Pages tagged “bonnaroo”

Thursday, June 15, 2006
In a Winnebago near Manchester, Tenn.
2:30 p.m.

A few miles before the exit for Bonnaroo, the air outside and traffic ahead have stagnated, and I begin to sense I’m driving toward my doom. My daughters had been startled and uncharacteristically concerned about my plans to attend the same event as their school’s “laidback, dreadlocked crowd,” having lived with my inability to cope with dirt and disorder, the maniacal dread of not appearing pulled-together, and the personal-product dependency and rigorous underwiring that no doubt contributed to a recent MILF citation. I told them the truth, how I wanted to do something entirely foreign to me, requiring a force of will sufficient to yank me out of my work and interchangeable days, an activity as unlikely as my swimming with dolphins last March. They still look at the pictures and say they can’t believe I did it or that I asked the guide if the things had talons.

Also, alternative music has been one of my middle daughter’s main interests, a way she’s been able to maintain a distinct and private place for herself, something her sisters and I have been alert not to intrude upon—until now, it seems—and so her wariness about how Mom is going to endure 80,000 camping strangers seems tinged with a kind of protective, territorial attitude toward Andrew Bird, Brothers Past, Death Cab for Cutie and other groups scheduled to be here that I’d be thoroughly ignorant of had I not stealthily borrowed from the massive stockpile in her car. In the seventh grade, when she dressed like Hollywood costume designer Edith Head for a report on influential women, the bang I got from her smart independence is so much of what I’ll miss after she’s left for college in eight weeks that a trip like this is also part of a deliberate plan to get myself working outside the house, where she won’t be, where all three of them won’t be, not in some murky future anymore, but within the next year. I’m going to be miserable without them, but this could be a solution—going and doing and writing about it.

3:10 p.m.

My nephew, JD, is driving. Besides the children, I don’t think I’ve let anyone else see how uptight, cynical, critical and pessimistic I can be, frustrated when it’s confused with dormant rage. We’ve been in this RV for nine hours, not talking a great deal because it isn’t necessary after 30 years together. He’s left his real-estate business to come here with me because he does things like what he’s about to do, turning away from the traf?c onto a road he knows will take us directly to the registration site, and because he’s an outstanding person to have in the unknown. He knows I’d rather deal with people in my imagination than in reality, and if it weren’t for him being with me during the writing of my last two novels, it would’ve been all but impossible for me to come out of reclusion once they were done. He took me, for instance, to Larry Flynt’s strip club in New Orleans, a kind of starter experience, and then moved me down the street, in and out of progressively looser establishments, and after another book was turned in, he took me to Las Vegas, where directions for coming out of the shell, mercifully, stay. I worry though about losing him in a crowd, having to ask strangers to help me locate a big Fred Durst-looking dude.

11 p.m.

We checked in, arranged the RV and walked on out toward the amalgamation of shops and causehead booths known as Centeroo, then toward the stages, and what’s already feeling like too, too many people, but there isn’t the sense of danger I’d already ramped up my nerves for. I hadn’t duct-taped my spending money into my brassiere, but I’d been watchful for the pickpockets and sneak thieves generally expected to roam through hordes of distracted people. Everybody, everything seems fairly reasonable, but I came back to the RV after going to only four stages. I was planning to plaster my feet with Band-Aids and return for Tortured Soul, but I see blisters in the morning, so JD cuts on Radio Bonnaroo to hear what we’re missing and drown out the horror of mangled feet hitting salt water.

David Ford and The Wood Brothers brought back memories of going to hear Marshall Crenshaw at the Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, N.C.—of going around afterward, certain I’d witnessed the real thing on the verge of being the next big thing, then wondering what happened, unaware he may’ve been involved in projects outside my provincial margins. With Ford and The Wood Brothers, I’d also expected to feel some of the elitism that tends to attach itself to any art well-done but not well-known, but both were accessible, and I didn’t detect anyone around me nursing suspicions about why their dreadlocks were being scrutinized by a trendy mom who’d probably borrowed her daughter’s clothes and should’ve known better than to bring a pink beach bag to coat with ?eld dust. I just want to know the reasoning behind the hairdo for white, blonde, American youths, not looking to pick a dispute, but being aware of how absolutely, insultingly Republican it sounds when I even consider asking. I’ll have to look it up on the website where I just learned about the meaning of Mormon underwear, another thing an individual can go around curious about for only so long before it creates interference. JD goes out again and may not be seen until daylight, but there’s no need to worry, as he once lost his jacket to a pack of wild lesbians in an all-night poker game but otherwise made it back to our hotel fine.

Friday Morning

JD was up before me and outside working on the generator when I found him to ask why I’d slept unhappy and hot. We hired a roving repairman, who promised to return with parts, and then I went early to the afternoon’s press conference to take advantage of the tent’s air conditioning and Lewis Black, an old friend with a tour bus and driver who could’ve fixed the generator had he been able to reach us through the maddening cellular network. Ben Folds was also there, and as I sat through the questions, waiting to hop on Lewis before reporters got to him so I could report how in need I was of his guy to lower the temperature—and what JD had begun calling the “whining index” in our Winnebago, it occurred to me that Ben Folds was wearing a toboggan that made the top of my head feel pluperfectly scorched, and since he mentioned he’d lived near me outside Chapel Hill, maybe that allowed enough familiarity to ask him why he would do this in 90-plus-degree weather. All that, in turn, led to a kind of heat-induced fugue, vagaries of thought about the nature of present-day music celebrity and its inherent sex appeal as opposed to my formative listening years, spent fixated on Jim Morrison and then Robert Plant—not to say a lusty charge from Beck or Ben Folds isn’t possible, but the intellect, for certain, sublimates the nether regions when there is too much resemblance to Olive Oyl.

Ill-tempered, I went to Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder ?rst, knowing the sensations of calm reality and ground-in, rooted-down place which invariably attach themselves to bluegrass music and re-create the experience of listening to the Grand Ole Opry with my mother on any Saturday night in the 1960s. Then, we’d watch Ed Sullivan on Sundays, although there hasn’t been anything since to reproduce the initial impression of some large art existing out there along with the blowback that caused me to physically lean backward to give Jim Morrison the space he clearly needed when he seemed to be coming out of the Motorola to light my fire in 1967.

The place was so full now that I retreated to the Troo Music Lounge—the closest thing I found to listening to the radio alone—and more or less sat without moving through Bobby Bare, Jr., Samantha Stollenwerck and Hot Buttered Rum, having erased any desire to walk anywhere again after hiking to the ends of the tent camping grounds and back between Ricky Skaggs’ show and discovering this smaller venue. Desperation, then, had driven us to some of the best music here.

Saturday Afternoon

The heat was so rough today, I had to shut down until dark. Resting outside under a neighbor’s awning, JD introduced me to a New Orleans musician named Pete. When I was down there on a winter book tour, my impression from teachers, musicians and artists I met in the city and in Pass Christian was that each person had been thinking about the one thing they’d most want broadcast on their behalf, like a mantra that went beyond criticism and complaint. I told Pete about the teacher who’d ask me to tell people, “We’re still here,” and he said she was right, they were, and without hesitating he said, “All we need is for people to come to New Orleans and listen to the music again.” He plays regularly at the Banks St. Bar, the Kerry Irish Pub, anywhere as much as possible, having returned to the city and his career, unhesitant after his means of earning a living was destroyed, and still moved by the Tipitina’s Foundation’s practical relief in supplying a set of drums.

When the sun was good and down, we started walking. By the time we were out on the fringe of the crowd at Radiohead, ironies that had been bothering me in small, escapable ways seemed to be everywhere, so I returned to the Troo Lounge, where I could sit, listen and think. Artvandalay, Tishamingo and The Avett Brothers couldn’t have played better soundtracks for what had been on my mind—why I’d come, how alienated I’d felt and how I craved anything able to pull me back into place. There was still something disappointing about looking out from the tent, watching as more people appeared to be wandering aimlessly, dropping trash despite incessant reminders of global responsibility, reminders everywhere that the mission of the ’60s movement—which bound a collective political and social intent with an optimistic insistence on the purifying and instructive nature of music—has degenerated into people hanging out.

When I saw lively market economies for food and water—everything evolving out in the enormous area coated by tents—I thought of stories my girls’ father told me about coming of age in the Haight-Ashbury, with the Free Store and The Diggers—the authentic beginnings of psychedelic experience that couldn’t bear the weight of Manson, Altamont and the deaths of three 27-year-old artists in a year, and which can only be replicated in a too-far-removed way without the tragedies of race and war that inspired them to begin with. But racial tension is always about, and there’s a new war to supply continual spiritual combat, but there’s something disconnected here, as though everyone’s got themselves up for a good-hearted journey to the edge of somewhere, somewhere ultimate and extreme—but, lacking the power authenticity brings, the whole enterprise has settled here, and it becomes the responsibility of music by itself to make the trip relevant and give the days substance, which, without exception, it does.

Sunday Night

When I got back to the Winnebago, I caught up on email and the news, including Nicole Kidman’s wedding announcement, so I put on Lenny Kravitz to celebrate, contemplating how those two weren’t meant to be, his fashion sense and thighs, two things I never found in the otherwise inspirational performances this weekend. I could’ve seen the clothes on Elvis Costello, but I’d seen him in the refrigerated aisle at a quickmart in Oxford recently, and then heard him at a small bar across from where he was recording—the kind of thing that happens in Mississippi—so I was jaded. Checking email and listening, waiting for Deadwood to begin, I heard strains that returned me to World Party’s show, and having been at Bonnaroo—so often feeling myself lifted up and back into other music from other times when my life was supposedly as simple as I’d now have it be—I actually missed being there in the heat with people determined to do it, hear it, see it, play it and have it, whether they were on a mission I’d wanted to impose on them; people, mercifully, still too innocent to bear it, able to hang out for another while.

Radiohead Backstage before the show, Thom Yorke gears up for a long night. “We have to play for two-and-a-half hours!” he says. “Do you have that much material?” I ask. “Barely—maybe we’ll just make some stuff up as we go along.” The highlight of the show for me isn’t the sea of lighters making a phosphorescent wave before the first encore, or the intense glowstick war among 80,000 people, or even Yorke dodging glowsticks and egging the crowd on for more before firing back in fun. No, the highlight was sitting on the side of the stage next to Michele Stodart of the Magic Numbers as she quietly sang in perfect harmony to “Fake Plastic Trees.” You just can’t make this stuff up. —Jay Sweet

Beck At his hit-packed Saturday show, with songs ranging from 1996’s “Where It’s At” to 2002’s “Paper Tiger” and last year’s “Girl,” Beck’s performance was anything but ordinary. First, his band “dined” onstage—with servers—and then played some spontaneous percussion on glasses and plates while Beck did a semi-solo set, including the heartbroken ballad “Lost Cause” and an endearing cover of The Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??” Later, people in bear costumes kicked Beck and the band offstage. The set was at its quirkiest when puppet versions of Beck and his bandmates starred in a short film that good-heartedly mocked Bonnaroo culture (“I smell hippie!”). Then the real Beck and band returned—just before Thom Yorke and co. took the stage—with their own version of Radiohead’s “Creep,” sung with slightly different lyrics: “I’m a creep / I’m a… puppet!”

Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint Combine Elvis Costello’s punk-tinged vibe with Allen Toussaint’s classic-soul sound, add a capable horn section and a rowdy crowd, and you’ve got one of the festival’s most dynamic shows. The two opened their Saturday-afternoon set with “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” and included several other Costello signatures, plus most of the songs from their new collaboration, The River In Reverse. Costello stood in the foreground, indulging in the occasional political rant between songs, while a smiling Toussaint sang from behind the piano. By the end of the set, hipsters and hippies alike were charmed by all the chemistry.

Bright Eyes Late Friday afternoon, a confident Conor Oberst, backed by a band that included producer Mike Mogis and labelmate Maria Taylor, performed a mix of songs from his last few albums and debuted some brand new ones, as well. Almost halfway in, he delighted the crowd by inviting bluegrass duo Gillian Welch and David Rawlings up for a gorgeous rendition of “Lua.” Then he invited Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals to join them, performing his band’s “Hello Sunshine.” (“I feel that’s the theme song of Bonnaroo,” says Oberst.) After bringing the final guest—My Morning Jacket’s Jim James—to the stage, all the musicians performed together on an enthusiastic version of Kevin Ayers’ “Singing a Song In the Morning.” Oberst scanned the stage, grinning. —Kate Kiefer

THURSDAY:

Randomness or coincidence… or does it even matter? Make my first flight after leaving the checklist with my wife.

• Change plant litter
• water cat
• return the kid and give the movie lots of love

Who the heck designed Washington D.C.’s Reagan airport? Make a note to exterminate said engineer. During a layover I sat between the ranting, homophobic, hippy-hating redneck from hell and Phish keyboardist Page McConnell. After an amusing 30-minute Abbot & Costello remake, turns out Page isn’t on his way to Tennessee for Bonnaroo, but headed to a family reunion in West Virginia. His plane leaves first. As soon as he splits, the redneck starts in on all the “hippy and fag juice” invading Tennessee.

Rather than subject myself to any more bigotry, I decide to silence the Rebel Rube by showing him a picture of “my partner and our adopted Russian baby,” which is really a picture of my son with The Roots’ ?uestlove during an interview at the Ritz last summer (see above photo). The Rube can’t speak, and starts to shake with fury. I board my flight before Civil War II breaks out in our nation’s capital. Ah, the melting pot.

I Find the best radio station south of the Mason Dixon, east of the mighty Mississippi. 91.1 FM out of Nashville. Blaring Gomez’s “Tijauana Lady” into Emmy Lou Harris’s “Luxury Liner,” I try to navigate “backway” directions, which actually include, “take a right at the large oak by the old brick ranch house.” I let the Oldsmobile Alero gallop over the Kelly green curves of Murfreesboro, Tenn. Splitting the landscape with jersey cows and cacophonous cicadas, I spy a rainbow illuminating a solitary grain silo. The idyllic rural splendor is abruptly marred by the flashing blue lights of Patrolman J. House. After one of Woodbury County’s finest offers some better directions and a polite citation which severely dents my libation budget, I slowly pass into Coffee County on 55 west. I’m greeted with nothing but empty asphalt, cavorting fireflies and a massive hand-painted bolt of cloth tied to a fence welcoming the road-weary with the satiric question, “Ain’t Life Grand?”

After the Southern Hospitality of the redneck and Patrolman House, I hope the weekend will hold a truer answer.

FRIDAY and SATURDAY:

Experiential education is crucial in surviving four days and nights of music. To this effect, the serial Bonnagroovians can be easily spotted by their Camelbacks and colorful mud boots briskly zagging and zigging through the meandering herd of zombied neophytes. They know where and how to locate the What and Which stages, who’s playing in This and That tent, and that The Other Tent can be the best place to begin the day. This year Josh Ritter christens it with infectious joy. His bouncing red-fro rhythms and mile-wide melodies power his piercing lyrical spotlight aimed at a world brimming with sanguine bliss, greed beasts and one or two capricious lovers. When the set ends I suddenly find myself on the verge of skipping.

• Joss Stone in a sun dress booming the White Stripes’ “Fell in Love with a Boy (Girl)” with libidinous delight. Check.
• Listening to live Jurassic 5 while taking cuts in the backstage batting cages: A+.
• The Gourds whooping up their eponymous cover of “Gin and Juice” before sliding into “Pickles” with Jimmy Smith dancing and slapping a paint brush for no apparent reason—makes me hungry and thirsty.
• Rap with the Allman Brothers’ Butch Trucks over a ham sandwich about how their long-time producer Tom Dowd helped create the atomic bomb at age 16, before his drummer in crime, Jaimoe sits down with a heaping plate of ribs.

“You know they‘re gonna send you to the farm if you keep eatin’ like that?” – Butch to Jaimoe.

“What farm would that be?” – Jaimoe to Butch

“The fat farm. Hell, I’ll be surprised if they let you back on the bus; don’t you know we gotta make weight limits on some of them bridges.” – Trucks

“Is that burger number two on your plate?” – Jaimoe

“Sit down and shut up.” – Trucks

Brothers indeed.

Well fed, the Allman Brothers highlight their set with covers of The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Good Mornin’ Little Schoolgirl” with Jerry Douglas on slide guitar. Confederate despair and sonic concupiscent never sounded so good. As “Whipping Post” is unleashed the drizzle turns to rain. Once again, Warren Haynes wins the annual omnipresent artist of the weekend award.

Backstage virtual Golf with Galactic’s Jeff Raines and Paste editor in chief Josh Jackson. I’m 5 over after 3. Need to work on my short game.

Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters featuring John “I swear I am a serious jazz freak, not a Tiger Beat cover boy” Mayer on guitar was the hotspot for want-to-be-seen artists on the backstage-poser platform. A throbbing cover of Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein” pulses through the storm. Good to see the drenched crowd appreciating the improvisational patriarch of an often ignored “jam” genre. However, the real jazz gem was not so hidden under That Tent.

Hanging on for dear life in the photographer’s pit, my musical paradigm was slapped silly by the Benevento/Russo Duo. The intensity of purpose imposed on their instruments is a gale force of youthful bravado. While Marco Benevento generates mountainous swells of organ wash and wields javelins of avant-garde keyboards, Joe Russo plays a trap drum set like a runaway red-headed Cerebus. Just when you think the rubber band is about to snap sending the whole sound into splintering particles, they turn on a dime and Tangerine Dream your mind back into melodious mirth. Having Phish Bassist Mike Gordon as your recurring guest doesn’t hurt either. Especially when the set ends with Phish’s appropriately titled “Mike’s Song,” and to the utter delight of the phrenzied crowd Benevento turns his B3 mic toward them so they can sing the entire song, which we do with great aplomb and finesse.

Soon after its set, I watch the band mug and posture for legendary music photographer, Danny Clinch, Benevento draped in young women and Russo torching the muggy night with a zippo and a bottle of lighter fluid. By the time Dave Matthews hits the main What Stage I’m in the artist tent sipping a novel concoction of Go Fast’s energy drink, Grey Goose Vodka and Glaceau Vitamin Water. Josh Ritter, smartly sticking with the Jack Daniels, eloquently captures the whole shindig with, “I feel like Jane Goodhal walking around this place.” Behind him the cookie-monster-blue hair of sitar-slinging Asian chanteuse Gabby La-La is a dead giveaway that the playing field is starting to warp. Soon elfin harpist Joanna Newsom is conspiring with SNL comedian Fred Armisen to turn down the live Dave Matthews feed streaming loud-and-clear into the tent. They’re up against the stiff competition of a devil-stick-flinging freaker clad in tight tennis shorts and a pink izod windbreaker. The windbreaker wins.

I end up outside the trailer of Sound Tribe Sector Nine while they rehearse a few numbers with hip-hop foot soldiers, Mr. Lif and Akrobatic from The Perceptionists. The all-nighters swaying out front are going to love this. I head off for my pillow passing the Mars Volta in full swagger and sustain. The time space continuum starts to blur.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY?

The Benevento/Russo Duo on the Sonic Stage being interviewed live on XM radio by some straight-laced DJ between songs.

“Wow. Pretty impressive. You guys have played four times in the last 48 hours, how the heck you have the energy to do that with the way you play.”

“Acid,” says a completely sober Benevento. The crowd roars.

“Well…umm…okay…I guess we’re okay, it’s satellite, so okay… here’s the next tune for all you radio listeners.”

A ripping rendition of “Becky” ensues. Mister Flustered hops back onstage for round two.

“So this is your first Bonnaroo—having a good time?”

“Well, like I said, we’re on acid, so yeah.”

In case you are keeping score: The Duo - 2; XM DJ - 0. Game on.

M. Ward hiding beneath his natty, sweat-soaked L.A. Dodgers cap, in fact he doesn’t look like he’s changed since backing Beth Orton in This Tent last year. But does it really matter when you have such a voice? The way he sings the word “Helicopter” is so hypnotic he could be clad in cow dung and still command respect. The low-fi, “Hi-Fi,” the acoustic pounding of “Four Hours in Washington” and the lonely “Fuel For Fire” all swim together in a sweet haze. The spell intensifies when Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis saunters onstage like a lost Austin Powers extra in mod skirt and white go-go boots to harmonize on the jaunty crowd pleaser, “Big Boat.” To keep the synapses firing, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James plugs in for a note-perfect falsetto on “One Life Away.” Monster’s of folk unite.

Gov’t Mule. Let’s just say the end of the set list was Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed,” and a medley of Mule’s “Fallen Down” into the Grateful Dead’s “Terrapin Station” into Temple Of The Dog’s “Hunger Strike” into Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy” back into “Hunger Strike .” Put that in your pipe and, well… you know.

I’m standing on What’s side-stage viewing platform with Matisyahu bassist Josh Werner as The Black Crowes go for the throat on Marvin Gaye’s “Don’t Do It” and their own rocker “Sting Me.” The recharged Robinsons—long-lost guitarist Marc Ford and original drummer Steve Gorman in tow—battled Jack Johnson for listeners and made it a draw by redlining “Thorn in My Pride” and “Soul Singing” before flowing into the Dead’s “Brokedown Palace.” Watching Kate Hudson shimmy backstage to a “Remedy” encore had to beat out watching burnt pledges climb trees over at Johnson’s Hawaiian sing-along. Or as Werner said, “Thank all for the Crowes, they finally gave some balls to the day.”

Back to the artist tent for the same tri-sponsored sippy cup of dubious alcoholic innovation now named “The Bitch Slap.” Ordering the next round, Amos Lee is overheard asking the bartender the origins of said drink. He slurs, “When the energy drink finally wears off, the vodka, well…” he gives his face a nice spank. So that explains it.

Swaddled in red-light saturation and baptized by sweaty funk stalactites dripping from the brows of Crescent City’s collective backbeat, I join the revelry of Galactic’s Krewe De Carnivale. With New Orleans Big Chief Monk Boudreaux and The Gold Eagle Indians in full regalia, “God’s own rhythm section” the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and The Meters’ own Leo Nocentelli on lead guitar, it proves you can take the boy’s out of Tipitina’s but you can’t take the Tipitina’s out of the boys.

After losing founding member Michael Houser a few years back, Widespread Panic returned from an extended hiatus rested and road-hungry. To celebrate, Mr. Pink Windbreaker is handing out a whole bag of glow-in-the-dark yo-yo’s. I walk back and forth between the poser platforms and the live feed in the tent practicing my “walking the dog.” A not-so-surprising guest joins in for at least three songs. I start playing six degrees of Warren Haynes with the local Jack Daniels rep. We both win or lose depending on point of view and functionality.

Trey Anastasio wins most eclectic set of the festival, but with new backing band 70 Volt Parade the music seems overly disjointed and dispirited. However, playing Zeppelin’s “In the Light,” Stevie Wonder’s “Boogie on Reggae Woman,” Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” and the entire second side of The Beatles’ Abbey Road showed off the musical versatility and prowess of Trey’s hired gunslingers. Anastasio also brought out former Phish-head and rising Hasidic Reggae Star (name another one and you can have my press pass next year) Matisyahu for “Close My Eyes” and Marley’s “No Woman No Cry.” The set’s chugging train made a quick pit stop at Bizzaro world when American Idol runner-up and grand marshal of the Bonnaroo Mardi Gras parade, Bo Bice joined Anastasio onstage to wail Van Halen’s “Panama” complete with Roth’s improvised erotic aria “reach down between my legs…” This was my cue to run (not walk) over to catch the end of RJD2’s set.

The mesmerizing MC’s, “Good Times Roll pt. 2” could be the most infectious head-nodding, affirmation for adding turntabilism to the general lexicon. However he’s just the tantalizing appetizer before the main course of hip-hop this weekend—De La Soul. Standing stage-righ