Bonnaroo Or Bust

Blogging Bonnaroo - Day 1
Coffee County, Tennessee claims a population of about 50,000. Between now and Sunday, a 700-acre farm just outside the county seat of Manchester will be home to 80,000 more who have bought up all of the available tickets to the fifth annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.

Driving (at about 0.5 MPH) into the farm, you think this might be what it was like at Woodstock, but with more acts and a bigger crowd, and without the gate-crashers and the mud. Young as it is, Bonnaroo has already been recognized by Rolling Stone magazine as "one of the 50 moments that changed the history of rock and roll."

Between now and Sunday, nearly 100 bands representing a half dozen musical genres -- with a cast of classic rockers that includes Elvis Costello and the Imposters, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Bonnie Raitt, Phil Lesh and Friends and Buddy Guy -- will occupy Bonnaroo's five stages, sharing the spotlight with a comedy club, a beer festival, a movie theater and a music technology village.

For Coffee County -- located halfway between Nashville and Chattanooga -- Bonnaroo represents a financial windfall of around $14-million. The Festival itself takes in almost that much, which qualifies it as the highest grossing music festival in the US.

As a member of Grateful Dead, Phil Lesh played Woodstock in 1969. Lesh headlines the closing night lineup at Bonnaroo on Sunday. "Inside, at night, with artifical lighting, no matter how psychedelic it is, it's a different animal," Lesh tells a reporter from the Nashville Scene newspaper. "Especially if it's outdoors in the sunshine, it's a very liberating thing. It connects people not only to other people, but to nature, to something larger than themselves."

In that regard, Bonnaroo may be more like Woodstock than even its organizers ever imagined.

What's Old is News at Bonnaroo | Classic Rockers at Bonnaroo

^{Photos by Marc Deley}