Hey everybody. Welcome back to the What Podcast. I'm Barry Courter. You will notice that missing this week are Brad and Lord Taco. Brad is, of course, busy out running around who knows where with his new best friend Bill Murray and Lord Taco is, I'm sure, somewhere probably on his bus on Twitch saving yet another blue-haired princess. This is sort of the in-between time or the downtime or the quiet time, whatever you want to call it in the festival season. There are fall festivals going on, of course, but most of the big ones are over for 2022 and they will gear back up sometime in December, January, February when they announce lineups and we will be there for that. But until then, we thought it might be fun to go back and maybe put together some short shows, much shorter shows from clips of our earlier shows. We've been doing this now since 2018, if you can believe it. Today, for example, I've got two clips from Ashley Capps. He's the AC Entertainment and he's the co-founder of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. He joined Brad and I back, like I said, in 2018. This first clip, he discusses the importance, what we think is the importance of Bonnaroo when it came online in 2022 and then he talks about everybody's number one artist ever at the Bonnaroo Festival. It's really Paul McCartney, number one, and then everybody else, number two. It was such an incredible experience for everybody that was there, including Ashley, who, like Brad and I, but on a larger scale maybe, does this for a living. It was an important show for him as well. We hope to do a few of these, many What Podcasts, like I said, in the between time as we get ready for lineup announcement coming up in the beginning of season six. Incredible to think about. We hope you'll go hit that subscribe button. We hope you'll share. We hope you will tell your friends and we hope even more importantly to see you on the farm next summer. Thanks again for listening. Here's Ashley Caps. So let's get to it. Ashley Caps, the subject of today's The What Podcast. First of all, thank you, but I want to take you back a couple of years to actually forecastle. I don't know if you remember, but I introduced you to Brad in the bourbon tent. Oh, I'm sure this is going to go well. First of all- And you expect me to remember this, right? No, but I'm going to ask Brad- You forgot what you just said. I'm going to ask Brad if he remembers what he said to you and then I'm going to say your reaction was to look at me like, do we need to call security? Which is a perfectly legit- I have no earthly clue what I might have said. Okay. Well, it's important. It's relevant. You said to him, you know, hello, and then you thanked him. You thanked Ashley for saving music. I actually believe in this. Yes. I actually, I've had this argument with people before. I think that Bonnaroo and the festival culture saved not only live music, but it transformed the entire industry. Wow. Yeah. That's quite a thought. It's a little over the top, but I don't disagree- I'd buy you for a living. I don't disagree with him because I remember, and this is where I wanted to start with you, Ashley, is I remember thinking after about the second one that this is why I got into writing about music in the first place. It re-energized me, and I think that was Brad's point. Do you hear that ever from anywhere else, Ashley, and what are your thoughts on that? I think I hear that expressed in different ways, and I've never thought of it in quite those terms, but I think in some ways it's true for me as well. Because in those days, I think we were, as a promoter, as a concert promoter, and as a music fan, I think it was a moment where we were kind of looking for a way forward and trying to break the mold of the standard concert presentation that was going on and looking for new ways to engage people socially and also to excite people, I think, by presenting the music in a really exciting way and in a context that connected it to a greater whole. And so I think all of those things were- we would never have stated it that way at the time. You know, this is kind of something you think about in retrospect. I think it's an interesting thought because it did transform people's experience of music in certain ways, at least here in the United States. Obviously, that culture had been alive and well in Europe for decades. The hearing from you that that was as a fan just like for me that was a huge moment those types of things that can happen at Bonnaroo the big and the small absolutely you know to me scale is not necessarily a factor it's that ability of an artist to connect with you as a member of the audience you know Anjali Keeja is an amazing performer and that was a you know I've been hoping to present her at Bonnaroo for years so it was wonderful to be able to finally do it and that was such a great show at the same time even though he was in front of a huge audience Paul McCartney had this just extraordinary gift to make you feel like he was just playing for you and your friends I mean there was such a you know in spite of the scale of the whole experience it was it was very intimate you know in a way that it kind of sounds crazy.
