We're sad we aren't on The Farm today, and you are too. Instead, we bring you a series of virtual Camp Nutbutter experiences with some special guests! Today, we are speaking with Jim Burruss from Columbia Records. Stay tuned for more coming soon!
Topic: Bonnaroo
Guest: Jim Burruss
Hey, hey, hey, hey! How y'all feeling? Journey through the stories that define the artist playing Bungaroo. Who are they? What are they? What will you see? The what? Which band? This year? That matter? With Brad Steiner and Barry Courter. Tool, Miley, Base Nectar. The 1975, Run the Jewels. Glass Animals, Young the Giant, Megan the Salient, Tipper, Brittany Howard. Primus, Dashboard, Confessional, Big Wild, Linen Stella, Pigeon Plink, Pinkfong, Turquoise, Still Woozy, Tones and I, Markerbellet, Yola, Loochie. On and on and on. Plus Barry, plus Taco. None of which we are seeing today on the What Podcast, the Friday edition of the Virtual Bonnaroo Experience. Welcome to the What Podcast, virtually at Camp Nut Butter with Lord Taco, Barry Courter and Brad Steiner podcast for Bonnaroovians by Bonnaroovians. So, Happy Roo! Can we say why we're doing this? Because I think you guys felt it, right? I mean, if you'd have said to me Monday, hey, it's Bonnaroo Week. I'd have been, yeah, right. I had no anticipation of waking up yesterday and spending literally all day talking with you guys about Bonnaroo and wishing. I mean, I watched a two hour radio headset from 2006 while I was working. Look, it hit me so hard yesterday morning. Yeah. Realizing that it would have been the first morning at the farm, that sucked so bad. And the normal feelings aside, the weather is really what got me. The weather is perfect literally everywhere on the East Coast, everywhere. And to think that we would have been graced with not only the greatest festival day lineup we have ever seen, at least I have never ever seen, with maybe the greatest forecast that has ever been graced upon us at Bonnaroo, it was too much for me to handle. It was too much. Basically, we said, all right, let's do this. Let's make a virtual camp experience all this weekend as if we were sitting at camp anyway. I was on the phone a little while ago with our campmate Brian, who's head is fine. He's right over your left shoulder right now, which I don't know what he's doing, but he is a... He's a good looking man. That's a good looking man. He's very sweaty. That's a funny story. But he said the same thing. He said, I wish it was pouring. I wish it was raining so hard right now. It's not. It's gorgeous. It's not. It's perfect. The point being, we really... I mean, we spent half a day or longer yesterday, the bunch of us, just back and forth and back and forth. Barry, is your shoulder okay? I cut part of it out. Just checking on you. I didn't... Just making sure. By the way, I don't know if... I know me and Taco are, but is Barry drinking this fine virtual campsite experience? Not yet. Yeah. I know that's stunning. Not yet. No, I have some more work to do. Yeah, I'm sitting here in the bus drinking a PBR, which is exactly what I would be doing at Bonnaroo, just in my garage. All right, so let's go through it. It's Friday now, so we didn't do really a show yesterday, but let's go through what your Thursday would have been. You wake up. It'd have been the first morning. We would have made some Bloody Marys. We would have started drinking really early, and then probably made our wander out round about noon when they opened up the grounds and had our first spicy pie, maybe a Cray Musty, and saw a few bands that we've never heard of and didn't care about, and came back early for nap time, wouldn't we? Yeah, I was just trying to pull up because I don't have a lineup in front of me. I don't remember who was tonight. Yeah, there it is. I've got this useless piece of paper right here. Who would have been last night? No, you're exactly right. We would have been up there Wednesday, set up, and then we would have awakened to the night. We'd have finished setting up camp Thursday morning because night would have come a little bit too early. We would have gotten dark, and we wouldn't be able to finish setting up camp. Right about now is when everything would be set up and more people would be coming through, but on Thursday, Thursday morning is a little difficult because not all of our camp is there. There's probably only a third of us, and we don't have all of our gear yet, so we have a makeshift Camp Nut Butter camp, and what you're seeing over Barry's head right now is essentially makeshift Camp Nut Butter. This is Friday morning. This is Friday morning. It's more like Thursday morning. That's a Thursday morning campsite. That picture is really old because that's pre-Bloody Mary bar. In fact, that's me right over your left shoulder in the tent trying to make a cocktail because our Bloody Mary bar hadn't come yet, and I was trying to make a Bloody Mary in that stupid tent that was not a Bloody Mary bar, which is unacceptable. We don't have the picket fence is not up, and the wedding tool and all that stuff. The bus isn't even in that one, so that's pretty old. Yeah, it's very old. So Thursday morning would have came, and we would have gotten into the grounds. We would have made our way around. Was there anybody on Thursday that you were really, really excited to see? I was going to go for sure to Larkin Poe, the regrets, and then just try to discover. Yeah. Thursday was also Bristan Maroney. Yeah. I just saw that one. Yeah. Found on Bonnaroo Left. My dude from Knoxville. Yeah. So those were for sure. Bristan Maroney, podcast listener, mind you. Let's shout out to Bristan Maroney. Hey, Bristan. He does listen. Yeah. He's got a good voice, man. He's got a creamy, so put that on top, and you've got the whole package. I said this on Twitter, but my rule for Thursday, and I know that you want to, it is the biggest mistake that you can make in all of Bonnaroo, going hard on Thursday. Whatever you do, do not go hard on Thursday. I beg of you. Now, you can make your own life decisions. You can do whatever you want. But word of advice from somebody who's done this 15 years deep, don't go hard on Thursday. And it would have been especially hard yesterday because it felt so good and you don't think you're getting burned. That's right. You don't think you're dehydrating. And then- Now, today, I'm getting blown out. I am getting blown out. I am going to be doled out come Saturday morning. And I don't care. I don't care because this is going to be the day that I just don't give a damn. And it would have been started right about now. I mean, right literally at this moment, we would be joined by random people at our campsite. By now, some of our, the rest of our camp would have come in. I have to run point for most of our camp. I have to go get them from outside and bring them in because we only have a certain amount of car camping passes. So I sort of have to run point on everybody getting in and out of the festival. Plus, I like to leave the grounds and do a couple of things. There it is. There it is. I was going to- I run errands, guys. I'm the errand guy. That's right. You bring things in, but you do leave things when you go out, don't you? Yeah, I bring things in and I let some stuff go every time I leave the camp. So by the time we would have camp completely set up right now, it would be humming. Camp would be buzzing right now. It'd have all kinds of gas. And what we wanted to do this weekend was sort of recreate the campsite experience with so many of our friends popping in and popping out. We have often, often times said, Camp Nut Butter feels like the Merv Griffin show. If you remember the Merv Griffin show, it was basically just celebrity after celebrities walking in off the side of the road, you know, half drunk and sitting down on the couch and talking to Merv. That's sort of the way that we feel about Camp Nut Butter. You have no idea who's going to sit down. It might be Corey Feldman to somebody we haven't seen in a year. So along the way this weekend, we're going to have some surprise guests. If you've been listening to the show, you can probably guess who those surprise guests will be because it's not going to be anybody new. And then hopefully we can put a bow on it and wrap it all up come Sunday with our entire camp on a virtual call. And you'll get to meet some of the people that we talk about on this show in real life. Hopefully we get as many of them as possible. If you haven't tired of Brian Stone's butt at this point, you'll get to see more of it come Sunday. But today it's very exciting. We're getting joined by one of our all time favorite guests on the podcast. Absolutely. And again, just to point out, this was not a plan until yesterday afternoon. Because of all of us back and forth and how much we missed it and I think how much we were all surprised by the constant back and forth, this came out of that idea. I think like I said two days ago, you and I were thinking, eh, whatever. The way that I operate life is if I can't have it, it's out of sight, out of mind. I want nothing to do with it. I think about it. I don't think you can engage with it. I don't think this is about, I don't want to spend all weekend playing the what ifs and whining. I think it was just we miss it and it means something. This is how you and I are different. Because I want to whine like a baby. I think it just meant so much. Some of the people that are going to be guests felt the same. They kind of reached out and we reached back out and said, hey, we're going to do this. It was right away. Yeah, let's do it. I think the trick is going to be how do we make it all happen? There's so much to do. Yeah, plus it's really pretty outside, but screw it. Just before we get on, before we are joined miraculously by surprise by our first guest, Taco, Taco, who else is doing things this weekend? I know, did I see Boundary 365? First off, who is that person? And secondly, what is this event they're doing? Because they put together a tremendous live experience there, a virtual experience for Bonnaroo that I thought Bonnaroo would have done. Yeah, you're talking about Homeroo and it is Bonnaroo 365 and I don't know who it is. I almost met up with him at exit 111, but it never happened. So yeah, it looks like he's just going to live stream some old concerts and stuff. Where is he getting it? Just from YouTube? I don't know. I've never seen him so, but you're right. It's something Bonnaroo should have done. Yeah, I'm not going to talk about Bonnaroo's reaction in the last 24 hours, which it's nice to see them show up and say some things that were important, but I really do wish there was something going on right now. But the community is sort of making that work. Yeah. There is, this is it. And then Roobust did something, right? Did Roobust do something? Well, no, but the virtual beer exchange was last night, I think. Oh, was it? Yeah, I missed it. Speaking of the beer exchange, that would have been today, right? Don't they do that on Friday? Didn't we do that on Friday last year with them? There's no way I would have made it this year. Not a chance. Just to get ready for tonight? Yeah, there's no way. I mean, you got to understand, if you really look at the lineup for today, the first artist that I'd want to see is Yola, and I'm betting that she goes on in about an hour and a half. I bet she's one of those early three o'clock slots, don't you think? I want to say that beer exchange started around 10, 30 or 11, didn't it? I mean, we might have made it. Didn't it really? Was it that early? Yeah, it was early. Oh yeah. Oh my God, I would be shit wrecked. Oh my God. The beer exchange started three hours ago. So I'm going to assume we're not even going to talk about tomorrow because that's recovery day. We're talking tomorrow. Tomorrow. There is no day after today. There is no time and place. Yeah, there's no time and place other than the present, Barry. Haven't you understood that? Your back is going to be broken by the end of the day. I would have started with Yola today and then if the beer exchange was happening earlier, we could have totally made that work. That would have been totally okay. Yeah, I want to say it was early. I hate that I missed it last night. I want to say it was early. Because I think they want to get out too. What did they do yesterday for the beer exchange? I don't know. I think actually I read somewhere that their Zoom room crashed or something. So yeah, I think it ended kind of early. They might try to redo it. Okay. Hey, I'm all in. I'll give that a try. Anything else going on in the community that is of note? Well the Roobuses, they got stuff all weekend. You said maybe not last night. We're not supposed to talk about that. Oh, okay. Well, they're doing it. I mean, we don't have to give details, but they have some stuff planned, which is cool. Okay. I think as I said the other day, those guys... Is this going to be one of those secret Cage the Elephant sets that everybody talks about? Because I don't know anything that's happening right now. Instead of Cage the Elephant, it's Cage the Taco. Okay. Oh my goodness. Look who just popped into our house. Our camp. Welcome to Camp Nut Butter, Jim. Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me. Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, good. This is... Be still my beating heart, because if we can't have Bonnaroo, we're going to damn sure make it. How are you, buddy? I'm doing well, thanks. I just so wish that I was making my way over to my first meal of the day, leaving the hotel after shaking the cobwebs off. I always love going down on Thursday, regardless of what lineup may be, because there's just something about getting settled, finding out exactly where Camp Nut Butter is, your settings and back to you, and then start to begin the whole celebration. Veres had Springsteen a couple of years ago, but first he had to find out where Camp Nut Butter was. That's right. Forget about where Bruce is, but he had to find out where the CNB was first. I certainly did. How many years, Bonnaroo, have you done? I know we're double-digit. I think 10 or 11, maybe, something like that now. How many years do you actually get to do Thursdays? It's not like you're a very free man. You got stuff to do. I always make it down there. Let me put it to you this way. I always make it to Tennessee on Thursday. Nine out of 10 times, I'll make it to Manchester. I'd say of that, seven out of 10 times, I make it over to the site. Sometimes we have artists that are working on the back end of it, trying to do the initial setups of the Super Jam, or I get stuck on a conference call, or somewhere. I've actually been on site and never made it within the confines of the... No kidding. Yeah, outside of the artist compounds and stuff. Just depends on how much we're working on what we've got to get done. I don't know if you even bothered looking at the lineup this year, because... I did. Did you? I did. Anybody on Thursday? Anybody you were going to see yesterday? No, just you guys. Thanks, buddy. Thank you. I say that because my Thursday, I already knew right off the bat what was going to happen when I got there. I was going to have to come into Nashville, finally get down to Manchester to check in. By the time I got off, the number of calls, it would have been about eight o'clock. I just figured by that point in time. Of course, I say that, and then I go out on site and I find some band. I've never heard of somebody I didn't realize that was there and fall in love with them. Weirdly enough, Barry, Jim and I have much different jobs. He has things to do. I have nothing to do. I'm just going to sit here and drink, I guess. We haven't talked in a while, but this Friday was literally too good to be true. Look, you do this for a living. You are in this industry. You craft this industry. I don't know if I have ever seen a festival lineup that was as good as Friday front to back. Yeah, no. In fact, the funny thing about that, and that's a good observation, no matter who you were or who you wanted to see, you were going to have conflicts on trying to get around the site to figure it all out. We always end up here, but when you have massive, that bewitching hour between seven and midnight when all of a sudden you don't know what to do. Sometimes it's fine to go here or try to go there, but I think TOOL was one of the, if I recall, I don't have anything in front of me, but one of the three night ones, guaranteed we would all have found our way there. That would definitely step on other things as well. See, me and Barry have talked about this. That TOOL slot was the slot that I could see all of us just hanging out at camp for a while and gassing back up. Well, you certainly could do that. I just think one of the things that you find is, look, you guys know that I hang out with a very broad brushstroke of people. Interestingly enough, and you kind of get into that, look, what was that? We all ended up at like four in the morning at the kaleidoscope. I'm waiting. I was going to bring that up. Your dance moves are smooth, Jim. Thank you. I'll go ahead and do it now. I mean, Brad's in radio, I'm in newspaper. I'm a label from that angle, but what I love is we're all fans and proof of that was last year. I mean, you hung out with us. I don't think you intended to stay as long as you did. No. Early evening and then at four in the morning. His specific quote was, I am not going to see blank. Gucci Mane. It was Gucci Mane at two in the morning. And then we went to the, oh, the calliope, you know, the calliope stage and watch the flames. Yeah. It was a great night. One of my favorite memories of all. It really was. In fact, it's funny because that kind of, we talked about this the last time I was on the show, how what Rue does to you, you know, you don't have to call it high five Friday. People are high five and you know, by the time they get there on Thursday until the time they leave on Monday. And you know, to be able to sit at camp, not butter is one thing, but everybody and we all got up and left and we made it over and Gucci Mane and then ultimately making it out to a dance party at four o'clock in the morning. You know, moonshine might've had something to do with that. And I mean that, I mean that in the air that was illuminating. Better than soul shine. So I think Jim, Jim's in an interesting spot because, and just so that you can get it so we can get this right, cause I don't want to get this incorrect. Your actual title for Columbia records. I'm senior vice president promotion operation. Okay. So you have, I've thought about you specifically a lot and your label a lot because I'll get to where I'm going with this here in a second, but with everything that's going on in the world and everything that, especially with COVID it's wiped out an entire year for say an artist to capitalize on a moment that has been crafted for them to take advantage of. You guys spend month after month, maybe a year planning when to strike and how to maximize a certain moment and what that then can turn into a career. I think of specifically when COVID hits and those moments are now missed for an entire year. They missed the big stages. They missed the moments afterwards. They missed the opportunities that arise from these things. I think of Lynn and Stella a lot because there was an art that's an artist. You guys spent so much time crafting and this was going to be the year that you guys put her in the, in the, in the forefront and now COVID has hit and that's gotta be heartbreaking for her. And how do you guys adjust, fix it, figure it out, move forward? What's the plan now? Yeah, it's a good question and something that we've all had to deal with in our own ways, especially work from home, shelter at home and certain things that we have have been stripped away for the obvious reason. I don't mean that like, I mean it's negative because we all enjoy live music. It's obviously difficult because it is part of our marketing strategy. Because Lynn, you know, specifically, you know, we've had incredible opportunity, especially last year in the summer to introduce her, you know, to the live stage. And I'm not saying she hasn't done that before, but you know, as you well know, she was on the TV show Nashville with her sister. She started her foundation there. She obviously can sing as can her sister. And we put her out after we did a song with the Chainsmokers and she was on a huge stage at La La Palooza. And then she went out with the Chainsmokers and then, you know, she was ready to do her own thing and obviously was going to be there at Bon Root. But with that being said, it, you know, I'm the kind of last half full kind of guy with silver lining. I believe that, you know, when there's an opportunity to close this down, it opens up another area. So it's enabling her to work her craft, you know, to work on, you know, her socials and some of the other issues that, you know, if you're on the road doing these things, you can't really concentrate on doing so. So when they're sitting there writing and, you know, this trying time of year, not just because of COVID, but, you know, with everything that's going on, you know, through the Black Lives Matters and all the various other things that are going on in the world as well, I just believe, you know, at least in my heart of hearts, I believe that, you know, where opportunity is going to rise to be able to write, to be able to spend time, to be able to go back and catch things. Now we're still putting music out and we're still signing artists. I mean, we signed a woman by the name of Natalie Taylor, who lives in Nashville, and we found out about her. She had a song that was out about five years ago. Somebody picked it up on TikTok and started to play around with it, with some videos and stuff like that. It caught our attention. We got ahold of her via Zoom, signed her via Zoom, and have now started to promote her and did some artist industry type of, you know, playbacks and stuff like that. About 40, 45 people at a time, you know, we kind of did it up East, Midwest, West, and tried to introduce her that way. And as we sit today, literally about eight weeks after signing, we're sitting at number 40, to be debuted at number 40 on the adult top 40, the media-based Airplay Chart. So there are opportunities like that and things that we're exploring and trying to move forward. Again, it's just one piece that we've taken out of it, and hopefully we can get back into that, I guess, by 2021. As part of that, Jim, I hadn't really thought about it, but it's an interesting question. Do you, with somebody, some of the artists that, as Brad said, were you were going to roll out? Do you hit a pause button and just mothball it, thinking six months, a year, you hit reset and start? Or is it, does it have to start all over? And as part of that, I'm wondering, I mean, this thing is so obviously worldwide. Does the content now have to change? I mean, if they had a lighthearted whatever album plan, does it now need to come out and be more serious minded or not serious minded? Is that any part of the discussion? It's funny you bring that up. Yeah, there's been a couple of discussions. The first part of that is, it's a case-by-case basis, what you need to put pause on. We held up the Dixie Chicks release because we had certain components built into a marketing and promotion plan that was going to further the awareness of this band that's been a waverall, not just being able to put a song out on radio or the DSPs, the digital service providers, Spotify, Apple, et cetera. That's all part of it and can be done without some of the things that we wanted to do. But we wanted to announce a tour and we wanted to do other things that, when you, I over use an expression called poke the bear. At what point in time, or if you want to talk about it, anybody that's a trout fisherman, but the trout is a very smart, somewhat lazy, and I don't mean that lazy like they don't do things, they don't want to expend energy to feed. So they sit in the lane. So you've got to get in that lane. So how do you get in the Dixie Chicks lane? How do you poke that bear that might have walked away from them years, decades plus ago and get them back? Well, part of that is the live music scene. If you can't find it there, then you've got to go other places. Some people, radio is still extremely important to them, where the digital service providers listening to streaming services may or may not be. So we, in that particular case, pushed that back. And we have a couple of other heritage type of artists that we've done that with. The newer artists that live in a different space and that we have used when we start to watch the various metrics that come out of it, whether it is a Spotify, something that's coming off of the digital era, it just really depends on how quickly that can go. But to your point, Barry, about, you know, Sad versus Happy versus Real versus Whatabian, I think we've seen through the test of time, some of the best summer writers will talk about, you know, how things affect them and whether that's cultural, whether that's, you know, could that be COVID related? Could that be, you know, Black Lives Matter? Could that be, who knows? You know, maybe being a questioner and working from home and becoming one with themselves or, you know, understanding what these four walls mean, etc. So we have held a couple of releases back because we felt that they were a little controversial for the time and just, you know, for sensitivity. And for the most part, we haven't policed that ourselves. For the most part, it's our artists and how they... You know, it's remarkable. A year ago, we were, you know, in the midst of Lizzo taking over the world. What if Good As Hell got tried to be released today? It wouldn't work. It wouldn't work. It would go right over somebody's head. They would turn it off immediately. It goes to show you right place, right time has so much to do with this. And no matter how good the plan is, sometimes, you know, the world's got a different strategy for you. I just wondered, I just was at sort of add to that the idea of fatigue. I mean, that's an overused phrase right now. But because this is happening to all of us, you know, I mean, I think the really good artists are going to have to stand out and they will as they always do. But just, you know, it's going to be interesting to see what comes out of it and at what point people want to just move on, you know, if they do. Yeah, I mean, it's funny. I think, you know, we've watched how artists have, you know, conceived their notions and started to record. It doesn't surprise me with some of the newer and younger artists that have grown up in a different world, right? They're not playing in their garage. You know, they're writing on their computers and they're sitting in their hotel room or, you know, in the back of a van or whatever the case may be. I'm interested to see with people being confined at home, what type of reach out type of collaboration come up. Because I think it's at some particular point in time, you don't want to just sit here in your own four walls. You want to start to reach out to what other people are doing and, you know, do these various collaborations. You had Lennon Stella this year. You had Leon Bridges this year. Who else did you have in line up? Do you remember? I don't. Honest to God, I don't. I had it all written down and I got to the month of June and whited out the entire month. Do you think that they're both candidates to come back next year or has the time moved? No, I think it is. I mean, first and foremost, Leon, I think, is going to absolutely come. We just put a song out by him on Monday and it was on. Lennon, I think, you know, she lives there. It's one of the things that she's always loved. If she hasn't performed Bonnaroo, she comes and visits and, you know, and hangs out there. I've worked with Leon there before. It's a great place for him to be. He loves being there. There is something about his sound that just fits the farm so well. It was a great set, man. It was a great set. He goes, he's one of these guys that it doesn't even matter if you know him or know any of his songs. He just fits the time and place so perfectly. It's a totally natural fit. I think he just gives so much. You feel that. That's what I. He's a true artist. You know, and like you said, he gives all the way up. In fact, when you were talking about when you mentioned him, it reminded me it was it was sweltering there and we did it and he did. I don't know what it was, but it was a shoot where they had a bunch of different clothes and stuff. And here's the kind of character this guy had some shoes. They'll make wingtip shoes that were about two sizes too small. I could barely get his feet in them. But he got them in there and kind of gingerly made it over to the photo shoot. But that's the kind of guy was like, you know, we could get you some other shoes. No, this is what they want me to wear. This is what I'll do. It's going to look good in what he'll do. But I will say there is one artist that we signed and he's going to play on Sunday that I've never seen live and I cannot wait. I mean, I've been with the guy a bunch of times and I love his music and stuff like that. Orville Peck. And I was dying to see what a weird guy. I love that. What are you doing? I didn't know that Orville was yours. Interesting. Yeah. So what do you if you want to see him, what do you think? This is all going to come back. I've gotten some hints, at least locally, that the local some local promoters want to do some events in the fourth quarter. I know of a major city in the south who wants to do three, if not more in the fourth quarter. Are you seeing are you seeing or hearing anything that would lead you to believe that 2020 is not completely off? No, not yet. I mean, either way, I have no idea. I've been very thoughtful and obviously fearful of some of the news releases that I see, like with some of our brethren at Live Nation and AEG. I know AEG this week announced further layoffs and furloughs and stuff. That doesn't fit well for what we're going to see through the rest of this calendar year. I just know that when we have artists, especially on the sides of the stage and the importance of the stage of Bonnaroo, that these aren't one off type performances and stuff. I'm not saying that you have to go out on tour and in there or start there and in somewhere else. My point being is this for an artist to be able to go out and get ready to play for a show like Bonnaroo for an audience like that takes takes a minute. And you know, I've seen like, you know, Dave Matthews band and a number of other bands like that that had big tours, Harry Styles, one of our artists, you know, they literally pickpacked and moved 2020 to 2021. And it's just, you know, kind of how it is. And some of that interesting, you know, it's not the exact same dates or the exact same what have you. I believe if I read the note correctly, like the Harry Styles tour will be just a little later than what it was slotted to be here. We were going to start to hear at the end of the month. But I like it, by the way, congrats on the Harry Styles thing. I mean, that's a smash. And I know it is going to go over the heads of some people to listen to the show. But Harry Styles is the real deal. And his songs are nothing but candy. And they're good. You know, they're really, really good. And he is one of those crossover pop artists that I can see at Bonnaroo one day. It makes total sense. Yeah, no, I agree with that. I saw him at the forum here when we did the album release in December, and I cannot believe the power of that band. And I think you know what it is. It's one of those things that you find a couple of the other guys came out of that boy band. That boy band kind of look, you know, everybody goes into the pop world and he completely didn't do that. No, I mean, he's he's he's like a little Mick Jagger out there. Yeah, just just watch. I mean, if if they're that's a good question. And I know you got to go. But is there somebody like him that you can see throw in a Bonnaroo next year that wasn't on their schedule before? I'd have to think about that. I'm sure there will be. I mean, I think that's one of the greatest blessings out there. I mean, it also depends. I mean, it's so funny like Sturgill Stimpsons. Great example. He just did a I think it's called Shooks TV the other night, Nooks TV or whatever. You know, he said if he got X amount of likes on his Instagram, he wasn't very active. And I'm saying this, and we don't represent him or anything. And he got X amount and he decided to do a concert. So he did it at the Ryman with nobody there. And he went and got with his favorite bluegrass folks and did it. You know, like we know Sturgill. Well, OK, I won't quote the T-shirt. But the reality of it is, is that he's a country artist. He just did the bluegrass. But when we saw him at Bonnaroo, you know, he walked out there. He was the hardest rockin. You know, that was a rock band. I mean, that was crazy. And one of the out of out of the last decade, that's one of the top five performances. I loved every minute of it because it was three guys on stage and the lights were just white and didn't change. That's all you got. And it was Sturgill. That was a statement. It was Sturgill throwing down a statement saying, good luck trying to beat this. Good luck. Yeah. And I think later than or the next day was Muse, right, which was not to say anything. It was just that the difference is very on purpose. Very intentional. I think Jim was there. It reminded me of the year that that Arcade Fire was on stage and put out this massive amount of sound with 11 people. And the next night, the Black Keys were on stage with two people. You know, it's it's remarkable how different it can be and still be great either way. I wasn't a fan of the Muse show. That just was a big snooze fest to me. I equated a lot to Matchbox 20, where it sounds exactly the same on the record as it does live. It's never going to be different. It was impressive. It was impressive only because there were so many moving parts and they made it sound terrific. But when it was over, I looked at our campmates and said, I couldn't hum you a single minute or single second of what I just heard. Well, Jim, let me ask you real quick for you for you go. And it's a it's the it's another I don't know, I'm guessing kind of question. But we've speculated on here for so much. What do you what what do you think 2021 might even look like? Is it going to be completely different than what we know? Or do you think it's just a smaller version and we start working our way out? Well, somebody sent me an article a couple of months ago or so referring to the period of time we're in as the great pause. And you know, I don't while I agree with that, I mean, I really think that there have been a lot of soul searching that's gone on a lot of, you know, interest. It's funny, I get back to what happens as a New Year's resolution. I think that we're all sitting here trying to think and how we're going to be better people do a better job, how we're going to change this. I mean, I've already threatened that I won't go into my office five days a week ever. You know, I mean, I do work in New York City, don't live in New York City. But why is that? And it's not because I'm afraid of COVID or public transportation or anything like that. It's that I can get so much done here. And there's a lot that I can get done there. And I'm one that thinks that, well, you know, I've got an open door policy. I'm out and I'm doing things. You have the things that I'm out in between, I will always do. I'll just be more mindful of what that may be and how I can do it. So I like the idea with the pauses. I also don't like the idea thinking that, well, we've now in a year from when this all starts to go down February, March, we just pick it up from there. I do believe we'll pick it up. I do believe that we're resilient. I do believe that we will come up with ways. And look, I'd like for this just to be a flip in history. We have an antibiotic. Nobody has to worry about any of the problems that we've had. I like to shake hands. I like a high five. I like to hug Mary, especially at four in the morning leaving base next to me. Those types of things. No, but I think there's a certain thing. 30 years ago, Faith Popcorn wrote a book called The Popcorn Effect. And it was really about cocooning and people not needing that natural type of thing. And you read it like, well, yeah, and have we gone that way? Sure, we can order anything off Amazon. You can actually don't even have to worry about Amazon anymore. You can get it from anybody or a pickup. So you don't have to go out and see anybody against that cocooning effect. But that's really not what our social makeup is about. We do have that need to have, and us who are associated through the fraternity of music, we need even more. So that's where us being able to get out and see shows and to be able to experience things the way we used to, I do find that's going to come back. Now it won't be like a light switch. You won't turn it on and all of a sudden you're at 100,000 watts. You're going to take them. But I think it's going to be fine. I really, really do. And like, again, I started by saying I'm the ultimate optimist. So let's hope that glass is half full. Well, optimistically, we're going to see you soon, but definitely in about 360 days, I hope. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no doubt about it. But the path to Camp Nut Butter is well-worn by the steps of Jim Burris. Thank you very much. It's funny, last night when we were sitting there going through it, I don't know what it was last night, but it was in the air and everybody started sending messages and pictures and what have you. Barry, I know you had your boundary shirt. I did. I got my Grammys t-shirt from Nashville. So I've always got the mindset that somebody sent me a picture on the side of it of you and I holding those Bonnaroo pots. Yeah, the skillets. Yeah, the skillets is great. So love that kind of stuff. So and then we had some bunch of other pictures. And it was really funny because at the beginning of the week, I kind of got really excited because somewhere along the line, Facebook will always tell you what you did sometime three years, five years ago or so. I got a couple of my Bonnaroo reminders. Yeah, I got a reminder of the day that I saw Bono's deal. I just looked up and his deal was sitting right there above me and I got a picture of it right there. Hey, Bono's deal. Always got to bring it down, Brad. Always got to bring things down. I love you to death and I miss you like crazy and I hate that we're not on the farm together this year, but soon enough. Thank you. I'm sure. I appreciate it. Russ, good seeing you. Sorry we didn't get to back and forth, but we'll do that in person. Brad, you know, I love you. Absolutely. I love you as well, my friends. And by the way, I want to point out, Barry, that picture in the back of the camp is not from last year. No, it's not. In fact, if that, I would go so far as to say that's about six years old. Pretty old. We were trying to figure it out. And you might be exactly right about that because that very tent might still be at Bonaru. It lasted one weekend and it sliced open one of our guys' hands and he said screw it and threw it on the ground and it never came back. I'm going through pictures, Jim, so that's just one I found. And it's early in the week, so you know, we're going with that one. It's a very young, young, young camp nut butter. The other one was cropped funny and it was obscene the way it is. Yeah, if you know, you know. If you know, you know. I got it. Jamie, I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure. I can't wait to see you again. Thank you. You bet. Talk soon. See you. We got it. The Patreon list. You want to go through some Patreons and thank them for their amazing support in a very, very weird time. Yeah, and we have some stuff headed your way, guys. So we got the shirts done. The shirts are ready. Yeah, just in time for Bonnaroo. They're ready. Expecting some some gifts coming your way. Aaron Carlson, Bill David Grimes, Frank Swanson. You think it's Swanson or Swanson? You know, I'm not going with Swanson. I don't think so. Of all the questions you could ask, I was not going to clarify Swanson. Look, with a name like quarter, I'm sensitive to people getting it wrong. So Frank Swanson, Liesl Condor, Phil Hanley, Timothy Proctor, Chloe Hannon, Dan Sweeney, Dustin Gehrig, Haley, Mary T, Melody, Melanie, and Jesse Feldman, Mitchell Stafford, Musical Antlers, Parker Reed, Skyler Torrey, also Chelsea Davis, Evan Brown, Gordon Silver, Jason Hazelbaker, Joshua Herndon, Lauren Edholm, Linda Doles, Lucy Young, Nick Yeatman, Ross McNamara, Ryan Mathewson, Sean McCarthy, Tyrone Basket, William Richards, Clay Wilhoit, Andrew McBride, Katherine Riccio. We got a bunch of names, guys. We're going to show one day where it's just Barry asking how to pronounce regular names. How do you pronounce Bill? Is it Bill or is it Bile? David Solano, Jacob Marty, Justin Nigro, Meredith Ritman, Brooks Tussie, Daniel and Sharla Horton, David Henson, Ella Philnei, Sean McCain and our newer group, Benjamin Wells, Karen Sheets, Stephanie Ramirez. I can't read my own writing. Romero and DK. Sweet, sultry, velvety sounds of Barry Courters' vocals. All right, more guests coming up. Who knows who can stop by Virtual Camping Up Better throughout the weekend. Until then, love you. Bye.
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