Bonnaroo 2025 First Impressions: Olivia Rodrigo, Tyler, The Creator, Hozier, and more!

What stage for Queens! What stage for Queens of the Stone Age!

Don't mess around with this one. Put the rock band on the greatest

sounding stage in the world. Don't mess around on that.

Hello. Welcome everybody.

Okay, so we're live.

You're live. Welcome. Yes.

Okay. I've never done a live anything before, like a streaming kind of thing.

Hello everybody. This is the What Podcast. It is line up day before I start rambling on into anecdotes.

That's not true. You've done the radio. The radio is live.

Well, other than the 20 years of live radio, if you throw that part out, I haven't done a video cast like this before.

Quite like this. So I'm sitting here like it says I'm in the backstage.

And so I'm like, what the hell does that even mean?

So welcome in everybody. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for being here. It is an exciting day and it looks like information is changing as we speak.

Are you getting these texts to Lord Taco, the fine producer and overall tech guy of the show?

I am. And this has been the craziest year to try to keep up with everything.

It really is. And it's pissing me off a little bit.

I know. It's a little disconcerting. We made all these plans.

And then, of course, everything changed.

Those are for a whole week. So, you know, we've had to try to do a few things.

Barry's not here yet. He is on his way. Yeah, Barry will be here shortly.

Yeah. So we originally the text we just got is a confirmation from Barry from down the chain line that it'll be.

Wait, hold on. Did I read that right? Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Where my bad guys.

I'm all discombobulated. So that's not got about 30 text to.

So we're looking at a huge thread. So we're looking at 11 o'clock Eastern, just like we had planned. Right.

That didn't change. OK. I read the text wrong. OK.

And of course, you know, we've got to do the Eastern to Central conversion.

So, you know, we're Eastern. We're but we're barely Eastern.

Those are over. Those that don't know we are one county away from Central time.

And so anybody who lives in this general area, no matter what it is, a work meeting, a school meeting, whatever, it's always there's always a time issue with when you're scheduling appointments.

And so we this year has been a little bit even more annoying because it's changed from noon to 11 to 10 to noon to 11.

And from what we understand, that's there's just there's just some red tape.

There's some some, you know, the fine print that they've got to wait before they can legally through all the contracts go live.

And for some reason, there was a couple of hang ups this year.

And so if it's been this way in the past, I don't quite remember.

But it's still it's it's still one of the calendar days, Taco, right?

Like, I mean, it kind of hit me last night for the first for the first.

Wait a minute. Insane clown posse just leaked it.

Insane clown posse. So I guess ICP is going to be there.

ICP is going to be there. And they put the whole thing up.

I don't know how I feel about that.

I don't know how I feel about that.

M.D. Mark Tar. You know, because what was it?

Twenty twenty one or twenty.

The M.D. Mark Tar leaked the lineup.

They weren't supposed to. And it looks like ICP did the same thing this year.

So, you know, I haven't looked at it yet.

There really is something.

Pull it up. There is really something to say.

We'll get to it. There's really something to say about the fact that you say it.

I know it's early, but. My man.

There we go. OK.

My man. My man.

I've I've got I do have.

The my my Bonnarooo Cup.

Not no PBR in it, but I'm already getting called out in chat for not having PBR.

I will say that you go. You're welcome.

It's amazing that they're able to keep this much of a secret as they do all the way until an hour 30 or 25 minutes out that they're able to keep this thing a secret in a country in a cold.

That can't keep a secret to save their life in a country and a culture that loves to lie about everything and just make shit up and and and secrets are basically non-existent.

The fact that they're able to do this every year all the way this close and even for people like me and Barry, who have known a lot of these people for years, they still won't tell us.

I thought you were my friend.

You can't get nothing. Yeah.

Yeah. State secrets aren't even this secure.

It doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't work that way.

They're not going to let it well, at least until the last minute.

And I I believe there's a little bit of calculation there between ICP and and Bonnarooo.

Should we wait till Barry gets here before we start looking at?

Yeah, I hate to dive into it just yet.

Barry's not even here yet.

Yeah, I do want to say, though, I mean, out of all of the, you know, the rumors and the speculation and people talking about who they wanted to see, nobody I have heard nobody talk about.

I have heard nobody ever mention ICP.

So this came out of nowhere, it seems like.

No, our campmate Tara V. Tara at Tara Mothership.

Yeah, we were texting last night and she was like, you know, happy Roo.

And she's like, it looks like Slipknot is not going to be there.

So now I don't even care. Now, winky, smiley face.

She's like, you know, joking.

But I was like, Slipknot. I never heard Slipknot.

I didn't either. She was making a joke.

But ICP. Yeah, ICP not what not on my radar either.

Not one bit.

And it feels like a little bit this year that these the early leaks that were all calculated were there was more of those than usual.

Is that is that fair to say?

Yeah, between well, we had Roo Clues and then the leaks from Festival quote unquote leaks.

Yeah, because like you said, it's calculated.

I understand all this. Yeah.

And that's fine.

It just feels like those there was more of those than usual.

And yes. And there was so the build has been nice.

The build has been good.

I was reading speaking of Festival, I was reading some of his stuff most recent on Twitter last night.

And it was a really long like what to expect.

And I was like, what? This is this is a lot of drivel here.

And it's the way that he or she or they who I think is Brad Parker, by the way.

Sorry. Sorry, Brad.

The way that they keep that conspiracy going.

Yeah, you heard it here first a month ago.

The way they have this thing layered out or the way that he was they were describing it was it is got me excited.

Like it was the undercard according to this write up was it is going to be one of the better looking under cards you've seen now.

It's always it depends on who you ask situation.

Right. I mean, just of course, I think something's good doesn't mean you do.

But the the twenty twenty comparisons were were coming out in some of the comments sections.

And I think that's going to be a bond rule or thing for the rest of our life.

We're going to compare everything to know.

And I don't think we're ever going to I wouldn't don't think it would be right to reach that level of.

No. And I wonder because we're now five years, five years removed from the time we were set up.

Brad Steiner and Barry Brad, the original founder, one of the founders of the show, along with you guys.

And we were at the Moxie Hotel here in Chattanooga.

Yeah. And we got it. We were there all night to like one or two o'clock in the morning waiting to get the lineup early because that was just how we always did things.

And then we recorded and had it ready for for the next day's announcement.

And I remember it vividly.

I remember I did. I do, too. We were exhausted.

Hand. Yeah, we're sitting there all night, like for five hours and and for a little bit.

I'm thinking, OK, this is the time they're not going to come through and we're not going to get it.

And we're wasting an entire day. And then we finally get it.

And it's probably midnight or later. It probably was later because I bet they had a kind of a an overall conference call or text and email thread that said, if we're who we're sending this out to is going to be officially after midnight.

And we all got it. And I we were just like.

Yeah, we were just our jaws dropped.

Can you believe this? There was people in that room that I had just met that day.

There was people around that I had never met before at all.

Oh, yeah. We had a good group of people that showed up for the for the for the lineup.

And everybody was four hours in. We're like, should we just go home?

Yeah, it seems like nothing's happening. And then, yeah, it finally came out.

And everybody who was there who was just hanging around as bystanders because they thought what we were doing looked cool because it was cool.

And they all agreed. Like, I didn't know these people like, can you believe this?

Like, no, I can't. So anyway, that's five years ago.

And comparing lineups to that one is probably not fair.

But that's what we do around here. We compare things that we probably shouldn't just because we got nothing else to do.

Yeah. So let's see. I don't think Barry's quite ready yet.

But how's the special guest later to? Yeah. Who we got? Tell me about that.

Well, I know, you know, Lauren and David from sound checks to stage dives.

They were on last season a few weeks ago, actually.

And we brought them on just because they're going to know more on the EDM side than we do, of course.

And it seems like there's a lot of EDM on here that they can talk about.

That was another thing from Festivals post on Tuesday night was that this is, you know, just as we all expected, EDM heavy and EDM quality, like a really solid lineup.

And that doesn't surprise me at all. What about this? My God, forgive me for not having notes and forgetting some of this stuff.

The new stage. Oh, I know. I wanted to talk about that, too. I don't have a clue what this is. It's not really a 360 degrees.

Yeah, it doesn't read to me as much like a stage that does a viewing and listening experience.

But to me, that is a direct sphere effect. There are a few different companies, production teams that are doing similar things to what the sphere is doing.

I mean, the sphere has been an idea for 10, 20 years, and it took five years to build the place. Maybe maybe quite maybe not quite that long, but it was longer than your traditional construction.

And there was an exhibit in London for the Pearl Jam Dark Matter release that was one of those all immersive sound lighting, you know, kind of like Meow Wolf style kind of thing.

If you know what that is out out west, I do. I just had some friends that went out west and went to that. Yeah.

So there's a few the few of these immersive experience things that are on the up and up and the technology is just getting better each time.

And the fact that Bonnarooo jumps into this like they have is just another example of this festival for 20 plus years consistently being ahead of the curve, doing things before anybody else does.

Maybe Coachella's got a little something similar. I always out that far west. I mean, we might as well be in two different countries.

We're so far we're so far apart and the trends are so different.

So for the two thirds of the country and what most people are more familiar with, because most people are not from California and Coachella,

they're doing things as always that these other festivals wish they could do from being a camping festival in the 21st century when no one else was from the simplest things like the layaway plan, the you know, the pay over time plan.

Bonnarooo did that first for the what I would consider a negative but good for the selling bottom line.

The camping additional fees. Bonnarooo did that before anybody else did once people started.

Camping was just a part of things. Bonnarooo changed that.

I'm sorry for not having a list. There's more.

And they continuously stay ahead of the curve and they've done it again with this.

I guess I'll just call it experience. So I'm really looking forward to that.

My guess is it's going to be much easier.

I don't know any other way to refer it to. Yeah, experience.

Yeah, I guess it's unfair to just call it a stage, another stage because it's not.

So that'll be interesting to see how that unfolds.

And I still haven't looked at the ICP post yet. I will shortly.

Is there anything from the chat thread you'd like to throw out there, Lord Taco?

Yeah, let's see. There's a bunch of chat. You're pondering that. I don't have it.

Yeah. Breaking news, Pondo's drinking PBR. Cheers.

Hey, Pondo, have yourself a morning PBR. I can't believe you guys drink this stuff.

I mean, I don't mean alcohol. I mean, PBR.

Yeah, specifically PBR. I know. It won a ribbon.

It's an award winning beer. Yeah.

Which the story is pretty interesting how that comes together.

We got about a hundred and twenty five ish people here. Welcome.

Wow. Thank you. Don't you all have jobs? Yeah. Yeah.

Where do you all work? Don't you have a job? Yeah.

Yeah. People that seem to be hyped about the lineup.

We got a lot of people talking about it. ICP, Faygo on the farm.

Let's see. Who else? Shout out to Pondo in the chat. Who else?

I see a bunch of names that we've talked to over the years.

Sorry, I'm trying to multitask here once. A little annoying.

Working from home. Okay. Oh, the old I work from home thing.

Boy, speaking of 2020, I never got to do that.

I wonder what that's like all these years later. I've never had to do that.

I was ahead of the curve because I started working from home before then.

Well, you're a tech guy. Yeah, that's why. So it's worked out.

See, I'm the opposite of a tech guy.

Technology ran off without me about ten years ago.

Everybody's just catching up with me now. Exactly.

So it's all another thing that from my list.

I just remember by looking at my shirt, Blam from 2014, the lineup.

But now 23 shirt. Yeah.

The lineup announcement has been different from year to year.

And speaking of Banra doing things before everybody else, the innovative way of releasing the lineup.

They've done it from weird out. You know, weird outed at the Blam year.

I believe they did some video things. Some of them were kind of ridiculous.

Some of them are really, really cool.

And the fact that they're consistently changing it up just to keep it interesting is just another another example of this festival doing neat things all the time.

It looks like we got Barry and let's let him in. So Barry will join us.

There he is. So not working from home like all our listeners and viewers there, Barry.

Yeah.

Barry, can you hear us trying to drag him into the show before he's ready?

Oh, this is shirt shirt buttons. Nice shoulder.

But yeah, it hit me last night, Taco. I was I was and this has happened the last few years to me where I it's not as exciting because it just becomes such a routine.

And it's just like another day or that's how I feel about it as it's kind of just another day on the calendar.

And then once it gets on that Eve, there's something about that Christmas Eve style, you know, lineup Eve kind of feel kind of does feel like Christmas.

We've we've made that comparison.

Last night, I had trouble getting to sleep. I really did.

And I think it was because my mind was racing about the lineup itself and everything else.

So I am really, really excited to be here with you guys.

And thank you so much. I mean, I'm joking when I poke fun for do you even have a job?

But where the hell am I? I don't work either. Right.

Yeah. You had to take off a little bit so we could be do this together.

Luckily, I've always had a gig that is fine with that.

So I don't tell my employers.

I told them I had a doctor's appointment. OK.

So tell them that I have my blood pressure was spike.

Yeah, it was an emergency. You had to go go go see the doctor.

I could have told him it was about Bonnaroo, but it was just easier to say a dentist appointment.

Sure. Yeah. Or a doctor's appointment, whatever the hell I said.

Yeah. My guess is today production is at an all time low because everybody that's working from home that is a Bonnaroovian is not working right now.

Hey, guys. There's Mary. Can you hear us? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah, we're good, man.

Welcome, Mary. Just rambling around bouncing off the walls trying to remember that.

I remember that twenty twenty very well. Oh, my God.

Wasn't that a night? You saw Dr. Pondo. That's what it is.

We that was a good time. That was a good year. So we're still waiting. Right.

I'm sorry to be joining late. Well, it got leaked by Insane Clown Posse.

Yeah, that's that's what that's what TACO is reporting to do to do to do to do to do to do to do to do reporting here live.

Yes. I haven't seen it yet, Barry. We're nine minutes away until the top of the hour.

I'm conflicted. I've never I'm I'm emotionally all over the place.

Like I want I want it. I want it. But then I want to wait till the the announcement at 11 exactly or 11 our time, 10 a.m. Central.

I'm kind of yeah, we're eight minutes away from the official official one.

But yeah, when you started saying that a couple of days ago, Brian, that you're like, I think I want to wait.

And I thought, well, what? That's not what we do. And then, oh, what would what would be the harm?

Number one and number two. Yeah, why not? I mean, plus so much of it has been leaked.

If that's even the right word, it's almost it's hard.

It's hard to truly wait until the last minute because it does get leaked.

Yeah. And to me, it's kind of, you know, I don't know.

It's like opening your Christmas presents early. Yeah, we were just talking about that.

So, I mean, yeah, I there's something about it, Barry, you know, this and it's it's it's silly and it doesn't really mean anything.

But getting it early, it just felt like a badge of honor, you know, like, hey, look at me, look at me like that for sure.

Yeah, I can't get away from that.

My mind won't let me completely get away from it.

But when I realized that it was going to be difficult and then, you know, I'm just different person than I used to be.

I was like, this sounds pretty exciting to kind of do this all together.

And I like it. So I'm happy.

Even though in St. Cloud Posse beat Boner to the punch, according to where they're asking for you to turn your volume up a little bit.

OK, probably just need to get closer. Is that better? Better, better, better, better.

Yeah, yeah, too much. Yeah. No, it's not too much.

OK. Yeah, that North Georgia Wi-Fi is good as it up here in Chad.

Yeah.

But yeah, I'm the same as you. I was like, you know, I like getting it early, but mostly because that let us prepare.

That was what we always told ourselves anyway. But you're right. It was kind of a yeah, we get it early and you don't kind of.

It's petty. It's ridiculous. But it's still, you know, it was fun. It was it was a neat and we did stuff where that it wasn't just vanity.

But no, no, it was work several times.

I mean, you come up thinking about it, Brian, we did this before even the podcast.

Oh, yeah. Down to the paper at what? Seven in the morning and we had it and we were ready to go.

And that helped. I mean, that was for sure. Yeah, that was probably 10 years ago.

I know. It's a long time ago. And so, yeah, we were you guys over at the paper or not.

I'm not going to go into the details of you guys now, but them guys and you guys back then had the we're kind of ahead of the curve a little bit.

It's too bad. They dropped the ball on that one as far as the video conferencing and video content distribution.

But that was a lot of fun then. And it's it's always different.

You know, that's kind of cool, too. Like this is not a moment on the calendar that always looks and feels the same every year.

It feels a little different. And that that brings a level of excitement that sometimes I lose as it as a time approaches and then I get it back as as I as we get close.

How much I don't know how much you want to wait till after 11 when it drops to talk about that kind of thing.

But what was the year you remember, though, they had the huge production.

They had comedians and they were like throwing it all over the play and did like the old one, not MTV, but did the drops.

The the did something with Conan like pop up video kind of thing type of thing.

Yeah, that was weird. I didn't weird out.

Oh, sorry. Yeah, weird out. Yeah, something.

And that might have been Blam. Was that Blam or was that another year?

No, no, that was another year. That was not the same because we were all at I don't bear.

You might not have been there and actually talk. You weren't either because this was 10 years ago and Barry said it's pre podcast.

We were at Mellow Mushroom in downtown Chattanooga for one of Brad Steiner's radio remotes.

What this this Blam thing was. So, yeah, I mean, it's every year.

It's a it's a little different and it's always it's always fun no matter what.

And those worked until the leaks started happening and that pretty much killed them trying to hang on to everything.

Remember, still still shocking. They they keep it under wraps as much as they do.

But yeah, that every everything's changed enough to where it just I don't know what I want.

I don't know what I want. I want it early. I want it now. I want it five minutes ago.

I want it in four minutes. And right now, as we're four minutes away from eleven o'clock Eastern and I guess the Bonnarooo

official site will on probably Twitter is going to be the first place to see anything.

Yeah, I would guess. Now they'll put it on their site.

ICP hasn't taken it down yet. So, well, I guess I'm going to start mosey on on over to ICP's Twitter.

Sorry here, guys and gals watching the show again.

Thank you for being here on this Wednesday morning.

Yeah, we do want to thank everyone.

Drop a like if you are enjoying the show and thanks for joining.

We got looks like close to one hundred and fifty people here.

So that's pretty insane.

What are your predictions or guesses as far as how close it'll get to what we've we've already been?

You know, we're past that. We have it. It's out.

It's out. OK. Yeah, I haven't seen it yet. I mean, oh, geez.

Well, I'm starting to look at it now.

It's ICP. We do this. Let's just all do this together.

Yeah, let's just all do this together, guys.

ICP is at ICP. That's simple on Twitter.

If you would like to go to the same place, I don't guess we'll have any graphics on the live show because that's not how this is set up.

Not live. And then the real ICP on Instagram.

And they've also put it there. So, oh, my goodness.

Yeah. Oh, my. Is this real?

This is real. This.

Whoo. All right. Hold on. Slow down, Brian. Slow down.

Don't don't don't start getting too excited over this.

I don't have any hands, Parker. I've got PBR.

Shout out to Parker and Reed for fear from.

Yeah. And another another guy that sticks true to the really old rotgut beer crew.

The hams, the hams, the hams loyalty is very, very impressive.

It's now official on Bonnarooo.com, too.

So it is out. All right.

Yeah. Tyler, the creator.

OK, here we go. Yeah, finally.

Olivia Rodrigo and Hozier are going to be your top three headliners.

I'm happy with that. That is strong names.

Strong names. I like that.

Um, Avril freaking Levine.

Boy, the millennials are going to love that.

Yeah. The vampire. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Vampire Weekend.

Last time I saw Vampire Weekend was at Bonnarooo 2017.

Yeah. Same animals. OK. Megadeth.

Megadeth! Megadeth is on there. Yeah.

No! Rainbow kitten surprise.

Gorilla. Mount Joy. Boy, all the ones that a lot of the predictions are coming.

Yeah. And Barry, apparently you can't swim.

Barry can't swim. No. A lot of things he can't do anymore.

Man, guys, Thursday is really good.

This is not just emerging up and coming. This is way more than that.

I mean, I know it's not been that for the last few years.

I mean, Thursday has become more and more.

But Marcus King. Yeah.

Insane. ICP.

Daniel Donato and the country, whatever the cosmic country.

I'm not that familiar with this guy, but I've seen him all over.

It's picking up speed and people are telling me,

dummy, why don't you know about this Daniel Donato guy?

Luke Combs. I mean, I guess, is that a country guy?

Sorry. That's Luke. Yes. Yeah, he's kind of big.

He's kind of a big deal. Great.

No, I know. Luke, Brian, Luke, Brian.

Yeah, Luke's the Luke's. Yeah, I get that.

I can't keep it all. So that's got to be a what?

Right. That's got to be a what? Yeah, yeah.

He was definitely the headliner on Thursday.

And he's the one that Brad teased that no one would ever guess.

And everybody had guessed what about a day later, day and a half later.

Yeah. See, this has just been a different year for me all the way around.

I stayed out of the comments section.

I just I didn't see a lot of people talking about it because I didn't want to.

Goose, Goose. Friday. Top two lines is pretty strong.

Goose is going to be there.

Oh, I mean, I need for that.

I need a we had Goose at our local festival that shut down about a year ago.

And it was a disappointing day.

A lot of that was anecdotal, but it was a disappointing day.

I need a goose bounce back. Yeah. Oh, my God.

On Friday, Friday, those top two or three.

You got Foster the People, our friends Flip Turn, their bad.

Foster the People. Slightly stupid for the people who like stupid

talented music, but people love that band.

Flip, our friend of the show, Flip Turn of the Trees, which we already knew about,

which is EDM.

Rainbow Kitten Surprise, which I think is cool because they were on what?

There was the twenty twenty three lineup and they had to cancel because of some health issues.

Right. So yeah, good to have them back.

Dude, that Friday, that Friday is rocking.

I mean, I'm already thinking conflict.

Glass Animals, Glass Animals, Mega Death, Goose.

I got to see Tipper after all this.

Flip Turn.

Uh, sorry, guy.

This is in the same. If you look in the upper right corner,

remember, it says King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

They're doing their three sets, three days residency thing here.

Holy shit. What? Yeah.

Three days, three sets of King Gizzard.

OK, I got to take a breath.

Yeah. OK, so Saturday night is the Remy Wolf's insanely fire.

1970s pool party super jam.

Yeah, what the hell sounds like fun.

It does. Guys, I don't make stuff up and just make them fake emotions to get.

This is really good.

Just when I thought I don't think Bonnarooo can keep making lineups at work for me.

Boom.

You haven't you haven't made it down quite to Sunday yet, but no age is going to be huge.

Yeah, I mean, I saw that.

I just I've been digesting slowly.

Queens, I've never seen Queens.

I've never seen them.

I saw them at Shakenese.

They go maybe.

God, that rock. They rock.

So hard.

What stage for Queens?

What stage for Queens?

Stone Age.

Don't mess around with this one.

Put the rock band on the greatest sounding stage in the world.

Don't mess around on that.

All right. I just jumped over to comments and the first one that pops out to me is this is the worst lineup today.

Who said that?

There's always somebody.

I love it. I love it.

I love it.

Yeah, my eyes went right to it.

Worst one.

Yeah.

Oh, shout out to.

Well, there's Elizabeth.

Yeah.

Corey just pointed out that we were missing King Gezard.

But oh, I didn't see that.

I didn't I didn't look at rumors much going into this.

I didn't even know that was a possibility.

There it is.

OK, so that was what I was thinking.

Candor just said lineup has something for everyone.

I'm not going to go into that.

I'm not going to go into that.

I'm not going to go into that.

Candor just said lineup has something for everyone.

When I did start hearing about, you know, the rumors slash confirmations, it felt like to me this one is as bad about as well curated as any that I've seen in a long, long time.

That's kind of what Festivale was saying.

Yeah, that's and you know, that's there.

Just even the four headliners is is a pretty doggone good mix.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Luke Combs, Tyler, the it's it's about as as diverse as you could you could be women.

Yeah.

Genres men, women, white, black country, country, country.

Yeah, I don't know what you call Hozier.

It's not rock.

But what did I hear?

Jake, call it Fay, Fay Rock, Fay Rock.

They use words.

I don't know what they mean.

I don't know what that means.

Perfect.

I just think it's just I just take me to the church.

Take me to church.

Shit is Hozier.

I love it.

I'm not hating.

I'm not hating.

That's a great Sunday headline.

It's a fabulous Sunday.

Sunday headliner.

Vampire weekend on Sunday.

Oh, my God.

And that Thursday going back, you know, once we kind of knew it was going to be Luke Combs, you kind of questioned.

Well, all right.

Well, how big will Thursday be?

I mean, I know that's rare to have a what stage headliner on Thursday.

So is it going to be will it feel like a one off and everything else will be just OK.

But that's pretty strong.

Yeah.

And a pretty good day all the way around.

The goose thing is surprising to me because they're playing at the all the new Allgood Festival that same weekend.

So that's Evan Bonnarooo.

Evan Bonnarooo is on the chat.

What's up, Evan?

So I thought, you know, that's that's not that far of a track.

But the chances are they probably won't work out.

And there it is Friday.

Goose on the second line.

Let's move to Saturday.

I barely even looked at Saturday yet.

Let's see.

Nelly, Nelly.

Oh, I didn't even see Nelly.

How cool is that?

I mean, I won't I won't be there.

I won't be there.

But that's cool.

Modest mouse.

Oh, modest mouse.

Oh, I did.

Oh, they're way down there.

Wow.

Yeah, their popularity is has waned quite a bit in the last 20 years.

But I'm a fan.

I've seen modest a couple of times.

I will definitely be there.

Bouncy stuff, man.

I'm ready.

I'm already thinking conflicts, but that's how it goes.

Mostly on that Friday.

I don't see how that was Nelly.

Is Nelly going to do the entire Country Grammar album like he was in 2020 or is this going to be a different set?

Oh, was that the case then?

Well, that was what was on the lineup back then.

Nelly performing Country Grammar.

This just says Nelly.

So who knows?

We'll see.

I bet there'll be a little bit of a throwback to that.

Maybe not the whole thing, but I bet there will be some kind of, you know, maybe not announcement, but from from the stage and during the show.

I bet there'll be something a little bit that resembles that anyway.

Yes, Saturday.

Well, not to say it's not really that good.

No, it's plenty good.

Let's what about a super jam?

Do we have a super jam?

Remy Wolf's insanely fire 1970s pool party.

There it is.

There it is.

Not that I personally ever usually do that, but I was curious.

So that answers that.

So let's move on to Sunday.

Dispatch.

People are going to be excited about that.

There's Barry Can't Swim.

I didn't know what the hell you were talking about earlier, Doc, when you said Barry Can't Swim.

I was like, what the hell is he talking about?

Now I get it.

Big gigantic.

Just going with names, you know, that I'm familiar with.

I guess really for me, it starts strong and it gets less and less throughout the weekend as far as what I'm overly excited about, which is actually good.

That's how I like it.

Let's start with a bang.

And then as I tire out and run out of energy and run out of options, there's less.

But that Sunday is still that that is not.

Oh, my Sunday is still stacked.

Hozier, Vampire Weekend, Queens of Stone Age.

Now I can skip Hozier.

I've seen them a couple of times.

Don't need to do it again.

I've seen them, but I do kind of want to see them again.

Not saying I'm with.

I will saying I can.

Vampire Weekend and Queens of Stone Age, Stone Age are do not miss shows.

Absolutely.

Do not miss on Sunday.

So all you say, you know, Sunday's the weekend.

So we do have a couple of guests if we want to switch over here and talk EDM because that's kind of where we need some help.

So we've got Lauren and David from sound checks to stage dives.

You want to bring them in?

Yes, do it.

Yeah, I'm going to have to bail here before too long.

But David, Lauren, what's up?

Hey, I got a little bit of a problem.

I'm going to have to get a little bit of a problem.

Hey, guys, what do you think?

Hey, how's it going?

Hey, what do you guys think?

Yeah, Lauren, what do you think?

David, you guys, what did first first thoughts when you see the lineup, which is, you know, we've all got in our hands now.

What do you think?

They can hear us.

They can hear us.

Live.

Hey, guys, there we go.

What do you guys think?

Yeah, there are definitely.

There's a lot of delay here.

Just go just take it and run.

Just take it.

Yeah, we're on a delay.

Sorry, guys.

But yeah, no, this is this is incredible.

We are absolutely blown away.

What's jumping out?

So there's about a four to five minute delay here.

Yeah, don't watch the YouTube if you can watch it through the Riverside.

Here, I'll jump in because I can I can hear you guys pretty.

Yeah, go ahead.

So I'll jump in.

So first things that are jumping out is Dom Dollar.

Obviously, my Aussie brother coming to the farm, which is going to be really awesome.

Also, another Aussie is what so not is another one that jumped out of the river.

So I'm going to jump in.

I'm going to jump in.

Also, another Aussie is what so not is another one that jumped out at me there.

He's an Aussie who's been a producer for a really long time.

So it's going to be cool to see him on the farm there.

Brian, you mentioned Big G just before Big Gigantic.

Yeah, Lauren and I know those guys.

They're one of our favorite groups of producers.

They're going to be a really cool show.

They play the drums and saxophone live as well.

Why they are why they play music as well.

So that's going to be such a great cool experience.

Jade Cicada is one that Lauren is absolutely in love with when it comes to the way he does his sets and everything like that.

So are you caught up now, Lauren?

Is it back?

I think so.

I'm going to go for it.

Yes.

Speaking of Jade Cicada, you know, we mentioned with Tipper last time we were on about just kind of this musical sonic journey.

And Jade Cicada is very much the same way.

Kind of hard to put into words exactly what to expect, but an incredible show.

I believe, David, that you might have mentioned Big G.

If not, Big Gigantic definitely wants to watch.

Some of your under cards that people may not be as familiar with.

Ahi, Gorilla T.

Those really jumped out at me.

Very, very much up and coming artists that you need to check out.

LSD is huge.

The collab between CloZ and LSTream.

Got a chance to see that at Electric Forest and guys do not miss that one.

It's incredible.

And I mean, look, this is total speculation on my part, but I really hope that we get to see a lot of EDM acts on this new immersive stage because there's a lot of EDM artists who are really playing with sound and venues and understanding how to create a full sonic experience kind of like Mercev's been doing on his tours.

And yeah, I really hope we get to see a lot of these EDM acts at this new stage.

Just want to point out for people just wondering why we've got David and Lauren, you guys travel in a van, right?

You bought a van and that's what you live out of and you travel the country or the world even mostly following EDM type music, but you go to a lot of other festivals.

So as we've said on here before, that is not necessarily our lane, though that lane is getting wider and wider for me anyway.

Very wide.

Yeah.

And so we wanted to have somebody on who could, you know, see the line up and speak to it with a lot more.

And in all seriousness, guys, I wanted to, you know, David, Lauren, love you guys, love to have you on the show and we'll do it more down the line, right?

The line.

But I was like, I bet the line's not gonna be that good.

So we're gonna need to like talk about EDM somehow.

Let's bring them on.

Hey, that's actually what I thought.

And I was just afraid we were gonna be a bunch of names and you and I were gonna go, no idea.

Well, that too.

Yeah, that that too.

But I wasn't expecting expecting to be so multicultural, Lee blown away.

And that's just my bad.

Sorry, Bonnarooo.

I don't know why I question it wasn't the hell.

So David and Lauren, I don't know if you heard us talking, but for me, this feels like a really, really good curated Bonnarooo lineup, which is something we've always thought they do probably better than anybody else.

Not just that it's all because something you know, there are festivals that it's all one lane and they do a great job with that.

But this one is kind of a little more, you know, little variety.

What do you guys think about that?

When you look at it, I know you mentioned the the bands that you know, in the in the EDM world.

But how about the the others?

So, yeah, I think the lineup is really great.

And I think it's a great way to kind of create of like, obviously, the diversity.

I mean, like, you know, I see P and then you've got Megadeth and you've just got all these different like, you know, acts that are going to bring this different vibe.

So it's going to be really cool to be on the farm and see, like, how those genres kind of like mix together, like at the actual event.

Things that I think I want to say is if there's some acts that you if you haven't been in the EDM world before, I think there's some acts that you should definitely check out.

Now, one that I think is very funny is Ahi.

We just mentioned him the first time I saw Ahi.

I thought of like, if you never went to an EDM show and saw this for the first time, you would be really like confused at what it is.

He's very like space music, alien style vibes.

So like if you want to see something really different, definitely go check out Ahi's set.

It's a very good time.

Another one, if you like a lot like remixes and a lot of party style songs, Tate B and Liberty, they'll be two good acts that you can go see.

I'm really hopeful that Liberty play at this 360 stage that they've got because they did it at Electric Forest last year at their 360 stage, which was one of the coolest sets of 2024.

And they also played at the Lost Lands Crater stage, which was a 360 stage as well.

So if those guys play at that stage, it's going to be a really big party and you should definitely check it out.

Obviously, Tipper, like we said in our previous show, he's definitely a legacy act that you guys should definitely check out.

It's going to be a little bit a little bit different.

And then definitely go see Dom Dollar as well, because he's been putting on absolute massive shows, even in Australia.

He's been touring really hard lately and he'll bring a lot of good dancey vibes to the farm as well.

And I mentioned this in the chat, but like I am so excited for Rainbow Kit and Surprise.

They have been like a little bit of a white whale for me lately this past year, and they are unreal from everything I've ever heard and seen in performances.

So I'm so excited that they get kind of their their do over right with with Bonnarooo.

So I'm very, very excited about that.

And then I just wanted to also mention, I feel like Foster the People is kind of buried in there a little bit.

I don't know if anyone mentioned that.

I was a little surprised, I guess, to see them on line three there of Friday.

But definitely again, a little bit of a throwback maybe for some of us, but definitely someone to check out as well.

Lauren, I agree with you 100% on the Foster the People thing.

Their ascension was huge.

But like six, seven years ago, I guess it's kind of, you know, it's it apexed.

But yeah, that's going to be great.

I know I thought the same thing like third line for Foster the People.

But I'm looking I'm looking for Lawrence.

Is it on there? Parker, did they make it?

I'm not seeing it.

I know Parker is sharing Lawrence music with me for the last week or two.

And I know he really wanted him on there.

But yeah, so what else was jumping out?

This is it's pretty strong.

Throw out the indie, the indie kind of vibe here is huge as well.

Mount Joy looking at Remy Wolf, St. Motel, you know, all these kind of like indie alt nation.

If you're familiar with with SiriusXM kind of bands are popping up on there as well, which is something that I've always personally been like my new discoveries when I typically go to Bonnarooo.

There's a lot of those indie types of guys.

So I would definitely put put yourself onto those as well.

Yeah, I'm just I'm looking down the list here myself.

Sorry to be there's always that first read through.

Wow.

And then you got you got to double check.

I got this is this is this goes against everything I was ever taught in broadcast media reading my phone, reading things, trying to talk at the same time.

Like this is this is not coming together.

Normally you have a little bit more heads up, which is part of why we used to like to get these ahead.

I get I get what we're doing here and it's fun.

But it's a mini apology for sounding like I don't know what I'm doing.

Mount Joy, you know, we had them on the podcast.

We interviewed them what several years ago now.

Yeah, that's been some time now.

Big fan of Mount Joy.

They played here and chatting several times.

I mean, it is some good folk.

Just catching up.

I'll take just a minute, I guess.

We for long time listeners.

Thank you.

We took several weeks off at the holidays.

Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas to everybody.

By the way, glad to be back.

This is year eight for us.

Absolutely.

I started season eight.

Yeah, he's an eight kicks off for us.

That's crazy.

And we do have tickets to give away to what we'll talk about a little bit later.

We'll talk about that here in a minute.

How we're going to do that.

We also have got several guests lined up.

People that have reached out to us that want to be part of the show,

which makes me feel so good.

And there's some really cool people that are long time Bonnarooians like us.

We want to do some of the we love the behind the scenes, the sausage making stuff.

So we're going to get into that with some folks.

And we want to have as many guests on as we can.

So that's all coming.

I think we'll be weekly from here on out.

There might be a couple of breaks.

And I know we'll dissect this lineup even more.

And keep having people like David and Lauren, thank you guys for coming on.

Because we want a lot of different opinions.

We had some other people lined up.

Work gets in the way and life gets in the way.

But this is a great day for Bonnaroo people, right?

I mean, this is the best day of the year.

Yeah, it really is.

It really is pretty exciting.

This is good stuff.

And to what you were speaking of, Barry, too, don't be shy, guys and gals out there.

If you have anything you want to push and you want to talk, I can't promise you anything.

But if you've got anything that's Bonnaroo related you want to get in touch with us, please do.

Speaking of, there's Geraldine.

Hi, Geraldine.

I can't wait to have you on.

Yeah, I wanted to shout her out.

Oh, yeah.

Our international correspondent.

Our international correspondent.

Can't wait to have her on as a guest.

So, yeah, thanks for listening in today.

What do you think, Geraldine?

She commented.

She'll comment.

Yeah, Pondo's here, too.

Pondo says the Pondo Army's coming back.

Pondo, I hope you're going to make it this year, man.

I hope you're feeling better.

Speaking of, not feeling better, but shout out to Cory.

I think Cory should be having his first child.

Yes, I want to mention that.

Any time now, basically.

That's part of why they're not on with us this morning.

Exciting times in the Cory Smith family.

Yeah, and that's why Bootscoot and Boogie Nights is not on here, I think, because he did tell me that

Oh, yeah!

Time away off from the band because of the baby coming.

What happened?

Yeah.

We broke bad news.

That's right.

Yeah, well, get used to that.

Brad might have been trolling a little bit when he sent that to Barry as the...

You mean festival? I mean Brad Parker.

Festival, I mean Brad Parker.

Shout out to Beth, too. I see Beth in the chat.

Hello, Beth.

All right. Do we want to talk about tickets?

Sure.

All right.

We have a pair to give away with camping.

And Russ, you've got it all figured out.

Explain how we're going to do it.

All right. Here's what we're going to do.

So the whatpodcast.com slash win has all the details.

But basically we're going to do a weekly question and answer kind of thing.

We're going to ask a question. We want you to answer.

There's three ways you can respond.

You can call and leave a voicemail.

We've done voicemails in the past. Love them.

You can also email us if you just want to write up your story and not talk.

That's fine. If you've got pictures you want to send in, you can do that.

And now you can also if you want to record a video of you telling your answer or your story,

you can submit it to us there, too.

All of that's on the website to submit.

Every week we're going to come up with a different question so you can enter multiple times.

Yeah. So and that final, the third leg of that, that was tacos brainchild.

I like that idea.

Adding the additional audio and video potentially away from like a phone call,

the traditional ways. I think that's pretty neat.

So we'll be doing that as long as I don't know, a couple of months probably anyway.

We'll talk about it each week.

We're encouraging you to get creative.

I mean, you know, don't just, you know, one or two words, here you go.

Actually tell a story, maybe show some visuals if you got props,

if you got, you know, memorabilia you want to show.

Of course, yeah, we'll have a memorabilia show for sure.

It's one of my favorites.

Well, let's kick it off. What's going to be our first?

This is our first week doing this. What's going to be our question?

I mean, I think it's got to be what do you think of a lineup?

Yeah, we'll just start there.

There we go. Yeah, I guess we'll just we'll keep it easy.

It's right there on the T.

We'll just hit it over the fence.

All right. Go to the what podcast dot com and tell us what you think of the lineup this week.

Burn it up. Burn it up, baby.

And if you like your answers, we'll play some on the show and then eventually we'll pick a winner.

I always interrupt Russ.

I always see his voice just sounds like he's done and he's never done and it gets me every time.

David and Lauren, you've had a few more minutes.

Any new thoughts? I mean, there's always something that you miss those first two times.

Digestive period here, you know.

Yeah. So the on Thursday, they're the kitchen dwellers for you.

Jam band heads. They're probably not kitchen dwellers are.

But if you haven't seen them before, they're going to be great live.

They play a lot of different instruments.

They play with Daniel Donato a lot as well.

They've done several shows with him. So. Yeah, that's cool.

That's cool. I'm not familiar with them.

Daniel Donato I talked about already a little bit. I am.

So that is that's good information.

And of the trees on Friday, he's on a tour right now.

And his his we saw a little bit of his tour recently and it's really good.

So he's going to bring a really cool vibe to the farm as well.

OK, so of the trees is a he it's a guy. Correct. OK, yeah.

He played here locally at a Sound Haven.

You guys familiar with sound? Was it wasn't that what it's called? Yeah.

They headline he headline Sound Haven about a year ago.

And so they're on my radar. He's on my radar just a touch.

Give everybody a plug about your your stuff.

You guys can do multiple things as we talked about before.

You not only go to festivals and have a podcast about that,

but you also blog about your van life, right?

Which I'm still fascinated by.

But tell everybody where they can find what you guys do.

Yeah, so we're we're on YouTube.

We are on all the other social media platforms.

Obviously, YouTube is our long form content.

We're gearing up for festival season this year, getting out all of our tips, tricks, info,

everything we've learned for, you know, like you said, being on the road for this long

and trying to get all of the prep work done for festival season this year.

And then we've also started to go into a couple of different series for specific festivals,

like Electric Forest, like Bonnarooo,

where we're going to start releasing some festival specific information.

And as you mentioned, we blog as well.

Those typically are the most fun for us to make because we get to kind of show you guys

what our experience is like.

And that's always a really, really good time.

But yeah, check us out on YouTube, all the socials.

And yeah, we have to hear from you guys.

That reminds me, one of the topics obviously we'll get into later is the camping.

The whole camping ticket buying experience with Bonnarooo.

Didn't want to do that today because there's way too much to talk about it.

But obviously it's getting a lot of chatter and attention.

And we'll probably have the guys from C3 on to answer questions if they will.

I'm sure they will.

And we'll talk about some more of that later.

But yeah, sorry, I'm reading some of the, you know, I mentioned the comment about

it's the worst one ever.

Lizzo Murphy from Twitch says,

I think that is probably the most improved year over year lineup I've ever seen for a

single fest.

That feels right.

Feels like the right comment.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, that's Matthew's when we had our EDM panel last year.

Okay.

Shout out.

Thank you.

Nice.

Nice.

Thanks for checking in.

And yeah, we'll do that again.

Speaking of that panel, there's EDM Kyle.

He's at work.

He's at work.

He's at work.

Yeah, we invited him to.

Hey, David, your thoughts on the Infinity Stage, the new, we talked about it at the start.

We don't really know anything about it.

I don't know if you do more.

Your thoughts on the Infinity Stage and that immersive kind of sound visual experience

that they're bringing.

So one of my favorite things is stage design and what different festivals bring when it

comes to stages and productions.

And I think this, the 360 stages are really great because it's about like being immersed

again within what's happening, you know, at that stage.

So I think even just Bonnarooo stepping up and bringing something different, you've got

to obviously applaud them for that.

Some festivals don't do that, right?

So even them just stepping forward and bringing that something really good to see.

And I think if you've never been to a 360 stage before, you're going to have your mind

blown in the fact of just how immersive it feels when you're actually in one of these

setups.

Is it, is that experience you think going to have a Las Vegas sphere like, and I don't

know.

I mean, we're talking, I mean, huge differences here in size and scope and scale, but is that

what we should expect to feel, to hear, see and feel what's going on?

Does that sound fair at all?

It does.

I don't, again, I don't know what kind of stage they're going to bring.

I don't think it's going to have the top and feel like the sphere, how it goes up.

Like it goes up over your head.

Yeah.

It's more about like walking in and it being immersed behind you and to the sides and nowhere,

you know, the DJ will be in the middle.

So everyone can be around.

So almost in the round kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, correct.

So instead of kind of going up, I'm more thinking obviously like around visually.

Yeah, I can't wait to see that.

I wonder if it'll be probably a little bit like the old comedy tent back in the day.

Everybody wants in so nobody can get in.

The Yogi Bear is, nobody goes there because there's too many people.

Does this feel like, and I think it's a question that we'll probably ask over and over and

over because it felt like EDM stage, the other stage was becoming a place where a large

number of people spent their entire time.

They didn't really get out and see the others.

To me, this feels like there's reasons to get out.

And we kind of touched on that a little while ago.

A little bit of crowd control.

Yeah, a little bit of crowd control.

Does it feel like that to you guys or does it feel like you could spend, you know, all

four days or whatever at the other?

I mean, look, you could just again kind of looking day by day like you definitely could

kind of hold up in that tent if you wanted to and have a fantastic time.

But I agree.

I think the diversity and the variety on this lineup is going to encourage people.

I think there's a mix of old and new.

I think there's a mix of, you know, headliners under cards.

Like everything is very balanced.

And so I think that I think someone in the chat mentioned there's something for everybody.

And I think that is definitely going to help kind of disperse the groups and spread people

out a little bit for sure.

Yeah, Festival was talking about on Twitter last night that on the long What to Expect

thread, maybe a sellout.

Maybe this thing will sell out for the first time in a while early, like in the spring.

And I was like, yeah, of course.

That's what Brad Parker, I mean, Festival is going to say.

And I'm like, OK, yeah, yeah, maybe.

Maybe we do hard sell out this thing.

And I hope so.

I really do.

If you're at work and listening and not on YouTube, the phone number 423-667-7877 is that contest hotline.

I should let you do that, Brian. You're the radio guy.

Well, I know that hotline.

Call in that hotline.

Somebody asked about fax.

So I dropped the fax line in and now my fax line is ringing like crazy.

So I assume people are faxing in their entries as well.

That's a fax machine.

706-965-4335.

That little telephones.

Fax line is open.

Yes, that's hilarious.

That is so good.

I forgot you have a fax machine.

I know I forgot.

Countless iPods and a fax machine and you're not going to you're not going to miss a taco.

He's easy to find.

Cutting edge technology.

Feels like we could do this for a while.

And like I said, we're going to do more shows.

Anything else today that we want to probably not because I got a bail as well.

Real life does call.

But, um, guys, Lauren, David, thank you so much.

Everybody in the chats who came to, you know, and play hooky a little bit with us.

Thank you so much.

What a fun day.

What a great.

What a great day.

This is this is awesome.

Yeah, I'm excited.

Yeah, we mentioned that this feels more like Christmas than actual Christmas Day for, you know, for us.

So great to wake up and try to think of analogies beforehand about Christmas and the whole lineup being confirmed and all that.

It feels kind of I was thinking it felt kind of like getting gift cards for for Christmas.

It's still good.

But you know what you're going to get.

You know, this work.

This was really good.

David, Lauren, thank you guys so much.

I'm good for you for having the the ability to do whatever you want to do.

I love it.

I'm envious as I can.

Yeah, I got to ask where are you guys?

Because it looks like you're not in the van right now, right?

Yeah.

So we are currently in an actual brick and mortar house.

We would actually rather be in the van.

But Colorado had it was one degree on the dashboard thermometer this morning.

Cold.

So we're just, you know, yeah, taking some time inside to enjoy a little bit of, you know, walls.

If you're if you're in a van, that's a hell of a van you're in right now.

I was going to say, you've upgraded.

What's your next festival?

I meant to ask that earlier.

Actually, we're doing Winter Wondergrass out in Steamboat Springs where Kitchen Dwellers will be playing again.

Very much jam bandy.

Very much right up you guys's alley.

I think something you'd very much enjoy.

So very excited.

I will be very familiar with this band by the end of the day.

I'm excited.

Yeah, we've got an interview with Max, the guitarist on our YouTube.

If anyone out there is also looking to learn a little bit more about them, they're incredibly talented guys.

Incredibly talented.

So do Flunky wants to know if there'll be a pool party for the pool party.

That just sounds like a good idea in theory.

But a swimming pool at Bonnarooo.

I mean, you got the fountain to go get diseased in.

You know, we don't need a pool to.

But yeah, I got to run guys.

David Warren, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for having us guys.

As always, we're in.

Thank God.

Get ready.

This was great.

I'm excited to do more shows like this.

This was a lot of fun.

Yeah.

Appreciate the work, Taco.

See you, everybody.

Bye.

Bye.

Happy Roo.