By Bill Foster and Rusty Odom • Photos by Bill Foster
Bonnaroo is – for better or worse – an ever-evolving entity. Currently in its 20th edition, the festival has evolved from a jam band-heavy, DIY effort on leased land to a Live Nation-owned festival on its own property. Of course, there are individual changes every year. Here are some of the notable changes we noticed through the first two days.
* Most of the major roads are paved. This is a tremendous aid – both for our feet and in knocking down the dust the festival had become (in)famous for.
* Four giant ceiling fans each have been installed in the This and That tents. These are cool additions.
* The Other Stage (which replaced the Other Tent) has had a lot more production added to it, including four towers out in the audience that synch lights with the stage.
* The Who Stage has been replaced with a spaceship-like tent. The stage is much better, but the new location is subject to bleed from the two major stages.
* The beer selection consists of offerings from smaller breweries only – no Miller, Coors or Bud to be found. KUDOS! Also, all bars are cashless.
* The craft-brew tent, from which one used to be able to observe the Which Stage, has been moved really far out of the way.
* The Kalliope Stage is absent.
* The Platinum viewing areas in the tents have been expanded, leaving the front rows in the tents empty for at least half of the sets. It must be disconcerting for the bands.
* Jake and Snake’s Christmas Café, a beautiful reminder of the festival’s NOLA origins, is gone, replaced by a matrimony chapel.
* By moving the Who Stage, the organizers opened a third way from the tent side of the festival to the main-stage area. Additionally, they removed the food vendors from the upper passage by That Tent. These two changes eliminate the bottlenecks at the start and conclusion of major shows on What.
Here’s what we enjoyed on day two of Bonnaroo 2022.
What’s next
The Los Angeles four-piece (expanded with an additional live member) that are The Regrettes continues to impress. Frontwoman Lydia Night sings songs of empowerment and identity while somehow channeling this incredibly appealing mixture of punk and ’50s rock ‘n’ roll. She spins and whirls, jumps off things, dives into the crowd and communicates constantly with the audience, all while leading a tight band playing great songs. This is one of the best live acts around right now – and one that saw a certain mayor of regional importance getting down sidestage.
We first discovered Lord Huron on a small stage at a smaller festival. In the years since, they have grown and grown, moving up until they are just a step below headliner status, playing the 10 p.m. slot on the Which Stage in front of a huge and rapturous crowd. Sounding like some sort of cross between Arcade Fire and Calexico, the band took the stage in Western clothes, as the backdrop came alive with lit-up cacti and the outlines of mountains. Although there was a bit too much fog (and by that I mean literally all the fog that was possible to produce), the set was striking. Ben Schneider remains the focus, as he jumps and spins, but the band is the star, laying down propulsive, infectious grooves that take the recordings from their four albums to another level. If I had not seen Andy Frasco & The U.N., this would have been the show of the festival for me.
‘Rona baby
Pitch Meeting was born recently, as many things were, during the pandemic when Eric Fortaleza and his partner decided to create a collaborative environment for musicians to be heard in Nashville. According to its website, “The Pitch Meeting band give(s) back to Nashville’s songwriting community in the form of the ‘songwriter pitch night.’ Songwriters get to hear what their songs sound like when supported by an amazing band, and the audience gets to witness the magic of an artist’s vision being spontaneously realized in a live setting.”
So what does that have to do with Bonnaroo? Well, it just so happens that the upstart has a tent near the old Sonic Stage, close to the post office, where they are hosting artists throughout the weekend. The backing band for the Friday afternoon series of shows consisted of bassist Fortaleza, Makena Hartlin on vocals, Tabitha Meeks on keys and vocals, a three-piece brass section, a monster of a drummer whose name I didn’t catch and Mike Gannon on guitar. Gannon is a bashful animal with the axe and has a crooner’s voice to boot, and each member adds a layer of brilliance. The craziest piece of the puzzle, though, is that they are allowing musicians from the crowd at Bonnaroo to sign up for a chance to play with the band live. We plan on doing a separate full-on feature when we get back on Pitch Meeting, and we would love to see something similar in Knoxville. The band will take the How Stage on Saturday afternoon from 4:30-5:30 and again from 6-8. They’ll do it again on Sunday from 6-8 p.m. If you’re reading this at Bonnaroo, try to make it to one of these things. It’s as inspiring as it is legitimately entertaining. As crazy as it sounds, the PM House Band was my favorite show of day two.
Still got it
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss kept it short and sweet on a sweltering evening on the main What Stage, playing only 10 songs – but all of them absolutely perfect. Featuring covers from everyone from Calexico (“Quatro”) and the Everly Brothers (“Gone, Gone, Gone”), every song featured soloing from the crackerjack band led by Stuart Duncan and Viktor Krauss. Both vocalists were in fine form, with Plant becoming more animated as the set progressed. They performed four Zeppelin-associated songs: “Rock and Roll” (in a startling, beautiful new arrangement), “The Battle of Evermore,” “Please Read the Letter” and a set-closing “When the Levee Breaks.”
In their first-ever major festival performance, The Chicks brought their absolute A+ game. Playing Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” as bumper music, they took the stage with the tree of the band in silhouette. The focus was on lead singer Natalie Maines, but sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer had plenty of spotlights. The Chicks had an extensive video presentation behind them, but the lighting highlighted the three members in different colors than their large band. Maines rarely addressed the audience, preferring to let her lyrics make her political points, particularly during a moving segment in which they displayed a list of school shootings in America before playing a powerful “March March.” Other highlights of the 16-song set included “Gaslighter,” “White Trash Wedding,” Patti Griffin cover “Don’t Let Me Die in Florida” and Fleetwood Mac cover “Landslide.” The impressive set concluded with “Not Ready to Make Nice” and “Goodbye Earl.” The Chicks are a true machine with immense talent through and through, and they seemed to win over thousands of listeners, both new and old. This stretch of Alison Krauss into The Chicks might well have been the best back-to-back display of female talent in the festival’s history.
After two rounds, Andy Frasco & The U.N. are firmly the leaders in the clubhouse. We’ll report back tomorrow. And wherever you are, drink some water.
