BONNAROO 2013: Ten Years Ago This Week

ALL PHOTOS BY CHUCK MADDEN

Jim James of My Morning Jacket

This writer had the blessed fortune to cover the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee six different times in eight years. I will be forever grateful to Mike Breen & CityBeat for the opportunity, an absolute dream assignment for a music junkie like me. Six times! Like an acid trip, each Bonnaroo adventure was unique and totally crazy. The best kind of sensory overload you can imagine, equal doses of exhilaration and happy exhaustion. This piece doesn't represent my writing at its best. Pretty straight reportage. But the musical memories can't be beat. The 2013 Bonnaroo festival is forever ensconced in my all-time favorite concert experiences. Commemorating the ten-year anniversary, here is a repost of my coverage that originally appeared in the pages of CityBeat.com. ~rh

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Thursday June 13 - Sunday June 17, 2013

Turkey vultures circled overhead as my good friend and photographer Chuck Madden and I drove through the rolling green hills of central Tennessee between Murfreesboro and McMinnville, on our way to Manchester for the annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Our circuitous route through small towns and backwoods was briefly complicated by pounding rain. But soon the skies cleared and we found our way to the media campground located behind Bonnaroo's Which Stage, happily settling into an area that's just a few minutes walk from the festival grounds. The friendly spirit of the festival was upon us immediately as we were greeted by new friends, fellow travelers in the campground and other members of the assembled press in the backstage Media compound.

Highlights of our Thursday perambulations included Futurebirds in This Tent, a glimpse of slam-bang Country rockers Houndmouth in the On Tap Lounge and a display of first class Honky Tonk by J.D. McPherson in That Tent that stopped Chuck and me in our tracks.

McPherson had the crowd smiling and dancing to a Rockabilly hybrid that swung like a wrecking ball. Western Swing met Chicago Blues as McPherson and crew featured upright bass, B-3 organ, and saxophone for a syrupy saunter through Bo Diddley's "I Wanna Try For You." McPherson himself added some tasteful Telecaster licks, bringing a warbling echo of Surf music to the mix.

As Thursday began, we heard the tragic news of two people from the tri-state who were killed in an automobile accident on their way to the festival. (Five others were injured in the same crash.) All told, Bonnaroo attendees and staff number close to 90,000 souls during peak hours. For this long weekend in June, Manchester becomes the seventh largest city in Tennessee, with births and deaths on-site like one would expect in a small city over the course of any 96-hour span. On a brighter note, this year's festival kicked off with a young couple tying the knot under the multi-colored arch at Bonnaroo entrance.

In the late afternoon I wandered through Centeroo, perusing the various vendors' booths. Corporate sponsors abound, but non-profits and independent artisans dominate the Bonnaroo bazaar.

In the shadow of a Ferris wheel and psychedelic light tower a giant throng gathered in and around the area surrounding The Other Tent stage to greet Cincinnati's pure Pop pride and joy Walk The Moon. Technical glitches delayed the start of their set but they had the crowd bouncing, clapping, singing along and eating out of their hands from the minute they took the stage. WTM singer Nicholas Petricca shouted, "We're called Walk The Moon! We're from Ohio!" and the crowd roared as the band launched into their single "Tightrope." This writer has never seen a larger crowd assembled for a performance in the Other Tent and Petricca's buoyant charm and boundless energy kept the crowd pumped and jumping throughout the bands' entire performance.

Later in That Tent, Father John Misty brought the weird and the beard via his sardonic Folk Rock parables. I half-expected the depth and humor of FJM's material to sail over the heads of most Bonnaroovians but I was pleasantly surprised to hear many people singing along. A huge fan of his new Fear Fun album, I think I would have driven all the way to Tennessee just to hear Misty sing "Only Son Of The Ladiesman". He didn't make me wait long, playing it in the No. 2 slot.

Friday's Bonnaroo festivities started with great promise, as we were treated to a surprise performance by Jack Johnson in the press tent. Johnson is a last-minute fill-in for headliners Mumford and Sons, who had to cancel because their bass player had a medical procedure to fix a blood clot in his brain earlier this week. Warmth and humility emanated from Johnson as he debuted two brand new songs accompanied by ALO's Zach Gill on accordion.

Trixie Whitley

An hour later Trixie Whitley slithered on to the Which Stage in a long black gown and proceeded to mesmerize the mid-day crowd with her hypnotic and soulful swamp Rock. There were moments during her set when she sang with such power and pathos it literally knocked the wind out of me. The crowd was so awed by Whitley's performance they stood in a stunned silence so quiet that at times you could hear shutters clicking in the photo pit.

I don't think Chuck and I stopped laughing once during a spontaneous and hilarious 15 minutes we spent chatting with Daniel, Thomas and new drummer Johnny Colorado of the Futurebirds. We barely had time to catch our breath and regain our composure before a 4pm press conference that featured comedians Michael Che and Mike Birbiglia.

Around the festival grounds today we heard remarkable performances by Jason Isbell and 400 Unit, Nashville's Alanna Royale and Trombone Shorty. Coming up later tonight: Wilco, Paul McCartney, ZZ Top and many more.

We are barely halfway into this thing and Bonnaroo's memorable performances and highlights already seem too good to be true. In addition to 12 stages featuring live music for 18 hours a day for four days straight, the assembled press are privy to gut busting scenes of spontaneous hilarity in Bonnaroo press conferences twice daily. Without fail, these press conferences will feature provocative observations from the panelists about their respective Bonnaroo experiences. But more often than not they will degrade into an impromptu exchange of silly quips, wacky tales from the road, and dirty jokes. Friday was no exception.

After setting the bar obscenely low for the 1pm press conference with multiple references to sex acts taking place on and off stage, it was the affable Matt + Kim who stuck around for nearly 45 minutes afterwards, smiling broadly, happily answering more questions and posing for photographs.

The press conference itself was a chaotic and ramshackle riot that teetered on the brink of peep-show perversion for the duration. Perhaps this was no surprise as its schizophrenic panel included TV star Ed Helms and classic rocker John Oates alongside the eager upstarts Matt + Kim, Nicki Bluhm and Michael Angelakos from Passion Pit. Aside from a brief description of Oates' charity work, the discussion was a lighthearted group improvisation on the pros and cons of playing big festivals.

Helms is doing double duty at this year's Bonnaroo, presenting a comedy revue in the festival's comedy tent and hosting a Bluegrass jam on one of its main stages. Asked why he loves the banjo, Helms sighed, "I believe that banjos are very irritating and that's why banjos and comedians get along."

"Hey Ed," a smirking Oates chimed in, "Do you know why there's no banjos on Star Trek?"

"No, John. Why is that?"

"Because it's the future."

Later in the day there was a 4pm press conference that featured some very insightful exchanges between country rocker Jason Isbell and Jazz Fusion guitar legend John McLaughlin. The Bonnaroo crowd warmly embraced McLaughlin's evening performance in That Tent, causing the master musician to grin from ear to ear from the first notes of his set to the very last. Though they started 30 minutes late, Rock icons ZZ Top performed a smoking midnight set in This Tent to a capacity crowd who sang along to nearly every song in the bands hit-laden set.

It goes without saying that Paul McCartney flat out slayed 'em on Bonnaroo's What Stage last night. Snagging Sir Paul as a main stage headliner is possibly the biggest coup in Bonnaroo's 12-year history. To no one's great surprise, McCartney dished out sheer unfettered joy to the thousands via a masterful marathon performance that featured one heart-warming soul-sending classic after another. You can be sure that his eyes have beheld many wonders over the course of a 50+ year career that is unrivaled and unparalleled in every way imaginable. But even McCartney himself could not disguise his expression of awe and disbelief at the size and deafening enthusiasm of the Bonnaroo crowd.

Today and tomorrow, my plan is to focus on the smaller stages to catch up close and personal performances by JEFF The Brotherhood, The Revivalists, and Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Already today I've seen the Futurebirds destroy the Sonic Stage with their peculiar powerhouse hybrid of Indie Country.

Sir Paul's son James McCartney drew a respectful and curious crowd to the On Tap Lounge for his early afternoon solo acoustic performance. Sadly, the booming bass reverberating from the larger stages all but drowned out his gentle Folk Pop purr. If you could huddle up close enough to the stage, he sounded pretty good. But the son of a Beatle deserves better accommodations.

It was the keen eye of photographer and close friend Chuck Madden who first caught the clues on Walk The Moon's Facebook page that seemed to indicate the band would be doing something special for their fans at Bonnaroo this weekend. On little more than a hunch, Chuck insisted that we check out "Kaleidoscope Space Tribe" at 3pm on the Sonic Stage. Sure enough, at five past the hour WTM bounded out on stage and proceeded to artfully bash through a 30 minute set of Talking Heads songs including "Girlfriend Is Better," "Burning Down The House," "Psycho Killer" and more. Considering the huge crowd they played to just two nights ago in the Other Tent, this performance was an ultra rare treat for the clever and faithful two or three hundred fans who figured it out.

Dwight Yoakam seemed mildly irritated at Saturday's 4pm press conference. Perhaps sensing that the Bonnaroo press corps might be too young to know his story, Yoakam quickly sketched a casual crash course on his career dating back to the ’80s. Rather unexpectedly, Dwight struck up a rapport with fellow panelist, comedian Reggie Watts, as the two of them discussed their mutual love of Hee Haw.

Dwight's 7pm performance in That Tent began with an eight-song medley during which the band never paused for a breath, rocking through one continuous segue that included the songs "Please Please Baby," "Little Sister," "Streets Of Bakersfield" and Buck Owens' classic, "Act Naturally."

Other highlights from Saturday were Beach House, Bjork, Nas, Gov't Mule, Billy Idol, Weird Al Yankovic and the two-man riot JEFF the Brotherhood. Jack Johnson and his band did a great job filling in for Mumford and Sons, even performing one of their songs. This year's late night super jam featured John Oates, Jim James, Preservation Hall Jazz Band and legendary Sly and the Family Stone bassist Larry Graham, who led the star-studded ensemble through an extended jam on the Sly classic, "Thankyoufalettinmebemiceelf."

Dwight Yoakam ALL PHOTOS BY CHUCK MADDEN