Attending one of the US’ biggest music festivals was kind of intimidating! Sure, I went to Lollapalooza a couple years back, but Bonnaroo is its own universe seemingly in the middle of nowhere!
Thank goodness I was attending with a friend. It made the renting a car, driving an hour outside of Nashville, and navigating the “farm” a much more doable feat. Especially in the face of some extreme weather. Aside from it being extremely hot and humid, the threat of rain loomed most of the day. And it apparently had seen a bit of rain in the days leading up to the festival, because this was only the second day, and the first full one, and there was already mud everywhere. The only blessing we got were that it didn’t actually rain again, and the threat of rain brought us cloud coverage for most of the day.
And when I say day, I mean a long ass day. The festival gates open up around 11:30AM and then they had set scheduled to finish at 6:00AM the next day. And then they’d start all over again at the same time on Saturday! Just with how the schedule was laid out, we did hang around until about 2:00AM. But, the day was filled with many sets from many bands. We saw Amble first, whose songs were hard to differentiate from one another, but my friend and I decided would be good background music. Blues Traveler was another fun set to see – their songs have been with me since childhood! Mt. Joy didn’t do a whole lot for me by way of playing anything memorable, and I enjoyed listening to some of the acts on the “Other” stage, like Notion and Adventure Club.
Of course, the acts that I was really there to see totally killed it. I was bummed to learn that Wolfmother had to cancel, which means that The Chats were the first group I really got to see that I was itching for. As is the case with their normal concerts, they played so many songs in the 45 minutes they were given. I loved hearing ‘Struck by Lightening” and “6L GTR,” and it was great to see people waving their cigarettes around during “Smoko.” Wet Leg, again, we magnificent. I was also pleasantly surprised by how different the setlist was from last weekend. I think we got almost every song from their debut album plus a good handful from the new one! Yungblood was entertaining to watch – especially the joy on his face when he just sees people singing along. He’s a treasure that I hope never changes.
To end the night, it was a triple hit of The Stokes, who aside from Julian Casablancas’ weird dialogue between songs, sounded amazing. It was incredible to hear “Bad Decisions” and “Last Nite” live. We scooted just to the other side of the field to then catch Lil Jon, who just like at Tacos and Tequila last year, was so fun to listen to. Of course he started with “Shots,” and I also wasn’t surprised that he ended with “Turn Down for What.” Me and the people were excited to dance around to Lil Jon! We also squeezed in most of Turnstiles’ set, which sounded so, so good! I haven’t stayed up to date with some of their newer music, so that was kind of lost on me, but I did get “Mystery” and “Blackout” back to back, so I’m not complaining.
All in all, it was a really fun experience! The actual festivals grounds were massive, so it never felt too crowded, and there was always something to do somewhere. Heck, they had a beer garden that was broadcasting the US World Cup game later in the evening! I know we probably didn’t see or do everything that we could have, but for just spending one day there, I was satisfied.
