The What Podcast
Bonnaroo Veterans React to the 2026 Lineup (What Stands Out)
Season 9, Episode 2
Published December 17, 2025
https://thewhatpodcast.com/episode/bonnaroo-veterans-react-to-the-2026-lineup-what-stands-out

I already got somebody that said the other day, I was like,

well, it's not going to rain like that again.

And this comment section was like,

when he shut up already, Jake's in everything we do.

So I won't go there.

But I think the farm's going to be just fine.

I think it would be pretty easy to have more women,

more great female artists on this lineup.

Jake of the RooHamm guys was almost violent in his hate

for this.

Oh, really?

Really?

Yeah.

Welcome back to the What Podcast.

It is December, middle of December.

We'll just leave it there.

We won't go with days and time.

But it's the middle of December.

We're a couple of weeks away from the lineup

being announced.

At Bonnaroo, we are back.

I'm Barry.

That's Russ.

That's Brian.

Sitting next to Brian, you guys that

have been watching for a while, we'll recognize Beth.

Hi, Beth.

Hi.

You're not on the West Coast.

You're right there.

So welcome to Chattanooga.

Thank you.

I'm in the middle on the way to the east.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah, you traverse the entire continent, don't you?

Yeah, pretty much.

We have lots to talk about, including why Beth is in town.

And obviously, some Bonnaroo news, some other festival news.

And then we're going to talk a little bit about the unbelievable

number of entry to our contest for two tickets to Bonnaroo

with camping.

So we'll do that in a little while.

I thought maybe it might be a good idea

to just spend a few minutes talking about who we are

and why we are doing this.

We started this podcast in 2018.

Brian has been to every single one in some form or another,

not like from start to finish for each one.

But you technically have been to all of them.

Yeah, that first one, I jumped the fence

for a couple hours for widespread panic

and used my Nokia phone to the block Nokia to call people.

Can you believe where I'm at?

Oh my god, I can't believe.

I just jumped the fence.

And then I went up to Nashville for the rest of the night.

So I was there, not for long.

But I did see panic that year.

Same.

Same with me.

I was there that first day.

But I was there in my official capacity

as a reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press

because we heard about this horrible traffic jam

between Chattanooga and Nashville.

And so they sent me in a photographer.

And I went, got in, and thought, this is really cool.

I'd like to come back.

But then I realized it was a camping festival.

And I realized I was in my mid-40s and had no camping gear

and didn't want to sleep on the ground until I went home

and let younger reporters go for the next three or four years.

But I've been every year since 2007

and just fell in love with it, as we all have.

2018, I was having lunch on the regular

with a guy named Brad Steiner, who is a radio host.

As we like to tease him, he did sports and weather updates.

But he actually was program director.

Traffic reporter.

Traffic reporter.

Yeah.

We casually one day said we should do,

I said Facebook Live while we're at the event.

His eyes lit up.

And he called me the next day and said,

we're going to start doing a podcast.

I already have a name.

I have a format.

I've got design.

Nick Turner did a lot of the graphic design for us.

All of this, what, for us in a day or two?

Yeah.

It all came together pretty quickly.

Yeah.

And along those lines, he said, I got a guy named Lord Taco

who's going to do basically the production

and does the web design and the web building.

And I'm like, what's a Lord Taco?

And we had never met.

And probably didn't for a while, actually.

But we started this thing in 2018 with the premise

that we didn't really know a lot of the acts on the lineup.

And so we thought, well, let's do a deep dive

into some of those acts and talk about them.

And we'll do that for a couple of months.

And then that'll be that.

And here we are nine years later, nine seasons later.

So we do it every week, which is stunning.

Just as stunning is the fact that we're still doing it.

We were the first.

We reached out to the Bonnaroo people.

And they said, we love the idea.

We'll help you however we can.

You can't use Bonnaroo in your name.

And you can't use any of our graphics.

But otherwise, we're all in.

And it wasn't long after that they started their own podcast.

Yeah, they stole our idea.

Yeah.

With John Norris from MTV.

The early 90s, not early, early 80s, the beginning of it.

But the 90s, most popular time, Kurt Loder, Tabitha Soren,

and Matt Penfield, and Norris.

And they had Norris come in.

And they did like eight episodes.

And they fizzled out and died.

And I was involved with you guys on the periphery.

And I was just like, ha ha ha.

Yeah, yeah.

Couldn't work.

It's pretty hard, isn't it, Byron?

It's very difficult stuff, right?

It's hard.

And yeah, Brian, as he kind of alluded to just then,

has been a regular, was a regular early on,

especially with like lineup day releases and stuff like that.

We would have Brian on as a guest.

And then Brad moved first to New Orleans.

And then he moved to New York.

We hit COVID.

And his job and life changed.

And so Brian came on board as his replacement,

what, three years ago?

I'm terrible.

Three years.

And we expanded into video as well.

We changed this from an audio podcast to audio and video.

Time flies.

It ain't got a thing to do with whether you're

having any fun or not, right?

Well, it's funny.

The video component is what forced

Russ to suddenly be not only on camera but on microphone.

Because your intention was to be off camera, right?

You never intended to have to speak.

You guys are the hosts.

I mean, I was just in the background

helping put all this together.

But yeah, since we're doing it over video calls and Zoom

and stuff like that in the beginning,

it just made sense that I'm on screen with you guys.

Yep.

And three years ago, we met Beth, coincidentally.

And the guys, the dudes, your campmates from Nashville,

you live, as I said earlier, live on the West Coast.

But you come have how many years?

It's a lot longer than I would think.

I started in 2004, and I only missed 18, 2018.

Yeah.

And so I started camping next to us.

And obviously, you and Brian, well, I won't speak for you,

but have a relationship because of Bonnaroo.

So I can't imagine what that long term, long,

what's the word, long distance relationship.

But you're making it work.

Yeah, check back with me on another podcast.

You'll hear more about it.

All right, so I think that brings us up to speed.

You are, Beth, you came into town

because Chattanooga had its annual Main Times 24 event,

right?

I guess the number one reason you're here

is to see the dumb ass sitting next to you.

But the bait, I guess, besides this, was Main Times 24, right?

So you came.

You guys went to that.

Rush drives his Westfalia every year as part of the parade.

So you guys did that.

I think you said you went to a concert at the Caverns

the other night, right?

Portugula Man?

Yeah, I'll let Beth speak quickly, or as much as you want.

It just kind of fell on that same time frame,

trying to figure out the best time for her

to come during the time off period here

at the end of the year.

And I was like, well, we got our annual party,

and then, hey, Portugula Man, which I've

become a huge fan of, that's the best sound I've gotten

in the Caverns in the cave to date.

We've been up there a lot now, and they have the amphitheater

stage outside, which is a completely different setup.

And sonically, it's completely different.

In the cave, it's a little hit or miss.

You know, you're in a cave.

It's tough to make that sound perfect.

They're great every time.

They sounded really good.

The only note to the show I'll give

is that it was an interesting set list layout.

They have a new album out, and they played damn

near the entire thing to open the show, about 2 thirds of it.

Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And I don't know the music well enough,

so I didn't know that for sure that that's

what they were doing.

And then he was like, OK, well, and he

had this whole thing about how he finally

got off Atlantic Records, and like, he's free.

And he was very happy about not being on Atlantic Records

anymore.

And I guess part of that was, I'm

just going to play the whole new album for you.

Here you go.

And then they played a whole other two and a half,

a set and a half of all the old throwback classics.

I know a lot of people listening are not from Chattanooga,

so you're not going to know Main Times 24.

But it's basically a 24-hour neighborhood block party

that features all kinds of stuff.

And so it's probably similar to what you have in your area,

which is why I think we're going to spend just a little bit

of time talking about it.

But what were the highlights again this year?

You got pretty good weather, right?

Fantastic weather.

It was a little chilly, but yeah, beautiful.

It was chilly, but it wasn't rainy.

It seems like about every other year,

it rains hard on Main Times 24.

So any year with no rain, I consider that good weather.

Yeah, it was quite chilly to start the day.

But the sun came out, felt like the burners

were turned on with just a little bit of sun.

It was nice.

I mean, it really is.

If you didn't know any better, which most of you

don't because you're not from here,

it's just a big block party.

But that kind of feels like it's kind of sliding the event,

like calling it just a big block party,

because it has become so popular.

And it is one of those.

It's kind of the if you want to be seen place, right?

And I mean that in all the best ways.

You're not as cool as you think you are if you're not somehow

feeling like you're involved with this a little bit.

So it's really grown.

It's the 17th year.

Started in an area of town that was in need of revitalization.

Some would call it gentrification,

whatever you want to call it.

It needed that.

It got that over the last 17 years.

And this event was kind of designed

to help push that forward.

And now it's the hip happening area of our town.

It's the place that you want to be if you're,

I don't know, what do you say?

25 to 55, you know, basically the target demographic

for selling people's stuff.

25, 55.

Yeah, it's the creatives.

That's the word that they used when they started it.

Such an overused word.

Sorry, go ahead.

I think the parade is probably the signature event.

It gets bigger every year.

It's almost too big.

It's too big.

I'm helping you guys.

It was two hours, two hours of going five miles an hour.

It's not easy to do in a straight shift with a clutch.

That is the worst.

There's a few people that we know and some that we don't

we're figuring out that are waiting on Russ's bus

in this parade.

Primarily get a free Jell-O shot and a beer out of the deal.

Because we did pretty good on supplying those.

And a few of them are just like, oh, I'm

always looking for you guys.

Got a PBR?

And then there's a lot of people we know that are waiting on us.

And a few times I'm like, are you all in the parade?

Where are you?

I have been out here all morning and I haven't seen you yet.

Yeah, we were towards the back of the parade.

So yeah, and two hours.

And they live streamed it too.

I don't know if you all saw that.

There's a whole video recap of it with commentary.

I don't want to bore our audience with this,

but I have to shortly.

One of the emcees of that very was our buddy Sean Phipps.

Nice.

It was two hours of him and just some other guy

narrating this kind of thing.

I don't envy that job.

No.

Don't envy it.

Sean's good, but boy, he was making jokes like, oh my god.

When does this thing end?

Yeah, I can only imagine.

He goes down that back alley quickly.

I can't imagine two hours of it.

And OK, we got the bus, the fantastic bus.

Here's something I would like.

I'd like to make love in one of those things.

I don't believe you should be able to say that.

No, no, no, no.

I mean, not two.

Two, one of them.

I want to experience love in a Volkswagen.

I feel like that's the ultimate 1970s experience.

But the Jello shots have become of the signature event,

as I think correctly Russ puts it.

The Jello shots have become the signature handout, I guess.

Candy for the kids, Jello shots for the adults.

They get a little needy ingredient.

I'm like, hey, can I get three more?

Get out of here, man.

We still have an hour and a half left to go in this parade.

We got to ration all this.

So it's all in good fun.

And I do want to shout out somebody on the street

who saw us and just I heard him say, love the podcast.

So thank you.

Oh, that's right.

Awesome.

Didn't catch who it was, but we got local fans too.

So appreciate that very much.

Yeah, sometimes we have a hard time getting our own talent

to recognize that we exist.

Which we like.

When it comes to publications, they

give the best podcasts of the city.

They tend to forget that we're here.

But hey, we appreciate that very, very much.

All right, we had other news.

Jazz Fest announced its lineup.

Yeah, I mean, Jazz Fest kind of does it again.

The top line doesn't do a whole lot for me.

Sorry, I'm trying to pull it up.

I didn't have it ready.

Well, you skipped over the Lillian show

before we head into Jazz Fest.

That's my buddy Travis Knight, who

also does the artwork for the poster for Main Times 24

this year, and put me on the poster, which I appreciate.

Also, your nephew Graham is in the band.

It's kind of become a tradition now

that they play the Main Times 24 show at Boneyard, which

is technically not on Main Street, but close enough.

Yeah, it's a block off thereabouts.

So yeah, how was the show?

Show was great.

I think they're working on a new album.

They played a couple new songs that I hadn't heard.

What did you guys think?

Oh, we didn't make it.

You didn't make it?

Yeah, that was the end of the night.

It was around 4 or 5 o'clock once the sun set,

and I was getting cold.

Oh, it's just getting started.

I'm on it.

That's true.

I flew overnight on Thursday.

I got like 15 minutes of sleep.

So it was a little hard to hit the ground running

when we first got here.

Well, you'll have to do better next year.

And then the Chili Cook Off, did you guys make it to that?

We did.

Yeah.

They were almost out of chili by the time we got there.

Excellent.

I had six chilies, six great chilies.

So perfect for that type of day.

They have like a pancake breakfast,

and then the Chili Cook Off, and then Big Wheel Races.

And don't they still do dog parades, too?

Yeah, I think so.

There's dogs in the parade for sure.

Yeah, they need to save some chili,

because the parade was so long that by the time

we got out of it and parked and made it to the Chili Cook Off,

most everybody was out of chili.

But they start at like 7 in the morning cooking chili.

All right, Jazz Fest.

Yeah, so the top, Eagle, Stevie Nicks, Rod Stewart.

You get started there as like Rod Stewart.

Yeah, what is this, 1980?

Stevie Nicks, Eagles, they're still doing things.

But as always, it's a who's who.

It's just they seem to get, if they're touring for that year,

somehow the Jazz Fest has a budget.

It's almost like it's a nonprofit or some kind

of governmentally funded thing that can take a loss.

It's like, I don't know how they pull profit, especially

in the ecosystem we're in of how expensive just putting

on a festival is.

And it keeps going from there.

Lord, nice to see she's done very few days.

In the last several years, Black Keys, David Byrne.

I was getting whispers that the talking heads were

doing an actual reunion.

That's breaking rumors here on the show.

I don't know if that's true or not.

But David Byrne, Black Keys, and I won't go through the list

because it's exhaustive.

Alabama Shakes, Earth, Wind, and Fire.

They're just kind of Lake Street dive.

Mavis, revivalists are kind of little feet.

It bounces from very contemporary to not at all

very quickly.

So I've never done Jazz Fest.

Anytime I tell that to somebody who's a festival,

I don't maybe not call them festival heads,

but somebody who knows festivals of the longevity of them,

they're like, how have you never been to Jazz Fest?

I can't go to all the cool things, Barry.

I try.

But I can't.

It's one I'd like to, I think.

And I think a lot of it is what you see in the bars

or on the streets that aren't necessarily on the poster.

That's what I've always been told.

The music, they celebrate it.

Well, with Jazz Fest, it's kind of like Mardi Gras with me

over the years.

Yeah, those things sound fun.

But you can go to New Orleans any time

and have yourself a hell of a time.

Right.

And I've been a couple of times.

And we've all been at Bestman a couple of times.

We were just talking about it the other day.

Certainly would like to do it one of these days.

But I don't know.

We'll see if it'll be this year or not.

Probably not, because it's in the spring,

as we're in our busy time, as we're

getting ready for the farm.

But as far as festival stuff, the Minnesota Yacht Club

thing looks pretty good up in Minnesota

if you care of such things.

And then Hangout slash whatever it turned into last year,

the shaky or sand in my boots and whatever,

don't step on my boots fest or whatever it was called,

they're officially closed up shop down there,

it would appear, for the beach.

The Orange Beach Alabama Festival

seems to be officially done.

I don't have a lot of thoughts on that, as I thought.

I thought the sand in my, you know where,

was a little annoying to begin with.

I mean, it just speaks to how tough it

is to make these things happen every year, which

is why what is happening with Bonnaroo

is all the more interesting, which we'll talk about again

here later in more detail.

But yeah, I mean, it's tough.

It's expensive.

So not surprised.

Well, Hangout had a nice run.

I didn't expect Hangout to come back.

They kind of moved on from that concept.

But I mean, you take two, Beth was kind of laughing at me,

thought I was being silly on this one a minute ago

before we got on here.

But you take two very, very difficult places

to navigate, a festival setting and a beach community.

And then you pull them together.

Never had a lot of interest in doing that,

even though some of those early Hangout lineups

were as good as anything the Southeast has ever seen.

There was one year Foo Fighters and Paul Simon.

And I mean, that's it.

I'm going on memory.

So that's not going to work from 15 years ago.

But there was so Paul Simon was the one that stuck out

the most that year.

But hey, nothing lasts forever except for Bonnaroo so far.

Exactly.

Don't say that.

You're going to jinx us again.

Yeah, this podcast.

All right, let's take a break.

And we will come back.

And we will talk Bonnaroo.

All right, so one of the things we want to do

is we want to hear from Beth, who was not on the lineup

reveal show.

Kind of get your first impressions when you saw it.

And now you've had a couple of weeks to live with it.

And maybe get your take on some of the don't miss.

Real quick, Beth, before we jump right into that,

tell them why you are not on the show.

I'm going to start with you.

Beth, before we jump right into that,

tell them why you are not on the Bonnaroo, our show we did live.

Oh, I was in the comments of the live stream.

But I was on my way to Seattle for a benefit for KEXB

with Jeff Tweedy and Mavis.

So I had a good excuse.

It was my birthday.

I was on the show.

And it was her birthday.

So we should have said in the introductions, too,

not only is Beth in the Bonnaroo since, what, 2004.

Or the photographer for a venue where

you live in Washington state.

You see a lot of these bands.

You attend a lot of shows.

So it's not just a, I mean, not that it would matter.

You can have your opinions, too.

But you see a lot of them.

So what was your thought when you saw the lineup?

It was about what I expected.

Because I thought that they wouldn't

be spending a lot of money on the headliners.

I am actually curious about the survey,

whether people said that they wanted better undercard

than headliners.

Because I think that's kind of reflected here.

That might have been the vote, is

that people didn't want them to spend the money

on the big name headliners.

Because I know I said that.

So I can't really complain about the headliners.

Because I did say I would rather have a robust undercard.

I don't think the headliners are really

headliners with that said.

You know, they're not huge.

We also just watched the Lilith Fair documentary.

So about the history of Lilith Fair, which is great.

I definitely recommend that.

On Hulu.

Yeah, on Hulu.

And I didn't notice until we watched that documentary, which

I should have.

And this is a problem.

But I didn't notice 11 headliners on the top line,

one female artist out of 11.

So I think that's kind of an issue.

I would like to see a few more.

The undercard's really good, though,

on a lot of female artists.

There's a lot I like.

I mean, I really like EDM.

So I would say it's about 75% EDM, maybe.

I made a playlist with one from each person.

I'm missing three somehow, but there are 100 people,

97 on the playlist.

And it's probably the easiest playlist

to put together I've ever made, because so much of the music

is kind of similar.

It goes in together really well.

I want more wild cards.

So I'm not complaining, because there's a lot to like on here.

Definitely excited about Turnstile,

Amulet of Sniffers.

I've seen Wetleg before, so I'm excited to shoot them.

What am I going to see at that?

Because that's one of my, that's way up on my must-see.

Hold that thought back.

Barry, on our way back from Portugal,

Caverns is an hour from where we live, roughly.

And we put on Wetleg on the way back for an hour.

You're going to like it.

You are.

I think anybody who likes music that has guitars in it all

is going to like it.

I knew one song, and I enjoyed it very, very much.

Oh, I like the music.

It's the show, I'm curious to know.

Show is great.

Because I'm still trying to figure out what the shoulder

pads were all about on their tiny desk.

That I don't know.

Yeah, I saw them a few years ago.

I sort of shot them.

So my local festival that was very local in my town,

but had moved to closer to Seattle,

a lot of people on this lineup were

at my really small local festival a couple of years ago,

which, by the way, is also taking a year off.

So in Festival News, there's another one

that tried to pivot, do weekends one day,

like one Saturday for a month.

It didn't work.

But anyway, I saw Wetleg at that festival.

They have really strong stage presence.

They're very energetic.

And their style has changed in the last couple of years.

Yeah, that's what I noticed.

And that's why I'm really curious.

Obviously, but Shay's lounge was what put them on the map.

And so since then, it's like, oh, let's

watch another YouTube video.

And I'm like, ooh, OK.

Shoulder pads.

How do we get from here to there?

Yeah, I have a video.

And I have a couple photos, which maybe we'll

show from when I saw them a couple of years ago,

where they're wearing full dresses and combat boots.

So the style has changed a little bit.

But I think it was always, you see

her doing almost a full back bend, holding the microphone

up.

The seeds were there, for sure.

Well, since we're talking about, obviously,

they're a female duo, going back to what you said,

we've had this conversation since it was pointed out,

who was going to be the first female back

and then COVID hit.

And it was a big deal.

First female headliner.

Lizzo.

Lizzo, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

On a Saturday night, Lizzo was scheduled for that 2020,

right?

I think.

2020.

It was one of those that I don't.

Did they intentionally not have a female,

or were they just couldn't, there wasn't a female headliner

available?

Do you buy that?

And I guess what I'm trying to say

is, should there be, I mean, do you put a female on there

just to have a female on the lineup,

or do you pick best available?

I mean, where do you think they fall on that?

I know we've talked to Brian Benson and Steven about that.

I think their answer is we choose best available.

But I don't know.

What are your thoughts?

I mean, I think that's a problem.

I think there are a lot of great female artists available.

So I don't think you put somebody on just

for representation, or just because you should.

But even looking at some of the undercard,

I mean, there's some people that could be headliners

comparatively that aren't in that slot.

So I think it would be pretty easy to have more women,

more great female artists on this lineup.

All right.

Who are some of the other people that you're

going to recommend to the three of us Luddites

that we should check out?

Well, I mean, I'm a big Grizz fan.

So Grizz, I think, deserves to be up there,

deserves to be on the headline list,

because he really has a long relationship with the farm

and has put in the work and draws the crowd.

And so I'm really happy about that.

Let's see.

I've been listening to Blood Orange lately.

Really like that.

Listened to Wednesday last night.

Dora Jarr was really good.

There's a lot of stuff that, as kind of singer-songwriter,

that I really like to listen to.

But it's always different what I plan

to shoot versus what I would like to listen

to in my normal life.

So kind of the sleepier ones will probably

sound great in a tent in the afternoon.

But I may not end up seeing them,

because they're not going to be so much fun to shoot.

So I'm going for, there are a lot of punk bands

that will be really energetic.

I saw Freddie Gibbs and the Alchemist at my,

or I guess he was never the, Freddie Gibbs and Alchemist

in the festival I was just talking about.

Another person I don't really love just listening to,

because it's just kind of really hard driving rap.

But I love watching live.

So that was a great live show.

I think that's going to do really well on the farm.

There's actually some good hip hop.

I was expecting, oh, I didn't bring my bingo card.

But I made a bingo card and got almost everything checked off

on the bingo card.

And I thought they would have one hip hop artist,

non-headliner, which is pretty much what happened.

But Lil Jon's going to be really fun.

That's kind of the same Nelly spot, Nelly slash T-Pain spot.

So I think that'll do well.

Really happy to see Trombone Shorty back.

I think it was good that they did a nod

to the history of Bonnaroo with Trombone Shorty, who

used to be there all the time.

Blue's Traveler I've seen a million times,

but happy to see them back on the farm.

I'll be really glad to see them there.

One thing that I have about the lineup,

and EDM has a lot of different branches.

So although there are so many EDM artists,

they're all so different.

And you can really get into those subgenres

and the parts of EDM.

But I think that they're not giving the EDM crowd enough

credit, because this music is made up of a lot

of different types of music.

So I think you can push that audience further

and give them different types of bands,

and they will enjoy it at this festival.

And by give them credit, the EDM audience

is the credit that they will branch outside of just EDM.

When you first said that when we were talking

the other day, the other week, I thought,

what do you mean by that exactly?

Because I do think that there tends

to be this preconceived opinion of sorts

that EDM fans only want EDM.

Yeah, they only want bass, or they only want house,

or they're not going to be happy.

And they might not patron you.

And I think the only reason I've put any extra thought into this

is because this really does kind of correlate

with the 20-some-odd years ago of the jam band explosion.

And it was the same kind of thing.

It felt like, well, the jam fan, the panic fan, the fish fan,

the string cheese fan, that's all they like.

They don't want to hear the Black Keys or maybe even

Jack White or something, White Stripes, or something

that was more I'm trying to think of things

that were popular back then.

Sure.

I think I feel like that was more accurate potentially,

because the jam band community were insufferable.

I was part of it.

So I thought that was an interesting take.

And I'm not entirely sure I agree with it,

because I don't know enough.

Like, I don't know the ethos enough.

I would default to, yeah, EDM, you better give them all of it,

or they might not show up.

And I think I know Beth's thought is that they probably

can be pushed and do want to be.

I think that's an interesting thought.

I think that's been, for me, as like I said,

someone who's been basically going since the beginning,

and as someone who has been covering music for 42 years,

one of the things that I've always given Bonnaroo credit

for is this idea of discovery, which is what we do here.

That the fans have changed, and that now they

want to discover.

25 years ago, if it wasn't on the radio for a lot of people,

they weren't going to listen to it.

And then you had your jam band, which

they were the sort of outlier.

It was cool to not be listening to Top 40 radio.

But then it has begun to shift, where I've said many, many

times my favorite t-shirt that I saw was,

I'm into bands that don't exist yet at Bonnaroo.

That's become the attitude.

Yeah, I want to find something that I've never heard of.

And I don't care what genre it's in.

Well, because you look at those first three years,

two, three, and four, four was starting to stray,

but two and three, not at all.

There wasn't a thing on that lineup except for a jam band.

Not a thing.

There wasn't any discovery other than a jam band

you've never heard of.

That was intentional, because they were hippies

and they'd sleep in a field.

It was intentional.

And then it didn't take long for them

to realize that that's not going to work long term.

And I guess I'm kind of making this up as I go here.

But I am a little concerned.

Beth uses the number, 75%.

We'll call it 2 thirds, call it whatever you want.

But a very large number of this is EDM.

This isn't an EDM festival.

Let's not turn it into one.

You had a jam band festival and you

realized not a good idea to focus on one thing.

It's a really good idea to become the most unique brand,

potentially, in the world by doing

what you just described, Barry.

Eventually that happened in the mid aughts and then certainly

into the early teens.

That's what it was all about.

It feels like they're, I don't know.

I'm not trying to be I hate the lineup guy,

even though I'm not a fan of the lineup this year.

I'll find Discovery and I'll start working on it in January.

I plan on putting a lot of effort into that.

I'm worried that there might be leaning on that too much

and not following the advice of Beth,

not that anybody asked any of us,

but that give these guys, these people the EDM crowd credit.

They might want to see Stevie Nicks.

They might want to see Noah Khan, which they're

going to get the chance here.

So yeah, that's the only thing I'd be concerned is,

there are EDM festivals, guys.

You don't need to be one too.

Those already exist.

You're not the copycat festival.

You're the trendsetters.

No.

Sorry, I'm not trying to sound angry.

I'm not mad.

No, no.

Along with that shift in Discovery,

the folks who book it and the festival planners,

they realized they needed to up their camping game, which,

as we've noted, they've done with all the VIP experiences

and the a la carte ticket buying options.

We saw another video that came out, what, this week

about improvements on the farm.

But we've noted how that makes a big difference

to the experience of the bathrooms and all

of those sorts of things.

So they put a lot of money into that.

This lineup feels like, I guess what I was trying to say

is the efforts seems to have been on the infrastructure, which

obviously was a hot topic because we got rained out last year

and three times in six years through no fault of anybody.

But obviously, they've made those efforts.

Yeah, I think a lot of that's optics.

But optics is part of branding.

And optics is part of how you sell your brand going forward.

And I think that's fine for them to do.

I already got somebody, I said the other day,

I was like, well, it's not going to rain like that again.

And this comment section was like,

when he shut up already, it's jigs and everything we do.

So I won't go there.

But I think the farm's going to be just fine in June of 26.

Quickly, as far as the lineup goes,

and we've been just sampling a little bit here this past week

before I do my deeper dives and playlists coming into January.

Geese.

Have a little trouble with Geese.

I don't know if I was a little tainted because she kind of told

me.

I don't really know what's going on with this band.

And then I'm watching like, I don't know either.

But we're trying to figure Geese out.

So I don't know what they are just yet.

Yeah.

Corey, I think when he was on with us talking about the survey,

that they heard from people that they wanted more guitars.

And so they've added that, tried to add that element to the lineup.

I'm still looking for those guitars.

Kind of looking around.

I was going to ask, have you found any of the guitars?

Well, I found a really weird sounding one in the band Geese.

It could be a careful what you wish for.

You might get some weird guitars.

I'm not trying to be a hater just yet.

They're also very young.

I didn't realize this until Beth pointed it out.

I mean, they were graduating high school, would you say, five years ago?

COVID year they were graduating.

So I mean, they're 24 years old, maybe 23.

So they're still figuring themselves out.

But yeah, I'm still looking for those guitars and I'll find them.

But to be fair, absolutely to be fair, I have purposely not done any of my

discovery yet.

I mean, I don't usually until it gets closer to the spring.

We got such an early drop this year, so I'll find those guitars and I'll be

happy as a peach when I find them.

Let me start you out with one Villanelle on the last line on Thursday.

That's from what I understand, that's Liam Gallagher's son.

Yeah, yeah, they have two songs.

So I sure would.

You don't even have an album yet, it looks like from free free search.

They have two songs.

As far as yeah, she told me about that because she knew I'd be Liam.

Liam Gallagher, his son, and then, yeah, we listen to it.

It sounds like some English sloppy garage band noise and I'm here for it.

But yeah, they're brand brand new, very speaking young, young kids.

So, yeah, happy to see that.

I just want to I don't I'm not complaining about the lineup.

I just want to make that clear.

You know, I mean, that's me.

That's her. That's right.

I'm I'm just kind of pointing out that I think that it it doesn't have to be as much EDM.

I think they're saying, oh, let's give everybody what they want.

And I think I really think you can push the EDM audience a little bit farther and give more variety.

So I was kind of hoping for another niche kind of band that draws a wacky crowd, you know,

like sort of the guar corn, ICP.

We have Weird Al, which I'm really excited about, because I've never seen Weird Al.

So we've got that.

But I would have loved to see kind of a subculture band like that here.

But I mean, there's a lot to like.

I'm I'm pretty happy with everything that I'm listening to.

Yeah, that's me. And recommendations from people who listen to this show,

I've pretty much everybody that people have recommended I've liked.

Buffalo Traffic Jam, I've listened to quite a bit.

Turnstile I knew a little bit about, but listen to a lot more.

That's going to be a good show.

Yeah, just thrilled to see Flip turn back on back on the lineup.

So I think all four turns.

Yeah, all the turns. I like turnover.

Turnover is really good.

And then turn down for what? Also.

So we have four turns that I'm going to make sure that I see all four of those.

Yeah. Yeah. And as far as a one note,

I made to myself is I'm not going to die on the hill of that tent.

Being moved.

It's going to that was what I was going to ask earlier.

Yeah. You've had more time to think about that.

What do you think?

Oh, well, I still hate it.

I'm just not going to die on the hill.

The hill they moved or another hill.

All right. I'm not going to die on a hill.

I hate it.

Hate it. Aesthetically, more than anything, aesthetically, I don't like it.

Don't mess with my what field.

Don't mess with my what stage.

And but I do understand that from what I'm gathering,

I don't understand from experience because I haven't been close enough to.

But I guess the other and that are having or having bleed issues.

But if we really cared about bleed issues, then this and which

would have been would have been addressed a long time ago,

because if you've got acts that are that are different in volume

and those stages are always going at the same time,

this tent and which have bleed all day and can be a problem.

It's not so bad that it ruins the show for either, but there are bleed problems.

So I don't I think it feels like they're doing stuff just for the sake of doing things.

That's OK. I'm not going to die on the hill.

Yeah. I mean, I remember now you you had not heard

the explanation when we did the the thing two weeks ago.

Yeah, I know.

And the trees, you know, growing and the road and all of that.

They get in the back load, the load in load out.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's my I think that's my take.

The more I think about it and the more I've heard, it makes a lot of sense.

And that was only going to get worse.

Yeah. I.

Beth pointed this out, though, is that saying that some of these

some of these artists are bigger, you know, bigger productions.

So it's more trucks rather than bands. Right.

Except it doesn't feel like this lineup has that.

Maybe, maybe.

Noah Khan, you know, is not on the tent.

Gotcha. Yeah.

So anyway, I it's fine.

I just I thought that tent was in a very, very good position place.

It was very easy to get to very, you know, kind of that why,

you know, you walk this way to the witch, you go this way to the what?

And it's a very easy.

I don't know. But it's changed very, you know, how we are with this.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's my festival.

I mean, I'm thinking, you know, John Prine in there was great,

but there was only about 40 of us in the audience at one point.

But then some of the others were bleeding out and you can't even

you can't see, you know, you can't find a place to even see.

So I kind of get it both ways.

I will say on that.

Sorry, real quick.

The late night on that, though, makes all the sense in the world.

Like late night, that tent and the what's pretty much it's now closed.

Now you got the whole field to spread out.

That will work.

That will work fundamentally.

That's that's where I was going to go is kind of it all depends on how it works.

You know, with the change when we see it in the field there.

So, yeah.

So I'm going to let it play out and then I'll have my more thoughts on it

in seven months from now.

There you go.

Speaking of changes.

Yeah, let's play this video that they put out another Justin video with Dale.

The expansion of the internal road system

will include over a million square feet of gravel roads.

People will be able to get in and out better experience

as far as walking around the event to get from place to place

will be a whole lot better.

Expansion of the road system is going to significantly help

our camping experience by getting fans in and out of the site

more efficiently, while at the same time providing more robust

road system for our fan services.

There you go. Yeah, I like that.

I think that's good.

Getting those walkways

in better shape is I don't think that is optics.

I think that's a good a good infrastructure improvement.

Absolutely. And speaking of videos,

I don't know if you have any of this ramped up, Russ, or even the link,

but they released what Bonnaroo 2002,

some of the early footage.

And I have not seen any of that, really.

Yeah, that came in our inbox for what's his name?

Yeah, this fake Matt.

Fake Matt. Yeah, this is a great name for some reason.

I laughed. Fake Matt.

Yeah. Yeah, this this was not released.

This was him basically preserving this Bonnaroo 2002 DVD,

which is I've looked for it and you cannot find it, at least not for like,

you know, 50 or 100 dollars or less than that.

He's got a copy. You have it?

Yeah, I have it. We can copy it maybe or something.

We'll do whatever. I have it.

I didn't think it was available anywhere.

And yeah, this guy, fake Matt, emailed us and said he put a copy up on archive.org,

which you can download, which I did.

And then he's also kind of put some of the clips of not the performances,

but like the the segments they did in between on the DVD.

So you get, you know, shots of, you know, people waiting in line.

Like you said, Barry, the traffic jam.

People were waiting on the interstate 12 hours just to get in.

Yeah. And then, you know, and they finally let people in and open the gates up.

There was somebody whose car caught on fire.

So you guys are just sitting there.

And then what we pull in and then the fucking burst into flames, I guess.

Shit.

Well, fuck it.

You're not going to let it ruin my time.

But pretty interesting, the interviews they did with a lot of the fans

and early news clips, early

interviews with people we know, like Jonathan Mayers

and Ashley Caps, they're in there.

Pretty, pretty fascinating look back.

I mean, it's almost like a time capsule.

Yeah, that's exactly.

I thought that, I mean, I have I thought I had every Bonnaroo DVD, too.

I thought I had the two thousand two one.

And this seemed to be a lot more almost felt like a lot of B-roll.

I'm not sure if I think some of this stuff might not have made some of those DVDs.

I'm not either way.

It's really, really fun stuff to take a look at.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. Some of what I saw just it confirmed reiterated whatever

everything that we've been, you know, been told and been talking about.

You know, Ashley has said, for example, from the beginning that the whole hippie

fest, you know, people complain, like you mentioned earlier, Brian, at year three

and four, when it shifted from the jam band, you know, it was never intended

to be a jam band festival every single year.

They did it because they needed people that would camp.

Yeah, they needed a proof of concept, right?

Right. That that that a festival would work.

So let's just go let's go where the well is the deepest.

You know, Phish was having those those just massively attended

the camping festivals down in Florida and up in the northeast.

And they basically copied that model to a certain degree.

You know, I don't know what they were thinking in that moment.

Well, we'll be doing this 20 years later.

But yeah, let's start where we know it'll work.

And sure, certainly did. Sure.

Final thoughts from your just initial look there, Beth, because I'm still

I'm still waiting for I dive too much other than what Beth tells me to listen to.

Yeah, I mean, I think they're doing what they know is going to work now.

So I think they know that if they put a lot of EDM artists on there.

And I was also thinking that part of the rise of EDM as a festival thing

is that you are so far away from the stages at festivals now

that it has to become more about the interaction in the crowd

than about what's going on on stage.

So I think that that's been the shift because these festivals are so massive.

It becomes about people's outfits and people's totems

and people connecting with each other through dancing.

You know, so it's not as much focused on what's happening on stage,

although some of them have pyro and lights and all the cool stuff going on, too.

So I think this makes sense.

And this is just a thing that's happening this year.

Out of all of I mean, I really like house.

So I like Baby No Money, Sidepiece,

trying to think of the other.

I listen to some Sarah Landry.

I'm glad that she's on this lineup, but she's like really hard techno.

So kind of a little farther than I usually go.

I used to listen to Venom and it was kind of like that.

Just constant kind of driving hard.

Yeah, Sarah Landry.

I went to a high school with a girl named Sarah Landry.

And so when I saw she was a cave fowl, Sarah Landry.

She's done well at the Caverns.

Caverns, I mean, not cave fest, sorry.

At the Caverns, sold out too hard, not too hard sell outs.

Just recently, I grabbed my attention.

If you know, if this means anything, I know it will.

Do you talk a little bit?

And maybe do you bury too, but like 90s techno kind of dance rave?

Yeah, that's what Sarah Landry is far more like.

She's in her mid mid 30s plus or so.

So if you like that kind of thing, it's a little bit of a throwback.

Almost if she had maybe more popularity over the years, a legacy type act almost.

But anyway, that's my there's my insights into dance.

All right. Mark it down.

Wow. All right. Three more people.

Youngblood for sure.

I'm really excited. Youngblood is going to be there.

I listen to Trixie Mattel singing and I love it.

But Trixie Mattel is going to be DJing.

So we may not get to listen to actual singing.

And there was one other.

Oh, I actually really liked Amble to Ambles, kind of like Irish folk music,

which is the type of thing that I love to listen to.

May not want to shoot.

And one thing that quickly does

about things people might be talking about online and the threads and stuff.

Youngblood was moved up to that top line.

Yeah. I don't know.

I think deserve a place.

Oh, I mean, I know that there are going to be complaints,

but he had a really good explanation for why why he deserved to be on that line.

It was on the second line because I have the original printout still right here.

And it was on the second line right next to our new favorite band, Geese.

If Geese and Youngblood are anywhere near the same caliber, I would.

I hope not anyway.

So I just thought that was an interesting topic of discussion,

that it was bumped up to the top line of a headliner line.

What was the explanation?

Just the the number.

I can't remember. I was talking to Tara Veland about this yesterday.

They made a statement number of.

Just numbers of streams and all that.

I've read with a lot of people recently collaborate with Aerosmith,

has collaborated with a lot of really big name artists and is,

I guess, well known enough in the United States that compared to these other lines.

I mean, I think the case is definitely there for being a headliner.

Maybe they saw their name next to Geese and said,

Baru, what the hell do you think we are? Yeah.

Well, I have to say one of the bands or acts that I'm really

going to have to check out is Teddy Swims.

And that is because Jake on the of the RooHamm guys

was almost violent in his hate for this.

Oh, really?

Really?

Yeah. You're my guy, Jake.

You're my guy.

I recommend go listen to that because it's kind of one of those.

Well, now I'm interested

because he hates it so much.

Well, especially because last year we were supposed to have Barry Can't Swim.

This year we have Teddy Swims.

Here's what I need.

I need bands to get a little more creative with their names.

All right. If three other bands got turn in their name,

get a different name.

Sorry. That's my there's my little mini-ram.

I just had to mention that Teddy Swims.

That is a dumb name, too. Jake, I'm with you.

He was like, I'm not he's talking about not even going

when he saw it on the lineup.

That's how much this guy like me is just hyperbole his whole life.

Not typically, but man, he he went full Bryan Stone on this.

I have heard a lot of great things about Teddy Swims a lot.

But I also hear a lot of great things about bands I don't like all the time.

Yeah, I'm still excited about everything.

I and I know that all discovery will get me really, really good

when I when I decide to truly put my effort into it later in the early next year.

All right. Well, let's take a break.

And when we come back, we're going to talk about the unbelievable

number of contents entries that we have gotten.

It's going to be a tough choice, guys.

But let's talk about that when we get back.

All right. If the number of contest entries means anything,

people are excited about Bonnaroo 2026.

That's my initial take after, what, 10 days of this

since we announced that we're doing this.

I mean, the numbers of entries is pretty amazing, wouldn't you say, Russ?

Yeah, more than we've ever had at this point in the contest.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

And we we appreciate that, Barry.

You'll get this.

It was 20 some odd years ago where I can't remember who I was dealing with.

But it was one of those doing radio show stuff and like, is anybody listen?

It feels like nobody's listening.

Let's give away something real quick. I'll show you.

And then we got tickets to the dog show or something.

And it's like, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, light, light, light, light,

fax machine, fax machine, email, email.

All right. They're out there.

Yeah, they're there. That's good.

So thank you guys.

I'm trying.

I mean, I think I've read most all of them, if not all are listened

and trying to look for a theme.

If anything, there's a lot of people, obviously, who were disappointed.

Last year got cut short.

A lot of people who want to return a lot of people who last year was their first

time and they got cut short.

So that's the worst story, isn't it?

The one that they got there, there was a first time ever and they couldn't wait.

And then it gets cut short.

And then some of those stories are and I got there Thursday night.

Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, there's so many of those.

Another theme that I picked up on, I don't know if you noticed this,

there's a lot of people that aren't necessarily trying to win tickets

for themselves.

They are. They want to win it for their their wife, their significant other,

their son, their brother, you know, just somebody.

They're not even trying to get them for themselves.

They're trying to make a boner who happened for somebody else that they know

that either got cut short last year or have never been.

Yeah, maybe their friends and yeah, they've they've heard about it

and they want them to experience or like, yeah, like you said,

some of them are heartbreaking.

Yeah. You know, for family members who just need to get away.

I won't get into specific names, but there's a couple of those.

We're like, this is for a family member who's got a, you know,

dealing with a whole lot and could sure use four or five days of

radiating positivity on the farm.

So you got a lot of those.

You wish we had 100 tickets to give away.

Yeah. Yeah, I joked when I said this.

It sounds like a good idea now.

And then when we have to choose in a couple weeks or months, it's going to suck.

And along those lines, because we've gotten so many,

I don't know when we'll choose them.

I don't want to drag this thing on three and four months.

That seems sort of sort of cruel

to people who have entered

and are wanting to do something.

So you guys may feel differently, but I don't know when we'll choose,

but I don't think it's going to be three, four months from now.

That just seems like I said, I agree with that.

So, yeah, well, I mean, just based on the number that we've gotten and,

you know, there's still time if you want to submit

an entry, we are asking you to either call us

four, two, three, six, six, seven, seven, eight, seven, seven.

Leave a voicemail, a short voicemail

explaining why you think you should win.

You can also go to the what.co slash win for all these details.

And there's a place you can send us an email,

comments at the What Podcast dot com.

You can send us a video if you want to record yourself,

which we have gotten a few video entries.

So, you know, there's multiple ways to do this.

Somebody has been calling our voicemail line every single day.

Just kind of like, yeah, catching up, like, hey, here's what I did today.

Just thought I would call.

I love it.

Where were your own personal therapy service, voicemail service?

Yeah. Mm hmm.

Just to give you a sort of an example,

we've asked people to, you know, be clever.

Andrea sent us a bunch of haikus that she wrote.

Oh, yeah. I think that's the first time.

Mm hmm. Do you like haikus?

Here's a few.

What, which, this, that, other, the fountain and Ferris wheel,

bees at the big stage as one wetleg and weird owl.

San, San Holo.

Um, real quick,

help me remember a haiku, the five four, what is it?

Five, seven, five, five, seven, five.

Sorry. OK, go ahead.

Yeah. Wetleg and weird owl.

San, San Holo, Tosh Sultana, Kesha Super Jam.

Peace, love, unity, respect.

Don't be that guy.

Be cool, man.

Leave no trace or trash.

So thank you, Andrea.

That's just a couple of them

and kind of an example of

the type of entries that we're getting.

Here's one I want to play real quick,

because this is a video that was submitted.

Someone, she 3D modeled her entire campsite.

I don't know why.

Wow. I'm looking forward to that.

Yeah. So, yeah.

So, I mean, it looks like, you know, there's this whole tent set up.

They've got, you know, several different canopies set up.

There's tapestry, Alice in Wonderland poster tapestry.

There's cots, there's fans, there's coolers.

I mean, yeah, this is wow.

This is this is cool.

This is really cool.

Unicorns and that's got some actual the bedroom looks like.

That's a wow. Yeah.

Incredible.

Looks like the the things we talked about, the pantry things you'd hang in your

like a shoe rack from your closet for your pantry that's hanging up here.

You got lights, you got curtains.

You got camping stove.

We can hang out with you.

Please.

Well, now I'm curious, did she do that for the contest?

You think she just does that because that's what she's cool.

She sent a follow up video to that.

Well, yeah, I'll let her explain.

Hi, I'm Angie, and I wanted to submit a second video just to prove to you guys

that I am the one who made and owns that 3D model because I did post it to Reddit.

And so if somebody else had the idea to steal my video and submit it for the free

ticket contest before I had that idea, I just wanted to make sure that you guys

know the shit show.

I'm the one.

I'm the one who made it.

And I'm giving these tapestries as proof they match the model.

Welcome to the shit show.

Well, well done.

That's awesome.

Yeah, well, don't steal other people's work and send it to enter the contest.

So thank you, Angie.

We believe you.

And that's definitely one of the more unique ones that I've seen.

I don't know about you guys.

Absolutely.

If I didn't have a girlfriend, I'd be like, where is she from?

Did she leave a number in that voice mail?

She did.

She clearly really likes camping, though, so that might be an issue.

Yeah, it'd be a deal breaker.

I don't know.

That's funny.

That is really cool, though.

No, all jokes aside, that is really, really neat, Angie.

Thank you.

All right.

So those are just some of them.

I think we will probably dedicate a larger portion of future shows to all of these

entries.

And yeah, and I'll call to action you guys on the recommendations as we get going

down the road, too, because that was always that's always a big help.

I mean, I found Chapel Rowan primarily because of someone calling this show and

saying, you should listen to this.

So exactly.

We'll do that down the road, too.

Well, like I said, I think the two bigger points, as we mentioned, are the numbers,

the fact that there is a lot of interest.

I mean, that's how I'm interpreting this.

It's all been really positive.

I don't think we've gotten many emails or comments or anything saying I'm not going.

It's a terrible lineup type of thing.

It's, you know, how do I get back on the farm?

And as Brian said, obviously, last year was devastating.

So to to see this much energy and positivity, people want to get back, I think is a good

thing. So love it.

All right. Well, thanks, guys.

We'll be back next week.