I’m just arriving back from Bonnaroo, which wrapped up its ninth annual weekend festival.  The roughly 80,000-person music festival is held in June every year in Manchester, TN, conveniently located an hour from my house in Nashville.

Aerial from 2006

This year’s Bonnaroo is certainly one to go down in the books, seeing as the festival started with heavy rains and thunderstorms, turned to blistering heat,
and ended with perfect weather for Dave Matthew’s closing set.

With the initial rains, golf carts, cars, trucks, and even tours buses were stuck in mud on entering the festival site, but luckily due to the extreme heat on Thursday and Friday the mud finally dried and allowed for traffic to flow more freely.

At Bonnaroo, I worked as a golf cart driver for the Artist Transportation department which thankfully meant I was driving fairly often, allowing me to catch what little breeze there was to break the stagnant heat.

My main duty was transporting artists to the stage, “This Tent.”  After meeting most artists playing “This Tent” I was surprised at how nice and entertaining every single artist was with our crew.

My favorite sets of bands I drove included: She & Him (Zoe Deschanel and M. Ward),The Melvins who were not only the heaviest hitting band at the festival this year but also the funniest personalities of possibly anyone I have met, and of course New Orleanian, Jay Electronica who gave great tributes to New Orleans throughout his set.

The four founders of Superfly Productions, the creators of Bonnaroo, all lived in New Orleans during their college years, a commonality Patrick and I share.  To our liking, Superfly still has a strong taste for New Orleans music.  Not only does Superfly manage New Orleans live act Galactic, the festival’s inaugural year hosted a number of New Orleans bands including The Dirty Dozen Brass Band (band leader Gregory Davis is a former teacher of ours), and the Little Rascals Brass Band (a sixth ward favorite).

(Photo by GARY GURTCHEFF)

This year’s New Orleans bands included Bonnaroo veterans, Galactic appearing for their eighth Bonnaroo, Big Sam’s Funky Nation – Big Sam appeared for 5 different sets during the weekend including a stellar performance with Galactic during their late night set featuring Corey Henry and Cyril Neville, Trombone Shorty and Orleans Ave  playing an hour of New Orleans brass band music to start their set, and Jay Electronica who brought New Orleans hip hop to the fest.

Over the whole weekend I was able to catch around 40 shows which is one of the unique offerings of a festival as diverse and nonstop as Bonnaroo.  The festival creates an environment that causes festivalgoers to be exposed to different genres of music that they may not like or listen to, but every year each fan comes home with another favorite band whom they had never seen until Bonnaroo.  Bonnaroo furthered this idea by creating two new tents this year solely dedicated to Latin and Electronic music.

As far as headliners, I was able to watch both Stevie Wonder and Jay Z fifteen feet away from the stage with roughly 70,000 screaming fans behind me. I still cannot believe I was able to see Stevie Wonder live.  Each put on a show that no other artist could recreate.  Stevie set off the crowd by teaching us how to sing and Jay Z put on the greatest hip hop show I have ever seen, including singing happy birthday to a friend of mine’s little sister.

Other noteworthy shows included Flaming Lips who once again (previously in 2007 at Bonnaroo) put on the greatest visual spectacle that I have seen at a rock show, as well as new Electronic acts such as DeadMau5 giving the crowds reason to dance early into the morning, John Fogerty playing CCR classics, Weezer playing the Which Stage,  and The Dead Weather bringing energy to the fans strong enough to stand the sweltering heat.

Driving artists around, working with those experienced in the industry, and meeting new people who become friends is always a gratifying experience and one that I plan on continuing in the future.

With its extensive and eclectic lineup, and emphasis on the music –  Bonnaroo, hands down, is my favorite festival , but then again maybe being a Tennessean who’s fallen in love with New Orleans music, I’m a little biased.

As always looking forward to questions and comments. If you missed shows this year, check out Bonnaroo’s youtube channel for sets you missed. Hope to see y’all out there next year!

- David “Butters” Buttrey

david@rabbitholeconsulting.com