BONNAROO

Tennessee hosts the best rock festival in America. by Steve Bloom

It’s 95 degrees and Mindy Smith is not happy. In the heat and humidity, she can’t tune her guitar. “I’m so frustrated,” the folk singer tells the crowd. “Pray for me. I need prayer.”

At the Bonnaroo Music Festival in southern Tennessee, prayer isn’t hard to find. Just this morning I woke up to hear local radio 1440 AM preaching the Gospel. “I’m leaning on Jesus,” a country preacher sang in a duet with a female pastor. “I’m well on my way.”

I didn’t attend the inaugural or second Bonnaroo festivals. Staging a hippie rock festival smack in the middle of rural Tennessee at first didn’t strike me as the smartest move. But the event sold out, and horror stories of police searching travelers in and out of the site never materialized.

The fact remains that Manchester, TN, is south of Nashville and just 30 miles from the Alabama and Georgia borders. It’s located in the Deep South, right in the heart of the Bible Belt. Years ago, I traveled west through Tennessee and Arkansas, and everywhere we went, people tried to convert us to Christianity. We even attended a passion play in Fayetteville, AR. These memories came rolling back to me as I listened to the AM radio station crackling with static thunder.

“You don’t need an appointment to speak to Jesus,” the female
pastor related. “You can speak to Him anytime.”

If God is watching over Bonnaroo, then I guess he decided a little rain shower would prevent the 90,000 attendees from wilting in the sweltering temperatures. Late Saturday afternoon, it rains for about 20 minutes, breaking the heat wave that we encountered the moment we drove onto the 700-acre farm that serves as Bonnaroo’s concert site. But the precipitation has little effect. The moisture disappears like beer in a cup. The sun returns and resumes its powerful onslaught. As I slather on 30-protection sunscreen, I notice a rash on my right ankle. Being that we’re camped out in a grassy field and I’ve been walking around barefoot, it dawns on me that I have poison ivy. I also have a little sunburn on my instep. Welcome to Bonnaroo.

We arrived a day and a half ago, on Thursday evening, right about sunset. I flew into Nashville from New York; my friend Jamband Sam
came in from Florida. We meet in the airport, which pulsates with
stoners arriving from all over the country, carrying backpacks, sleeping bags, tents and assorted baggage. Many sign up for the shuttle bus, while others rent cars. It’s amazing how cheap it is to rent a car at the Nashville airport. Thanks to Jamband Sam’s $25 discount coupon, we get a premium vehicle for a total of $60 for four days.

On our trip south to Manchester (about 60 miles), we take county roads to avoid festival traffic. Except for a couple of wrong turns here and there (typical directions from the locals: “You go down the road a piece ...”), we follow Route 55 until we see actual Bonnaroo highway signs as we approach a backup of cars on I-24. We stop at the Holiday Inn and then the KOA Campground, where we receive wristbands (orange for guests, yellow for media) that allow us entry into the VIP campground.

Thursday night is kaleidoscopic and surreal. Though the festival hasn’t officially started, the concert site is open, bustling with food vendors and activities. The biggest crowd is packed inside the air-conditioned Yet Another (Comedy) Tent. (I can’t get in.) Four bands are scheduled to play at 11 p.m., but I don’t catch any of them. Instead, I lounge on a couch in the Cinema Tent watching episodes of In Living Color.

The main circle, or central meeting place, known as Centeroo, features a mushroom-shaped fountain that will, in the days to come, serve as a
sprinkler and shower for the parched and dirty masses. I see some familiar vendors—Woodstock, NY’s venerable Not Fade Away and the Yashua’s Common Ground Café, a two-story structure that serves mostly
vegetarian food. I stop at the Sweet Leaf booth for a plate of stir-fry tofu, veggies and rice and wash it down with a cup of Sweetwater’s 420 microbrew. It’s been a long day. I walk back to the tent and doze fitfully. Let’s face it, this city boy’s not used to the outdoors—or generators that run all night, either.

Friday, June 11, begins appropriately with a press conference in the
media tent, coordinated by the Big Hassle publicity team headed by Ken
Weinstein. After reciting some fun stats (one million pounds of ice will be used), he stresses that when interviewing musicians, “please ask smart questions. No set-list questions. And don’t be shy.”

Inspired by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the British Glastonbury and Reading rock festivals, Bonnaroo offers a smorgasbord of music on six stages. The two main stages, What and Which, feature the biggest-name acts, while the other four tents (big A-frame pavilions)—That, This, Other and Another—are more genre-specific.

At 12:30 p.m., Austin’s Los Lonely Boys open Bonnaroo. I’m particularly excited to see the Black Keys, a two-piece garage-blues band, at 2 p.m. At the same time, Yonder Mountain String Band set a solid bluegrass tone for the festival; there’ll be plenty more pickin’ where that came from.

At the first press conference of the day, Chris Robinson, a recent convert to the jam-band scene with his solo band the New Earth Mud, wearing Wallabies and dark shades, says he likes Bonnaroo because “it’s rural—that’s if you can get past the car searches,” a not-too-subtle stoner reference. It’s interesting to note that Robinson was born some 40 miles away, in Chattanooga (he grew up in Atlanta, where he formed the Black Crowes with his brother Rich).

Following Wilco, Ani DiFranco and Patti Smith, I’m faced with my first logistical dilemma of Bonnaroo. Between 5:30 and 8 p.m., Robinson, Bob Dylan and the String Cheese Incident are all scheduled to perform. I make a plan: I’ll see each of them for 45 minutes, starting with Dylan, who’s a half hour late. He sits at a keyboard and doesn’t play guitar; he covers the Grateful Dead traditional number “Samson and Delilah,” and then I split after a rollicking “Highway 61.”

Over at the Other Tent, Robinson is showing off his newest bandmates, Crowes guitarist Audley Freed and Rob Barraco, former keyboardist for Zen Tricksters and the Dead. I arrive just in time for a jam session with Warren Haynes on “Got Love If You Want It.” I cross the field to the Which Stage and meld into SCI’s epic “Rollover, “ which begins as a cover of the Chili Peppers’ “Give It Away.” It’s the set closer, and I can only wish I had sampled a little more Cheese.

The second press conference is under way, starring Dave Matthews, who has Bonnaroo’s first prime-time 8:30-to-midnight unopposed slot (no other bands will be playing at the same time). It’s not a Dave Matthews Band show; instead it’s billed as Matthews and Friends (among the “friends” are Phish’s Trey Anastasio and guitarist Tim Reynolds). “The world is in an incredibly frightening and ugly place,” Matthews says. “That’s why Bonnaroo is so special. This is the power of the people.”

Best buds Matthews and Anastasio play crowd-pleasers for the big show, performing a set of mostly covers (“Up On Cripple Creek,” “Tell Me Something Good,” “Hey Bulldog”) that ends with a lengthy “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” as a juiced-up Matthews dances a funky jig.

The late bands (Vida Blue, Umphrey’s McGee, the X-Ecutioners and Praxis) blend together into a cacophony. I’m tired from walking and standing all day, drinking my share of $2 VIP drafts (Magic Hat’s #9 is my favorite) and not getting a lot of sleep. So I bail.

On Saturday, Los Lobos kick off a day devoted to the Dead (the evening’s headliner) with a “Not Fade Away>Bertha” medley. The temperature is peaking in the high 90s when Mindy Smith starts melting down. In addition to tuning problems, she’s a bit unglued about the racket Gomez is making in the distance. “I have a ittle rhythm section out there,” she notes. “I can’t hear anything. I might have to play you a different song.”

Next tent over, Beth Orton is struggling as well. “You’re very kind to be here in the fucking heat,” the British folkie says. “It’s going to take a minute to tchoon.”

Weather is a fact of life at rock festivals, and Bonnaroo had been
spared its first two years, with no rain to speak of. That’s about to
change. A storm, complete with thunder and psychedelic lightning bolts, is blowing in. It hits during My Morning Jacket’s set at 5:20 p.m. I happen to be in the press tent during the deluge. Water pours in from the door and through a side flap. A few reporters, including myself, make a valiant effort to redirect the water, but it’s a losing battle. A huge puddle dominates at least half of the room.

When the rain subsides, I step outside the tent and find an even bigger mudhole facing the Which Stage. A crowd has surrounded it, and women are challenging each other to wrestle. These are not small women, either. A few guys join in, tossing each other around in the fresh brown goo. Mud people grow out of these encounters.

The high-pitched squeal of Steve Winwood’s Hammond organ signals that the music has resumed. The Dead don’t go on until 10:30, but it’s worth the wait. Now featuring Warren Haynes (who played earlier in the day with Gov’t Mule), the Dead are leaner and meaner than last year’s model. They open the first set with “Tennessee Jed,” and the two-hour second set with “St. Stephen>The Eleven>Dark Star.” Bob Weir’s rousing “One More Saturday Night” and Phil Lesh’s timely “Box of Rain” close the show at 2 p.m.

Out on the main concert field, Robert Randolph & the Family Band (with Soulive’s Eric Krasno sitting in on guitar) are speed-boogieing, while Ween and Primus trade licks between stages, or so it seems. Primus keep jamming until past 4 a.m.—certainly not a Bonnaroo
record, but late enough.

With the mud and everything, the place is a mess. But fortunately, the
portable toilets are cleaned out every day, and there are even shower
facilities at the campground. Adjusted to the heat, rain, pace, food,
camping and even poison ivy (the medical tent gave me hydrocortisone),
I’m ready for the final day’s events.

After a morning washup and an egg’n’cheese breakfast sandwich at the Common Ground, I reverently follow the reggae beat of Burning Spear to the main What Stage. I dance up a storm. I find myself dancing a lot today. Perhaps I’m feeling a bit looser, but it’s also the roots-style music that has me shaking and grooving. Taj Mahal (“Gone Fishin’”), Cracker (“Low”) and newcomer Donavon Frankenreiter are all highlights, but Femi Kuti, the son of Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, tops them all. While most of the crowd jams out to moe., Femi plays to a smaller, more intimate audience. With the band’s colorful matching outfits, you can see them all over the site. I check out Guster and Soulive but come back for more Femi. African music is infectious, and my feet don’t fail me now.

David Byrne is a perfect follow-up to Femi, with his blend of Talking Heads funk and Brazilian pop. From “Once in a Lifetime” to “Psycho Killer” to “And She Was” (“It’s about a girl I knew in Baltimore—we took acid together ...”), Byrne rocks. He’s not the type of performer you would expect to see at Bonnaroo, but this festival is full of un-jam-band-like surprises (Yo La Tengo, Material, Danger Mouse).

The jazz pulse of Medeski Martin & Wood calls me. On the way there, I duck into the press trailer (the press tent is closed). Big Hassle’s Ever Kipp, who’s monitoring the weather on his laptop, shows me a red streak that’s about to crash into Manchester. “I’d say it’s a half hour away,” Kipp warns.

I head back to the campsite, where the HTGA crew reassembles as thunder and lightning rumble in the distance. This time the skies open at 7 p.m. The shower lasts an hour, making conditions that much sloppier. There’s one band to go—Trey Anastasio’s. The mud-splattered crowd trudges dutifully to the main stage one last time. In contrast, Anastasio is dressed nattily and so are the several dozen musicians onstage. It’s the Nashville Chamber Orchestra!

Phish haven’t even broken up yet, and Anastasio is already making radical moves. Still, the opening set with the symphony is a snore. Considering the weather and the general conditions, the crowd is
perhaps a bit impatient. Tie-clad musicians are replaced by the tie-dye variety as Anastasio’s solo band takes charge for the second set. More covers (“Sing a Song,” “Sultans of Swing”) are mixed in with Anastasio’s non-Phish originals (“Night Speaks to a Woman,” “Push On ’Til the Day”). The band is tight, but Anastasio doesn’t soar on guitar, building stratospheric solos like he does with Phish.

The show ends gloriously with a fireworks display that’s so close you can almost reach out and touch the colorful shapes and shards of light. It’s a tripper’s paradise.

The morning after, the crowd begins to disperse. Camps are broken down
and RVs and sundry vehicles dodge muddy ditches on their way out of the parking lot. Some have to be pulled out with a chain. Our rental needs a battery jump. Overall, though, it’s a pretty smooth departure. Easy in, easy out—Bonnaroo’s got its shit together.

I pick up the local paper, The Tennessean, and learn that two people died at Bonnaroo—both possibly due to drugs. To me it was a pretty clean scene (pot, mushrooms, beer), but I suppose you might have a few bad-drug casualties at any large music event. Despite this, Bonnaroo’s organizers—News Orleans’ Superfly Productions and Knoxville, TN’s AC Entertainment—did an excellent job. You have to wonder what they’ll do for an encore.