An Aussie First-Timer's Guide To Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival

From an outside perspective, the annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival is a uniquely mythical place, an incomparable, mind-bogglingly expansive celebration of creativity and camaraderie, more akin to a living bohemian dreamscape than reality.

The truth is, having spent the past four days in wide-eyed thrall to the overwhelming sensory experiences that Bonnaroo has to offer, that’s a pretty much bang-on assessment from an inside perspective too, theMusic.com.au digital editor Mitch Knox reports.

Day One: Radiate Positivity

Without meaning to sound conceited, I consider myself something of a young veteran of the Australian music festival scene. I know, the road to Hell is paved with innocent intentions, but over the past 11 years of my legal show-going life, I’ve pretty much seen it all — or I like to think I have — at almost every major music event that has graced our shores.

However, within minutes of arriving at the 284-hectare farm at which Bonnaroo is held, just outside the nearby town of Manchester, Tennessee, it becomes swiftly apparent that I actually know nothing. At least, nowhere near as much as I thought I did.

Firstly, when you're used to local events, the sheer size of the festival is overwhelming. Last year’s event brought more than 90,000 people to The Farm and, making my way through the pop-up city that’s passing for a campsite — seriously, there are street names and golf-cart taxis and tents and vehicles and vendors as far as the eye can see, the whole scene emitting a microcosmic atmosphere of a living, breathing, functioning society, even at this early stage — I’d wager that if Bonnaroo hasn’t bettered that attendance in 2015, then it must have come painfully close.

Regardless of the exact numbers, the Bonnaroo site transforms from wide, open space to Tennessee’s seventh-largest town in the space of all of 24 hours once punters start to arrive on-site. In fact, it takes more than half an hour to cross from the western entry tollbooth to its eastern counterpart, and that’s before everyone’s even shown up. That is how big this thing is.

Rather brilliantly, the individual “suburbs” (I guess?) – or camping sub-sections – are named after characters from famous films and TV shows, from Pulp Fiction (Camps Marsellus Wallace, Honey Bunny, Vincent Vega) and Star Wars (Camps Chewbacca, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker) to Ghostbusters (Camps Dr Peter Venkman, Dr Raymond Stantz, Dr Egon Spengler), Mad Men (Camps Pete Campbell, Peggy Olson, Joan Harris) and many more. Strewn throughout are numbered “Pods” — little self-contained oases of amenities such as showers, sustenance, ice vendors and ATMs, some with general stores, some with booze for sale, and even the odd merch store — that are clearly visible no matter where you are in the seemingly endless field of tents, and an indispensible resource to help improve the overall living conditions for this year’s festival denizens.

Snaking towards the oversized rainbow Arch that marks the entrance to the main festival grounds, dubbed Centeroo, and symbolises the fact that you are now officially leaving The Real World, I am thrust into the midst of the largest chain of high-fives in which I have ever partaken, my hand reddened from a thousand brief, friendly collisions with smiling strangers by the time I reach the bag check. Cheerful cries of “Bonnarooooooo!” ring out among and above the mass, every soul in proximity clearly pumped as fuck to be there.

Upon entering Centeroo, obvious comparison points stand out — it’s basically Splendour In The Grass on steroids, in Big Day Out weather, with a Glastonbury-grade line-up — but, even then, it’s evident that Bonnaroo is not Just Another Festival; it is a force unto itself. Near the middle of the grounds, in a central communal area called Planet Roo (think Splendour’s Global Village), there is a cornerstone structure known as The Fountain, a large, mushroom-shaped water spout/cooling-off facility emblazoned with the words, “Radiate Positivity”. It’s a mantra that is repeated frequently throughout the festival, and one that its attendees truly take to heart. In fact, it's such an ingrained philosophy that I suspect that anyone not actively heeding that advice would find themselves ostracised and shunned quicker than The Flash masturbating in church.

In fact, Bonnaroo stands as living proof that — regardless of what the organisers of the Darwin Summer Session want you to believe — shirtlessness is not even close to the root cause of Australia's problem with douchebags at festivals. The level of bare chests, from all genders, is simply out of control, as men, women and presumably a few people in-between of all body types move through the festival with impunity, literally nobody — well, nobody that I can see — picking alpha-dog fights or being lecherous pricks about all the skin freely on display. It's an issue of culture, not apparel, a point never more apparent than when standing in the middle of a sea of confidently, peacefully displayed nipples. It's an absolute revelation.

And then, of course, there's everything else — The Comedy Theatre, the Cinema Tent (which screens a quote-along run of Back To The Future before an Enchantment Under The Sea dance party late tonight), the maze of stalls peddling their sustainable/organic/otherwise Earth-friendly wares in the Market, the Christmas-themed club barn, the Salon, the Silent Disco, the Food Truck Oasis and, um, the Ferris Wheel.

If there is one aspect in which the event palpably falls short compared with local alternatives, it's in its absurd stage-naming conventions: This Tent, That Tent, The Other Tent, Who? Stage, Which Stage and the big kahuna, the What Stage. It doesn’t take long for confusion to set in: “Is Courtney Barnett at that tent?” “No, This Tent.” “Right, so that tent.” “No, This Tent.” “Yeah, no, I mean… screw it." Honestly, give me GW McLellan, Mix-Up and The Amphitheatre any day.

Speaking of Courtney Barnett, she is one of a handful of Aussie acts I am able to take in on Bonnaroo’s first day, which is weirdly loaded up with antipodean artists at a greater ratio than any of the days to ensue — but, man, kicking back to the sounds of local bands while you wrap your head around where the hell your life has landed you sure is a nice way to kick off a festival so far away from home.

Along with the Pedestrian At Best hitmaker, who plays to a simply massive crowd at, yes, This Tent from 10.45pm, the day sees sets from artists such as Sydney buzz act Little May — who probably get a little too precious about their soundcheck considering their place on the tucked-away Who? Stage — and DMA's, who open proceedings in curiously inert fashion at The Other Tent, though the crowd doesn't seem to mind too much.

Other standout performances for the day come from the likes of This Tent closer and 2015 Laneway drawcard Mac DeMarco, the prodigious Benjamin Booker, and up-and-coming young rapper Raury, who follows Little May with an immensely impressive display at the Who? Stage, which is at this point arguably beneath him. All up, it's an incredibly encouraging start to proceedings, and I depart the grounds to return to my hotel (unfortunately, I'm not actually camping), a 40-minute taxi ride away, smiling the whole way home.

Day Two: Heaven On Earth

It's only the second day of Bonnaroo and, already, I have never smelled so much marijuana at a music festival in my life (not that I know what marijuana smells like, Mum and Dad). Not just that, but I have never seen so much marijuana being openly consumed at a festival, either. I raise this point because, as a punter would later put it to me, "For the amount of drugs being taken here, you'd think they were all legal in the US." Indeed, the immense amount of blazing going on around me seems to be directly inversely proportionate to the amount of beer and other alcohol being consumed and, as a result, the level of aggression that hangs in the air (which is to say there's basically none).

It's about this time that it dawns on me that I have not seen a single surly-looking police officer inside the festival grounds so far. In fact, I haven't even seen a cheery-looking police officer. Basically, I keep expecting to see cops in riot gear walking four abreast and staring menacingly at people trying to have a good time because that's what Australian festivals have ingrained in me. Bonnaroo, however, once again, stands as a counterpoint to everything we're being told Down Under about the way festivals work: far from causing a notable spike in violence or illness or death, it would seem — at least, from what I have seen so far — that, without the ever-present threat of being pulled up by a sniffer dog or their human, wouldn't you know it, people are generally perfectly capable of looking after themselves. There's even a tent set up inside the grounds for people who might have gone a bit hard on the acid tabs or whatever and just need to lie the hell down without worrying about waking up in handcuffs. Gee, maybe there's not a thousand arrests and medical emergencies at Bonnaroo because people aren't shovelling multiple pills into their mouth in one go to avoid a run-in with the law.

This broad, evident freedom is not why I choose an allusion to the religious concept of heaven, however (although I can understand why it might seem like that after that diatribe). Rather, I'm trying to convey to you the sense of idyllic refuge that permeates the festival. For starters, despite the wide expanses of sun-roasted land across the festival ground — or, rather, because of them — there are highly coveted rest spots dotted all around the grounds. There is a hub of hammocks near a small central performance space called the Solar Stage, and I never see them empty. In fact, I'd bet the same people occupied them for most of the day, because if you scored a plum position like that in the midst of a baking-hot festival, why the fuck would you ever want to give it up?

Additionally, even though it's located several hundred kilometres from any significant coastal body of water, Bonnaroo carries an undeniable "beach" vibe  — along with the central fountain, there's a sandy, illuminated dance-floor near the ferris wheel, a beach volleyball court, and a massive inflatable structure fittingly called the Big Ass Water Slide. It's an incredibly inviting feature. Every summer festival should have one.

Not that I brought swimmers anyway (dumb move; lesson learnt), but even if I had wanted to muscle in on a game I couldn't have, as my real work begins today. I head out to do the journalism thing and spend time with a couple of artists for some interviews, and first off the rank are UK-based face-melters Royal Blood.

I've caught them just a few weeks out from their next jaunt to Australia, to play at Splendour In The Grass, and following the meteoric rise of their self-titled 2014 album to #8 on the iTunes Chart following a high-profile appearance on Howard Stern's radio show. Even in the face of such swiftly growing renown, the band — frontman Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher — convey a wonderfully dry, British sense of humour about their situation, with Kerr saying of their impending southern journey that they'll "be better than all the other bands" at Splendour.

Tongue-in-cheek though it may be, it's not an entirely unfounded comment, as Kerr also conveys that, above all else, the pair are looking to improve their game with every performance.

"I guess the kind of ethos of touring, for us, is really to get better at playing live," he says. "To us, there's two options: you either grit your teeth and get on with it and get to the end of the tour, or you can try to get something out of it, and to us, that seems like the most fun thing to achieve, to try and improve our live show ... I think the more creative we get with our live show, the more creative we'll become on the road."

After we wrap our chat, I swing via The Other Tent to lend some home-country support to King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (who, according to a nearby American, are "psychedelic bush rock", and, according to me, just freaking nail their set) before running back to watch Royal Blood's set at Which Stage to see if Kerr's just blowing his own trumpet, but the duo more than live up to the hype afforded them by their recorded works. Kerr is a simply phenomenal bassist and undeniably magnetic performer, and his closely guarded secrets regarding how the hell he manages to make a four-string sound like forty serve him well, as he proves a most enigmatic and charismatic frontman. To Thatcher's credit, he also proves impossible to pull away from, his frantic, animalistic flailing a visual and aural pleasure to behold.

Following Royal Blood, I head across to the wide expanse in front of the What Stage for the first time (it wasn't open yesterday, as no acts played the stage) to watch US Americana luminaries Dawes do their thing, partially because I have an interview with them tomorrow, and partially because I have genuinely been hearing good things around the festival traps these past two days. As it turns out, the grapevine is well on-point with its assessment of the band's talents, as they prove a highly polished, genuinely enjoyable act from start to finish. They benefit from preceding the likes of Alabama Shakes, Kendrick Lamar and Deadmau5, people evidently rocking up early and catching them by happenstance ahead of their main raison d'etre, but nonetheless I am doubtless that a number of those people would have walked away newly minted Dawes fans to boot.

From there, I head back to the media tent to meet Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight, collectively known as Odesza, for my second chat of the day. The electronic duo have only just arrived at the festival ahead of their 1am set at This Tent tonight, and are unbelievably nice, though just a little confused about my use of the term "punters" (however, once it's explained, Mills enthusiastically makes the decision to absorb it into his lexicon). Among several other topics, the pair discuss their affinity for our country and — unusually, when hearing foreigners espouse the good things about Australia — our musicians.

"We'll definitely return — I don't know if we can say when — but we'll definitely be coming back," Mills says emphatically. "It's not even about a fan base; we just have so many friends over there, and there's so many musicians in the scene out there that we love: Hayden James, Kilter… all those guys out in Australia are just awesome people."

Once I say my goodbyes to Odesza, I head back out into Centeroo to take in some more music for the night, with Ben Folds & YMusic offering some classically-tinged piano-pop joy before I venture to check out elder statesmen Tears For Fears, get within squinting distance at the ant-sized human on the What Stage that the booklet tells me is Kendrick Lamar (but could have been anyone, for how far away I was) and forgo Run The Jewels to check out Earth Wind & Fire, where I end up getting a slightly better view of Lamar anyway when he and Chance The Rapper come out on stage for a collaborative bash on-stage with the veteran act. As much as I'd love to stay for Odesza's full set, we're only two nights into a four-night exercise, and anyone who's ever done this sort of thing before knows how important it is to pace yourself, so I head out into the early morning satisfied once more with all that has crossed my path today. Even this thing:

Day Three: Stay Hydrated

It may just be the cumulative effects of having spent two full days in 35+ degree heat, but JESUS HORATIO CHRIST, IS IT HOT TODAY. But, thankfully, I don't have long to dwell on the fact, as I'm due to meet Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith, the brother duo at the core of Dawes, following their appearance at the Solar Stage to play a follow-up mini-set to yesterday's primary showing and talk about environmental issues — hitherto untested waters for the pair.

"That was our first activism-related experience that had anything to do with our music, that's for sure," Taylor says, "so that was kind of new for us, but I feel like it went pretty well."

Not that this is Dawes' first Bonnaroo experience; they've played the festival twice previously, having graduated this year to the hallowed confines of the What Stage.

"People have always really responded well to our music at this festival," Griffin says of their past experiences, before turning to this year's showing. "Having such a giant stage with so few people on it is eye-opening, but I think it went well. It's fun to have that much space; everything sounds big and great."

"Yeah, you hit a note on a guitar or sing a note or you hear the drums or something… it's so loud coming back at you, even through the PA," Taylor agrees. "That informs your experience, that shapes the way you play, so that was really incredible to experience because our earlier Bonnaroo experiences… our first one was in a little tiny tent, the Miller Lite Tent or something, only a few feet off the ground, and then our second time was in The Other Tent, maybe? I forget — but that was great, and it was pretty full, but even that was just… something relative to experiences we've had before, whereas yesterday, I don't think we've ever been on a stage that big, even when we've opened for big artists and stuff. It was by far the biggest festival crowd we've ever had, so that was really special."

Bonnaroo seems to be a place where specialness thrives — amid my travels throughout the grounds, I happen upon a small tree decorated with miscellaneous wares for Slayer, who perform tonight. At the base of the tree, there is a little commemorative card with a photo of a man called Mike Batts, who (I am told by a man hanging around near the tree) was a dedicated fan of the band who sadly passed away last year, and so his friends have planted a tree in his memory. He tells me they're trying to get news of the tree's existence to the Slayer camp in the hopes that the band will visit the site before they depart the festival. Unfortunately, I don't find out if they made it, but it's a beautiful monument and yet another demonstration of the genuine, indomitable human spirit that has so far defined every corner of this festival.

On the music front, I'm kept busy across the entire grounds by an eclectic array of enticing artists, from the incredible Rhiannon Giddens, whose old-timey, soulful blues is as cathartic as it is enthralling, the ever-reliable The War On Drugs, who step out to a wildly appreciative audience at the Which Stage and the twinkly inoffensiveness of Belle & Sebastian to the pulse-raising guitar work of the freakishly talented Gary Clark Jr, the sheer oversized spectacle of My Morning Jacket and the heaving sonic crushes of Childish Gambino. I forgo Mumford & Sons because, well, duh, only peripherally catching wind of the apparent madness going down at the late-night annual SuperJam, at which both Zach Galifianakis and Jon Hamm appear.

As much as I'd love to stick it out, with a near-hour-long trip ahead of me back to my hotel, three days behind me and one to go, I make the heartbreaking call to depart, for better or worse, and prepare for the final stretch of this arts-and-music marathon.

Day Four: Puke & Rally

You would be astounded how far human beings can push themselves when they're, for all intents and purposes, already at their limits, whether physical, mental, emotional or a horrid concoction of all three.

After three solid days of unrepentant partying amid 35- to 40-degree heat, swirling dust, sweaty people and the still-inescapable haze of pot smoke hanging over the festival, nobody would begrudge a tired soul for tapping out. But this is day four of Bonnaroo. The finish line is in sight. We did not come this far to simply give up now. So we pick ourselves up — we puke and we rally — and we soldier on determinedly to make the absolute goddamned most of this experience that we can.

I start the day off conducting an interview with the sharply rising US-bred duo of Tyler Joseph and Joshua Dun, aka Twenty One Pilots, who are due in Australia for a sold-out headline tour in just a matter of weeks, before heading back out into the throng to watch their first-ever main-stage set at Bonnaroo, an achievement they have racked up after only appearing at the festival once before. In fact, with a new #1 album to their name in the recently released Blurryface, their entire career trajectory has been hockey stick-esque; it seems unfathomable that only a few short years ago they were worlds away from where they are today.

Says Dun on their pre-main stage days, before they had ever even fathomed their career would take off: "We did just random stuff; I don't even know… at the time, I worked for a moving company, I valeted cars for a little bit, I worked at a music store… because that's, to me — I didn't go to college, and I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, so I'm like, 'How do I play music?' and I was like, 'I guess musicians come into music stores, so I can maybe try and figure that out,' so I worked there for a little bit.

"Even when we were kinda going out and playing shows and stuff, we worked throughout the week — Tyler worked a catering company and some other stuff, and we'd play on the weekends… so, for us, to be able to finally quit those jobs and make this our main thing and our main priority was a huge moment in our lives. And, even now, sometimes you'll be in this moment of complaining about something, or wishing something was a little bit different, I'll look back to getting up at 5am and moving fireproof safes from a basement to another office building or something in the middle of winter, and I'm like, 'This isn't bad at all. This is great.'"

It is great; in fact, their set is nothing short of remarkable, the seemingly boundless audience on tenterhooks for every word and command sent our way — when frontman Tyler Joseph tells us all to "get down", everyone listens. When he tells us to get the fuck up, there's no dissent. When he tells us to find a partner and get on someone's shoulders, the entire sea suddenly doubles in height. It's as memorable and polished a performance as you could hope for at an event like this, and will stay with me as a genuine highlight of my festival-going career.

I'm also fortunate enough to score a very brief chat with Gabe Witcher of prog-bluegrass outfit Punch Brothers backstage at That Tent, before their main set. I say "main" set, because — like Dawes before them — the band has just come from a pop-up gig at a coffee place out in the campsite, where they played to a "super chilled-out, really mellow, listening" audience (in fact, a lot of Bonnaroo artists this year seem to have a penchant for popping up in more than once place over the course of the event).

"You know, we're acoustic instruments, so we're meant to be played in a small setting, in a room, and that's basically what that was," Witcher explains — but it's not just small audiences in front of whom the band can shine, this being their "third or fourth" Bonnaroo appearance in recent years.

"I just remember the crowds being great, you know? Just really excited and happy to be here, even though it's pretty intense weather," he says, before listing examples of personal standout moments from his previous visits: "I remember seeing Steve Martin play at this very stage maybe, like, four years ago. For the first time, I actually saw him play. He did like King Tut and did all these classic songs… that was cool. I saw Radiohead last time — super-fun. Every time we play here it's been great.

"I hope [tonight] is even better!" 

It's a well-founded hope. Their set is a magnificent one, all spot-on harmonies and intertwining acoustic-string melodies and rollicking percussion. The crowd seemingly cannot get enough, though I am pulled away before their performance finishes to go and check out UK hotshots Rudimental. Unfortunately, their set suffers an early technical setback — an apparent loss of power — but they regroup with aplomb, much to the unbridled enthusiasm of their packed-out tent's audience. Not Giving In is a clear highlight for everyone in proximity, but the band do a magnificent job of keeping the entire audience hanging on their every word, swaying in unison to the undeniable vibes flowing forth from the stage.

Also on tap today are Robert Plant & The Sensational Space Shifters, whose audience is so voluminous that it's essentially a repeat of the Childish Gambino scene from the night before - if you weren't there well in advance, you have no hope of getting anywhere close to a meaningful distance from the stage. Fortunately, the sound carries all the way over the thousands of heads between me and the stage to allow me to still enjoy their tunes. Back at That Tent, Ed Helms and the assorted players of the Bluegrass Situation Superjam put on a valiant showing but, ultimately, there's only one place that counts once it hits 9pm, and that's the What Stage, where the legendary Billy Joel rounds out the festival with the kind of aplomb you could only expect from someone who has been performing for as long as he has, at the level he is renowned for. Even if you're not a dyed-in-the-wool fan, it's impossible to claim that he's not a stellar performer, and a fittingly ebullient way to bring proceedings to a close.

All of this is, despite my best efforts to see as much of everything as I possibly could, only a slice of the full Bonnaroo experience. I regret missing out on the Ultimate Corey Feldman Party at the Cinema Tent, which featured quote-along screenings of The Goonies and The Lost Boys as well as a Q&A with, and musical performance from, Feldman himself. I only later found out that Mumford & Sons might actually have been worth it after all despite still being Mumford & Sons, mostly for their ream of guest performers, a list that included members of My Morning Jacket and The War On Drugs, as well as Ed Helms and Hozier — who himself was a solo showing I unfortunately didn't get to experience.

But, honestly, it would be impossible to expect a single human being to see and hear everything that happens at a four-day festival, and it's especially so at an event the size of Bonnaroo. With magic and surprise around every corner, even the most meticulous of plans can be derailed by something to steal your attention and take you somewhere you never thought you'd find yourself.

Hell, I guess I'll just have to come back next year. So, if you'll excuse me, I have some annual leave I need to apply for way in advance. And so do you. Right now.

Thank you, Bonnaroo. The legend lives on.

Mitch attended Bonnaroo courtesy of Warner Music Australia.

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