New tonight, a popular music festival in Middle Tennessee just canceled at the

start of what was supposed to be a jam packed weekend. Organizers of Bonnaroo

made the call due to rain more now and more to come. The festival cited

campsites already in bad shape. It's expected to draw more than 60,000

people in those ticket holders are now up for refunds. Botter plans to give

refunds to everyone who planned to attend the four day event among the

headliners this year. They're no longer playing Ali and AJ Tyler, the creator

and foster the people organizers wrote on their post about the cancellation.

We are beyond gutted.

All right, so let's go ahead and address the elephant in the room. Sometimes

it's not great.

Though we despite what we've said for so many years about Bonnaroo, the famous

Ken Wynes Dean quote, it's never not great. We discovered this weekend.

Sometimes it's not great or or is somebody sent me a text to upset me

about way before Bonnaroo ever started. I said, I'd never say his name again.

One of the founders of the show.

It's finally not great.

Yeah, yeah.

And not everything can always be great. So this is not, you know, this is not

some major thing that something isn't great every single time in the history

of the world because nothing is.

But sorry, go ahead, Barry.

Yeah. All right. So, you know, if you know, sorry for my voice. I came home

with the Bonaflux. I think Brian brought a little touch of it home. I don't know,

Russ, you said you're a little a little bit feeling it.

I was a little down in the weather as well, but I think I'm going to make it

through. Yeah, it might be just psychological. Just.

Oh, I want to die. Yeah.

If we're talking that way, I'm about as close to death.

But spiritually anyway.

Yeah, this is the what podcast I'm Barry. That's Brian. That's Russ.

And behind Brian is Beth, our good friend and can't make from just outside of

Seattle. How are you, Beth?

I'm OK. I have a little Bonaflux, too, but OK.

Well, when I got home, I don't my wife has something in some of her workmates

or six. So I don't know if I took it or I brought it back.

So but I know we shook a ton of hands on Thursday and Friday.

So yeah. And the the the the farm always gives me the junk every single year.

It's just going to come with it. It's just it's just part of it.

And it's you know, it's we term or we coin it, not we, the entire

Bonnaroo universe, the Bonaflux for a reason is not actually a diagnosable flu.

We always come home feeling pretty rough.

And this case is no different, even though we were only there for a day

or a while or three or four.

So here's what we're going to do today.

Because of the cancellation, I mean, it's that's just the reality.

The cancellation on Friday.

We were going to spend take a couple of days off,

but obviously that's such a hot topic and we want to address it.

We don't have any news that no one else has or anybody else doesn't have.

We had I had one of the best Thursdays and half a day Fridays

that I've ever had in my life.

And then the rain came.

And I think a lot of people felt that right.

You rushed you were actually up there since Monday.

So you had more time than most of us.

Yeah. Looking back, I mean, I'm kind of glad I went Monday now

just because I really did get a full week.

I went Monday, went to Common John, met up with a bunch of friends there,

ate and drank.

We got some interviews, which, you know, we'll get to in a future episode.

They're really cool.

If you ever get a chance to go to Common John in Manchester,

awesome place, slept in their parking lot, woke up Tuesday morning,

met up with David Bruce, who made the 16 hour drive from upstate New York.

We got in Tuesday.

We got set up.

We had a great Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

And then, you know, what happened Friday? Yeah.

I mean, I was following along through Snap and Instagram and everything else.

I saw what you guys were up to. It looked great.

And I, you know, I haven't gotten there early in several years.

And I'm not mad that I didn't.

I'm very happy with the way things went.

We'll get into that a little bit more.

Yeah, I want to give a quick shout out to Evan Bonnaroo, too.

You know, we met up with him Tuesday and he helped a lot with some of the interviews.

And it was just great seeing them and hanging out.

The only thing I want to jump off here is is that like the adage of

if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

I don't. This is not coming from that with where that comes from.

Like, I have mean, nasty things to say, so I shouldn't.

I shouldn't say anything.

I have I don't know what to say.

And this is I have no I've never done.

Barry, this is almost giving me some additional anxiety

that I'm already fighting with for the last few days.

I don't do shows without a piece of paper in front of me and some notes like that.

Drives me crazy. I mean, I didn't have any I didn't know what to write down.

I am devastated by this situation far more than twenty twenty one.

I guess that's because that was just such a different time

coming out of an already wild time for everybody having, you know, I don't know.

It's just different. It feels like a lifetime ago.

And it's partially because things were going so well.

And even if they weren't going well, it like we had it was a good weather day.

We got good music. And if that was if that was the best of it.

This is as heartbreaking as heartbreaking gets.

And I don't throw around a lot of word.

I mean, breaking heart feeling, it's sinking in the stomach.

I know so many of you out there feel the same way.

And every now and again, you know, the comments section, my, you know,

gets wherever they go and then, you know, does the blame game or gets, you know,

you guys don't do this right.

Or I don't mean us. I just mean anybody.

Man, whatever it is that you do to make this your thing.

Is is the right answer. Yeah.

And it is so it's it sucks.

It sucks. I don't have a note to say what I was going to say there.

Yeah, it's I can't I can't get over it.

I can't get over it yet.

And I didn't want to record because I didn't want to know what to say.

But we we need to. And I'm glad we're here.

I agree. And I want to hear from Beth because you guys hear from us all the time.

And, you know, full disclosure, we live 55 minutes away.

We have it easy.

We're treated like frickin royalty at that place, especially this year.

Beth, you travel from Seattle.

You had your own travails.

You guys had some difficulty getting in.

Then you got in and we had a good Thursday.

So I want to hear about that.

But to your point, Brian, and this is the one I wanted to make.

In no way in this show today or going forward,

do I want to try to pretend to tell anybody how they should feel about what happened?

Because, I mean, if if

our emotions are everywhere, like, I mean, there's anger, there's sadness.

It's everything.

And that is bothering me, too.

You know, and they're all valid.

If you're mad, it's OK to be mad.

If you're upset, we are, too.

I mean, everything you're feeling is perfectly normal.

Yeah, we haven't actually met her in person, but Geraldine flew all the way

from Dublin, Ireland, never stepped foot on the farm.

Jesus. Yep. Christ.

Russ, your friend Savannah got there Friday morning,

spent an hour and a half with us at the beer exchange,

got a golf cart ride back to camp and watched it rain.

Never saw her to note other than a single band play.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, if you're angry, I mean, you spend a lot of money.

I get it. You know, you had all these hopes and dreams.

I get it.

But I think we all can agree that there was no decision

other than the one that was made.

Yeah, of course. No, I mean, that didn't even cross my mind for more than,

you know, for a second.

A lot of people want to, you know,

do the comparison to 2004.

Now, there was a huge storm in 2004 in the middle of the weekend. Right.

And there's no reason to go back and reset all that much.

That was a lifetime ago.

That was a lifetime ago.

That might as well have been 1964.

I mean, that was so long ago.

What happened then doesn't have anything to do

or at least a precedent setting for now.

It's just a different world.

It's a different festival.

It's run different, different people, different infrastructure,

different everything.

And that was a one one time storm.

There was not forecast for the next two days.

And we didn't have 12 inches, the most rain in a hundred and something years.

If I made a show sheet, that would have been a note on there.

Absolutely.

Because I thought about that and was looking back at 04 today.

I was pulling articles looking because I couldn't remember.

Was there was there storms all weekend or was it just the one?

And my memory was, which memory can be tricky 20 years later.

There was the one that I want.

And it was a big one.

But I wanted to make sure that that was right.

And I couldn't find anything that said anything else.

It was more than one.

So that's that in itself means forget talking about 04.

Because Saturday and Sunday had similar storms coming through,

just like the state of Tennessee and all the South has had to deal with

in an odd weather year.

And I got pummeled with more rain on Saturday.

And what we've learned and again, I'll I'll speak this.

I will speak for them.

It's not just about whether you can stand in the mud and have a good time.

It's about whether ambulances can get through.

It's about whether vending can get through.

It's about whether they can clean the toilets.

I mean, imagine what that was.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, let's go play in the mud.

Now I'm pissed because I can't find a bathroom.

Get out of here. Get out of here.

You know, that's going to happen.

And the unreasonable people are.

Sorry. Shocking news to everybody.

There are unreasonable jerks at Bonneville.

There are not every person there is is great.

Most are is a code that most people live by.

But you so I don't even know what my damn point is there.

But all right.

So, Beth, you sat there quietly jumping in.

What are your thoughts?

First of all, let me say you had already planned to come back to Chattanooga

and hang out for a couple of days.

Not only you, I invited our friend David Bruce, who was in our camp.

I am Bonnaroo. He came back Saturday,

stayed with me here at the house.

We all met up and had a great meal at Lo Main.

And then you've been hanging out.

So you were already planning on that.

But so what are your thoughts?

I I had a great one day.

I mean, I had a great Thursday.

I'm bummed because I was taking photos.

So I'm I'm sad that I don't have more photos to work with.

I expected to come back here and have thousands of photos to edit.

And that's what I would be doing these few days.

But, you know, it every Bonnaroo is different.

I've I've been going since 2004.

I do remember that mud year when the mud would just suck your shoes off your feet

and people got stuck.

And so, you you know that things can go wrong.

And I think that's kind of the only way to handle it.

Every year is different. Every year has a different story.

And this year, I mean, we had a great day

and then we had a rain delay and we all hung out under canopies all day.

And I really got to spend a lot of time with my friends this year.

And I wouldn't have been able to do that because I had so many shows I wanted to shoot.

I would have been just running, working the whole festival.

So I wish I'd been shooting shows.

That's what I wanted to do.

But, you know, the alternative was getting to spend a lot more time

kind of deepening my friendships.

And I am grateful for that.

And that's, you know, all part of the Bonnaroo spirit, too.

If you would, Beth, real quick, you flew in from Washington state.

Just a quick recap of how that went, because there was a little bit of issues.

But, I mean, you're flying to a festival in the middle of a field in Tennessee.

There's only so much stuff you can bring on a freaking plane. Right. Right.

It's not it's not Ireland, but it's still a long ways away.

Just a quick synopsis of that, if you would.

Yeah, there's a lot of stress over what you can bring and packing.

And do I put the rain boots in?

Do I take them out?

If I bring the rain boots, it probably won't rain.

That's what I was hoping.

Yeah, we were debating, should you bring them?

Because it saves so much space if you don't bring the rain boots.

But if you don't bring the rain boots, you're totally screwed if you need them.

Yeah. And I was already I was already worried when we used them.

I'm glad I had them. Definitely.

I was worried because this is the year I was most prepared for

other than the hurricane year.

So I knew I listened to all the music ahead of time.

I mapped it all out.

I knew what I was going to try to shoot and how the schedule is going to work

and how I could run between the stages.

Usually I don't get my hopes up to that extent.

I just kind of get there.

There's never guaranteed that I'll get there on time flights.

You know, you just don't know what's going to happen.

So this time I flew overnight.

I worked on Tuesday.

I got on a plane at 1040 in Seattle.

I got here. I got to Nashville at 5 a.m.

I Ubered to my friend's house and got three hours of sleep there.

So it's a total of five interrupted hours of sleep.

And we got our stuff together, packed the cars,

got over to pick up our credentials, had a delay with one of the people

in our group that eventually we we got to the gates of the festival

and we couldn't get in that night.

So that was another silver lining where I hung out with my friends

who live in Murfreesboro.

Luckily, they're close enough that we went to a really good restaurant

and I got a full night's sleep, which put me in much better shape to start.

And then we got in on Thursday and it was gorgeous.

And shows were great.

Shot more shows than I ever have on a Thursday.

Of course, now I wish I'd done everything, but I was thinking,

you know, marathon, not a sprint.

And it turned out to be a sprint instead.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And then, you know, spent time with the friends and.

Edited my photos in the media tent and came back and hung out

under canopies for the day.

So that's my whole experience.

On on Thursday evening, after we got done with most everything we're doing,

we got to order here a little bit.

They had all these these postcards that they were given out by local.

That's the same one by local artist.

And there was a place that you could post them for free.

And I was sitting there emailing my dad.

I haven't seen my dad on on our texting my dad.

I haven't seen my dad on Father's Day in 20 years

because it's always on Father's Day weekend.

He's fine with it. But, you know, I'm texting him.

I was like, hey, send my cousin's number or address.

And I was filling them all out.

It's like, I'll drop these off tomorrow.

Oh, cool. There was no one.

Oh, and I can say also, I bought the merch.

So if anybody wants to know what the merch looks like.

See, I didn't get by merch.

I didn't get by infinity stage.

There's all kinds of didn't get type of things.

I'm sure they'll still be selling the merch.

But yeah, yeah, hope so.

I never even saw the arch.

I never got close enough to get a picture or stand in front of it.

Anything like that. Never saw it.

I didn't get very close either.

Well, when I was out at Luke Holmes, we'll do a show later on with some

with some more of that.

We'll just dive into that great Thursday a little bit more at another time.

Yeah. But I got a little a little close to the arch.

But no, not not for a picture. Right.

I never don't get a picture of the arch.

Right. There's so many holes in my soul that we're all sharing.

You know, you the listener, viewer, all of us on the show.

It's a it's a soul sucking situation.

I do want to say and not to belabor it, but that Friday we had time, obviously,

and we had people in our group that are in the business, so to speak.

We've all, you know, in some way been part of events.

And so that just just kind of for fun,

we kind of talked about what do you think is going on in that room?

What are the conversations?

And it's just what we said.

Like while the rain was pouring and while the rain they're watching.

Yeah, it's like, when do we call it?

How do we call it? I mean, if and how much of it do we call and how much?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were doing all that.

Just it was speculative talk because what else?

There's only so much you can talk about the weather itself.

So let's start talking about other stuff. Right.

And send everybody out all at once.

Yeah. Do you wait? You know?

Yeah. I mean, just

impossibly hard questions and answers and discussions to be taking place.

And that morning I stopped into our media area where we have very good Wi-Fi.

So I did before I knew I would not be around it for a while.

My phone was not working on the farm at all.

For the most part, that's because I have a cheap shit phone plan.

That's not their fault.

So I went to do a good look at the at the radar coming through.

And that was probably about nine thirty, ten o'clock in the morning

before we went to the beer exchange, which we'll get to in a minute,

which was the incredible highlight of Friday for us.

Unbelievable. And I was looking at the I was looking at it and it looked like

everything else that we've been dealing with around the south,

which is just passing fast moving cells that can be dangerous, but they're fast moving.

So if they are here, they're going to get right on out here or so I thought.

And. It changed patterns and changed course, and meteorologists are not God.

They can't tell you what's going to happen.

And the damn thing parked on top of us for eight hours.

Yeah, yeah, it was rough.

All right. So is that enough of the bad that happened?

Do we want to talk?

I want to talk a little bit about Thursday and Friday, maybe not the details,

because we can do that later.

I know. Yeah, we could just bounce.

I mean, we can do it in a in a generalized term.

I know we got a little show and tell the taco wants to do,

which we'll get to here in a minute.

But yeah, we'll go ahead, Barry.

Let's start with that, because we got lucky.

I mean, in the end of the day, we we as a show, as as three Bonnaroo,

just lovers of all four sitting here, we got really lucky that things worked out

for us selfishly for us.

And I'm not going to apologize for loving it.

I can apologize for having a great Thursday,

but I was most people had a good Thursday, like the energy was high.

That was what made the day so good.

I saw it again later down the road.

The entire Lou Combs show.

I don't like Lou Combs.

I don't like him at all.

Yeah, I might like him even less after the show.

But the show was awesome.

You know, like it was a big day.

It was a fun day. But yeah.

Yeah. Plus, plus the weather we had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,

Thursday was amazing.

And if Bonnaroo officials had any thoughts, and they probably did,

of concern about weather into the weekend, it was just

thoughts and prayers and praying and hoping that those three days of

nice temperatures were going to going to be the foundation we needed.

And it didn't work.

Well, you know, they delayed opening the gate on Tuesday

because the ground was still kind of wet.

They were hoping a few more hours of sunshine, which we had,

might help dry out in retrospect before everyone parks in there.

Two hours more sunshine.

I can't do a goddamn thing. No, no, it was pointless.

But I mean, but they're doing everything they can.

They're doing everything. The optics are good.

Bonnaroo's optics are always good.

They they know what they're doing.

We say this all the time. They know what they're doing in emergencies.

They know what they're doing in planning and stage development

and in talent buying. They know what they're doing.

But I don't know how you prepare for six inches of water.

You can't flow in through camps.

You cancel the whole thing three days in advance and everybody's even more pissed

and think you're even worse.

And a lot of nations, you're going to come, you know,

steal your baby in the middle of the night.

I mean, that's what's going to happen.

So I I think the decisions they made from start to finish were the right ones.

Don't cancel because of what you're concerned with.

Don't worry about on Tuesday what might happen on Saturday,

which they could have done because of her insurance stuff,

which maybe someday we'll dig into the world of insurance and right in.

We've never really talked about that a whole lot,

but it was a gamble and it was a good gamble to take.

And and I just I think the decision making was right from the jump.

The point I want to make about Thursday and Friday,

I won't speak for you guys, but it was overwhelmed

at the number of people who came up and thanked us for this show.

Literally, I think every single person said, thank you.

You helped me get through the year.

You keep the hype up.

You help with your dos and don'ts and all that stuff and the gifts.

Ross, I know you got to I think you it was like Christmas for you.

I'm sitting here with all these.

Yeah, we'll get to a show and tell here in a little bit.

But I got more candy, as they say, than I've ever gotten.

My favorite little iPod.

Oh, yeah, the little iPod.

That and somebody gave me an empty Gatorade bottle for,

you know, those late night.

And it was a wide mouth.

If you know, you know.

It was very funny, but that was that was truly meaningful for me.

I couldn't believe how many people that wanted to get a picture,

or, you know, just say hello and that kind of thing.

Yeah, I mean, you're talking

about the I think kind of a combo of the two days.

So like the the beer exchange, which at this time we went last year

and I, you know, those who were not around regular, I don't drink.

So, I mean, I like to hang out with people, but I don't need any beer

at the beer exchange.

So I was even thinking, do I really want to do this?

Because there's it's Friday, you know, that we haven't even mentioned

by all accounts by everybody there.

The best day of Banra line up maybe in as long as anybody can remember.

I mean, it's sold the day tickets sold out what, three months ago?

I mean, so we haven't even mentioned the legendary lineup of the day.

So I'm thinking this is a big day.

I think there's so much to do.

Do I really need to go out, go out and hang around with a bunch of people drinking?

And I'm so glad that I did.

And and we were, you know, we were going as a as a team.

And I felt like for sure I should do that.

And there was so much love there.

It was amazing.

Yeah, it was a ton there.

But what mattered the most to me was the day before at Planet Roo.

And and boy, the kudos to Planet Roo.

I mean, that they have made that thing a destination.

I mean, it's not for everybody because it's not, you know,

Queens of the Stone Age under there.

But right. It is a really, really good place to spend some time,

even if it's just a rest is it is a great, great that stage.

You know, remember that?

Hopefully you can find a picture of the house stage a couple of years ago.

And throw that up front porch.

Taco. Yeah, it looks like a front porch with a nice, good backpork pitching.

This thing was was huge and legit.

Sound system was great.

And everything about it was was was completely pro pro all the way around.

And the amount of people that came just to hang out and watch the thing.

I sometimes have trouble wondering, like, what are you?

Yeah, I know. You lost.

How did you get in there?

It hardly seems real sometimes when I think about

how many people were actually there.

It was really cool.

And we'll get into more details on that when we play the tape.

But going back to Thursday night, Beth, you were talking about hanging out with friends.

So I was getting up literally to

get my shoes on and go to Luke Combs, what about quarter to nine or nine?

And our friend David Bruce came back

from taking pictures all day and put his stuff down and said,

I need a water and a scotch. I'm done.

And I said, I'm here for you, man.

And we sat down and talked to like one thirty in the morning because

he had a pretty great day.

He was featured on the Hulu live stream

for his work with the I am Bonnaroo project.

So we talked about that.

And he's still having those surreal.

I can't believe what just happened kind of moments type of thing.

So we got to share that.

And that was that was awesome.

Wednesday night before you all got there, he and I, you know,

we had gotten in Tuesday.

Wednesday, we were like, well, let's go to where in the woods

because, you know, there's nothing else happening.

There's no music yet, of course.

So we dropped into where in the woods.

Absolutely amazing.

I mean, it was packed.

And he specifically wanted to go and shoot some photos there, of course.

So I really just kind of held hang back.

And I felt like a shadow just kind of seeing his process of like,

you know, what he sees and what he notices and what he thinks

is going to make a good photo.

So it was really cool.

And we ran into a lot of people that that recognize him and me.

But yeah, that was so cool just to see him do his thing in his element.

I mean, it was really neat.

Yeah, I got to talk to him about photography a lot, too.

I wanted to do more.

I brought my film camera to try to get some tips, but we did.

We did get to talk about it.

He's he's so generous with advice and his time.

He's just an amazing person.

And he was very positive about everything.

He's he had the longest to drive, really the longest

travel of all of us.

And he was immediately positive about the whole experience.

Oh, yeah. That was great.

Yeah, he never he never he never sounded discouraged.

He never sounded, you know, no, he's a really positive, uplifting guy.

I talked to David more this year than I had ever before.

And he's been closer with you guys for no particular reason,

other than that's how it worked out.

Yeah. You're not going to get any negative vibes at any point around.

Oh, he loves this. Correct. Loves this festival.

I mean, it's how cool that he was.

So do I. But you're going to get some negative vibes from.

Good point.

Yeah, it was cool to have him join our camp because he's usually his camped elsewhere.

He's either gone with a group or and this year he was totally solo.

He asked if he could come back and camp with us.

So, of course, we said, yes, it was great having him right there.

Got spent a lot of time with him.

All right, Russ.

You ready to cheer some of this swag?

This year, I know you all got some to I got tons to show.

I don't have a whole lot.

So it's going to be mostly on you here because you you really mopped up this year.

And I know this, you know, the making all the stuff

and to give away has been happening for years.

But I just I don't know how I never really got to experience it until this year.

And boy, it was fun.

You know, I see your little your PBR Bonnaroo thing on your hat.

Like, what are they?

Yeah, let's start with is that called sprouting?

You got sprouted.

Yeah, I got some sprouts.

This one.

This is a tiny little hat on my hat.

So that's a little Bonnaroo baseball cap on my PBR baseball cap.

Yeah. And again, if you're just listening on, you know, the podcast,

you might want to watch on YouTube or Spotify because I got a lot to show.

We'll start with this. Yeah.

Yeah, that thing's beautiful.

So I know I feel like flavor flavor in this.

All you need is a clock.

Yeah. This is like a tower.

Yeah, this is made of perler beads that you kind of just stick on

on a grid and melt them down to stick together.

Says the what podcast. So that was really cool.

I mean, just tons of bracelets that you can see here that people made.

Yeah. Wow. You know, these are really a bunch of guys.

I only got a sweat band here.

Oh, yeah. Keychains.

Oh, yeah. I got a keychain somewhere.

Yeah, I think I have your you guys is

these from our buddies, the church.

OK, I'm hoping I was hoping you had.

Oh, he's got one. So one goes to Beth and then Barry.

Yeah, you and me taking care of right here. Awesome. Cool.

Yeah. Do you guys get one of these? This Bonnaroo?

I do have one of those. Awesome. OK.

Oh, not to mention here, that was pretty darn cool.

Don't know where it came from. Thank you so much.

Yeah, I tried to get, you know, ask names and stuff.

I will never remember any of these.

I'm sorry, but, you know, you know who you are.

So thank you.

I got these magic cards from the magic man.

Yeah, and I'm going to steal that damn laminated one from I mean,

the foil one from you.

I got the single holographic shiny one. Yeah.

Yeah, I've got this. I'm happy about it. Very cool.

Yours is better.

He was very nice.

Stickers, more stickers than you can imagine.

I mean, you know, I got church boners, totem.

I got stickers from everywhere.

I got, you know, there's a King Gizzard and a lizard wizard.

Yeah, I have those somewhere. Yeah.

I got a I got a button for signing the Bonnaroo yearbook.

Oh, yeah, we all got in on the down the on the yearbook.

Caleb and one of these poker chips, too.

I thought it was pretty neat.

I didn't get one of them. I got one of those.

I got got a PBR sign, metal sign. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, I saw that one.

And one I definitely want to show you guys is this.

This is a plane, a little biplane made out of PBR cans

cut out and kind of stuck together.

The girl that gave us to me, and I don't remember your name.

I'm sorry. I think we did this at the live show on Thursday.

She said, you know, I've had this a long time.

I know you like PBR.

And she said, I've been 10 years sober, so I wanted to pass this along.

So congrats to you for being 10 years sober.

And thank you so much for for gifting that to me.

How about that? And then we go.

Yeah, we got this little hand crocheted friend.

It just keeps coming.

I have like three things.

Yeah. Well, this somebody somebody at Common John gave this to me.

She said she made 75 of these.

The amount of effort and creativity people put into this is so it's I'm blown away.

Yeah, I would never put this much energy into that.

You're so much better than me.

Those of you out there that do it.

And oh, my God, it is so impressive.

The yeah, the amount of work and patience just to just to put all this stuff together.

And the fact that, you know, we got to meet up and an exchange.

I know we gave away as many stickers as we could.

Hopefully you got one.

And oh, don't forget the common John, the beer, the nuclear fusion.

Good looking can again.

And that, yeah, I will say last year's was better, but this one's good.

They're both pretty. I've got them both up back here on the on the mantle now.

This right here, I won't tell you what it is, but you can guess and you'll be right.

When we were standing around that table

right before we were going to go on stage for the

for the panel, there was a bunch of people around there.

And I don't know who all of you were, but I enjoyed every bit of the conversation.

Well, or maybe it was right afterwards, but it was right around in there.

Everybody scatters in. This is still sitting right there.

Now, I'm not one to usually pick up other people's smoking devices,

but I like if I don't take this, somebody else is.

And I don't think this is this Tennessee like kind of stuff.

I think this comes from a state where it's full blown legal cannabis.

So I guess I did just tell you what it was.

This is really good. And it's in good hands.

And thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you very much, even though you didn't mean to give it to me.

And I'm sure wherever you went, you were like,

Oh, my God, I lost that. I just ruined my day.

No, that's stone guy.

But no, at least I have it and not someone else.

And I didn't steal it because if I left it there, it was going to go anyway.

So thank you. And I don't know if you're in the comments section,

I'll send you a postcard.

I'm going to rely on you, Russ, because, you know, I'll get it wrong.

But we ran into our winners past, present.

We ran into several winners.

That's what I mean. Yeah.

And that picture is made with all of them.

Yeah. We'll put some of those up.

Our ticket winners this year were Lena and Mary.

They got the pair of Bonnaroo tickets and then Bosco,

who won the David Bruce I am Bonnaroo print the photo.

We met up with him. Bosco. That's Bosco. Yeah.

Yeah. He was camping in 931, I believe.

And we ran into killing it.

And bite us over, dude.

Yeah, we ran into Abby.

I think she won last year or last year before something like that.

Yeah. Who else we ran into? Church Boners.

I wanted to get over to the church boners camp.

Never got a chance to.

So I'm glad they were at the live podcast.

We got to see Rick and Sean and a bunch of people

and people even that we didn't get on the show when we had the church boners on.

Yeah, the church boners is a very big group.

One guy was like, hey, man, I wasn't able to make it.

I wish I could have. I was like, I don't think there was room for you.

So don't worry about it.

You can only put some we can only put so many people in one virtual room.

We would look like postage stamps on the screen if you had every one of them on there.

Yeah, they bring the party.

That was the one regret that I had is I wish we'd had more time

to spend with them because they they clearly wanted to hang out.

And they did. And I wanted to hang out with them.

And of course, we always said, oh, tomorrow, you know, we'll come by.

We'll come to your camp. We'll meet up. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Patsy Parker and yeah, Jake and Jake and Michael. Michael.

And of course, Daniel and Charlotte, you know, just so many people.

I think at one time I looked out from the stage and said,

you guys, whether you know it or not, you know, just about everybody

standing next to you.

So take a minute to to say hi, because it's all people

that we're all familiar with from all the various.

Oh, yeah. Speaking of Daniel and Charlotte, I do want to shout them out

and mention Wednesday night we got out there for their.

Oh, that looked like a party. Oh, no, I'm sorry.

This was Tuesday night. We didn't get out there Wednesday night,

but we went Tuesday night.

I want to shout out.

I think this I've got your name right. Adriana and Chris.

They're a couple that works Bonnaroo. They're fans of the show.

They rode by camp on our on their golf cart Tuesday and,

you know, said, hey, you know, just come to check on you.

If you need anything, let us know.

And David Bruce, actually,

if you know the monkey bar, Dave,

we spent some time there, we spent some time there in the past with them.

Dave actually owns a bar in Johnson City.

And David Bruce got to go there on one of those trips.

And he loved the atmosphere.

And he said, you know what?

I've got some giant prints of my photos that I have framed.

And they're just sitting in my office.

I think they would look really cool here in your bar.

And I would love to.

So when they said, do you need anything?

David Bruce was like, actually, I've got these giant prints that are framed.

If you don't mind, if we could get a golf cart ride down to the monkey bar

just to deliver them, that would that would save a ton of work trying to walk

through all the way around center.

So we got a golf cart ride Tuesday night.

Shout out to them. Thank you very much for that.

We got to hang out at the monkey bar.

We got to do sample David Bruce's signature I am Bonnaroo drink,

which was his take on old fashioned.

Yeah, he's a Scotch guy, right?

He loves Scotch. Yeah.

And so that was cool.

Uh, what else?

I just forgot all my candy was on my microphone.

Oh, there you go.

I was trying to get it off and I couldn't get it off.

I forgot about that. So there's some of it.

Yeah. So we got to spend some time at the monkey bar, some time with the Roobus.

Of course, they had their wiffle ball tournament Tuesday.

God, I'd love to do that.

I'd love to hit a wiffle ball. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, it's hard to explain to people.

They're going to people who've never been.

You're going to see those pictures of the rain

and you're going to think just what a nightmare.

They don't understand how these fools do this.

The randomness of things like that.

You can't plan for them to come by on a golf cart and pick you up.

Right. I mean, you can't know that you'll just be disappointed.

You just kind of have to let things happen. Right.

Yeah. While we're shouting a few names, I wanted to say thank you to Sarah.

Murray, I think is her last name.

I never met her before.

She's from Dalton and she does her programming

for some of their local like concert series.

Arts Guild. She works literally across the street from me.

OK, that's right. That's down near.

I forgot. I should ask you this.

Yeah, I should ask you in advance.

And she's been going for a while and she is like, I mean,

it is a big thing for her and her family.

And I had never met her and she came by the thing, too.

And so, Sarah, thank you.

I watch your your your stories and I see what you're doing down in Dalton

and you do great work and community involvement.

Older and I get I'm the more I am

just enamored with people who are involved with their specific community

to make it better. And she does that.

It's a creative arts guild in Dalton and they do great work

and they always have. But that's about 20 miles south of Chattanooga.

Yeah. Yeah. Talk about that, Beth.

I mean, because you say oh, for you came and you've told us before.

And I don't want to rehash the whole thing, but you kind of ended up by your

excuse me, yourself one year and ended up with the dudes

as you call them. And that whole.

It's a great name, by the way, the dudes.

You got to shout out the dudes.

Oh, yeah. Brad and Jerry and Mike.

Yeah. But you kind of exemplify that.

Just go with the you have to have a plan,

but be willing to adapt and adjust and go with it. Right.

I think that's what I said last time I was on this podcast, too.

I said, make a plan and then it's not all going to happen.

I didn't realize almost none of it was going to happen.

But yeah, you just kind of roll with it.

I mean, all the pictures of the people in the campgrounds

making slip and slides out of their tarps and mud wrestling.

And I know there's going to be some pictures because David Bruce took some on film

of all the fun that people were making and the connections

they were making with each other. Right.

And that's what I was really thinking about today as I was trying to cheer myself up.

I wrote like a little essay about, you know, my takeaway being that

every year there are more people that we're connected to.

And it's like I walked into the photo pit and I knew

probably 10 or 12 people.

And these are all people I didn't know a few years ago.

And, you know, we're still friends with those people all year.

It's unfortunate that now we have to go back to talking on the phone

or following each other's Instagram posts or whatever.

But that doesn't go away just because we don't get a full weekend

on the farm with these people.

Yeah, I mean, I at the thing we did Thursday with the panel,

I asked two questions and I hadn't planned it ahead of time.

But I said, raise your hand if you get if people that you work with

or your family get tired of you talking about Bonnaroo every single day.

And like every hand went up. Yeah.

And the other question was, raise your hand if this festival has changed your life.

And every hand came out every hand.

I know every hand on stage. Sure.

Every single hand came up.

And and and to that point, as far as like your coworkers

and your friends and family potentially get, I mean, a lot of them are curious.

I want to hear a little bit.

But then after a while, it's like, OK, enough. I get it.

And but what I'm getting the opposite of or well, it's the same.

But it's it's it's added today is my first day back in real life.

And to work earlier today and that's

is that everybody wanted to talk about it even more to me

because it's a national news story. Sure.

And I was like, I don't want to talk to a single damn one of you.

Can you get everybody together?

Can we all go to the conference room?

And I'll just I'll address you all at once.

And I'm trying to be friendly because they're interested.

They want to know. And I'm the guy to ask.

And normally I want to be the guy to ask.

I'm just so damn down in the dumps.

And we we run around Chattanooga.

She's never been here before.

And we ran around for a day and a half.

And, Jesus, it was great.

We had such a fun time.

And we were able to forget that we weren't at Bonnaroo and just go do stuff.

Monday rolls around.

It's like, oh, yeah.

Yeah, that was nice.

But we could have done that next weekend.

You know, we could we could have gone to Lookout Mountain.

It's been here for 10,000 years.

We could we can go at any time.

And I've I've gone right back into the dumps.

And so I talked to people at work and avenged us.

Yeah, it rained. It sucked. We left.

Whatever. What do you want to know?

Yeah, I had friends and friends and family text me

who would normally don't care about Bonnaroo that I go.

But they of course, they see on the news and they see the videos.

The pictures are like, oh, my God, are you OK?

Did you make it out? Is everything all right?

So, yeah, it's like every single time you got to rehash it all again.

And be like, yes, we're fine.

And I want to say, I know a lot of people maybe are watching

expecting us to have some sort of hardline thing on next year.

And and I think, Brian, you just said it.

And I know I have reached out to some of the folks who run the festival

like Brad and just said, not now.

We need time to process.

And he said, yeah, I need time.

So, I mean, that's me, too.

I don't want to.

I don't know what's going to happen.

I'm not going to pretend to.

I don't know how I'm going to feel.

I know I had a great time.

I'm not.

But I feel like I want to make one comment to that and just leave it at that.

Part of my anxiety and and I'm just an

anxiety riddled person and it comes and goes.

And it's it's it's it's usually manageable.

But part of the problem I'm having is how worried I am about the future of it.

I will just say that because I'm worried about the future of everything.

I'm worried about the future of my day job.

I'm worried about the future of our local events here.

I'm always worried about the future because that's what anxiety does.

You worry about the past.

You worry about the future.

I mean, I mean, I need a couch and a therapist to talk to about this.

I am worried about the future of the festival.

I am. I'm going to leave it at that.

I can't not be. But I don't know a thing.

I haven't talked to a person.

I don't you have the more contacts with everybody.

You're kind of the contact guy of the three of us, Barry.

And I leave that to you.

I don't want to bother people with, hey,

let's give me some rumors. I need some rumors.

I don't want any rumors. Exactly.

But I am worried because I'm always worried.

And that's the extra amount of anxiety.

This this this go around.

And if you're feeling that way, too.

It's it's warranted.

It's it's warranted.

Nothing lasts forever.

Nothing in the way forever doesn't exist.

There's no such thing as forever.

So yeah, that's been bothering.

That's added to my to my just downtrodden this of all this.

At the same time, though, you know, we went through two years of no

Bonnaroo whatsoever, and we kind of thought the same thing.

Is this thing over?

Is it ever going to come back? And it did.

Yeah. And I know I think I think I was kind of referencing earlier

is that was a time frame when the whole world was wondering what's going to happen next.

And it kind of changes the perspective from one person to the next.

And this is a us only thing.

Right. Like this is not something that other industries are worried about.

Back then, I know 21 was not as much, but it was so butted up to the covid years.

Like, oh, you're upset about covid and worry about covid.

Well, join the club, buddy.

We're all we're all worried about that.

Now we're we're kind of on an island on our by ourself.

We can't look at it and say, what about that other camping festival out in Utah?

It's working pretty good there.

Maybe we should make some, you know, like there's there's this is one of a kind.

That's why it's so great. It's the only one.

Yeah, it is.

And like, although, yeah, we did bring it up several times.

I know the dudes we're talking about, we're going to go meet up at the Caverns

for Cave Fest in October.

And to me, that's bluegrass.

And even I'm probably going to go to that.

Yeah, you should. I mean, I'm not in the caverns.

We can't go on. I can't tell you enough.

I love the caverns more every time I'm there.

So I know. But like we said, it's our second favorite place after Bonnaroo.

And the fact that it's kind of the same thing, it's so close,

easy to get in and out of.

We have a great time, great friends, the vibes and spirits.

The vibes and it is.

It's definitely going to help kind of restore some of what we didn't get

at Bonnaroo this year. Yeah.

Like I said, every whatever feelings you are having are legit.

They are yours.

And I am not going to try to tell anybody how they should be feeling right now.

But if you're angry and saying, you know, never, never, never again,

I can't blame you. But for me, I'm just going to give it time.

And yeah, I've read a lot of comments.

I said I had a great day and a half.

Yeah, but I've read a lot of comments from people that say never again.

I'm never going back. Sure. And I get that.

Yeah, I would say

this is kind of the

another of the old adage of, you know, if you're going to write the email,

you write the text, you're going to write the whatever it is

and make the phone call sleep on it. Yeah.

Sleep on it for a month or two, at least.

Give it some time to to to settle, because

as far as like, don't let I would just suggest to.

And I'm not doing a good job of it, by the way.

Don't let it consume you and sleep on it some and let the dust settle.

Let the water dry and then the dust settle.

And then and then try to.

I don't know, reformulate some of your emotions,

but you're listening to a guy who's not doing it well and can't do it right now.

So maybe I'll just stop giving advice.

Beth, your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, the only the advice that I wanted to give is

you'll also get a lot of feedback from people saying,

oh, this isn't the worst thing in the world.

This is a bunch of rich people who want to go to a festival.

And too bad it got canceled.

And it yes, there are horrible things happening in the world.

And this is also a sad thing for people.

This is something that we look forward to and save up for.

And so your feelings about this, it's not a trivial thing.

It's it's a valid community.

And somebody will make you think it's trivial.

They will. So you have to really

connect with the people who understand.

And I'm so fortunate that I'm here with other people who love Bonnaroo

as much as I do.

So I have this little buffer for a few days with people who really get it.

And I very much appreciate that.

So seek out the other people who get it and talk to them.

And, you know, maybe

not everybody will be able to comfort you in this situation,

but it's OK to feel that way.

Yeah, I mean, if this was your first one,

and you had that one artist that you, you know, your everything was wrapped around

and you didn't get to see it, it's hard to explain to that person,

you know, why they might want to think about doing it again.

I get that 100 percent. But oh, yeah.

I mean, if they know any of the track record,

let me tell you about this great festival they go to.

Half the time it gets canceled. Yeah.

So pack up, save up all your money.

50, 50 shot of habits. Yeah.

I'm being silly now in the last few years.

Yeah, I'm being I'm being I'm being silly.

But yeah, it's sorry, guys.

I mean, all right, rescue. We're going to say something.

Yeah. One last shout out.

I almost forgot. But on my way out, I'm driving and I see a guy walking.

And he notices me in the bus and he says, oh, finally, finally got to see you.

He's got an Australian accent.

I didn't catch his name, but he says, I love the podcast.

I listen all the time.

And he gave me this little guy.

This is a little kangaroo with a tiny little kangaroo baby in the pouch.

And he said he gave us too many, said, happy room.

Please leave a comment, a reach out or email or something to us.

It sounds like we would love to talk to you more.

Yeah, it would be super cool.

What's the what is it?

Comment at the what podcast is comments at the what podcast dot com.

I'd love to know. I don't know if he's thoughts on this.

Yeah, I don't I didn't get if he came here directly from Australia

or if he's just from Australia.

But that might be an interesting story there, a lot like Geraldine.

You know, absolutely.

All right. What else, guys?

As we said, I think we talked on Saturday night

that we should do about a 20 minute podcast.

Yeah. And we got an hour.

What did Savannah say? Yeah, right. It'll be an hour.

Yeah, we can't ever do a 20 minute podcast.

I do look forward to the time that we can.

I don't know if it'll be next week.

I don't know.

But soon enough to do a little breakdown of the good and and visually show it

like I feel like we do very well because of tacos,

you know, post production work on this show.

So, I mean, thank you.

We can talk into a microphone all we want, but to really maximize the

the reach and the and the I believe the somewhat importance

and fun of the show to be able to add a lot of that to.

I want to celebrate the little bit of fun we had and we're going to do.

I know we haven't had the pre-show meeting on that yet, but we'll do that.

And I look forward to it, but it's just not time for that.

Yeah, I loved our interview with Hey Nothing.

Oh, my God. I'm glad you said that. So cool.

Hey Nothing. Yeah, there's a good chance they're going places.

This is a good band.

We've interviewed a few bands.

I won't call them out because there's no reason I don't remember the names.

We've interviewed. We'll interview anybody who wants to talk.

I like talking to bands on the rise who you've all heard of,

you've never heard of.

And some of those bands are probably already done and gone.

And maybe Hey Nothing will be done and gone one of these days.

I don't know. This is they're impressive kids.

They're young. They're called kids.

They're impressive.

And they were very fun to talk to.

And if that's all we get out of that day on that, that's fine.

I loved meeting them and they loved talking to us.

And that's that's that's such a joy when you sit down with somebody

who wants to talk to you.

Yeah, they had a pretty good year, which we get into.

I mean, a lot of times in this industry, you know, you're going to especially,

you know, go back to, you know, 90s era where it was all about,

let's see how bad we can piss everybody off and make this awful.

You don't get that as much these days.

And when somebody sits down and acts like and even if they're just forcing it

a little bit to be nice, that they're really happy to be there.

That's a joy for us. It's a lot of fun.

And yeah, we're great.

Yeah. We don't know exactly what's coming up as far as schedule

or what we're going to talk about.

But please join the discord.

We put some stuff in there, some extra stuff.

If you want to check it out, if you're still wanting more for some reason,

the what dot c o slash discord, it's free to join.

Well, yeah, I mean, there won't be a ton to talk about here

because if there's not a lot of recap, we will be reaching out to people who matter.

And when they want to talk about things, we will invite them on.

They might not have any interest in doing this for any time soon

because there's a lot of legalities on all of these things.

And so we'll wait and see how that goes.

Thank you for your patience.

How this offseason goes, it will be very different than off seasons we've had before.

I mean, our goal is to have six weeks of recap.

Yeah, a month.

We usually do. Yeah.

A month at least. We're going to have one.

I mean, essentially, we're going to have one.

All right. Beth, what are you going to what are you looking forward to seeing in China?

I guess we'll get out of here.

We'll have a we'll have more than one because we've got several interviews.

Common John, Hey, nothing. That's right.

I'm sorry. I forgot about that.

We've we've we've got our live podcast, which will come out at some point.

I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking about that.

What am I seeing in Chattanooga?

I don't know. You guys are my tour guides.

I guess I guess I need to figure that out.

Whatever you guys want to show me, I guess.

Well, I know you got a man and had a murder burger.

Yeah. Yeah. It's been really fun.

Well, we went up to Point Park yesterday up on Lookout Mountain,

which is a national park very I am ashamed.

I've never been up there before.

Oh, wow. It's beautiful.

We'll throw up a picture so you can see it's amazing.

So like I tourist to my own town yesterday.

And it was great because I'm on top of a mountain overlooking our city.

And I didn't have to think about Bonnaroo for the day.

That's funny. I put David in the car and we drove up and down Missionary Ridge.

Oh, I even said that's right.

We got to do that. We were up there.

I said, OK, we're talking.

You know, looking there's a lot of placards to read about the Civil War.

I said, well, I live. Yeah.

Five hundred feet from the biggest battles.

We need to take a drive over that that ridge.

And I forgot. I'm sorry.

Yeah. Now I live on that ridge.

So that was a lot of.

Beth, I think I get custody of you tomorrow.

Is that right? I think we got to go to the better alibi.

Yeah. We're going to do some trivia somewhere.

Yeah, I got to record my local show and that's not going well so far.

I got some locals that are pissing me off.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say when we started.

Beth is we flipped the coin to see who got Beth and who got David and David.

David, you lost.

You had to come home with me. So there you go.

All right. Anything else, guys?

Just again, thank you to everyone that came to the live show, to the beer

exchange, just who saw us out and about and said hi.

We love it. We love.

I guess one others hugging howdy.

Yeah. One other shout out.

I stopped by in Planet Rue

for this on F the environment.

I thought it was a great. Oh, yeah.

I like the sticker and a great shirt with a little donation to their

to their charity.

And they were awesome.

And then there's like five or 10 or several

raffles for tickets for next year.

And if I win, we'll give those away on this show.

Cool. We'll probably have a giveaway anyway, hopefully.

But we might have to if I win from the F on F the environment.

We are neutral dot org, probably.

So they were very cool. And I enjoyed that.

All right. Oh, shout out to Patrick Whelan.

I got to meet him in person.

So cool. And his wife, too.

Got to meet him. Very cool.

Yeah. I was like, I want to meet Patrick, but let's make sure we do it.

I'm not drinking.

Yeah. I was like, hey, I didn't want to.

Your wish came true. He's right here.

He was right there. He's right there at the live show.

So worked out. Yeah. Thanks, Patrick.

We'll have you on. Thank you.

For sure. All right.

Thank you guys for listening and coming up and saying hello.

Talk soon. Don't know when, but we'll talk soon.