Re:SET Festival and Why You Need to Watch Noah Kahan at Bonnaroo

It is Bonnaroo Week on the What Podcast, Barry Courter.

How excited are you, baby?

This is the best.

This is the best.

You ready?

You good?

I'm never ready until I'm there.

Have you pulled everything out?

Yep.

Did that this weekend.

Is everything clean?

Is everything ready to go?

Everything's clean.

No critters.

No critters that I can tell.

No holes in tents.

Everything's there.

You're not bringing an extra guest or two?

Not that I know of.

Just you.

Nothing's crawling into the back of the car.

Have you already thought about how everything's going to pack into the car, into the truck?

Have you already eyeballed it and come up with the whole, okay.

Done it enough times now.

I delivered, met with Bryan Stone and Taco on Sunday to talk about the handoffs and got

the easy up tent to Taco.

He's probably already there trying to figure out how he's getting in early.

He's waking up in a Walmart parking lot right now.

It's a big week.

I'm starting to see all of the videos and pictures roll in from the people driving down.

You forget how, until the week of, at least I do, you forget how much of a mammoth thing

this is for a lot of people.

Evan Monroe had to start leaving on Sunday.

You know?

Well, you're doing it.

You're doing a little bit of that.

He's at a brewery right now.

Just, you know, because it took him three days to get down there.

It's unbelievable.

Yeah.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it not being 45 minutes away.

It makes a huge difference, doesn't it?

The one thing that's happening if you're not doing the Baderoo, and it's even happening

in DC this week and then New York this weekend, is the Reset Festival.

Barry, this has sort of been going on around the entire country.

It's this rolling festival with Steve Lacey, Boy Genius, Claro, and LCD Sound System.

And if you're not in Baderoo mode and you didn't do Govball last weekend, Reset Festival

this weekend is still with tickets, LCD Sound System on Friday, and then on Sunday they've

got tickets as well for Steve Lacey.

But this thing is exploding everywhere in the country.

And to me it's like this really fun new way of thinking about a festival-ish kind of thing,

but it comes to you.

And it's just this rolling operation that just comes through the entire, you know, east

coast of the country.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

We've talked about the evolution, you know, Bonnaroo 2002 kind of reintroduces Lollapalooza

before that, Coachella around it.

But that's a long way to go for some people to travel to.

And then the boutique festivals sort of popped out of the huge ones.

You know, how about putting a smaller one in a, you know, a neighborhood near you kind

of thing?

And now this is the next, sounds like the next idea.

It's such a brilliant idea.

Twelve cities going from as small as Columbus to New York, San Diego, LA.

I find it to be such a bizarrely crazy idea.

I'd love to, after it's all said and done, find somebody that's part of it and ask them

just the logistics of how all of this sort of like rearranged and moved.

Because in New York, LCD will be on Friday, but in DC, LCD is Sunday.

You know, it's just a never, it's like squeezing a water balloon with this festival.

We do.

You need to line us up with some folks who are planning this because everything else

that we've talked about still applies.

You still gotta get permits and security and bathrooms and all of that.

Now you just gotta do it in 12 different places.

Now you gotta do it 12 times.

12 different promoters too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's fascinating, but what a great idea.

It is great.

And then the other thing too that I kind of want to ask is, you know, when you, when you

do one of these, it's around the country.

You obviously have to plan that some of them are not going to do as well in certain parts

of the country, right?

You know, a lot of these festivals are regional sort of things, especially the boutique ones.

I wonder like how they program these to the entire country and not just to certain regions

of the map.

Anyway, I hope they do it again.

I really do hope they do it again.

It is a fascinating idea.

Yeah, it is.

I like it.

It is a lot of moving parts.

Like do you book an LCD because they're on tour in that area?

You know, you're not going to ask somebody to travel across the country for one show,

so you book what's local or regional.

Yeah, it's a lot of things to consider.

Yeah.

All right.

So we're going to pop in this week with a short little high five.

And I don't know of the guests that we've had this year in Bonnaroo season.

Of course, there's the Jim James that you can go back and listen to, which, you know,

we can wax poetic after, you know, the festival's over.

But the other one that we love the most was the Noah Kahan chat.

And it's particularly interesting to me.

Buddy, OK.

You all right?

I was like, stepped on a banana peel.

Yeah, something like that.

Yeah.

So the Noah conversation is interesting to me because I went to the show at Radio City

Music Hall last week and oh, my God, this Bonnaroo show is going to be massive, absolutely

massive.

And the only thing I'd say to anybody that's walking into the Noah show blindly or at least

listen to all of his stuff and have never seen him live.

The thing that's going to be tough is everyone there knows every word and they're screaming

it to the top of their lungs.

It is really hard to get into the show because everyone's already like 10 steps past you

with their fandom of Noah Kahan.

And there are moments of it.

I was like, man, I just wish I was listening to him.

You know, a few years ago, that Frank Ocean show of Bonnaroo was so difficult because

you couldn't hear a word he was saying.

Noah's not as, you know, as low energy as Frank Ocean.

But still, when, you know, twenty thousand people are screaming to the top of their

lungs every lyric.

Yeah.

Oh, OK, already.

And the David brothers got that way.

Yeah, they did.

That's right.

And it was like, I didn't come to hear the six people around me screaming my ear.

I came to hear them.

But that's what it's become.

So yeah, that that Bonnaroo show is going to be massive.

But it's a great show.

The new album's fantastic.

The new song is fantastic.

And you know, if you want to know a little trick, the Noah album is being re-released

with a couple of new songs.

There's only one reason they re-release an album like this is because they need it inside

Grammy consideration.

They need to squeeze in some new material so that he can get nominated for best new

artist.

So it works for me.

That was a great interview.

I enjoyed it.

And you're right.

Jim James, obviously.

And by the way, I got the return to Thunderdome vinyl.

Oh, how is it?

Oh, it's so good.

Is it so good?

The quality is so good.

And even our friend Parker reached out and was listening to it.

I think he's hyped now.

Oh, really?

He's all hyped up for the My Morning Jacket show.

Yeah.

Wow.

Because this is not one that he even understood.

No, I think he and Jake had said it might be a walk by for them just because we've hyped

it up so much.

But now I think they're reconsidering a little bit.

It's that good.

Yeah, I think those guys wanted to beat each other up at corn.

Isn't that right?

Some reason they needed to like, I don't know.

It's so funny that some people need to go to Bonnaroo to fist fight in a pit for some

odd reason.

And call it fun.

Yeah.

But yeah, the My Morning Jacket show is a for sure must.

I can't believe that anybody would ever call it a walk by.

But OK.

I know.

I mean, you've been on this record.

I mean, you know, really, I think you get what we've been talking about for so long

or I've been talking about anyway.

It's perfect.

Bonnaroo.

It's perfect.

So yeah.

Well, good.

We'll go back and check that out on the on the YouTube or the podcast of your choice

podcast, whatever it's called of your choice platform of your choice.

That's right.

And then we'll give you a little no con before we see on the farm this weekend.

Barry Courter Brad Steiner.

It's another high five clip on the podcast.

See you there.

Oh, no.

How are you, stranger?

Good.

How are you doing?

Amazing.

How are things?

Great.

They're great.

I I wonder what it's like being the biggest music star on the planet right now.

I wonder what that's like.

You have to ask Taylor Swift.

Yeah.

Man, I can't I can't tell you how much I love this album.

I love stick season.

God Almighty.

It has been stuck in my head for weeks.

I ride the entire train to and from the city.

I play it on repeat.

I don't know.

I know exactly the last song that I got this obsessed with.

It was Shays Long by Wetleg.

Yeah, man.

Congratulations.

What an incredible last eight, twelve months this has been.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, man.

It's been it's been a total trip and I'm still I'm still happy playing the songs live, which

is a testament that I think I actually might like the album a little bit.

So thank you guys for listening to it and appreciate you guys like it as well.

I wonder, do you you have to you're you're very smart guy being this part of the zeitgeist.

Does it what does it is it feel weird?

I don't know.

I feel like it's I don't know.

It feels cool to like have to have a lot of people listening to the music and and extrapolating

their own details from it and like putting it into their own lives and then seeing people

kind of form a community around the music is what it's all about.

I've been doing this for six years and you know, even when I was playing shows for like

300 people, like less than that, I still saw like this amazing sense of community in the

audience and among the fans.

And I still see that same community as the fan base grows.

And I think that's so cool.

Like being able to feel like you're creating something that's creating positivity and letting

people vent their feelings to each other and creating conversations around mental health

and therapy.

Like that's so cool.

So if I can be part I don't know what part of the zeitgeist I'm in, but if I'm doing

anything and people are hearing the music and taking away their own challenges themselves

and finding ways to deal with it, then I'm happy.

Well, you mentioned music is therapy.

The way that you write is so I don't know, you're so introspective.

It feels like it's coming straight from your life.

How much of it is therapy for you to put some of this out?

Yeah, I mean, it all every song has parts in the unit.

And every song is helpful for me to kind of figure out what I'm feeling.

Sometimes I'll write things down.

I don't even know how I was feeling it.

And then I read the words like Jesus Christ, I'm depressed right now.

Or, you know, like I am sad and this is sad.

It's cool to be able to kind of figure yourself out through songwriting.

So it's always been a way for me to process my emotions.

I also go to therapy every week, which is really helpful and allows me to kind of have

some clarity and let me look at what I want to write about next within myself.

And yeah, I think what's mostly therapy for me is seeing other people feel better about

it and feel like I'm making a positive impact on people's lives, which is just so cool and

should be the goal of any artist.

And that's been what's been the most healing for me is seeing people find happiness through

the music.

I was just saying that we have talked to people before who've said, I wrote a song, you know,

whatever that I never maybe intended to be public.

It was just for me.

And then it went public and they were shocked and surprised that it resonated with anybody

else.

Was there a point in your life where, you know, I'm guessing you might have been similar.

I mean, I don't think anybody sits down and says, I'm going to write this song because

it's going to resonate with, you know, a million people or a hundred million.

But at some point you have to make that transition where, you know, you wrote it just for you,

but now you realize it hits with other people.

Was there a point for you?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

I think, I think it started like the first times that I started writing songs about anxiety

and depression was just because I was feeling such an overwhelming sense of these things

in my life.

And then I started putting songs out because to be honest, I had writer's block and they

were the only songs that I had written.

I was like, you know what?

These songs need, I don't have a lot of other songs.

These are the ones that are about sadness and the things I'm going through.

The response was so cool and so supportive from everybody, you know, down to the label,

down to my family, but definitely to the fans as well that it inspired me to keep doing

it.

And I always say like when I was younger and I felt like there was no one else in the world

that understood what I was feeling.

And I heard a Paul Simon lyric or a Kat Stevens lyric.

And for one minute I felt like someone had figured me out and that someone knew what I

was going through.

And I felt like I wasn't alone.

And when I sit down to write, I do try to be as vulnerable as possible and I never think

like, oh, this song is going to come out.

But I think, man, if I could provide that little lifeline for some kids somewhere that

I got when I was in seventh grade, that I'm doing something important and the vulnerability

is worth it.

But you know, I don't make music.

I make music for me, but I really do also make it for the fans.

I think I'm not writing songs to cater to the fans, but they seem to like when I talk

about myself and I try to do that for them.