The Final Bonnaroo Post

June 28th, 2009    Posted in Bonnaroo 2009, Local Music

When you first saw this post you probably thought to yourself, “Oh God…another Bonnaroo post. Just get over it man!” But the truth is that Bonnaroo becomes an obsession for many…could be hundreds, maybe even thousands. Just pay a visit to Inforoo anytime of the year, the unofficial Bonnaroo messageboard, and you’ll see that I’m not the only addict of the festival who constantly has it on their mind.

Although the festival has been over for nearly two weeks now, I don’t think I made a post yet where I really got some things I wanted to say off my chest. Basically what I wanted to write about was how when you leave Bonnaroo, or any festival for that matter, you leave either as a new fan of some bands or a bigger fan of one’s you already knew about. Festivals are really the best music experience, because when you have a ton of bands, in this case over a hundred-and-twenty, you’re gonna find types of music that you may not typically have given a chance. In the three times I’ve attended Bonnaroo combined, I’ve walked away knowing about hundreds of new bands. Some are my favorites today, some were my favorites for a little while, and some may even be among my favorites a year or two from now.

I’ve also noticed that I’m often a little late on picking up on some bands. For instance, at this year’s festival I’d have to say that I became a big fan of both Passion Pit and Chairlift. While Passion Pit has been growing over the past year or so, even just a year can mean all the difference. A year isn’t really long when you think about it, but in music it feels even shorter. Passion Pit had played at Northside Tavern sometime last year, sorry I don’t know the exact date, could’ve been early in the year, could’ve been late. But I remember hearing the buzz grow about that show even before it happened, and I’d like to think that they’ve become much bigger since then and probably don’t stand a chance playing in a tiny venue like that again, although they played the Mad Hatter just days after I saw them at Bonnaroo. One of the biggest shows of their careers, they reached an audience of somewhere around 5,000 people at Bonnaroo, in what served as the best dance party on opening night.

When I left the Peter, Bjorn and John concert at the end of April, they played at the Southgate House, I actually left feeling more interested in what I saw with the opening band, Chairlift. I guess it mostly had to do with hearing new sounds to my ears, as I had been listening to PB & J for at least the past couple years. Not that I had become bored with PB & J, but I’m always in search for new music, or new to me music. I’ve got over 5,600 hundred songs on my iPod and I have to tell you that sometimes I feel like that’s not enough music to satisfy me.

Another band who really impressed me on that first day of Bonnaroo was Hockey. I’d never heard of them, not sure I had even read about them on one of the twenty or so music blogs I check out on a weekly basis. I went in thinking they’d be alright, but left thinking wow, they’re really fucking good!

I love females that can rock, especially those who do it acoustically. The four ladies of Katzenjammer, who hail from Norway, are versatile, multi-instrumentalists who mix everything from folk and bluegrass to pop and punk, along with each’s vocal harmonies.

As a big Neil Young fan, it’s no surprise that I left Bonnaroo as a fan of Everest. Opening for Neil on his last tour, and then with My Morning Jacket on theirs, you can certainly hear a Young-inspiration there, as they’re full of both fuzzy and acoustic Americana rock.

Although I first heard Nickel Creek only some three or four years ago, which doesn’t say much considering they had been around for nearly twenty years, I’m becoming much more impressed and intrigued with the playing of both Sean and Sara Watkins. They both joined Switchfoot frontman, Jon Foreman, for a newer project called Fiction Family. Not much of a stretch of what I was expecting, it’s amazing to see a brother-sister relationship so closely knited while having played music together for so long. I’m a sucker for the violin (or if you want to call it a fiddle) and Sara, along with her angelic voice, will just make your heart melt.

I even came away from the festival as a bigger fan of the Heartless Bastards. Maybe that sounds bad because I’ve lived in Cincinnati my entire life, but I hadn’t seen them in a couple years and I think The Mountain is their best material yet.