Loueyville Special Edition: Bonnaroo 2007-- WE HEART HIPPIES

“We HEART Hippies.” I had a fantastic time at Bonnaroo 2007, but no moment during the entire festival gave me quite the giggles, the joy, and the pleasurable mild befuddlement than seeing those words scrawled in pink marker on the drive-in window at the Manchester, TN Starbucks on our way out of town. Welcome Bonnaroo Festival! We Heart Hippies!

I would never self-identify as a hippy. I hate jam bands; in fact, jam band music is just about the only type of music that I plain cannot listen to. Roommate dragged me to hear Widespread Panic at Bonnaroo and I was bored senseless. I don’t do drugs. At all. None. Unless you count coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, and Advil. That put me (and Roommate) in the vast minority this past weekend.

But I missed the New Orleans JazzFest, an event I regard as my birthday, Christmas, and Mardi Gras rolled into one, for the first time in nearly a decade this year, and Bonnaroo seemed a fair alternative. In the past six years, the event has evolved past the typical jam band hippy fest to offer a more diverse spectrum of entertainment.

But right from the outset, I need to make it clear that Bonnaroo is not what I would call “my scene.” So take any criticism that I may offer with that nugget of salt. And also know up front that despite my non-hippy (although Roommate may argue with me), non-stoner, jam-band-hating status, I had a hell of a good time.

And I didn’t come away from the event HEART-ing hippies. I got pretty sick of stoned people. And at times I felt kind of nostalgic for the time when being a hippy actually meant something more politically and socially significant. But the organizers of Bonnaroo did a heckuva job, in general, and I’ll certainly be back.

Read on for a Loueyville Special Edition: Bonnaroo 2007.

Loueyville SE: Bonnaroo 2007-- Getting there & Camping

Roommate and I left Loueyville at 2am-ish on Thursday morning and started the five or so hour trip to Manchester. Stopped in Murfreesboro for some Steak and Shake around five and then in a rest stop for an hour snooze. And when we arrived in the Manchester area around 7am CST, there were already thousands of cars lined up at the exits. After an hour waiting at exit 112, we were diverted to exit 127. Around an hour later, we were parking at our campsite.

Lou’s Roo Camping Tip #1: Although there is conflicting information on the web, it seems as though it doesn’t make a hugo difference what time you arrive. Within a few hours of arriving I heard people complaining that they’d gotten there super-early and that latecomers were getting better sites—that the Roo folks appeared to be filling the campsites from back to front. Our walk from site to CenterRoo took around 20+ minutes; it was tolerable, but inconvenient, especially if, as Roommate said, you want to “get your drink on” in between acts.

Popped up the tent, and then took tent #2 and hiked to the open camping site. Open camping is much closer to CenterRoo, but it is first come, first served, and my midday on Thursday it looked like a refugee camp. The idea was that I would camp at Open Camping and Roommate would camp by the car, but it became pretty clear to me early on that I was not going to feel comfortable sleeping alone in such a crowded space. This served up some pretty hearty conflict between Roommate and I for the remainder of the festival, as I moved into his tent. I do feel bad about imposing upon him, but in my defense I stand by the fact that Open Camping is no place for a woman alone. I don’t mean to play the gender card, but he didn’t get it.

Lou’s Roo Camping Tip #2: If you don’t mind a postage stamp sized piece of real estate, Open Camping is a great alternative to staying with your car. Get there early. Be prepared to lug your gear close to a mile. The smart folks brought dollies or wagons to pull their gear. As soon as you get there, make sure you stake your claim on all of the space that you need. Anything not taken up by a tent is free space for another Roo-er. I recommend a tent and a separate shade canopy no matter where you camp. That way you have both a sleeping space and a hang-out space. Bring a good flashlight because at night the place is a maze of tent stakes and people.

The first night, we cooked out steaks and veggie skewers. Everyone who walked by our tent ogled our meal. Amazing what two pieces of meat and sticks of mushrooms, peppers, and onions will inspire in people; we were the envy of our ‘hood. The third night we drunkenly cooked up some hot dogs. That was the extent of our camp-cooking experience.

Lou’s Roo Camping Tip #3: As your site location is a bit of a crap-shoot, don’t plan on many meals at home-base. I brought the makings for iced coffee but the milk spoiled by day 2. Powdered milk would have been a better option. Breakfast eaters might be better served by home cooking but neither I nor Roommate are big on breakfast. We brought fruit for light snacks in the morning. Lots of beer and wine and alcohol. A 24-pack of water served us for the entire trip, but next time I’ll probably bring two. It wasn’t unusual for me to drink three bottles before even setting out for CenterRoo in the morning.

Lou’s Roo Camping Tip #4: Bonnaroo is a joy for low-maintenance people. It’s probably hell for high-maintenance people. I sweat buckets and buckets. Suffered a bit of heat exhaustion one day. I was dirty ALWAYS. I have blisters you could bounce quarters off of. I spent too much money. I felt overwhelmed by options much of the time. But as I said, I had a blast. That being said, I am relatively low-maintenance. I am also brushing up against the age when I will no longer be quite so low-maintenance. In the not-so-distant future, I may only consider Bonnaroo if I can (A) pay for VIP tickets or (B) rent a camper.

Lou’s Roo Camping Tip #5: Things I brought and forgot:
Things I brought: A box of antibacterial hand-wipes that served as our “shower” all four days. It’s amazing the difference that three or four of those will make to your dirty, dusty body. I felt dirty all the time, but at least I went to bed feeling relatively fresh. Gatorade, while yucky, does a better job of hydrating you in the morning than plain water. I froze three bottles before leaving and they helped keep the cooler cold and helped me feel better in the morning.
Things I forgot: A big jug for water—I could have filled it at water stations and actually washed off properly. A camp shower would have been ideal. A bathing suit for aforementioned camp shower. Grilling tools—simple whoopsie on my part. A shade tent—definitely a must for hanging out outside and even for providing additional shade for the tent which turned into a broiler by 8am.

We left Roo around 11am on Monday, long after the traffic had died down, but it still took us an hour to get on the highway. I don’t know the answer to that; I doubt that there is one.

Loueyville SE: Bonnaroo 2007-- An Alternate Universe

On Saturday morning, Roommate and I sat at the New Moon coffee shop tent in CenterRoo and met some of the people who worked there. One of the guys said that it was his second Bonnaroo and that he explained the event to his friends as being “like an Amsterdam in the US for four days.” That’s the best description of the Bonnaroo environment that I’ve heard. Note that he said this as he lit up a bowl and commented that he could still taste last night’s opium in it.

Drug use is overt and ubiquitous at Bonnaroo. Back in the day when I was in college, I had a couple of friends who dealt pot, but most were casual users and normally so broke that the most they could hope to score was a dime-bag from time to time.

While waiting in line for the Flight of the Conchords/Demitri Martin show, I watched as the girls behind us lit up a joint as thick as my thumb and smoked the whole thing down to the nubbins in fifteen minutes. No single “drug” moment struck me more than that. Had my college friends gotten their hands on a joint that fat, they would have taken two hits, stubbed it out, and pocketed it for another day—or at least a couple hours later. When we arrived at Bonnaroo, we saw cars pulled over and bags of pot the size of small pillowcases confiscated. Clearly it was mostly for show (and an instance of profiling in the extreme—our car was barely examined).

Only 46 arrests were recorded at Bonnaroo (and we saw one of them, an unruly man pinned down by no fewer than three security folks on the second day), so anything goes and anything for the most part goes unpunished at Bonnaroo.

People are definitely friendlier at Bonnaroo. The official Bonnaroo website encourages attendees to reach out to people, to make new friends, to ask questions. And that’s a fantastic thing. We didn’t make any lasting friends this year—partly because I’m such an introvert—but we did have some wonderful conversations.

Varying degrees of nudity is popular at Bonnaroo. And frankly, back when I was a wee 98 lbs, not so many years ago, I might have taken part. (And this depresses me a little; I like to think I’m of the “be-proud-of-your-body-type” feminist camp, but all the cute, wee young women in sarongs and duct-taped or body-painted nipples intimidated).

My one teeny concession to this atmosphere was that I let the girls fly free for a few days. It may not seem like such a big deal, but once upon a time there was probably a young Lou much like me who prayed very hard to Our Lady of Perpetual Endowment in hopes of being granted giant bazooms. Unfortunately, Our Lady must have been a bit distracted because I was granted said bazooms instead of that girl. Bazooms that have continued to expand even into my early thirties such that I can no longer buy OTC bras. (More likely these bazooms were a gift from my grandmother, who, after seeing me in a bathing suit when I was 12, said, “I’m so sorry. You inherited got my boobs. You’ll have grooves in your shoulders where your bra straps rub by the time you’re thirty.” She was off by 5 years.) Women are generally ingrained with the knowledge that big floppy breasts are not a sight to behold, but gravity (who is a “harsh mistress” *The Tick) has been relatively kind to me, and it felt like a million bucks to be fancy free for a couple of days.

Yeah, yeah. Lou’s a hippy.

Loueyville SE: Bonnaroo 2007-- Thursday Line-Up

New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars: Had to hometown represent. Always fun.

David Cross, Aziz Ansari, and Nick Kroll (Comedy tent): Nick Kroll, soon to be of the Geico Cavemen TV sitcom, opened the show as his Fabrice Fabrice character who would have been patently offensive if he hadn’t picked out a hipster, instamatic camera wielding hipster named Crunchy out of the audience and dicked around with her considerably. (I have a low tolerance for gay stereotype comedy.). At the very least, he’s talented on-the-spot. Aziz Ansari, of the MTV show Human Giant, was much funnier. Both joined David Cross onstage for a Blue Collar Comedy parody called “You Might be a Deadneck.” “You might be a Deadneck if… you hackysack, but only with white people… you wear your Widespread Panic shirt to a tractor pull…” Cross’s best moments were improvised, lambasting the stereotypes of Bonnaroo people as rich white girls in dreadlocks singing “Buffalo Soldier,” mocking the weird comedy stage, and complaining (rightly so) that if you listened very closely, it sounded like there was a heavy metal band playing right next door. Cross didn’t disappoint. The others, eh.

Yard Dogs Road Show: One of the best venues of the entire event was the new Bonna Rouge stage. Headlined by the Yard Dogs Road Show out of San Francisco, the Bonna Rouge stage offered cabaret-style entertainment. Yard Dogs featured fantastic vaudeville jazz and burlesque. Stunning stuff.

Loueyville SE: Bonnaroo 2007-- Friday Line-Up

The Little Ones: I missed their big performance the day before, but caught them at a smaller stage on Friday. One of the true pleasures of Bonnaroo was catching snippets of bands I’d never heard of before and falling in love. The Little Ones was the first of these. Joyful, fantastic music.

Uncle Earl: A four-woman bluegrass group who recently recorded an album produced by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. Great stuff. I’d never heard it before. When JPJ took the stage to play the mandolin as a surprise guest, it was a genuine thrill. Later, he played with Gillian Welsh, and he apparently bopped around the bluegrass shows all weekend long.

Paulo Nutini: Started off a bit dull, but as soon as Roomate left to check out another show, he kicked it up. Played a great cover of Moby’s “Natural Blues.”

Gillian Welch: Sounded just like I hoped she would, like an angel. Won me at the first song, “Orphan Girl.” John Paul Jones guested. The only rain during the entire event occurred during her show.

Kings of Leon: Boring and repetitive. My opinion, though, was clearly in the minority.

Lily Allen: See Best Of

Firecracker Jazz Band: See Best Of

Angel and the Love Mongers: In the tiny Troo Music Tent, this Knoxville band was so good that for the first three or four songs, I was sure they were playing covers. Lead singer is a former model and actor, and his on-stage strutting and preening and pouting seemed a parody of rockstar-dom. But, alas, he was dead serious. Still and all, his voice made up for the silliness, and the whole set led Roommate to comment “there weren’t bands like this when I lived in Knoxville” on several occasions.

Loueyville SE: Bonnaroo 2007-- Saturday Line-Up

Old Crow Medicine Show: Saw them in 2006 at JazzFest, and that small stage was such a better venue for their old-timey sound. Still a great show.

Alexa Ray Joel: Girl’s got pipes! So nice to see celebrity spawn who has something to offer beyond her lineage. She’s cute as a button, and if you bumped into Alexa Ray at a party, you’d immediately snark to your best friend, “She’s adorable, but she looks like Billy Joel with braids.” Good original tunes, but it was a bit unnerving that she’d introduce each song saying, “This is my Ray Charles-y song” or “This is my Dolly Parton number” and it would be.

Gogol Bordello: Sounds like the party band for Johnny Rotten’s bar mitzvah. I listened to the first two and the last two songs. The last two were better than the first. Wish I had actually seen the band. Fountains of Wayne commented that they had a “naked” lead singer and dancing girls. Damn being short.

Fountains of Wayne: See Best Of

Damien Rice: See Best Of

Flight of the Conchords/ Demitri Martin: The women in line behind us commented that Demitri Martin was the boy they wanted to take home to their mothers. He’s not my type, but I get it. Old school, one-liner kind of comedy. Most of it was hilarious, but some jokes were met with a chorus of “huh?” Finished out the set with a hilarious song of a litany of insults called “You vs. Me.” Surprising lack of audience response to the final insult: “You: George Bush/ Me: Your place in history.” And what is one to make of New Zealand’s Flight of the Conchords, this folk band comedy act picks up where Spinal Tap left off 20 years ago… sort of. I’m waiting to see their HBO show to render my final verdict. Had some good belly laughs at songs like “Part-Time Model” and was surprised at how many audience members knew their stuff well enough to call out song requests. Also surprised at how many people left after a song or two. Not for everyone, clearly.

Police: Saw Sting at JazzFest a few years back, and no offense at all to the rock gods that complete the Police, but you could replace Axel Rose with Sting in Guns N Roses, have them play “Roxanne,” and I probably wouldn’t know the difference. Still and all, good stuff.

Loueyville SE: Bonnaroo 2007- Sunday Line-Up

Don Byron featuring Chris Thomas King: See Best Of

Wolfmother: Roommate loved it. I thought it was just… loud.

Charlie Louvin: See Best Of

Elvis Perkins in Dearland: The Bonnaroo guide made it sound like Perkins’ music would make you want to jump off a tall cliff, but I found the set joyful and fun. The band looks like a bunch of B-grade 70’s porn stars, except for the drummer who, mid-set, strapped on a bass drum and pranced around the stage like Puck. I’ll definitely look to pick up a CD soon.

Miss Lolly Pop’s Burlesque Coterie and Sideshow Bennie Experience: I’ve never seen women strip to pasties and be so wholly unsexy. Not even on in a cheap Bourbon Street club where the low lights barely hide the women’s stretch marks and C-section scars. The one exception was Miss Monica Honeybush, who’d clearly done her homework for her old-fashioned formal-wear gloves to skivvies strip tease. She got her tassels twirling like ceiling fans on high. Sideshow Bennie was a bit more entertaining, shoving screwdrivers up his nose and swinging four (!!!!) irons from his nipple rings.

Wilco: See Best Of

White Stripes: Couldn’t see them for the crowd. The audience would have been much better served had the White Stripes appeared on the big stage with the video screens (aren’t they a visual act, too, in the end?). Great music, but I pouted for hours because they didn’t play the “Doorbell” song. Damn them.

Loueyville SE: Bonnaroo 2007-- Best Of

Fountains of Wayne: John Roderick of the band The Long Winters called Fountains of Wayne an “Absolutely Perfect Rock Band” in his blog report from Bonnaroo. (yeah, I know, “if he could do it why couldn’t Lou?) Amen and then some. One of the few sets I listened to from beginning to end, FOW proved themselves to be pretty damned perfect. Playing a good 50% of their stellar Welcome Interstate Managers album, the band began with a canned feed from a New Jersey radio station announcing the weather and traffic information for any given morning in the tri-state area. You just got to love a band that says, “Because we’re playing in Tennessee, it’s in our contract that we play a country song. We’re going to play one by Kenny Chesney. We were going to ask Kenny to guest for us, but we don’t know him. And regardless, he’s busy sucking somewhere else.” Easily making my “best of” list, FOW made me laugh, made me dance like a crazy person, and made me want to kick the asses of the lethargic, moribund jerks who took up space inside the tent waiting for the upcoming Ween show. I like Ween just fine, but their fans made me want to skip the show, which I did. If you can’t rock to Fountains of Wayne, there’s something wrong with you.

Lily Allen: The day after Bonnaroo, we made it to Murfreesboro, TN before konking out. I was suffering from some sort of cold/allergy brought on by the excessive dust, so we stopped in at a Target to buy some medicine. The Lily Allen cd was on sale for $9.99, so I bought it and on Tuesday we listened to it three times over on the way home. I’d heard Allen on NPR and several of her songs rang sonically familiar to me. She positively sparkled onstage; jubilant and giggly, she electrified the audience with her big band and diverse musical repertoire (ska, nola jazz, reggae, hip-hop, rock, you name it). The audience (most of it) fell in love, and so did I. But some were turned off by her brash, brat persona. She announced very early on that she was “So drunk” and preceded many of her songs with autobiographical stories about men who fucked her over and friends who turned out to be bitches. And after listening to her album several times over, I’m conflicted. She’s got a pixie beautiful voice and absolutely rocking music behind her, but her lyrics are quintessentially brat-punk. Because I loved her show so much, I want to shuttle her into the same category as Liz Phair, another brilliant, no-shit, foul-mouthed songwriter. But some of her songs are genuine turn-offs. But I can’t deny the fact that her version of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” might have been the musical highlight of Bonnaroo, and no on made me want to dance like she did.

Wilco: There ain’t nothing wrong with Wilco. Ever. Always tip-tops when it comes to performing live. They can stray down strange avenues and always make them seem like a walk through a shining neighborhood. And there’s nothing like watching Jeff Tweedy looking happy and healthy. I’ve never seen him smile so much.

Charlie Louvin: In a few weeks, Charlie Louvin will be 80 years old. I missed his big stage show, but was one of fewer than 30 people who caught him at his show at the Sonic Stage. Louvin, the surviving member of the Louvin Brothers band, is a Country Music Hall of Fame member, and funny and sweet and… randy! Obviously thrilled by the median age of his fans, Louvin commented several times that he thought that if he prayed hard enough, someone would take off her shirt. While I was in line to have him sign his new CD (duets with the likes of Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy, and Will Oldham), a Newbury Comics employee mentioned that Louvin said he’d “sign anything… even boobs!” We listened to the CD on the way home. Excellent purchase. His song, “Ira,” about his dead brother/bandmate made me tear up. Heartbreaking. Hard to reconcile the album’s Christian undertones with this breastloving man!

Firecracker Jazz Band: Just about the best New Orleans style jazz band that I’ve heard, in or out of New Orleans. Just one more reason that Asheville, NC is one of the most popular places for New Orleans ex-pats. Seriously worth a trip just to see them. According to their website, they don’t play out of town much.

Don Byron Featuring Chris Thomas King: We came out of this Sunday concert—the first of the day—wanting to duck back into the tent to see the band’s second show. I went because I’ve always adored the mercurial Chris Thomas King, but the whole band—every single member—was extraordinary. Don Byron plays the sax and the clarinet and was the bandleader for the event. When we left, I joked to Roommate, “This band belonged on a Cosby Show episode,” and he immediately knew what I meant. Each musician was stunningly talented, charismatic, and more than easy on the eyes. If there were any media in the poorly attended first show, surely they would have cast this as the best most-missed show at Bonnaroo. The music didn’t hold true to the schedule description (cartoon jazz?); they played well-loved funk and r&b classics like “Shotgun” and James Brown’s “There it is.” CTK was in full voice and guitarist David Gilmore could have headlined a show on his own. I’ll definitely be buying this album from Blue Note Records.

stay tuned

No blogging from Bonnaroo. 90+ degrees and a 3/4 mile walk from camp to concert. Not dragging the laptop. But having a great time.

Too hot to even stay in this tent!

Note to future Roo-ers: You can never have too many Handiwipes!

Coming Soon: Lou at 'Roo

At posting time, there is 1 day, 22 hours, and 50 minutes left until Bonnaroo 2007. And this Lou will be there.

In a perfect world, I'll find the time to blog during the four-day festival. They'll have free wifi, and in theory, a place to plug in. If the stars do not align, then expect to see a Special Bonnaroo Edition of Out-of-the-Ville soon after I get back.

Stay tuned!