, beautiful park. So we spent damn near all day getting lost in there. And it finally started to feel comfortable. I'm not going to lie to you. No, man, I really miss New Orleans. I really, really, really miss New Orleans. Especially right now at Jazz Fest going on. And it's crawfish season. Oh, God. Seeing my friends post about crawfish and Jazz Fest, I literally want to get off of social media. Just delete, delete. Have you not found a crawfish place there in New York yet? You know what turns it out? Just ask them for a little crawfish. You want to suck the head? I'd like to be there when you do. I think you could probably go down Long Island and find some Chinese crawfish. But no, no, it's not the same. In fact, I even contacted a guy named Crawfish. Yeah, actually, the Bonnaroo Crawfish guy. He will mail you crawfish boiled or live. And so if I wanted to, I could get like 10 pounds of live crawfish and do like a boil on my stove. I don't know. I'm going to figure out how to do this because I am dying. Nice. Well, go down the street there to your bar and ask for some Budega and ask for some crawfish. Sweet tea and some crawfish. And let me know how that goes. Have you found a Powell's replacement yet? Oh, so, Powell's. I do have a funny story about a bar. So everybody, if you listen to this show, my favorite bar in the world is a place called Powell's in my neighborhood in New Orleans. It's the greatest bar I've ever been to in my life. So we take a stroll around our new neighborhood here in Brooklyn. And I found a bar literally a block away from me called Best Friends. Best Friends. How ironic is I go from Powell's to Best Friends. Couldn't find a Chums? No. Yeah, every move again is to make up acquaintances. Acquaintances, yeah. Someone I know. A guy I met once. Just have a hard time seeing Brad Guy at a Best Friends. I went to a guy. Go to a Powell's. What's wrong with the Best Friends? Go to a Powell's. Go to Best Friends. OK, whatever. Yeah. But it's been going OK. What about you? How's dad? How's taco? How's everybody feeling? Everybody's great. I'm great. Just got back from Shaking knees in Atlanta. Oh, yeah. I went to Shaking knees. Shaking knees was fantastic. I'll tell you what, if ticket sales are down, it wasn't evident at Shaking knees because it was just as big this year as it was last year that I could tell. I thought that Shaking actually did well. It did great. Everything that I heard, see through, is really happy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, good weather too, right? Good weather. Excellent weather. Great lineup, obviously. Yeah, great lineup. If we could have that weather for Bonnaroo, perfect. And you understand you got to play celebrity for a little bit. Three times. Somebody, some in the crowd, came up to me and said, oh, you Lord Tago from the what podcast? I said, yeah. So two of them were named John. Weird. And then we had Aaron, who was actually on the show back in 2020 before everything shut down. So I'm pretty excited to see them. I handed out stickers. I'm out of stickers now, by the way. All right. Oh, God. OK. I thought we did our head stickers. Didn't we do head stickers? You did a few. Didn't we do? I haven't ordered any. We need to start doing those again, huh? Well, I'm waiting on a deal from Stickermule. Yeah. See? Very sticker. I feel like I got another one around here somewhere. Well, now that I have my own head, I got to get my own stickers. Yeah, but yours would have to be a huge sticker. It's going to be a huge what? Huge sticker. You saying I got a big head? Sticker. Got it. That head that Brad had made is a little oversized. Well, I got the digital version. I mean, they can cut a sticker any size. Yeah. So who'd you see us shaking? Who was the standout show? Standout show for me was Godspeed, You Black Emperor. It was absolutely unreal. I've never seen it before. I don't even know the words you just said. Godspeed, You Black Emperor. Is that an anime? No, they're like a post-rock band. They were, I think they were most well known. They had a song on the 28 Days Later soundtrack. But of course. I love that movie. What? I don't even know what movie that is. Oh, OK. Is that a movie? Oh, that's right. You don't watch movies. They have a TV show. I do. I like movies. Godspeed, You Black Emperor. Yeah, they've got a, I mean, it's like a 25 piece band. And it's like they've got violins and drums and guitars and you know. A Canadian post-rock band which originated in Montreal in 1994. Wow. They've been around forever. Yeah. Cool. All right, Barry. I'm going to give you some names of albums from Godspeed, You Black Emperor. All right? I'm going to give you a name of the album. You tell me if it's a real Godspeed, You Black Emperor name or totally made up on top of my head. OK. Number one, lift your skinny fists like an antenna. Got to be real. That's absolutely real. That is real, yes. Of course. Beyond infinity, the cat killed curiosity. Sounds real. That is fake. Totally fake. Good for you. All right. That's good pull. How about this? All lights fucked on the hairy amp drooling. Wait, that's a Taco Twitter post. These are Taco tweets, yes. No. I'm sorry. That is an actual Godspeed, You Black Emperor album. Wow. Wow. What an odd pull this is, Taco. Totally odd. And the best part was their visuals. They had a guy with like four projectors in the back, real film projectors, like 8 millimeter. And he was running film strips through them to project just colors and patterns. And it was just bizarre, but it was all real. I mean, this wasn't like a screen. And at the end, he would actually run it through and slow it down. So it would get heated up by the lamps. And it would just straight up burn. So the end was just like it was crazy. Cool. Wow. OK. Very cool. You taught me something today, buddy. I did not see that coming. Did not see that coming. So the show today is actually one that we've been trying to work on for a few years now because we have multiple times on the show talked to Ashley Capps from AC Entertainment. But a lot of people don't know AC Entertainment had a partner when they started Bonnaroo. It wasn't just AC Entertainment. And it didn't just operate by AC Entertainment, even though for us, being in Chattanooga for all those years, AC Entertainment was right at the road. So they were the ones right off the top of our head. And we had close proximity to it. But the partners that started this whole thing with AC Entertainment was a company called Superfly. Superfly ran by four guys, one of which is Rick Farman. And Rick Farman, one of those guys that started Bonnaroo, is our guest today, going deep into the history of Bonnaroo and then what he's up to now and then the future of festival life in general. It's going to be a lengthy one, a very lengthy one. Yeah, he gave us a lot of time and he could have gone another two or three hours. I don't even think we did. I expect him to. We're gonna do this again. Yeah, we didn't even touch. I know, I know. We didn't even scratch the surface of some of the nerdy things that we really wanna talk about when it comes to Bonnaroo festivals. But they also produce outside lands and they've got another project that they're gonna work on too next year or so. I really loved it. Rick is a, he is a dialed in dude. Yeah. This guy knows his stuff, huh? I'm glad we got him and you're right. We actually, with AC Entertainment, we've had, because as you said, proximity. We've talked to him and Jeff Cuellar. I don't think we avoided Superfly. We just never. We just didn't know anybody there. Didn't know anybody there and this was great. It wasn't until I got to New Orleans where I started hearing names and the people that were operating Superfly. In fact, I didn't know Superfly was still operating because they weren't necessarily in New Orleans anymore. It just turns out they've sprawled across the country and they're doing incredible work still with outside lands. So that's really, really exciting today. I hope that you enjoy this. It's a big one. So if you gotta pause and take a break, do it. And if you do pause and take a break, please rate, review the show. It'd be very helpful. All right, here we go. Rick Farman on the What Podcast. All right, y'all. Perfect. Look at that. Look at that dreamboat. Looking good. Trying to match the energy on the other side here, guys. I hear you. Where are you these days? Where are you set up these days? I am in Berkeley, California. Okay, because it's weird. Superfly has kind of taken on a little bit of a, it's a sprawl these days. Where's the main office now? Still in New Orleans. Still in New Orleans anymore. We just reopened a new office here. I mean, a new office in New York about a month, month and a half ago, something like that. So, obviously with everybody, like everybody, we were kind of fully shut down in terms of, in person work and stuff like that. How big has Superfly gotten? Because the, isn't the legend, there are four guys, and then when did it become the major entity that it is now? Just for starters, are we starting yet? We can. Okay, just wanted- This is what we do. We just shoot the shit for a little while. We do conversation. Okay, cool. I'm used to sort of just knowing when we're, you know, when we're live, when we're going and when we're not. Yeah, Barry knows when he's around Brad, everything's the show. Yeah, once you see records, you better be on point. Because it'll show up somehow. The reason I ask is because, you know, not only do we have such a long history with Bonnaroo, the legend of Superfly and then AC Entertainment, and then this guy, you know, moves to New Orleans, and I hear all about the Superfly cats. And then I, two months ago, pick up and moved to Brooklyn. And you know, it seems like, it seems like I'm just following Superfly's path. Come out to the West Coast here, man. You know, it's good. It might be next. It might be next. So, sorry, was your, what was your question about, like how big are you in there? Yeah, how big has Superfly gotten these days? We're about 100 people today. We do kind of three different things. We obviously create, you know, festivals and events and experiences that we create the IP for, and like we, the brand and everything. We have long had a marketing services business, so an agency that helps, you know, different businesses create meaningful marketing programs. But a lot of that kind of frankly got born out of work we did at Bonnaroo very early on. You know, we kind of came up with this basic ethos of how we work with brand partners. And it was all around, if we're gonna get a brand involved in one of our experiences, there has to be a value for the fan, right? As you know, at Bonnaroo and, you know, other events that we created, we don't have your typical stage signage and presented buys and stage names and all this kind of stuff. We always felt that if a brand was gonna be part of one of our experiences, then they needed to, you know, have something really tangible, you know, that the fans felt was benefiting them, that it was adding to the experience and to the community. And so we did, you know, that so well early on, and we onboarded a lot of brands into that kind of way of thinking that we ended up, you know, kind of starting a business, you know, kind of a complimentary business around helping brands do stuff like that. And so we get to do some fun stuff. As an example, this year we will be, you know, producing a bunch of different events for companies that, you know, bring together their fans, their fandom, you know, generally media companies and things like that that have, you know, kind of talent and, you know, content that there's a lot of fandom around. So we love to do, we love to bring communities together and people together in whatever format we can. Well, when it was just the four of you, how old were you when you really started getting this Superfly thing together? Yeah, so I'd say the very beginning of Superfly was a part-time affair, right? That was really our first ever event. We actually just celebrated this past February, the 25th anniversary of the first ever Superfly show, which was Take Funk to Heaven, Mardi Gras 97. And it was a show at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. And when I say it was at the Contemporary Arts Center, I say that loosely, it was in the parking lot in a warehouse that was half covered. So it was not in the beautiful, gorgeous building that is the Contemporary Arts Center. It was in their ramshackled parking lot. And so that was the, the beginning of it was really doing things like Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, then we started to become a regular concert promoter. And it wasn't until kind of I graduated that it was like a full-time thing, right? So that was a few years later, 19, really probably 2000 was when we were kind of like, okay, let's see if we can do this for a living. And what I mean by that is like, can we pay our bills? And literally, we used to joke that we ran the thing as like a socialist organization because we would pay each other based on what our expenses were. If one guy had a car note and the other guy had student loan and somebody had $200 in rent, the other guy had $300 in rent, that's how we figured out what you get paid. Just list your expenses. And that's what we're gonna cut checks for just so we can do this. I hope nobody included the girlfriends in some of these expenses. It was pretty above board. Fortunately, we were in New Orleans where it was generally inexpensive to live. And we were all doing a little other things on the side, bartending. Well, this is where I was going with this because I spent so much time in New Orleans, the very good friend of mine, Howie Kaplan, reminds me every time I talk about Bonnaroo, he oftentimes reminds me that, don't worry, Brad, the reason Bonnaroo exists is because of the Howie Wolf, because the Superfly guys started right here. Well, that was certainly one of the venues that we were working in heavily. The Howlin' Wolf, Tipitina's, Maple Leaf, and then a lot of venues that were off the radar, like the Riverboat, Cajun Queen, and the Masonic Auditorium that's on the 13th floor of 666, no, no, sorry, 13th floor of 333 St. Charles Avenue. We did some shows up in there. And then as we kind of started to graduate a little bit, we started to use some of the theaters, the Sanger Theater, the Orpheum, the State Palace. And really, our Jazz Fest event, and it's relevant right now because the first weekend of Jazz Fest, sorry, the second weekend of Jazz Fest is just kicking off today right now. My wife's down there having fun. And that event, like our night shows during that, and the sort of the energy that was formed around that really became the basis for us thinking, oh, you know what, maybe we can take this energy and do it in a place where we could have full control, where people could come and camp and kind of create a much deeper experience. But in a lot of ways, it was similar because we were working with a lot of the same artists, and there was sort of a community thing that was starting to happen around these night shows that we were putting on. That's where I wanted to go back. When you were talking about it, so Superfly was basically five years old in 2002 when Bonnaroo started. So, and it reminded me, we had Ken Weinstein on a couple years ago, and he told the story, and I wanna get your take on it. It was basically a phone call to him that said, hey, we've got this event. We don't even have a name yet, I don't think. And it's gonna happen, and what did he say? Brad, like six months or eight months? It was pretty soon. But then he remembered that moment when you and I guess your partners and Ashley all ended up on the stage on Sunday night looking out at that ginormous crowd and thought, I think we can do this. This might be a thing. First of all, did he remember it right? And if he did, what was, tell that, tell your version of it, I guess. Yeah, Ken who, just to remind everybody who's listening in here, Ken has been, and is the, was from the very beginning, and is still is the publicist for Bonnaroo. Incredible guy, incredible business partner to us as we were getting this going. A lot of the early work around how we message what the festival's all about to the industry and all that kind of stuff. Ken was really influential in. And yeah, I met Ken because he represented the band Galactic. And we were managing Galactic at the, right around the time we were formulating the idea around Bonnaroo. And so we just started this friendship around that and working relationship. And so he was the first person I thought of when we needed somebody to help us with the PR messaging. And yeah, that moment that you were talking about there, Barry, it's kind of a little embarrassing almost that we did that. It's something none of us would ever really do again. And we didn't ever do after that. But I think there was a tradition in the music world of where the promoters and the producers would sort of MC a little bit. Bill Graham did that famously, right? You listen to a lot of old Grateful Dead bootlegs or whatever where there's somebody introducing the band and it's Bill Graham. And then, you know, Quint Davis, who's a huge legend in the music festival scene, the guy who created Jazz Fest, he does some MC stuff. But I think those guys, they have a different level of stature, almost or something. And, you know, so we, I think, felt like this thing at the end of that first event to like, oh, we should go say thank you. And so we all went up on the stage and did that. I think we were all deer in the headlights. We have no business being up on stage. That's not what we do. We should be in the background. And so my recollection of that moment was, why didn't we just do that? Like, that was a little scary and let's never do that again. But there also was a celebratory moment, of course. The fact that we, you know, that actually happened. We actually pulled it off. You know, it's, you know, you can have a lot of dreams in your life and you can put a lot of dreams out there. And when some of those things come true, it's pretty profound. And I think we just felt a certain level of gratitude at that point that we wanted to express. Let me follow up real quick. Was it, I mean, you had just graduated college. You guys all met sort of college age. Was it a little bit that hubris of youth that made you think you could put on an event that size? I mean, that's, that's, it was pretty, you did it without marketing. You did it without advertising. You did a camping event in the middle of Tennessee, which now, you know, all of us looking back now say, well, yeah, it's been a huge success. But at that time, I mean, I'll be honest with you, even at my paper, which is 64 miles away, we didn't care until the morning of when we got the word that the traffic was backed up from, you know, here to Nashville. And then it became an issue for us. Was it just that sort of hubris? Was it just naivete of youth or did you feel like you knew what you were doing and you knew it would do well? Yeah. Well, two things I'll pick up on there quickly, Barry, you know, that story you just told about you guys not really kind of paying attention until then, it wasn't just you. I mean, even the local community and even some of the powers that be that we were dealing with, I think because it was, you know, pretty underground. In other words, you know, like you said, there's no traditional advertising. It sold out right away. I think there was a lot of skepticism in general locally of whether this was real or not. And I have some great stories about the aftermath of that that I'll have to share sometime later. But to answer your question, you know, we, you know, I often when I'm advising young entrepreneurs, which I like to do from time to time, often kind of tell them that story about the fact that like we didn't know what we didn't know and that was very beneficial. Like I don't know if I knew what I knew now when I ever started Bonnaroo, right? So I'm not sure if it was hubris as much as naivete a little bit, you know, like I think we, you know, the atmosphere that was surrounding, you know, the formation of Bonnaroo, there were a couple major things that were going on. But first and foremost, the Superfly partners, we were all going to a lot of festivals and events and we were looking really at the landscape of that stuff just as much as fans as we were from a business perspective. You know, we'd see these lineups of all these European festivals roll out and we're like, oh my God, like if we could just go to something like that, that would be so fun and none of us had the resources or ability to do that at the time. I think one of my partners maybe had been to a few European festivals, but for the most part, you know, it wasn't that accessible to us. We were going to a lot of the smaller domestic festivals, things like High Sierra and Telluride Bluegrass and there were a bunch of small festivals in the Northeast that don't exist anymore, you know, Burkefest being one of them. And we were sort of seeing what was going on there with the camping thing and sort of what there was forming around that. We had our Jazz Fest experience. So that was sort of like the soup that we were like, okay, like there is this thing going on here in terms of festivals that isn't happening in America, but it's a thing that goes on in other places. And, you know, could we use the basis of what we were doing during Jazz Fest and some of these things that we're experiencing in a smaller fashion, could we do a mega version of that here, right? Like that was a lot of the real initial thing. Now from a business side, what you had going on was, this is really at the beginning of the formulation of what Live Nation is today, right? You had basically the consolidation of the concert industry kind of coming together. And I think at that time, you know, most of the general industry was not focused on things like this. They were focused on the amphitheaters. They were focused on, you know, sort of the things that needed to come together in order to have that consolidation happening. Remember, this is in the wake of Woodstock 99 that was, you know, obviously, you know, publicized as a, you know, disaster and all that kind of stuff. And so you had this sort of, I think, a little bit of like, you know, festivals are not as, you know, interesting for the mainstream industry. And you had a lot of the other parts of the industry, like the agencies and stuff like that, because they were seeing this consolidation, they were encouraging folks like Superfly and AC Entertainment to get together, to know each other. And in fact, you know, one of the ways that Ashley and I first connected was through, you know, an agent, Tom Chauncey, who's a great friend of all of ours and represents a lot of amazing artists. He kind of was one of the facilitators of like, hey, you guys should know each other, you know, in this sort of consolidated business, the independent guys can have some strength by coordinating. And so, you know, that when we all kind of got around this, you know, look, our expectation was not that it was going to sell out in two weeks, was not that we were going to sell 70,000 tickets the first year, to be clear. We would have been happy if we just, you know, got it done and we got out of it alive and, you know, didn't lose money. And, you know, if we had sold 30 or 40,000 tickets or something like that at that time, I think we would have felt like, wow, we did a festival of this big and that's great. And we got the poster. That was always an important thing to us is getting, you know, the poster with all the names on it, the Superfly logo and that kind of stuff. Like, that was really our expectation. So I think it was part, you know, just youthful enthusiasm and naivety and part, you know, having our finger on the pulse of kind of where the fans were at, because we were the fans, right? We would have been the first people to buy a Bonnaroo ticket. I promise you that if somebody else had done it, we would have been the first in line, you know, flag waving, ready to go. And so I think a lot of it was really, you know, coming from that place more than anything. When you started putting this together and you, I mean, as the really first go around in making a festival, what were some of the challenges? What was the biggest challenge that you ran up against? What was the thing that made you say, I don't know if this is going to work? Well, there was, you know, one big factor that we had that gave us a certain degree of confidence that we could pull it off. And look, the biggest thing that Superfly had done before then was, you know, a series of concerts during Jazz Fest, the biggest venue being, you know, 3,000 people and no camping or anything like that. Ashley had done a small festival called, I believe, Mountain Oasis, but it was, you know, a few thousand people or something. So he had a little bit of a framework for that. But what we really benefited from early on is that we were able to tap into the team of people that had put on the large scale FISH events. And so, you know, FISH was on their hiatus at that time. And I had built a relationship with the FISH team through being one of the sort of facilitators of creating Oysterhead because Oysterhead, the band Oysterhead with Trane Estacio, Les Claypool and Stewart Copeland was sort of formulated around one of our Jazz Fest super jams. That's where the super jam comes from, by the way, for, you know, Bonnaroo, which, you know, we can talk about that if you guys want at some point. But the genesis of that, that had been a concert series very similar to what happens at Bonnaroo now that we had been doing for many years during Jazz Fest and other times a year in New Orleans. And we got to know, you know, some of the people in the FISH universe through that. And so when we were initially talking about this, I started to call a bunch of them, you know, starting with John Paluska, who was FISH's manager at the time. And I think from his perspective, you know, he wanted to keep that team together a little bit. He would be, you know, he didn't want them to just kind of all go their separate ways and not continue that sort of muscle memory of doing things at this scale. And they also, I think they had like a lot of equipment that they wanted to rent to us. So there was a way, you know, it was beneficial for them. And, you know, to their credit, they were incredibly gracious and generous with, you know, advice on, hey, if you're going to do it, here's how you do it. And so we really, from an operational standpoint, the fact that we were able to tap into that crew of people, you know, it gave us a lot of confidence. Of course, you know, some of the challenges that unfolded, right, the traffic and, you know, some of the logistics. I mean, when I think back on the level that we produced the event at the first year, you know, it's not something I like, I'm that proud about. I'm proud that we did it and that it was safe and that, you know, everybody got in and out eventually and, you know, was, you know, obviously, you know, the basis for what it became. But as somebody sort of who was intimately involved in the operations and the setup of it, you know, we all knew that we had a lot to improve upon after that first year. You did have a second one, so. That's huge. We did. And we learned a lot in that one, too. And we learned a lot in the third one. You know, which year do you think you finally hit the, started getting things right and organizationally making sense? And when do you think you finally got in the pocket? Well, I had sort of said to everybody at the beginning, after the first year, I would say, that I wanted to be really good at it after five years. And I wanted to be able to just show up after 10 years. Now, that didn't really happen, but closer to reality than not. But I'd say it took us a good four or five years. You know, we needed to experience, you know, a wider range of things, right? And we needed to build a certain amount of infrastructure, like, for instance, the exit into the site, right? Like we needed that. We needed to build more roads. We needed to put drainage into the property. We needed to put in permanent electrical and things like that. And so, but I felt like after five years, we kind of had lived enough of it. We had had horrible rain. We had had dry seasons before that caused dust. Like we had sort of experienced most of what, you know, the variability of elements and situations are. And I felt after 10 years, we were getting pretty good at it. Well, I mean, I think once there's two things here. Yeah, because there's, I always said that that Torrential rain storm in that third year really felt like a game changer. You know, it was one of those, we're going to test you to the nth degree and shake you as hard as possible. And we're going to see if you're going to survive this. And then a couple of years later, you had the dust storm that was just absolutely awful. It really sort of crafted the space a little bit differently. But all of that becomes a lot easier. You correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of that comes a lot easier when so many of the other things were done right. Like for instance, the user experience. You keep talking, you talked earlier about not naming the stages. And one of the very first shows that Barry and I ever had was the reason I love Vodaru so much is because they always took into account the user experience. And I don't feel like I'm getting sold to every time I turn around. I've said that since the beginning. I don't feel like they had their hand in my wallet. That's right. And so when you get some of those basic things that so many festivals miss, I think the other stuff eventually comes around and becomes a little bit easier because you're not worrying about the things that you have to hire 15 PR teams to do. Yeah, you know, it really relates to what I said earlier. We were the fans, right? We knew that some of those things would not be done in a way that maybe they were happening in other places wouldn't work for the Bonnaroo demographic that we thought would want to come to this. And because we were the same, it was easy to know, right? And look, we had the advantage of success too at the beginning, right? Look, art and commerce are difficult, right? And it's always hard to manage, you know, how you put something together that, you know, you really want to truly be a valuable creative experience and really like something that people, you know, really benefit from. And at the same time, you know, you're running a business and you got, you know, things that you're responsible for. And look, I don't think this is that different than what artists have to deal with, right? Like artists are both a artistic expression. That's why they do it. But this is their livelihood and it's a business. And so, you know, figuring that out is always a challenge. And the more that you can do it in ways that you put yourself in the shoes of who you're trying to serve, right? And you kind of try and use your creativity to meet some of the needs that you have from a business perspective to marry that. That's where I think, you know, the basis of our success around the things you're talking about has come from is that that was really our volition all along, which is, hey, how can we make it feel good if we were the fan? And how can we make it also feel good and be a win for the various business elements that we were serving as well? And we still operate that way to this day on so many levels. Like that is guiding principle for what we do as a business. No matter, you know, whether it's something we're doing for ourselves or something we're doing in service for somebody else. I want to say this, Brad and I have said this on the show many, many times, but you and Ashley and the guys that founded this have given me personally so many unbelievable moments, concerts and shows from McCartney to Radiohead. I mean, just on and on and on. And thank you. But I don't know if you remember you were also there sitting right next to me at one of my all time favorite funniest moments ever on the farm, which was the oh, God. Oh, God. Here it comes. I didn't know. I don't know. Rick was was Rick there. I know Rick was there. Yeah, I had to bring it up. You won't remember. We were doing the media tour and you and I were in the golf cart. Quayar Jeff Cuellar was driving. Brad was in the back and we were driving into where in the woods, which was brand new and we around the corner and they had moved the Mr. T giant head. And one of the great things we love is to pick on each other. And Brad hates to be wrong. And so he he blurt out, hey, it's Mike Tyson. And it's like beat one beat to beat three and Quayar couldn't stand it anymore. He was so nice because he's leading the tour. Right. And he finally says, no, it's Mr. T. I don't think was there. I don't know. I sit right next to me because I remember we were doing a tour together. I had to bring it up because you're on the show with us. And of course, it's an opportunity to embarrass Brad. I thought I honestly thought you were going to say the day because that was at the same day that we walked to the what stage on Wednesday. And I look back and I think that was the year before. What podcast issue? Okay. Just because if you're going to if you're going to if you're going to if you're going to bust my chops here, I'm going to make something very clear that we have been fighting over for years, Rick, and you can be the judge and jury on this one because you're from New Orleans. You've driven up and down that street. Is it Calliope or Caliope? Come on. I think it's Calliope. My man. My man. Thank you so much. Thank you. The stage of Bono is Calliope. I had to think about that for a second because of that. I wanted to make sure I wasn't getting my things confused. But yeah, I think it's pretty pretty sure it's Calliope. I'm going to die on they moved the hill in it's Calliope. No, we resolved this last episode with Kyle. I don't care. He's literally the guy that started it. I'm going with him and not a guy. I want to talk about what I want to transition and then talk about what you got going now with Superfest. But you'd be as good as anyone. What do you think? Where do you think music festivals are today? 2022. I know we're coming out of an unprecedented event that sort of hit the pause button. And it seems from where we're sitting that we've got a bunch of festivals. Unbelievable number. Fans have a ton of options. Not just Bonnaroo, but boutique ones, big ones, small ones. You know, some of them in their backyard. Some of them they have to, you know, travel a great deal. Where do you see the industry right now? Well, look, I honestly don't pay a ton of attention to sort of the day-to-day machinations of what's going on out there. I'm pretty focused on the things that we, you know, work on. But I think, you know, what you said is the case. Like, there's a lot more, you know, I would say diversity of festivals and, you know, it's being, you know, become more niche here and there. Right. Which is something we saw happening pre-COVID shutdown and I think is just continuing to pick up kind of where it left off, which is interesting to me. I'm not sure I would have expected it that way. But I think, you know, things being sort of specialized and focused, whether it's an artist doing it or, you know, second or third tier city doing something, you know, just starting, you know, to become more and more niche sort of experiences. And, you know, we've always looked to Europe as sort of where the future is. Because when we first started this, you know, that was the case. Like everything in Europe was, you know, many, many decades more advanced in terms of the evolution of the festival market than it was in America, all the way down to even the equipment that they had, frankly, over their tents and, you know, the like, comparatively to what was available over here. And, you know, what you had certainly at the peak and I don't know where it is at now, I haven't followed as much, but of the European and particularly the UK festival market, you saw a similar thing where there were just a lot of really niche orientated events that kind of spurred off of the bigger things that were, you know, had been around and have been around for, you know, decades. And I think it's a natural evolution of things. And I think from a consumer standpoint, it's probably really awesome, right, to have this amount of options and diversity and choice and, you know, accessibility to these things. So, you know, in many ways, like, you know, look, the creativity being expressed through this is a real positive. You know, this has been going on for eons, right? People gathering in this format, all the festival, whatever, you know, it is, it's been happening forever kind of thing. Nobody invented this and it'll continue to happen and evolve and morph in ways that, you know, people driven by, you know, producers and people's imaginations, as well as, you know, sort of what the market opportunities are. And I think we're just kind of in another, you know, kind of interesting evolution of that with the weirdness of, you know, coming back after COVID. I hear you when you say that, but do you think that the big three, at least the big three American festivals, do you think they're in any sort of trouble? You know, I don't think so. No, what I'm seeing out there, I mean, look, first off, you know, one of the really nice things for the market of that stuff is that you do have very big companies that, you know, have a lot of resources and a lot of, you know, incentive to continue these things on at a very high level. And so I think that, you know, for the most part, you know, that is a real benefit of the consolidation of our business, right, is that you do have, you know, businesses that can withstand the ebbs and flows of these things, because that is the nature of it, right? You're always going to have like any kind of business, you're going to have your high points and your low points. And really, you know, it's having the access to capital and the ability to withstand those low points that make things durable. And that's very hard for small business. And it's a, you know, not easy, but easier for a large business. And I think we sometimes lose sight of like, you know, why some of this can be a good thing, right? It's easy to sort of maybe, you know, look at what could be a negative around when businesses consolidate and things like that. Well, there's good reasons for it. And sometimes those things are very beneficial to consumers. And so I wouldn't underplay, you know, that in any capacity. You know, I think, look, what I'm seeing with things that I'm still involved with, I'm seeing really good signs, right? Like we're doing great with a bunch of our experience related stuff and some of the remaining festival stuff that we have. And so I just think you're going to like anything things are going to evolve and change and be lumpy a bit. And, you know, that's the nature of business. That's the nature of market. And the thing that you are involved in now that's sort of in the same vein of highly curated specialized event operations, right? Is that what Superfest was sort of born from with that idea? Well, Superfest is a new thing. I'm happy to talk about that. The other thing that, you know, we still produce these days is Outside Lands, the festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate. How is it that all these that we've never been outside lands? I mean, it is one of the great ones in the country and have never been. It especially knowing what we do. Yeah, well, I'm only going to blame you for that. Yeah, thanks. Well, now you're getting the hang of the show, Rick. You know, it didn't take long, Brad. You know, so no, man. I mean, you're crazy. You've been to New Orleans Jazz Fest. I mean, well, here's this is a very sort of subject in this house. We moved to New Orleans two days after Katrina. I mean, two days after Mardi Gras, two years, three years ago. And then two weeks before a global pandemic sent us all to the house. And we bought we didn't buy we rented a house inside of the Jazz Fest neighborhood. We were on Ursuline and we got that house specifically so we could walk to Jazz Fest. I get a job that brings me to Brooklyn in the city a week before Jazz Fest. No more Jazz Fest. And you've never missed three Jazz Fest. Yes, but you've never been prior. We got one Mardi Gras in us and then we got no zero Jazz Fest. I love Mardi Gras, by the way. I'm a huge Mardi Gras fan and personally, I'm more interested in going to Mardi Gras than Jazz Fest. It was one of the great. I love Jazz Fest too. It's just for my personal things I'm interested in these days. It's the great two weeks of my life. It was legit two weeks. Mardi Gras is amazing. Very underappreciated event nationally. I think people have a warped perception of what Mardi Gras really is. That's exactly right. I mean, most people think it's boobs in the French Quarter. And you don't see any of that. None of that exists. Very deep cultural event with many, many layers and flavors. By the way, not to get off on the tangent here, but the best part of Mardi Gras for me was Skull and Bones waking up on Mardi Gras Day, which is very, I can't say if you don't like doing things afternoon, you wake up at five o'clock in the morning and you go to Treme, which is the oldest African-American neighborhood in the country and you watch this crew come out in full outfits. Right. And the whole point of Skull and Bones is to walk around the neighborhood and beat on the doors and wake people up on Mardi Gras Day. And they chant through the streets. They've got an incredible drum circle they create. It's one of the most magical moments of my life. It is very cool. Super fast. So where were we? So well, we were at Outside Lands still. So you got to make it to Outside Lands. You maybe go to Jazz Fest first. Although, you know, we have Outside Lands in August this year. You guys are all invited. Come on out and come check it out with us. You'll it will feel very different and very familiar at the same time. Right. You will notice the style that we produce at and how things are done. And sort of the some of the look and feel. The line is incredible. Who is who's mainly are you guys booking yourself? Most of the booking for Outside Lands really happens with Another Planet, our partner on that festival. So kind of like we partnered with Ashley at Bonnaroo. We partnered with the preeminent local Northern California promoter, Another Planet. They were sort of the, you know, principles behind Bill Graham Presents after Bill passed away. They for a time ran that business and then kind of went off on their own and started, you know, what is Another Planet. And they're awesome people. They're really close friends. They operate all the awesome venues here in the Bay Area like the Fox Theater and the Greek Theater and the Bill Graham Civic and all that kind of stuff. And so because they're so good at and so entrenched in the regular day to day booking of talent through this region, they really handle that. And like you said, Brad, I mean, they do an incredible job. Like it's it's it's hard. It's really hard to book a festival. You know, people, you know, some of the insight like, you know, to share on that just quickly is that like people are always question. Why don't you have this band or that band or why is this band at the same time? And then, you know, let me tell you, it's not for reasons because of the way the person booking the festival wants it to be right. If the festival if they could just wave a magic wand, it would all be perfect. But that's not how it works. You got a lot of, you know, masters to serve their all the different artists, their representations, their schedules, you know, their production. Like it's a it's a jigsaw puzzle on top of a jigsaw puzzle on top of a jigsaw puzzle. I mean, it really difficult job. So the people that do that, you know, that do it really well are and to still do it mostly independently to. We're very fortunate to be in business with those folks. And actually, sorry, because you said jigsaws. I heard somebody describe it as putting a jigsaw puzzle together without a picture or shapes. That's pretty good. Yeah, it's probably pretty good. And having to negotiate with, you know, some some pretty, you know, strong willed people on the other side of the coin. So, you know, so that that's that come out to outside lands, though. It's really it is, you know, what really is for us for the way that I kind of for our history interpret it. It's in between Jazz Fest and Bonnaroo. It's taking the best of both. Right. You have sort of the advantages of a city festival in terms of the comforts that you get along with that and that format. And then, you know, you have like this incredible Bay Area culture to play with. And then you have the creativity of, you know, our our team and what we do there. And, you know, it's it's it really is a special, special. And that's what this is. What year is this for outside? I think it's 14 minutes. It's been a minute, hasn't it? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. We got a pre-dial there. I mean, it's just I mean, what a fantastic festival. Congratulations. The so what? Tell me about Super Fest. I read a little bit about this. It sounds exactly like you were talking about. It sounds exactly like you were describing where the industry where festivals where live experiences are going in general. Yeah. Although with a big differentiation in how we're doing it and what the idea of it is, is it's almost sort of we're kind of trying to reverse engineer how one creates a festival. OK, so typically, you know, somebody like us comes up with the idea and figures out all the P's and Q's. Whereas it's going to be who's going to be performing, what you're going to spend on it, like all of those things. Right. And then you put it out to a community of, you know, you put it out in the world and you hope that people want to attend it. You hope in like the case of Bonnaroo, that some sort of like, you know, you know, foundational community forms around that. Right. Like that's what you're hoping to achieve when you do something like this. And what we're trying to do is Super Fest is kind of the opposite. We're kind of trying to start with the community. Right. This is the idea is like, let's assemble a bunch of people who are have a passion for festivals and experiences and music and culture and art and see if we can create something together that, you know, in a way sort of is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Right. That that because we're doing it with the community, we are going to know exactly what to build as much as you can before we do all of that work that I just mentioned before. And the reason that we're doing this now and what is sort of helping to pave the way and facilitate this is a lot of the things that have arisen in the sort of broader world of crypto currencies and, you know, Web3 and, you know, that whole sort of world of NFTs and things like that. I know I probably said a bunch of words that some people know what I'm talking about and a lot of people probably don't, which is totally understandable. And so I can walk you through it a little bit. But the way to really process it quickly, right, is that what we're really trying to create is almost like a membership model, right, where people are joining sort of this organization. This this thing is Super Fest with the intention of being a member. Right. And the way we're really kind of positioning it is like where people are really co-founders. Right. We're inviting a community to help us create this thing from the ground up. And we're doing that in a way that is sort of comports with how communities are being created around the crypto blockchain NFT sort of universe Web3 universe of things. And, you know, the way to think about a lot of that is really an evolution of how people are communicating and coming together to create communities. Right. Like a lot of what precedes this is all the communities that have, you know, you know, been created because of the Internet and because of digital communication and social media and things like this. And what's been plugged into this is a way of really creating, you know, sort of value and ownership and digital ownership that applies to people coming together to support or participate in something collectively. And so we're hoping that we become great facilitators. Right. We become the ones, the professionals who know how to do this, but can help a group of people coming together with that volition of creating something new and interesting and progressive. And like I said before, you know, like being done by the fans in the same way when we started Bonnaroo, we were the fans. Well, you know, we're not as much anymore. Right. I'm a guy in my mid 40s with, you know, family and kids. And, you know, I'm not out there, you know, as much as, you know, understanding. And, yeah, we have amazing people that work for us that do. But when you really bring together the fans to build something, you know, we think we can do something great. And I'll give you one other reference point to for you guys. One is Mardi Gras. Right. Like, think about how Mardi Gras is created by the people that are going to Mardi Gras. Yeah, you have a little bit of your floats and your but those are the same thing. Those crews that put on the big Mardi Gras parades, they're just collectives of people, right, who are pooling their resources together and paying their dues into those crews. So you can have an endymion parade or an orpheus parade or whatever it may be. Right. The other reference point is Burning Man, which has been hugely influential to me. I started going midway kind of into Bonnaroo, producing Bonnaroo. And frankly, a lot of the things that sort of became more of the community of elements of Bonnaroo were because we were inspired by going to Burning Man. And at Burning Man, most of the content there is created by the audience. It is created by people collectively coming together and saying, I want to build this really cool thing. And the reason I want to do it is I want other people to have fun with it. I want it to have a positive impact on other people. And that's what we're trying to do. I hear exactly what you're saying, and especially the Mardi Gras reference makes a lot of sense. But you're obviously creating something that's not linear. So this is a hard question to answer. But how far along the process do you think that you are? Oh, we're early. We're really early. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, we are just forming the community. You know, we've got right now about, you know, three thousand fairly active people in our Discord server. Discord is a platform that many of the crypto projects and Web3 projects sort of use as their sort of social communication platform. And, you know, it's active. We did this thing yesterday called a Super Jam, not surprisingly, where we opened it up to the community to have a creative brainstorm on things around what do we want to create? What kind of format do we want this experience to be? Is it a traditional thing with bands on stages or is it something a little different than that? Right. And so we had an amazing dialogue. You actually can go in there and listen to it. It was like incredible listening to people who have been inspired by some of the things that we've done say, hey, I wish we could do this at a festival. I wish we could think about it. Are you doing this on a regular basis? So how do we find it? Yeah, we're doing it. So go to the Twitter handle first. It's at Superfest and the Superfest is spelled with a three for the E. So it's S-U-P-E-R-F-3-S-T. That's at S-U-P-E-R-F number three S-T. That Twitter feed is sort of the starting point for communication. From there, you can click on the link to get into the Discord server. And that will unlock that whole social experience that I just talked about, being able to sort of interact with the whole community. So yeah, go spend some time in there. Check it out. The way these things work is there will be a moment within sometime likely in June where we'll do what's called a Mint. And a Mint is where people essentially buy their membership. That's the way to think about it. And so we're going to be issuing essentially 3,000 founder membership tokens, the ability to sort of buy that membership. The initial group will be 3,000 people. Now as we sort of go and figure out what we're going to do and figure out how to marshal the resources to do that, we'll do other future Mints that will give people access to the events and things like that. But that's the starting place of how we're doing it. And very different way of doing things. Do you have any sense of how big or is it too early? Do you not want to try to put a limit, a boundary on it? Okay. Yeah, it's really too early. And the answer to many of these things, not everything, right? There are things like safety and security and operational plans and business modeling and budgeting that will be the domain of Superfly. But most of the things are going to be around that, are going to feed off of what the community wants. This is not for me to be making the decision as a producer. This is me to be facilitating what the community wants. And so some things will be conversational, right? Brainstorms and just getting general input. Some things will be a vote, right? And each Superpass holder will have one vote. You buy 10 Superpass, you can have 10 votes. But essentially we are going to put up a whole bunch of things for the community to decide on or give us guidance on, right? And that is kind of, it's new. This is an experiment. It could be a disaster. It could be amazing. It won't be a disaster. You guys haven't really done one of those yet. Yeah, in terms of when I say disaster, I mean like, hey, maybe nobody will care, right? Nobody will be interested and it won't be anything. In terms of the actual producing of the experience, of course, you guys know how we do it. And we would never do something that wasn't going to be safe and run in a way that was appropriate for taking care of people as they come to something that we create. That's 25 years of history of delivering that. We always will. But this has never been done before. This has literally never been done before. Nobody has ever started a festival this way. It's the first time anybody has taken this approach. And we think it's a really cool way to be thinking about things right now. And to your point earlier, Barry, frankly, I don't have a ton of interest in just going to build another traditional festival. I'd never say never in the right situation, the right moment. If I feel we can do something that adds value to the world, then fantastic. But the idea of doing it this way, this really lights me up. This is exciting to me to take our skill set, experience, our history, and apply it to this new mode of doing things and to do it in a way that, frankly, kind of hits on some of the things that, as I mentioned, the way that some of these other experiences are produced that are affecting me in my life very positively. If we can create something that has a similar dynamic for people. That's fascinating given what we've talked about for the last hour, because you're combining that, I won't call it naivete, because you don't have naivete, but you're trying to, it sounds to me like, capture that sense of we don't know what's going to happen, and that's what's exciting, coupled with we do kind of know what's going to happen, because we have 22 years worth of doing this. So I would think part of the challenge is for you, you, with your experience to get out of the way, basically. You don't want to be the guy at the table saying, that won't work, and here's why. You want to be the guy saying, that's a crazy idea. Let's figure out how to make it work. Let's do it. Let's give it a try. Let's make it work. Well, yeah, you're right. I mean, Barry, it's a really astute perspective you're having, and I'm going to have to do my best to do that, because my role for a long time in our organization was to be the pump the brakes guy a little bit, and to be the, hey, yeah, that's not that practical. And so we actually had a conversation about this this morning on this project that one of the things that I found interesting when we did the Super Jam yesterday is that a bunch of the people who were throwing out ideas when I was giving some feedback, they were like, oh my God, this is so great to have a professional who knows what they're talking about and has done this to help inform us of what really can happen and what maybe shouldn't happen. And so that's a responsibility I'm going to take really seriously on this, is not to be a dream killer, because it's easy to be that. And at the same time, be a responsible, practical steward of trying to enable this community to build something that really can happen. And that's the goal. That's the volition. We need to create something that really represents the wishes of this community in a way that is safe and fiscally sound and all that kind of stuff. And that's a cool challenge to do. It's a cool challenge, a hard challenge to do when you're just dealing with a couple business partners. It's a whole nother ball game when you're dealing with thousands of people. But I feel like the people that are going to be attracted to this are going to have the right volition of doing something great and doing it in the proper way and following the guidance that we have in terms of the things that really matter. So it's already been a pleasure, literally at the very beginning of this. So I invite everybody to come check it out a little bit. This is not to be meant to be a replacement for the kind of festival experiences that people have. I think if you go to Bonnaroo, you'd want to go to this as well. Maybe not instead of it. I don't think so. This is going to be a very different experience than what you would get with something like Bonnaroo. And one of the things I want to just say, I got to probably run it a few minutes and it's been delightful talking to you, but one thing I wanted to make sure I got in before we ended here is that I am so excited to go myself to Bonnaroo this year. I am beside myself, to be honest, that I can now go experience Bonnaroo. Is it because you haven't done it as a fan before or is there certain things about the lineup, the festival that you're really excited about? No, not because I've never done it as a fan. I mean, my Bonnaroo experience has been working. It's Rick Farming camping. I got extra room in the bus. I've got too much potentially negative karma that if I camped at Bonnaroo, I am confident that everything bad would happen to me. No, I'm going to stay in an RV type of situation because that's what I'm used to at Bonnaroo. And at this point in my life, that's the comfort that I need. But my Bonnaroo experience, although don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of fun moments out there and I've experienced the festival in a really enjoyable way, but I always had a lot of responsibility, whether it was to the business part, whether it was to having lots of friends and family and business people that I'm hosting there. It was a major, major part of our livelihood and business life the whole way through. And so now that I get to just come, going with my brother, a bunch of our friends, my wife, we're just going to go have a blast. The idea of being at Bonnaroo and not having to worry about where I am at a particular time or who I have to go meet with or what thing I have to go do. And I want to do all this stuff that my friends have been doing for years, like one day I want to go get breakfast at Waffle House. I've never done that. I've never done a lot of the things out there that many people have. Did you ever, in any of the days, did you ever go to the Christmas barn late at night? Did you go to any of the late night parties on TA? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, a little bit. Yes. No, I've experienced it all in that regard, but always with like some, you know, not in a full blown way, right? I've always had to sort of, you know, just be, you know, in the moment and, you know, this was work, right? Like I have not been able to ever fully let loose and just enjoy Bonnaroo. I love the idea that Rick's idea of letting loose is going to Waffle House in the morning. That is pretty good. Well, that's part of it, but it's just not having responsibility, frankly, you know? That's like, you know, I don't know, like the only analogy I can give, it's not a good one, but like things like this, you care so much about them. They're almost like a child, right? Like you care about it so much and you have such a responsibility to it, you know, that like, you know, what have some ways the way I feel now is that like our, our, you know, child is an adult and it's able to fully care for itself. And I can still, you know, experience my child, right? As I know many of my friends who have adult children who are like, now I can go hang out with my adult child as a peer, as a friend, you know? And I think that's what Bonnaroo is going to be like for me, right? Which is like, it'll still always be something that we have feel, you know, very connected to in the creation of, but I don't have the responsibility of being. But you get to be a fan again. For the first time in a long time, you get to be a fan. You're going to bring a notepad? Yeah, you're right. Take notes just to share. All right. No. Good. No, I'm just, you know, I'm not afraid about any of that. Garbage can. Just. Somebody should pick up that cup. No, no, I'm just getting going on from you, you know? Well, good for you. I want to first off, thank you so much for the time. It's it's tremendous. And you know what you and Ashley did, I said it to Ashley caps and Barry makes fun of me, but it really did change lives. You affected so many lives and you damn near saved the music industry. So, you know, thank you for that. Thank you for your time. I want to hopefully at some point pull you back into this ridiculous hemisphere, maybe before Bonnaroo and tell some Bonnaroo stories and just go deep into, you know, your your well of Bonnaroo information. I'd love to hear some perspective from you on that. And then maybe after Bonnaroo hearing about how it was as a fan. Well, I appreciate you guys love what you do, love that you're propagating the Bonnaroo culture and vibe. And, you know, for as long as I'm here, I'm going to be doing that. You know, I care deeply about the festival and the community around it. And I, you know, want to continue to do everything I can to push that forward. And so thanks for what you guys do and for your time. And, you know, happy to to to ship with you all whenever. Also, what looks what are you playing right now? What's on the turntable back there? What's the last thing you play? Well, things have been broken for a while. Much to my wife's to grin every time she comes in here. She kind of gives me a little like the record players got COVID. Thanks to Reddy because she loves that. Most of these records, frankly, are her. I'm a digital guy living in a digital world. I joke with her. She's an analog girl living in a digital world. And so she gets frustrated that she can't just put something on and press a button. But no, look, there's so much good music out there these days, man. Well, you got my favorite fan in the world right now at the outside. Land's Wetleg. You know, oh, they're great. Absolutely. Check that out. Thank you, Rick. Thank you. Thank you. All right. There you go, Rick Farman. I'm going to say part one of our conversation because I feel like we've got multiple more to go with him. I hope so. I hope so. Because yeah, you you know, he has some stories, the funny stuff, the behind the scenes stuff. The I mean, you ask him about, you know, what are the challenges? I felt like we could have we could have gone deep. Yeah, we could have gone an hour on that kind of stuff. I mean, I want to talk to him just about the rainstorm of the third year because I can't imagine how that changed everything. I told the story a hundred times when I woke up that morning after the major rainstorm and we were two feet sunken into the ground and a random kid with a ATV was pulling cars out of the mud. I mean, it was an absolute shit show. And, you know, if I was them, I would look around like, I don't know if I want to do this. Yeah. And the same for me. I remember going to bed that night watching the lightning thinking I'm going to die because I'm in a pup tent. You know, I'm not going to survive this. But also the dust storm. Yeah. Two years later, the dust storm. I remember walking out into the center room and the parade and thinking, oh, they're putting off smoke bombs. These people spare no expense. And then I realized it was dust. And then I thought I've got Legionnaires disease. I'm going to die. I didn't know how much of a hypochondriac you were. I'm breathing. I couldn't see, you know, my hand in front of me. I thought this is this is people's funk. This is not good. So, yeah, they've overcome a lot of things. And, you know, to hear him talk about they didn't expect 70,000 people that first year. Imagine that, you know, it's the old you throw a party and invite 10 people and 100 show up, you know, kind of a big deal. So it was great. It was great talking to him. Yeah, it's there's a lot of area area to cover. That's for sure. Guys, I miss you and I hope I see you again soon. You cut off my shakinies. Oh, is there more shakinies? Yeah, that's fine. I'll just I'll throw out a shout out to the dashboard mom. She wanted me to mention her. Are you a dashboard mom? Yeah. What else did I miss on shakinies talk? What else did you do? I don't know. You cut me off. So you didn't get to the rest of it. I was trying to get to Rick. We got a long show. We got a long show. Yeah. Right. Hold, hold, hold that conversation about, excuse me, hold that conversation about shakinies and we'll talk about it next. Do you need to hold up a picture or tell her any specific you got to any any messy, you know, is that it? She asked for a shout out. So I had to throw it in. Well, there you go. Well, I want to hear more about shakinies. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. So put a pin in that and we'll come back to it next week. Okay. Okay. Because hopefully next time it turns out we need content for next week. And I got another. Well, hopefully next time we'll have the schedule. It should be coming out pretty soon. I've asked and not gotten any answer. So yeah, the times and all. You think it would come up? Is it normally middle of May? I mean, yes, it is. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. So we got schedule and shakinies talk for next week. Put that in the books, kids.
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