Bonnaroo 2008 Music and Arts Festival Review and Photo Gallery

by Fil Manley.

The 2008 edition of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival finished this year's four-day run on Sunday, June 15, at its 700-acre farm venue in Manchester, Tennessee. Headliners such as Metallica, Pearl Jam, B.B. King, Kanye West, Phil Lesh and Friends and Widespread Panic pulled off their shows with varying degrees of success. Opinions about the quality of the performances varied widely. Most people had good things to say about Metallica’s show. Pearl Jam was widely praised for an outstanding three-hour gig and Kanye West, well, that’s another story altogether.

In my opinion, by far the best show of the weekend was Widespread Panic. This was the fourth time I’ve seen them and this year they shined.

Everyone I speak to about Bonnaroo asks the question, “How was it?” That’s hard to answer. Bonnaroo, under the best of circumstances, is a mixed bag. Going there requires so much preparation that by the time you arrive, you’re already a bit worn out. Bonnaroo is more than a festival. It's part concert, part circus, part human drama and part shopping mall. I’ve had the feeling at every Bonnaroo that I’m trying to fit something into four days that should rightly last for weeks.

Time at Bonnaroo takes on a surreal quality. From the moment you awake to the moment you fall asleep, no matter where you are on the property you hear the sound of music. It might be someone playing Bonnaroo radio or it might be Metallica, but it’s always in the air. A friend of mine camped near the edge of the property, almost a mile away from the main stage, and told me he heard every word and note Metallica sang and played.

I had mixed emotions about going to Bonnaroo 2008. The story is that the festival was purchased by MTV and it’s widely held that blazing commercialism is the next big thing at Bonnaroo. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case this year.

Reporting and shooting photos at Bonnaroo you spend a lot of time alone, walking miles from show to show with 20 pounds on your back under a hot Tennessee sun. It’s easy when you’re so concerned with getting the shot or the story to forget about the music. I tried not to let that happen.

One of my favorite experiences of the weekend was listening to Phil Lesh and Friends serenade me to sleep as I drifted off in my camper not 50 yards from where they played on the Which stage. I’m not exactly a Deadhead, but then again, I’m not exactly not a Deadhead. Phil (former bassist for the Grateful Dead) and his band, Phil Lesh and Friends, have been touring incessantly for the past few years. Their interpretation of the music of the Grateful Dead is amazing.

This year's festival lineup was debated among loyal Bonnaroo goers. For the most part, the reviews I heard were negative. Headlining Metallica and Pearl Jam was an unusual choice. Roo managers seemed to stray from the event's roots and many of my friends stayed away. Add that to the fact that a lot of people bought into the rumor that Led Zeppelin was playing this year and you can understand their disappointment. The pervasive Led Zeppelin rumor was cemented when one news outlet mistakenly reported that “Led Zeppelin” was playing instead of “Lez Zeppelin,” the all-girl Zeppelin tribute band. Last year, I met Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones who was all over the place. He played the 2007 Superjam with Ben Harper and Questlove, which went a long way to fuel this year's Zeppelin rumor.

Superjam is Bonnaroo’s version of a surprise party. It happens late at night and is usually pretty good. For 2008 it was Les Claypool and Gogol Bordello doing Tom Waits songs. I was there for that set and enjoyed it immensely, especially their rendition of “Way Down In A Hole.” Les Claypool played in an Elvis mask with his usual metronomic freight train rhythm, and Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello turned out to be a dynamic vocalist and guitar player. Ironically, while this was one of the shows that I really enjoyed, on my way out a couple stopped me and asked if anyone else was going to join them on stage. I told them I didn’t know and the man who stopped me walked away muttering, “These guys are terrible.”

Pearl Jam and Metallica are both good bands. The problem is that the '90s were a long time ago and as headliners, they seemed like an odd combo for Bonnaroo. Add Kanye West to that mix and you wind up with a strange musical recipe that felt like a violation of some kind of unwritten musical Feng Shui.

I skipped Metallica and Kanye. I haven’t been able to listen to Metallica since I watched their studio documentary in which James Hetfield showed up in his classic car a day late to a recording session then spent a lot of time complaining about how hard it is to be a "Rock Star."

Of those three, Pearl Jam seems to have turned out the best performance. Their show was driving, heartfelt and Eddie Vedder went out of his way to connect with the crowd. They played almost all of their standards during a three-hour set and the crowd loved it. Metallica I heard about second hand, but the fans I talked to seemed happy with their show.

Kanye West turned into a fiasco the likes of which Bonnaroo has never seen. Rumors abounded about what really happened but it seems like a series of circumstances led to a breakdown in the process. Kanye was originally scheduled for an 8:15 p.m. performance on the Which stage, but requested a late night show and was moved to the What (largest) stage. Pearl Jam played last on the What stage and went over by one hour. The story is that it took a long time to get Kanye's stage set up after Pearl Jams was off-loaded. Kanye was supposed to hit the stage at 2:45 a.m., was delayed to 3:15, then 3:30, with West finally taking the stage at 4:25. In the interim, the thousands of people waiting for the show either left, fell asleep or joined in chanting “Kanye sucks” and throwing glow sticks at the stage. The taggers spray painted a green face on the Centeroo fence the next day saying “4:40 a.m., Fuck Kanye.” Rooers stopped to take pictures with the green face all day long.

A huge mob of photographers cornered one Roo general and asked him if he would say “Kanye sucks” for the record. He was quiet for a few seconds then said he would definitely not say that Kanye sucks. When photographers asked him if Kanye had equipment problems, he replied that Kanye had a “sleeping” problem.

The weather at Bonnaroo in 2007 was absolute torture. A month-long drought left the soil so dry that dust rose up with every footstep or passing golf cart. Everyone spent time choking on dust and baking in unseasonably high heat. Luckily, this year we were blessed with an overcast sky and a light rain that lasted 24 hours.

Sometimes it happens that I’m able to see a band live that I’ve heard of but never seen or knowingly listened to. My Morning Jacket was one of those bands. I caught their rainy midnight show and was pleasantly surprised to recognize their music and appreciate their musicianship.

I discovered again that it’s not so much the big shows I love at Bonnaroo. Being in the press of the mob has its appeal, but the real beauty of Bonnaroo is how the organizers go out of their way to bring talented performers who appeal to a wide variety of tastes to the smaller festival stages.

I saw a melodic bass and laptop player combo called FreeBassBK on the Solar stage. Aaron Goldsmith, the bassist, put on a fantastic show, playing fingerstyle bass guitar on the standard bass and the Guitarron, a modified acoustic Mexican bass guitar. He and his partner, who managed synthesized loops and drum machine in the background, threw down a solid 45 minutes of first class music.

He was preceded by a cello soloist and followed by a freestyle rapper from Brooklyn who deftly carved out all of his political convictions in a poetic yet hard hitting 30-minute diatribe.

I saw a North Carolina band called Bombadil in the Troo Music lounge. Bombadil was a five piece with two guitars, bass, keyboard, drums and steel guitar. The Troo Music lounge was packed to overflowing and Bombadil brought it with alacrity to a very happy crowd.

In the end, the answer to the question everyone's asked since I returned from Bonnaroo, “How was it,” is best answered by the old platitude, “It's what you make of it.”

For all of its bigness, the people who run Bonnaroo have created a venue which has the right space for just about anyone. The theater tent ran 24-hours-a-day and included showings of An Inconvenient Truth, The Flaming Lips, A Christmas on Mars with an introduction by Wayne Coyne, and Know Your Mushrooms with intro and Q&A by Ron Mann. The theater tent was air conditioned and offered a welcome respite to the heat of the day.

When people who have never been to one hear that I’m going to a music festival, I usually get one of two reactions: “Aren’t those things just about drugs,” or “How do you stand the crowds?”

Both questions have some foundation in reality, but as I said, Bonnaroo or any other festival is what you make of it. If you make it about drugs, it will be about drugs. If you’re afraid of crowds, you might be afraid at Bonnaroo. You can find any drug you want at Bonnaroo, from heroin to nitrous oxide. That doesn’t mean that Bonnaroo supports drug use. As a matter of fact, if you’re the trippy hippy who’s stupid enough to pull out your glass piece in front of a “safety” worker, you’re very likely to have your wrist band cut off immediately and be escorted out of the venue, if you’re lucky enough to not get arrested.

The crowds can indeed be enormous, although unless you’re at one of the headlining shows it’s generally no more crowded than it would be on a busy day at the mall. The designers of Bonnaroo have created a number of smaller venues and retail experiences that give people places where they can get away from the press of the crowd. You can get your hair done at the air conditioned Bonnaroo Salon or take your laptop and enjoy free wireless in a dark corner of the coffee tent, the Broo tent, or several other places.

For me, the best part of the experience was sharing it with the people I was camped near and making new friends in the process. Camped right next to me were four New Yorkers and two fellows from Nashville. One of the Nashvillites was a photographer shooting for High Times magazine. We spent a lot of time talking about acts and photography and listening to Bonnaroo radio.

Bonnaroo radio is a nice touch. The FM station, which broadcasts for the entire length of the festival, plays a rich variety of artists. Many of them are current or former Bonnaroo performers, interspersed with roots, reggae and lots of Grateful Dead.

There was a lot of music at Bonnaroo, as always. Some of it was good and some of it was bad, but that diversity is the real beauty of Bonnaroo. It doesn’t matter what kind of music you like or where you’re from, there’s something for everyone at Bonnaroo.

As I said, the band that really stood out to me was Widespread Panic. I’m not one of those dyed in the wool Panic heads. I’ve only grudgingly come to like and respect Panic. I’ve seen them in auditoriums and now for the second time at Bonnaroo. This year they hit a home run that went into orbit. The vocals, guest musicians, and especially Jimmy Herring's guitar work, were volatile and I didn’t want it to end.

Ultimately, I’ve come to the conclusion that Bonnaroo isn’t really about the music or the drugs or the ten thousand other things you can do there. It’s about people. It’s about you, those you love and take with you, the new friends you make while you’re there, and the memories you take home.

My favorite memory from this year is sitting under a tarp with new friends while a light mist comes down in the cool midnight air. Phil Lesh and Friends start up their late-night set on the Which stage, a stone's throw away. I have a frozen margarita in my hand, my feet throb and my skin is burned. We sit silently as Phil slowly and methodically takes us back to Haight Ashbury. After awhile, Will, the photographer from High Times, looks at me and says, “It feels like Phil Lesh is playing just for me in my back yard.” It did.

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About Fil Manley
Filson "Fil" Manley is a guitarist and writer, but is best known for his music photography. Fil is a full-time web developer and founder of the non-profit organization HelpForHumans.org that includes a non-profit search engine, the Backpacks for the Homeless project and the Help For Humans video documentary project. He conducts interviews, writes music reviews and reviews of live shows, and loves the music festival scene, which he covers whenever he can. He enjoys all kinds of music, but especially likes roots rock, reggae, blues, soul and bluegrass. Fil comes from a musical family. His grandfather, Verne, was chairman of NAMM for thee years and played trombone with Tommy Dorsey. Manley's father, Lance, has played in bands in the Atlanta area for 40 years and his mother, Sandra, is a vocal coach. Fil has owned and played a number of different guitars, from a Gibson Les Paul to a Martin D-18, and is currently playing a 1987 Ovation 12-string.

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