Bonnaroo is officially coming back in 2026, but not without some major changes. From losing Tuesday arrival and Thursday programming to scaled-back campgrounds and the end of "Where in the Woods" as we know it, Barry, Bryan, and Lord Taco break down the official announcement and what it really means.
Is this a "shrinkflation Bonnaroo" or are things just returning back to the way they were? Plus with some other things in the news recently, we get into a deep discussion about how infrastructure, weather, and politics are all shaping the future of The Farm. Finally, Barry shares the one thing that scares him about Bonnaroo's future more than anything else.
Listen to this episode here or watch it on YouTube. As always, subscribe to The What Podcast wherever you get podcasts for weekly updates on Bonnaroo and festival news!
Thumbnail photo by: Evan Brown
Listen Via:
Bonnaroo 2026: The Comeback and the Cutbacks
We're all glad it's back.
We're thrilled it's back,
but there are going to be some changes, right?
It's a shrink-flation version of Bonnaroo.
Well, it absolutely is.
By every definition, what shrink-flation is that we use it,
it absolutely is.
It's a scaled down version for the same price.
I'd rather have a shrink-flation Bonnaroo
every day of the week than none at all.
Losing Thursday, speaking of losing the piece of the soul,
is a big deal to me personally.
I think losing Thursday is awful.
I love Thursday.
That scares me.
That scares me more than any of these other things
that we've been talking about.
Welcome back to the What Podcast.
I'm Barry, that's Russ, that's Brian.
It is, what are we, late July now?
We have so much to talk about.
This is going to be an action-packed show.
We're going to go literally through the whole thing.
Show, we're going to go literally around the world.
News from around the world.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a lot going on over on the other side
of the pond, as they say.
And in some way, it all comes back to Manchester, Tennessee
or Chattanooga, Tennessee, where we are.
Like I said, this is the What Podcast.
Let's do a little quick sort of reset
because I think we're getting a lot of people
who are new to either Bonnaroo and or this show.
And so you may be wondering, who are these mooks?
Why do I care what these guys?
Who are these yahoos?
What are they up to?
And that's fair, absolutely fair.
We started this show in 2018.
The lineup for Bonnaroo was not terrific.
We've been, I've been going since the beginning.
Brian's been going to every single one of them.
Russ has been going since that 2018, right?
Yeah, it was my first year.
Started this podcast with Brad Steiner.
He was a local radio guy.
We used to have lunch together all the time
and realized we were talking about Bonnaroo 95% of the time
and thought we should do a live,
Facebook live show while we're there.
Him being in radio, he was more into podcasts
and his eyes lit up.
That was like at the end of a week
and by that Monday or Sunday, he had reached out to Russ,
who at that time, he called him Lord Taco,
which I had no idea why.
I don't know why either.
Well, the nicknames don't have to be explained
all the time.
I know, right?
I'm like, okay, Lord Taco, whatever.
But Russ, you were active, have been online, right?
And so Taco was tweeting and communicating online.
Was your...
Yeah, I mean, it wasn't just me.
There was a whole bunch of, you know,
there was a Captain Taco, you know, Doctor Taco
and I just thought, okay, well, Lord Taco is not taken.
I'll just use that one.
I never thought in a million years
anyone would actually call me that in real life.
So thanks, Brad.
Why you gotta think these things through?
Well, I wasn't thinking about my personal brand back then.
I was just trying to come up with a dumb Twitter handle.
Well, same with this name of their show.
Brad was trying to think of a name
that would last for three months
and came up with the What Podcast
because we reached out to the folks who ran Bonnarooo.
They don't anymore, AC Entertainment and Superfly.
And they said, we love the idea.
You can't use Bonnarooo and you can't use any of our graphics,
but have at it.
Yeah, because the original name that Brad came up with
was The What at Bonnarooo.
And that's what they said.
You can't use the Bonnarooo name, of course, in the title.
I didn't even know that.
Well, that's the domain that he asked me to get first
was The What at Bonnarooo, which I did.
And then we found out we can't use it.
So it just got shortened to The What Podcast,
which is kind of also a little archaic
because this is not just a podcast.
We are now do video.
So you can think of it more as just a weekly show.
True.
Talk show, whatever.
Yeah, it was The What Podcast.
Which bands this year that matter?
Yeah, which I think is a pretty cool tagline.
That was a great tagline.
I agree.
Yeah, it works in all the names.
That was pretty clever.
Yeah, but The What, we all agree it's not the best.
What are you going to do?
Well, especially like me, because I do all the web stuff.
So if you think of it from a online marketing point of view,
search engine point of view, if you just
search The What Podcast, for a while
it would just tell you the definition of a podcast.
Yeah.
Because it's a meaningless name.
What is a podcast?
It thinks that's what you're asking.
But I guess we've kind of endured it.
This is now seven years that we've been doing this.
Yeah, I think it works just fine.
But yeah, there's also The Whatever Podcast on Spotify.
That's what pulls up the quickness
is The Whatever Podcast.
The What Is It?
Whatever.
There's another What Podcast that was started, gosh,
10 years ago maybe, and it's dead.
But they took the Twitter handle, The What Podcast.
So that's why we had to be The What Underscore Podcast.
Those damn underscores, man.
I know.
I wish they'd give up that name.
So again, a little bit of background.
I spent 37 years as the entertainment reporter
for the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
My job was to cover events just like this, festivals, anything.
If a new festival in our region came online, I wrote about it.
If it went away, I wrote about it.
I got to all the behind-the-scenes stuff.
Yeah, if any of us in Chattanooga
came up with cockamamie ideas for radio shows,
we'd go to Barry and have him write a story on it.
That would be my anecdotal part of this.
But go ahead.
Well, that's right.
I was trying to think this morning, how many years have you been in radio?
I still consider you in radio, believe it or not.
No, I've been gone since COVID cuts of March of 20.
I moved on from that part of my life.
I'm fine with it.
Collectively, it gets to almost 20 years, about 19 years combined from 2002 to 2020.
So it was a fun time, but those days are over.
They're done.
Brian, is this accurate?
Would you say you're now more well-known from your podcast
than this podcast versus ever when you were in radio?
Is that fair?
That's a fair enough assessment in certain circles.
Yeah, in most circles.
Yeah, yeah.
And more from this one, and less about the local one I do here in Chattanooga.
It's just a fun little hobby kind of thing.
But yeah, I get all the time, like, hey, you used to work in radio, really?
In this town?
Yeah, in this town.
Forget I brought it up.
What else is going on?
Forget it.
I get that, too, being a newspaper guy.
If you weren't on TV, nobody cares.
You could be the worst weatherman in town, and you're more famous than anybody else ever.
But anyway, that's my own bitter.
I'm not bitter.
You're not just bitter.
You're a lot of things.
You're also bitter.
But anyway, like I said, Brian has been to every single Bonnarooo.
I've been to all but four.
Russ has been to all since 2018.
Yeah, people are surprised by that, that I'd never been before 2018.
And the question's always, well, why not?
And I don't have a good answer.
I always knew about Bonnarooo.
I mean, I've lived here my whole life.
So it's a thing that always happened.
I knew about it every year.
I just never thought to go or just never had the chance to.
You can't do everything.
You already do a lot of stuff.
He does everything else or did.
Of course, I've got the bus, which is a 1978 West Folly of Volkswagen.
And that's the first thing people, well, the first thing they say is, what year is it?
And then the second thing is, oh, I bet you take this to Bonnarooo.
And my answer's always been no.
And they're like, oh, man, this is perfect for Bonnarooo.
And then it became like, why don't I take it?
It really is the perfect Bonnarooo vehicle.
Why don't I take it?
So coincidentally, then when Brad hit me up to make this podcast,
I was like, that sounds great.
May I?
What's in it for me?
What's in it for me?
And he was like, yeah, I'll get you a couple tickets.
So that was my payment was I just got a trip to Bonnarooo out of making this website
and everything.
And of course, everyone thought this was a one time thing.
We didn't think it'd be more than six months.
Seven years later, we're still going.
Yeah.
And he's such a giver.
He got you GA that first year too, right?
He did.
He didn't think I would like it at all.
I don't understand.
He thought I would hate it.
So he was just giving me the bare minimum.
I didn't get access backstage with all of y'all.
But I did get you Miller Lite.
I got you Miller Lite hospitality that year if I remember right.
That's correct.
You did.
And I appreciate that.
Yeah, I did get my first taste of the good life, I guess,
going into the Miller Lite.
I remember too, of course, you were drinking back then.
This was before you went sober.
But you gave me your lanyard and said, hey, go in there
and get a couple of Miller Lites.
So I did come back out with two Miller Lites in my hand,
try to hand one to you.
And you were like, no, no, that's for you.
I just wanted you to get two because they're free.
So I'm like, OK.
Well, that's good advice, right?
It is good advice.
But now I'm standing here in the heat with two,
I think they were like 24 ounce Miller Lites.
And I'm like, oh, I got to drink these right now
before they get warm.
That's not a good drink when it warms up.
I don't care.
I chugged both of those things.
So yeah, thank you, though.
But yeah, 2019, I finally earned my spot at Camp Nutbutter.
Even Brad got me the head and all that.
So I was finally part of it.
2019 was a good year, too.
Yeah.
And as far as this show, Brian has
been a part of this show semi-regularly
from the beginning.
Whenever the lineups would come out,
you were always a guest in the pre-show
and then post-Bonnarooo, you would come on.
And then at the end, Brad moved to first New Orleans
and then New York and then COVID and all that.
And his schedule changed.
And so when did you become full-time?
Yeah, full-time.
Yeah, I'm waiting on that direct deposit, by the way.
Yeah, as if we're paying him.
We need your W9.
Yeah.
When was that?
That was the end of 23?
The end of 23, early 24?
It was late 23.
Yeah, early 24, because you were part of it fully in January 24.
So it's been over a year.
Not all that long ago.
And we've got the dream team now, baby.
Look at us now.
Yep.
All of that's to set up, because what I want to do
is talk about several things came across my desk,
let's put it that way, this week.
And they're all related to Bonnarooo.
There's a video that showed up on our Discord
about putting Glastonbury together.
And we'll link to it.
It's fascinating.
They bring, Glastonbury is 10,000 people.
It's a 10,000 people village.
And 200,000 people descend on that thing every year.
Part of the reason Brad and I got-
With the every fifth year off, by the way.
They take the every fifth year off for the, what do they call
that?
I can't remember.
But sorry.
The fallow year.
Fallow year.
Fallow year.
But essentially-
The grass grow kind of thing.
Essentially.
Go ahead.
Sorry, Brad.
No, no.
Part of what Brad and I were so fascinated always about Bonnarooo
is not just the event, but the fact
that it's a 700 acre farm that they build a city on top of.
Infrastructure enough for 90,000 people, let's say.
Which by the way, they've never sold more than 80,000 tickets.
I don't care who you are.
I don't care what you've been told, what you think.
I know from the horse's mouths, 80,000 is the cap.
Anyway, let's move on.
We should, speaking of Glastonbury,
we should really get Liesl back on here.
Because she's been to Glastonbury.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A couple times.
So she's one of the few who's done both, Glastonbury
and Bonnarooo.
She's done all of them, hasn't she?
I know.
She goes all over the world.
Is there an event she hasn't been to?
No.
She's a world traveler.
I've never met her.
I guarantee you she's at a festival right now.
Yeah, she's probably in Romania or Belgium.
Yeah.
Sorry, go ahead.
But Glastonbury, so if you watch that,
you see not just the
port-a-potties, which is amazing what they do.
They literally dig a trench and build like old-fashioned
holes.
I didn't see this.
Essentially outhouses.
Outhouses that you poop into the ground and then they, yeah.
Yeah, vault toilet is the technical name.
But the water system, because the town people
were complaining that they couldn't take showers
and wash dishes because the water pressured.
But also the mayor of Manchester, Tennessee,
died what, a year ago?
And the folks there are still fighting over land.
Manchester, Middle Tennessee is a lot of farmland.
And a lot of people like it, farmland.
But a lot of people want to develop a farmland
that's not just a farmland.
A lot of people like it, farmland.
But a lot of people want to develop and build subdivisions
on those farms.
Developers love this kind of stuff.
Exactly.
And I'll tie in why that matters in a minute.
But on top of that, as you guys all know,
if you're listening, Bonnarooo is back.
Bonnarooo canceled on Friday evening last month.
Sent us all home.
Lots of doubt, lots of questions.
Will it be back?
How will it be back?
Can it come back?
Literally, can it come back?
Well, we got word this week that it is indeed back,
or will be back in 2026, June 11 through the 14th,
with some changes.
And I know that's what everybody is here for.
So let's start there.
And then I'll work backwards with the Manchester
and the Glastonbury News, if that's OK.
To me, they all very much are intertwined.
So we're all glad it's back.
We're thrilled it's back.
But there are going to be some changes, right?
Which either one of you, if you guys want to go,
when you first saw this, what was your reaction?
Let's do it that way.
What are the things that jumped out at the note?
Well, I ran into Cory here in the city of Chattanooga
at the Boot Scootin' Boogie Nights show.
Cory Smith, marketing director for Bonnarooo.
Yeah.
And the drummer for Boot Scootin'.
No, he's not the drummer.
He sings and he plays guitar.
Oh, that's right.
I'm sorry.
But we discussed for a few minutes,
mostly off the record.
So a lot of this stuff, not nearly all of it,
I had a decent idea of.
And a lot of it is stuff I could have mostly guessed.
And I'm good with it.
Somebody on the Discord somewhere,
I'm paraphrasing, it's a shrink-flation version
of Bonnarooo.
Well, it absolutely is.
By every definition of what shrink-flation is that we use
it, it absolutely is.
It's a scaled down version for the same price.
It's your food in the package is a little bit less,
same price.
The Coke bottle is a little less, same price,
that kind of thing.
I'd rather have a shrink-flation Bonnarooo every day of the week
than none at all.
The only commentary I'll leave here,
and then we can go kind of roundtable,
I'll go to you next, Taco, is losing Thursday,
speaking of losing the piece of the soul,
is a big deal to me personally.
I think losing Thursday is awful.
I love Thursday.
Doesn't mean anything to anybody else why I do.
But it started in 2010, was when it officially
became a four-day festival based on a little bit of research
I did in my memory.
So not that long, but over half the time.
I love Thursday.
And Thursday essentially being gone sucks for me.
But that's all, and I'm still happy that it's back.
Do you want to comment there, Russ?
Yeah.
OK, then I'll jump in.
I'm with you.
Losing Thursday sucks.
But to me, I don't know if you all.
What do you guys mean, we're losing Thursday?
What is your interpretation of what is changing?
It's not a full day of Centauru anymore.
Based on the wording I see, it looks like just that what
stage kind of.
They're going to open the what stage, but that's it.
It's not going to be a full day of programming.
I'm trying to remember, because the COVID year
screwed us all up.
So prior to COVID, Thursday was, I always called it move-in day.
I probably wrote that story 15, 16 times.
We didn't start people in until Wednesday night.
It was 2 in the morning, and then it was midnight,
and then it was.
Yeah, but the this, that, and the other,
before it was the other stage and still the other tent,
were open all evening, afternoon and evening,
for most of the teens.
And we're sure they're not this year?
I guess that's what I'm asking.
It's how it's worded.
It's how it's worded.
We're kind of interpreting.
Nobody's really sure what's going to happen.
But.
It reads pretty clear to me.
Centauru always opened at 12 on Thursday, right?
Maybe not that early, but for the last many years.
Centauru's stages will be programmed full.
It's not going to be open fully on Thursday.
They're opening up the what field for what
they're calling a welcome party.
Yeah, it sounds lame as hell, by the way.
Welcome party.
Sounds lame.
I think it's going to be Remy.
I think it's going to be the super, the thing that we
didn't get this last year with Remy.
I'm trying to be silly.
You did that in Nashville.
I'm trying to be silly.
It might not be lame at all.
But I think a whole day of programming on Thursday
going away for me sucks.
But that's just me.
It does.
Yeah.
I don't disagree.
And back to what I was saying, that sucks to lose Thursday.
But you guys don't care.
But to me, what sucks more is losing Tuesday.
Yeah.
I actually think some of that reining back is good.
And opening up later is good.
I don't disagree.
I totally get it.
I just mean from a personal standpoint.
Sure.
That's what we're talking about.
I know why coming in Tuesday.
I think you're not alone.
I promise you.
Yeah, lots of people come in Tuesday.
But getting the push or thoughts?
That's going to change the week.
Well, yeah, it's going to change the week.
If I can't come in Tuesday, I guess
I'll go to Common John Tuesday now and then show up Wednesday.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of Thursday.
I mean, this is going to sound ridiculous.
But if you said we're going to cut Sunday in half,
we're going to be done at 3, and you get a full Thursday
or Sunday 12 or whatever, Warren Haynes
plays at noon on the What Stage while you guys all leave,
I'd be like, hell, that's great.
I can't wait to get out of here on Sunday.
But that's dumb.
I get it.
Nobody wants that.
Actually, I like that idea a lot.
Of course we like it.
I like that idea a bunch.
As long as I can stay till Monday.
Yeah, I pack up.
I'm up there by 10 o'clock in the morning on Thursday.
And I'm ready to go.
And then I'm like you, Sunday.
I'm good.
As long as I can stay till Monday.
Yeah.
No, I mean, it's a weekend festival.
It should go through Sunday.
I'm mostly being joking around.
But yeah, I mean, Thursday is a big,
it's one of my favorite days of the festival.
It really is.
I've said this before on here.
People don't riot because they don't have things.
They riot when you take things away.
It's true.
And that's what's going on.
Hate to keep bringing it up, but that was the whole point
with the bandana for me.
I wanted the bandana.
I like the bandana.
It's cool.
But when you start taking things away,
it feels like, uh-oh.
And we all knew, right?
I think we even, I thought, I don't mean to be,
I told you so kind.
But it felt to me before Bonnarooo
that all of the things that were going
to happen Tuesday and Wednesday, it just felt like too much.
Oh, I agree completely.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Yeah, it was almost getting a little out of hand.
Because every time you turned around,
there was another event announced.
And like, Where in the Woods had all the problems.
We've all documented.
We know.
And that's another thing we can get to here
as far as that change around how they're
going to do that, which I like a lot too.
But yeah, I mean, it just felt like that, I mean,
the outer-roof thing was starting
to get a little out of hand.
And I don't even know what I mean by that.
But I think shrinking that down is fine completely.
But again, that's not what I do.
So of course, I don't care.
Right, so this is going to be depends on who you ask
kind of thing.
A lot of people are going to say Thursday, who cares?
There's not hardly anything good on Thursday anyway.
Get me to Friday.
I mean, there's going to be differing opinions on this.
That's why they did the surveys.
And that's why there's platforms for us all discuss it.
Yeah, we should be clear.
These are all changes specifically for 2026.
Nothing has been said that this is
the way it's going to be forever or that they're not
going to restore any of this at some point.
This is just things they're changing for 2026.
Sure.
And I'm glad you both said that, because I meant to say earlier,
we will have Brad Parker, director of the festival,
and Corey Smith, marketing director, very, very soon.
They are anxious to come on the show.
So we will get the facts.
So I don't want to get too far in the weeds with us
speculating, because we're going to get the answers.
And we're going to ask these questions.
But yeah, that's a good thought is, to me,
this feels like a reset, basically.
We need to get a handle on everything.
The festival universe has changed.
Bonnarooo has changed.
The weather has changed, obviously.
It just feels like, let's back up, take a minute.
Let's get a handle on the land itself.
One of the things they said in their note
is they'd done some studies on how rain on the farm.
And that's what they're doing.
They're shrinking the number of tickets,
shrinking the campsite space.
That, to me, is interesting.
And I don't know exactly how to interpret that.
I can't wait to hear Brad's thoughts on that.
On the conversations I had was, sorry, go ahead, Taco.
They clearly know the areas that are prone to flooding more.
And I think this is part of them just saying,
we're not going to use those areas for campers
in case this happens again.
So it's the low-lying areas where
it tends to pool more and mud up and stuff like that.
There's a mixture of reactive and proactive going on here.
And that's what you have to do.
That's just a comment.
That's not a good or bad or right or wrong.
The bottom line is we don't deal with this almost ever.
This is just not how this normally goes.
You don't have to worry about massive, multi-million dollar
draining systems.
Guys, that's not happening.
They're not doing some kind of modern marvel of engineering
to fix just a farmland.
It doesn't rain like this normally.
No, and my question to that was, whenever someone brought it up,
is drain it to where?
It's got to go somewhere.
Going to build a sewer system underneath?
From where you talk about drain it?
I keep imagining this giant toilet.
People just think, just flush the toilet and it'll all go away.
It ain't a good point.
These are millions of gallons of water you're talking about.
It's a lot here.
And so I say all this and watch us have 100 year floods every year now.
I don't know.
But in 22 years, this has happened.
21 doesn't count.
Sorry, I'm never letting that count.
September does not count.
This has happened twice.
04, and that was one huge storm last month.
And that was a whole weekend of rain after 100 year rain accumulation.
For a month and a half, six to eight weeks.
And so yeah, this is not going to happen.
This is not going to happen.
12 inches.
I'll bet you a dollar.
It's not going to happen next year.
Which kind of brings me back to the Glastonbury.
To your point, Russ, where would you flush all that water?
But that's kind of, Glastonbury doesn't, they do it the other way.
They have to bring so much water in that they literally
have built underneath that entire property water mains.
Enough to supply water for 200,000 people and the 10,000 people
in the village.
That's an unbelievable amount of money and infrastructure.
And infrastructure and all of it.
Yeah.
And Glastonbury has been doing, I'm looking it up now to make sure I get it right.
50 something, I think.
But they've been doing this since 19, I was going to say 75, since 1970.
So I mean, it's grown significantly from then.
But they've been working on this for a long time.
Right.
It's worth it.
Bonnarooo, again, if you've been paying attention,
if you listen to this show, they pumped a ton.
If you listen to our last weeks or the week before episode
where we had the panel discussion, how the money that they put into grass,
trees, sewers, water, roads.
I mean, they're doing the same.
That's why the Glastonbury video is so fascinating,
because it's a lot of the same.
And again, it gets into insurance.
And I didn't know this.
There's not just one insurance company.
There is an insurance company for vendors.
There's an insurance company for musicians.
There's an insurance company for safety.
Yeah.
And they're all bloodsuckers.
They're all bloodsuckers together.
Well, there aren't a lot of them.
If I remember right, I think they said there's like 10 that will even
write a policy for something like this.
So they do.
They got you.
In sports commentaries and the radio and podcasts, a lot of people,
they have agents on or former agents to talk about contracts.
We need to find an insurance person who maybe is a former insurance person
and get them on here to talk about how does this happen?
How do the inner workings of these insurance claims and policies
work with these festivals?
One of the things that they mentioned was alcohol.
Like, Glastonbury doesn't allow, and I don't know how they police this.
I don't remember.
But they don't allow drinking games.
They don't allow events where like timed drinking,
because they don't want people getting drunk and starting fights and riots.
And no one's a dangerous activity.
Also, the cultural differences are significant over there.
Sure.
I didn't see that on the video.
I did skim through it.
That's fascinating.
I'd like to know more about that.
Oh, yeah.
Just that level of detail kind of thing.
That is authoritarianism, Barry.
This is why America is so much better than everywhere else.
And sorry.
Sorry.
Well, so again, I'm tying all this together.
When you watch the Glastonbury thing, and we've said it on here.
We said it Monday, the first week after we came back from Bonnarooo this year,
is I would have loved to have been in that room and heard the discussion
as to do we cancel?
How do we cancel?
Why do we cancel?
Who's saying what?
When you see this Glastonbury thing, and I think we made the point,
and I hope people understood it, it's not just about, look,
I've got big rubber boots.
I don't mind standing in the mud to see my favorite band.
That is like the last part of the conversation.
It's not even a discussion point.
It's not even a discussion point.
It's safety.
It's vending.
It's the ADA people.
How do we get them out?
Yeah, it's access.
Access.
Yeah, I mean, you're trapped on that farm.
And essentially, you're trapped on the farm.
And that's where all the stories that none of us had to deal with,
that I've only spent a little bit of time reading through the Reddits
and everything else of the stories of people essentially stuck there.
And yeah, boy, can you?
I just want to see, as far as flying the wall stuff,
how everybody's mood was.
Were they yelling at each other?
Not like, I hate you, but the stress of that day
for every single person involved is part of the whole heartbreaking part
of that.
But we don't really need to reset all that now.
Yeah, and if you remember, Brad Parker, he
was part of our live panel that we did Thursday at Bonnarooo.
He had to excuse himself halfway through because he had to leave.
He didn't say why.
I'm wondering now if maybe they had a meeting
that they were looking at weather.
I promise you that's why.
That's a good question.
I promise you that's why.
Well, first of all, Brad, you owe us an explanation.
Why'd you leave the damn panel?
Yeah, it was either that or he had to be Festival.
Now, it worked into the Festival thing.
And I went to the jerk store moment.
I could have done that Clark Kent thing better.
Like, hey, he just went into the telephone booth,
and he's backstage texting.
Now he's Festival.
I messed that one up.
I could have done that better.
That's funny.
But yeah, so that all, it just went, again,
I'm watching this Glastonbury video thinking of that day,
that Friday, and all the others.
And like I said, we've had Brad on.
We've had vendors on.
This is the stuff we like, the sausage making as we call it.
So all right, let's do this.
Let's take a quick break.
And we'll come back and talk some more about.
Weather and destruction and Festivals
and everything else, Tomorrowland and Electric
Castle looks amazing in Romania.
We can touch on a few of those things coming up.
All right.
So the other part of the note is that it's going to be,
as we've kind of talked around, going to be a smaller crowd.
They're not going to use as much of the camp sites,
again, because of the parts that flood.
But that means fewer people.
Obviously not coming in on Tuesday,
which, if everyone will remember,
was done in the first place so they could get everybody
in without long lines of traffic.
And so again, I don't want us today
to get into the rumor thing or speculation,
but I'm going to.
How much do you think they're going to shrink the crowd?
Do you have any?
What would you say?
What would you guess?
I wouldn't guess a whole lot.
I wouldn't guess a whole lot.
A lot of those outskirts campgrounds
don't hold that many people.
But I don't know the lay of the land well enough as far as,
now you look at a golf course and you can't tell how all that
goes, right?
It just looks like a nice, beautiful field,
but it's actually hills and valleys.
And I can't tell from my eyes where the low-lying areas are
out in the campgrounds.
So I could be wrong.
Could be a lot of space that they eliminate.
Taco, what do you think?
My question is, and they didn't mention this in the post,
are they doing away with single-day tickets?
Be a question we can put on the list.
That was part of how they were expanding,
because a single-day ticket buyer, they don't camp,
so they don't take up space in the camping areas.
They're leaving before everyone else.
It seemed like this was a good way
to expand without adding to the demands of the property.
That's a great point.
So I don't know if that's part of what they're eliminating,
to cut back, or if they're still going to have it.
We certainly will ask.
I believe my first thought is they probably
will eliminate single for 26, possibly.
Possibly.
It's a shame, because I'm pro single-day tickets.
I think it's a great idea.
I think a lot of people get to experience
Bonnaroo that wouldn't normally have,
because they're not ready to commit to a weekend,
or they can't commit to a weekend.
But the amount of energy and effort
it takes to police all that stuff,
and all the different credentials
that we talked about on here that came from Tuba,
from one of the pressers, the 90-plus amount of credentialing
from not necessarily from media and artists,
like every single person on the farm,
that's a lot to keep up with.
It was vehicles.
That's true.
That's a good point.
It was 93 different credentialed vehicles
that it takes to run that thing.
Imagine how many person credentials
they also have to go deal with.
So it's a lot.
So when you add one and two, and what day did you buy?
Friday?
Oh, did you buy Saturday?
Oh, I bought Sunday.
You really bring a lot of infrastructure issues
and management issues, especially when you rely
so much on volunteers.
And volunteer work ain't going to be all that good,
as we noticed and found out, because when everything got
canceled, well, their payment is done.
Their payment is the festival.
The festival's over.
They ain't helping you.
They're going home, and I don't blame them.
So anyway, there's a lot to police there.
And so I would imagine they will not do that,
but I have no idea.
I'm going to disagree.
I'm going to think that single day might be what saves them,
especially next year, because people
are going to be hesitant maybe to buy a camping ticket,
because they got burned this year.
Could be, and another thing I think Cory said.
And it's because of the lineup.
I'm sorry.
But if there's somebody on a Friday or the Saturday that's
I got to go see, I'm maybe more likely to buy that single day
ticket than to commit to the whole weekend.
I hope they keep it.
I don't know.
Yeah, I hope they keep it.
I think we all agree on that.
I do believe, back me up if you saw this anywhere, Taco,
I hope I'm not making it up or dreaming it,
Cory maybe himself or somewhere somewhat officially
was talking about the tickets probably
won't go on sale until the lineup is announced rather
than the waves in advance.
Yeah, I don't think they're going to do a pre-sale
like they normally have.
The lineup comes out and then the tickets go on sale.
I think that's true.
And that's more traditional.
That's how most festivals actually
do this with the little limited runs early.
But overall, Bonnarooo is the only one
that I'm familiar with all these years.
Basically, he sells tickets all year round.
I mean, you can buy Bonnarooo tickets next year
while you're there.
Yeah, you get them when you're leaving.
Yeah, which I think is a great idea.
This year they're going to change that.
So this is kind of like a similar thing coming out
of COVID where it's like, hey, we
have to make changes whether any of y'all like it or not.
And what you think about it, we'll listen.
And we listen more than you should, by the way.
We listen.
But so this is all, I think, good.
This is good, except for losing my Thursday.
But that's just me.
To that point, and I think I've said some things that probably
I didn't word properly, they do listen to their patrons.
And they should listen to their patrons.
They listen to them a lot.
More than any entity that I can think of.
Same.
Same.
I know I've made comments about don't listen
to social media types.
I say it all the time.
I know, right?
You and I are both bad.
They're not bad.
But you and I both say that.
It's mostly the people who say things without any information.
They just speculate.
Well, they're smart enough to be able to comb through that.
But still, I mean, the comment section,
you know where I am on that.
But the difference is, on our Discord,
and most of the people who are regulars love this festival.
And they love it for all the right reasons.
And so they should be listened to, I guess is my point.
Speaking of our Discord, you should join our Discord.
It's a very simple place.
I've been showing up more recently.
Yeah, you have.
I think you had three or four the other day.
And I'm not being a dick or anything like that.
I don't care if you say we're so back, by the way.
I wasn't even going to break it.
Say we're so back all you want.
Say it again, by the way.
Say it 20 times in a row.
There you go.
Leave a comment for Brian.
We are so back.
We're so back.
We're so back.
We're sort of back.
And I want to, I guess.
Sorry, sorry.
All of these changes, to me, with some exceptions,
feel, again, more like a reset and taking things back
to the way they originally were.
Not originally, but 10 years ago, five years ago.
Yeah, more towards the early days.
And Barry, is it fair to say there's this level of control
that they're getting back here?
They're getting the festival a little bit more back
inside of their decision making.
And to their credit, they let the culture,
the festiverse of Bonnaroo, they let it become what it was.
And good for them.
But I think at this point, when it's so volatile,
and all the money and insurance and all the things we talk
about, it's a good idea to get this reined in,
have a little more control over what's going on.
And then also, that's going to bring .
That's going to bring more accountability to the festival.
So that's actually putting them even more vulnerable.
I agree.
That's exactly right.
Outer Roo felt like it got out of control.
And I felt that a year ago and leading up to it.
Thankfully, nothing that we know of terrible happened.
We've heard of some incidents and some things.
But I imagine it just had to scare the living hell out
of them with this rain.
Boy, we should get some people on to talk about the Friday night
parties out there.
I've only heard about that.
It's just people having fun, too.
I mean, I'm not here to say.
Thankfully, it was people didn't go Woodstock 99,
which you can talk about.
Probably because it was too wet.
We're going to burn anything.
We're going to burn the place down when it's soaking as white.
Yeah, nothing's going to burn.
I guess the final part of the announcement
was that We're in the Woods is kind of over.
I mean, they're moving that.
An infinity stage.
Infinity stage also going.
Infinity stage is gone, which we kind of expected that.
But they're moving that UFO stage from We're in the Woods
over into Center Roo.
I think it's great.
I think most people are not going to like it.
I think it's great.
Get it out of there.
They're going to turn We're in the Woods
to just another Grove kind of place, just a jail or hangout.
Which is really what it should be.
Yeah.
Exactly what it should be.
You have two spots in that entire GA field
that has tree cover.
Let's not make a stage that's just on the side here that's
not really part of the festival.
Let's make that a very cool down, calm down place.
The Grove was one of the best things they added.
This will be another version of that.
Yeah, a place to put your hammock up.
Yeah, I like it.
And then get the Infinity stage, even when I heard about it
initially, I didn't care because it's not my thing.
Yeah, get that out of here.
That costs too much anyway.
You're just going to have people who are going to be pissed off
or mad.
Just put a little party over there in the corner.
And then the Who stage.
What about that?
We'll ask all these questions.
It's on the list.
All right.
Wrap up my intro.
So Brian, you pointed out last week that I was early to the,
hey, I think everything's going to be fine.
We're back in 2026.
I thought so.
And you were right.
Rose colored glasses.
And I'm thrilled now to throw a little rain on it.
The story out of Manchester, actually it
was a Wall Street Journal story, I think it was.
Yeah, it was.
About the land and the fight in the Manchester area
over whether to keep it farmland or develop it.
That scares me.
That scares me more than any of these other things
that we've been talking about.
Because if they build subdivisions around that farm,
we've seen it.
You've seen it in Austin.
You've seen it in Asheville.
Everybody wants to live near the cool part of town
until it's too loud and it keeps you up at night.
And then you bitch and complain that the bar you moved in next
to is too loud type of thing.
We saw it here with the development across the river,
Heritage Landing.
Our good friend Mike Dewar used to book a bar.
It's called the Sandbar.
And then they built all these high dollar town homes
and condos.
And those people complained that the music was going too long.
Legally, you can't move in next to an airport
and then complain that the airport is too loud.
You're going to lose in the courts.
But what happens is you suddenly get your next door neighbor
to run for city council or alderman or mayor
and you just make it go away.
You get enough petitions signed.
Yeah.
That worries me.
A lot of downtown hipster, the main streets
of the world of anywhere in town USA
are having this exact same problem.
And Bonnarooo is a very, very loud place.
Oh my god, is it loud.
And the What Stage is the loudest thing
I've ever experienced.
And so yeah, you put too much development around there.
And there's so many layers to how that could be a problem.
So many layers.
Again, the Glastonbury, they have rules in place
about lights, the lasers, the noise obviously.
They have certain parts of, they only
program certain parts of that farm or that area
after certain hours.
So yeah, there are rules.
But I mean, and I don't remember,
I've seen aerial shots of the farm for 20 years.
But I mean, it just takes the wrong person
or the right person complaining or whatever.
And suddenly everything changes.
I mean, part of what makes Bonnarooo awesome is it's 24-7.
If it had to shut down at 11 o'clock at night,
like a lot of festivals do, it's not the same.
You lose so much.
You lose so, so much.
I find it to be wild because of my older age.
No interest in a lot of that, that it's lasted that long,
that this long, that that's been such a thing.
You take that away, which again, nobody's talking about this
right now.
We're just talking about if there's
development and different leadership
within the Manchester community.
You never know what could happen.
That's always true.
Always be worried when you have big change,
turnover in governmental agencies,
because you never know what's going to come out of it.
But yeah, you take that away.
You have ruined Bonnarooo.
What stage is done at 11?
Y'all get some shut-eye.
See you in the morning.
No.
No.
Yeah.
That's a good point because part of what made Bonnarooo work there
was Lonnie, the mayor, for so long,
was a huge champion of Bonnarooo.
He supported it, embraced it, Lonnie Norman.
But you're right.
Government changes, people come in.
They might have a different idea.
And things don't go the same way they've been going for a while.
Real quick, to this point, anybody
who is a middle Tennessee person,
and you'd have to be in your pushing 40s,
or maybe in your 30s, but the Starwood Amphitheater,
just up the road in Antioch, same kind of thing.
They had this big, awesome, like it
was built in the 80s and 90s era.
But Amphitheater, developers came in, leadership changed,
and they started to build around it.
They had all these different problems.
And there's still undeveloped land and a portion
of that Amphitheater sitting there.
And a lot of people love that place.
Smaller thing, way different idea, same concept
of what you're talking about, Barry.
I think it's been long enough.
I can tell this without, I'm not giving away any names.
But the farm was in Coffee County from the beginning.
It's now inside the city limits.
Manchester has annexed it.
And there was a very real possibility,
I want to say eight, nine years ago.
The Bonnarooo folks were talking about shutting it down
because the hotels in the area were basically gouging.
That's their word.
I shouldn't, they had raised their prices for hotel rooms
for staff, crew, bands, I mean, outrageously.
And it was going to cost too much.
Well, now that's what everybody does.
Well, there's a couple hundred bucks or a hundred bucks more
as you'd expect.
But it was outrageously high.
So much so that there was serious conversation.
And I don't know if it was a pissing contest.
My feeling then and my feeling now is it was a weenie waggling
kind of thing.
But the bigger point is those kinds of things can kill it,
especially when everything else has gotten more expensive.
So anyway, not to throw a big wet blanket,
but just the fact again, in one week's time,
we get the announcement we're coming back
with these significant changes, the Glastonbury video,
and then that story came out.
So I mean, it was all on my radar within the house.
There's a lot going on.
And I mean, Lonnie Norman was the,
we had his daughter on with the panel with us.
He was first black mayor of Manchester, early 90s,
came back to do another mayor stint in the late teens
or mid teens or so, was a Bonnarooo champion all the way
around, or from the beginning, at least
that's how the story reads and it appears to be true.
And everybody around him at that time
was falling in line within the government.
And we're a generation plus since then.
And lots of change over turns, mindsets, ideals, all change.
And if they can make a ton of money selling off
some of the farm to developers, they will.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They will.
They don't care if you have fun in Manchester.
They'll make more money on the tax dollars and the TIFs
and everything, whatever it is.
Government doesn't care whether you have fun at your festival.
Right, so we have got to make sure we
get some Bonnarooians elected.
We have to steal the election, damn it.
We need city council.
We need them all Bonnarooians.
We had Ryan, forgive me for forgetting his name.
Ryan French, who's been a lifelong Manchester guy.
That guy needs to be mayor.
Ryan French for mayor.
Ryan French for mayor.
He basically is mayor right now.
He's vice mayor, I think, right?
Vice mayor, yeah, filling in.
He's one step away.
Let's get him there.
I would vote for him if I could.
Let's all move to Manchester so we can vote for him.
Let's all falsify our addresses.
Vote early, vote often.
If I've learned anything, stealing elections
is what we do around here, right?
Let's do it.
All right, let's take another short break
and then we'll be back to talk about some other news.
The other side of the world, yeah.
It's caught our attention, so we'll be right back.
All right, guys, we're back.
I don't know about you guys, but last weekend, I guess,
I started seeing all this stuff about Coldplay
and I'm like, what the, why are they in the news?
Here we go, we couldn't get through the show without it.
You knew that.
But I was like, what the, why are anybody talking
about Coldplay and then I finally saw the video.
That is the funniest, dumbest, what a,
I don't even know how to comment on that.
Dumb is the right word.
Wow.
Dumb is the right word and what I think the best part
about it is, I don't know, there's so many good parts,
but that it falls right into, right now,
we're in a major cultural war, maybe we'll be forever,
the billionaires versus the everybody else
and the fact that this guy is the top ranking official
of a billion dollar company that nobody's heard of
just brings a whole nother level.
There's another billion dollar country?
It was like, astronomer is the name of it?
It's astronomer, yeah, nobody's heard of it until now.
Yeah, and it's like, oh, so he's an astronomer,
I can't say the word, he's that, right?
No, no, no, no, he's just the CEO of a company called that.
No, it's just the name of the company, yeah.
So they're even less important.
Part of me thinks this might have been
just a marketing thing for the company because, you know.
Well, you sound like me, that's how cynical we have become.
You sound like me.
It's so funny to think that, yeah.
No, not at all.
She's doing that, she's gonna come out
with her own perfume brand there pretty soon.
Yeah.
Well, one of the jokes of, they say that he's worth
50 million, well, he's worth half that now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right.
150 million or whatever else.
Some of the memes are so funny.
I know you guys saw the Philly fanatic.
Oh my God.
Isn't that funny?
I hate the Phillies so much.
I hate the Phillies, but that whole sequence of the kiss cam
and the way they orchestrated it, bravo, Philadelphia.
It's awesome.
That was fabulous.
That was better than a lot of the other stuff,
but there's so many.
I agree, and from now on, I will never
hear another Coldplay song and not think about this incident,
this kiss cam thing.
I like Coldplay.
People give me shit.
I don't hate them.
I just was like, why are they blowing up everything?
It's so stupid, it's funny, and I want to be like, oh,
it's hilarious, let's talk about it.
It's funny.
It's funny.
Even I can't say it's not.
No, it's funny.
It's funny.
In some ways, I feel bad for those two people
because that had to be one of those unbelievable uh-oh moments.
I know, but if it wasn't for the way it's baked in of the billionaire
CEO along with the HR and all the employees around there,
just like they all know.
This is just, you two are idiots, and you
just want to be made fun of.
So my running joke about guys like that is I'm
betting he irons his blue jeans.
I'm betting his blue jeans have creases in it, which, you know, screw you.
Or the illegal help that he hires.
I mean, he does it for him.
But it's different for anyway.
All right, so yeah, bad luck with these festivals and stuff continues,
my goodness, with Tomorrowland.
Yeah.
Stage burns down.
I have yet to find if there was a cause for the fire.
Probably too early to find that out, but they came.
Well, they're in Belgium.
Yeah, I think so.
To be clear, the stage, it wasn't, they weren't actually performing.
No, no.
It was pre-festival.
It was pre-festival.
They were doing a pyrotechnics test, which is what caused it to burn.
Oh, well, there's the answer.
So thankfully, nobody was around.
Nobody was injured.
But yeah, burned the whole thing to the ground.
The day before, it was supposed to go live.
And then they were able to piece together something.
They were able to rebuild it real quick, I think.
They got over there and got it built back up.
Yeah, the news coming out over the weekend here
was that it was Metallica's, a lot of their stored video boards and PAs
and all the rigs that they have stored in Austria or something
for when they do world tours.
That was coming out over there from two or three different mostly reputable
entertainment aggregates online.
So that's just a little interesting piece.
But yeah, they put it back together.
Because it's not just the physical stage.
It's all that equipment.
It's all the lighting.
It's all the mics.
It's all the cords, all the sound equipment, all that was lost.
The festival is going on while we're recording this right now.
So we don't really know how it ends.
They did get a piece of bad news.
A woman 35 years old died in the middle of the festival
just from complications of being a human, nothing
that is foul play at all related to that fire.
But just another piece of bad news from festival world.
And between that, which is just a freak thing,
and this here, freak thing, speaking of Bonnaroo in the rain,
it is beginning to be increasingly, I don't
want to use dangerous in the word of dangerous,
but risky to even want to attend an outdoor event.
You spend a lot of time and money and energy and effort
to plan an outdoor event where there's just an amphitheater.
You just want to go see Coldplay at Lakewood Amphitheater,
Atlanta.
I mean, it might just get wiped out.
You spent a month and a half getting ready for this big thing.
And I know that's not new news.
But it seems like it's constantly now.
There was a Noel Gallagher show for me
two years ago that got threatened by a huge storm.
And they had to do it earlier.
Chapel Rhone had to deal with the same thing in Nashville
last year.
Neil Young for me a year and a half ago.
Big scare that it was going to get wiped out down in Huntsville.
And I don't know what to do about that,
other than hope it doesn't happen in the event you want to do.
But you guys see this?
Steve Miller Band cancels his entire tour
the rest of the year because of extreme weather.
Now, maybe Steve Miller Band tickets
weren't selling all that well.
Yeah, that one's a little weird.
And we'll just use this as a little mental health issue
more than it does weather.
Maybe, but that's how the headline and the story reads.
Is that it says the combination of extreme.
This is the quote from the release.
It says, a combination of extreme heat,
unpredictable flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes,
and massive forest fires make the risk for you,
our audience, the band, and the crew unacceptable.
Yeah, who knows what that's really about.
But it's not wrong that this is a thing that's happening a lot.
It's risky.
Yeah, it's risky.
You know, you mentioned months worth of planning.
It made me think.
We've heard so many of the stories from Bonnaroo people.
Just heartbreaking.
We've said it since last month.
So many people put a year's worth of planning,
wedding parties, family reunions.
The poor girl who was going to surprise her sister
flew out from California Friday morning and it got canceled.
And our friend Geraldine from Dublin
never made it onto the farm.
Hope you enjoyed your stop at Cracker Barrel, Geraldine.
That's not all there is to do in that.
I don't bring that up to pick at the scab again.
It's just keep hearing these.
Yeah, there was a comment on YouTube the other day.
A girl flew down from Maine and you know, didn't make it.
It's crazy.
And then another one real quick here while we're talking about festivals
and dealing with Mother Nature here, the Secret Dreams Festival,
which was new to me that just is wrapping up as we're recording
this weekend as well in Thornville, Ohio.
Tipper was one of the headliners.
Our friends Dogs in a Pile are there.
Mostly a dance music festival.
It's right outside of Columbus.
They had massive rain, like flooding out rain on Friday.
And they had to cancel most that day, but not the rest of the festival
because it was a one it was a one cell and the rest of the weekend's fine.
So again, I don't want to bring in political ideology
and what to do about the fact that we're boiling the planet.
But other than that, I don't know what I don't know what you do.
It stopped cloud seeding.
I mean, it's clearly what it is.
The Democrats. Yeah.
Yeah. We set this up.
We made this happen. All right.
Well, speaking of nothing, who I am speaking of,
festivals and traumas and dramas.
Russ
Shaky Knees came out and
you're already you're already poo pooing and whining about the conflicts.
Well, yeah, there's a lot of them this year.
Shaky Knees, I always say the last great rock and roll festival of America right now.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. So it's going to be September 19th to the 21st.
Already, you know, it's normally in May.
They've moved it to September. It's another location.
And it's hurricane season, baby.
And it's going to yeah, it's going to be right in that window.
Yeah. Just looking at Friday, you know, Idols versus Spoon right up against each other.
I'd love to see. Yeah.
You got, let's see, Cage the Elephant right up against Bill Murray,
which was one of the ones.
There's a lot of artists here that I wanted to see at Bonnarooo that I was like,
OK, I'll get the chance to make it up at Shaky Knees.
But like, Hey, Nothing right up against Dice Bits.
You know, I want to see both of them.
Yeah. Michigan or two.
Franz Ferdinand right up against Four9 Blondes.
Weird Al right up against Wetleg.
It's like everything I wanted to see is all Devo right next to M.
Do Mark Tar. Yeah, that's Saturday.
I don't have it in front of me.
I don't have in front of me. That's Saturday lineup.
That thing is stacked for me.
Saturday is huge. Yeah.
Love Saturday. I think Rivals.
You could just do Hey, Nothing right into Johnny Marr TV on the radio.
Cage and My Chemical Romance.
That's just one stage.
Black Keys that day too, I think.
Black Keys are opposite public enemy.
Oh, the beaches. My girl.
Beaches. Dice Bits.
Yeah. Yeah. But they're right up against Hey, Nothing.
Yeah, it's a good it's a good looking thing.
But the good news is that this this festival has moved around from Central Park
and sorry to bore anybody that doesn't know the southeast that well,
but Central Park and Centennial Park, which were both very good venues
for different reasons, pros and cons to both.
It's now in Piedmont Park, which is just your more typical,
just big grassy park, think flying your kite, taking your dogs,
having picnics, that kind of thing.
A more I don't want to call it like Central Park in New York, but
ish, sort of kind of.
And they have the two stages.
It's one of those I think they call the single stage when it's this one's done.
And then the next one, then this one's done and the next one.
And then they have the. It's just two stages.
Yeah. Well, technically four.
Yeah. Then there are smaller ones, too.
And I'm not sure how those logistically will be set up.
So it'll be easier to get around.
Music Midtown did one of their last runs at Piedmont Park.
And I've been to smaller festivals in there 20 years ago.
It's a great park.
And there's a really good chance that you won't miss as much as you think.
You're right. Yeah. I mean, it's a smaller than you.
Easier to get back and forth between stages.
So really, if you wanted to split your time between two bands,
you could easily do it.
Yeah. Last time I was there for for Music Midtown was in 2012.
And it was the two main stages right next to each other.
And you could find a spot kind of in the middle if you didn't care all that much.
Meaning being on the rail or anything.
This one ends. Move a little bit over here.
This one begins. Move a little over here.
But then there's also wet leg is maybe on one of those stages or hey,
nothing is probably on one of those smaller stages.
No, hey, nothing is on the big stage.
Yeah. Big wet leg is on the pond, which looks like it would be the small one.
Pond is going to be the smaller one if I'm using their names
or where they used to use them.
So I think it's going to be a great fest.
And I don't know for sure I'm going yet, but I hope to.
Speaking of wet leg, have you seen their tiny desk?
No, but I heard all the people raving about it.
It's really good.
But I don't know who dressed.
I don't know her name, the lead singer, but it's one of the weirdest.
It almost looks clockwork orange.
Well, they're a weird thing.
Yeah, yeah, it's shoulder pads and a cod piece.
The main reason I'm not into them more is because they're kind of weird.
They're very weird.
That doesn't mean I won't like.
This doesn't change that, but they sure are good. Interesting.
All right. What are the news?
I guess about everything I got.
What do you got, Taco?
So I was going to talk about next week.
I am leaving again on another bus trip.
I'm going to be going up to close to Boone, North Carolina,
for the High Country Bus Festival, which is kind of like one of the biggest
all bus Volkswagen bus events around.
So I'm going to head up Thursday night
and I'm going to stop in Johnson City and stop at Dave's bar.
Dave from the Monkey Bar.
He has a bar in Johnson City.
And if you remember, me and David Bruce
caught a ride over to the Monkey Bar
at Bonnarooo because David Bruce had two very large poster
size prints that he was going to give to Dave
and for the purpose of hanging in his bar.
So I was like, well, you know, I'd love a chance to see this bar.
So I'm going to stop in Johnson City, stop at the bar, see Dave,
have a drink there before I move on to North Carolina.
So very excited about that.
Cool. This summer.
You know, I'm doing a lot of trips this summer.
It keeps getting better and better.
Get a picture. Summer of fun.
So this is just this is just a this isn't like a Volkswagen show
or drive in of all versions of it.
It's just a bus meetup of strictly just a meetup, just to camp out.
So get your things, get your your your beetles and bugs.
Get them out of here. Get them out of here.
This is all buses. Yeah. Bring your bus.
Yeah, there's it's right on.
There's a river. It's a river bank campground.
So we're all camped right along the river, you know, get to float down there.
So it should be a lot of fun.
I've done this two or three times now.
Well, four or five times, I guess, over the years.
Also, we are dangerously close to 2000 subscribers on YouTube, which is amazing.
So if you haven't subscribed yet, please hop over to YouTube and subscribe.
And one last thought on festivals here, this electric castle.
You guys ever heard of this? It was going on.
It's going on. And first of all, I had to relook up what Transylvania
even was and where it was.
I think it was like a movie set or something.
Romania, I mean, you do some do some world
geographical history of refresh and lessen.
But boy, what they're doing over there over this past weekend, too, is
they're not having any weather issues, but it just looks incredible
on this amazing landscape of Romania.
They have a full grocery store,
a full grocery store inside the festival set up as a pop up with regular prices,
according to Festival had this and others, regular pricing as if you went to a
grocery store somewhere else in Romania.
I don't know what that means, but you guys need to watch that whole Glastonbury
video. It's incredible.
I mean, they bring they bring in fresh produce.
They have their own little.
It's not a grocery store. It's for the vendors, but they truck in
for. Yeah, no.
The vendors go and like go into the market every day to get.
It's wild. They do things differently over there.
And much of it is better.
Well, there's a lot of mud and water.
So there's some scenes in it that are like, not for me.
Well, yeah, there's no concrete around there in Glastonbury,
the Glastonbury farm that I could tell. Right.
So anyway, just I'd never heard of Electric Castle.
And boy, it is a beautiful, beautiful landscape.
If you're curious.
Plus, you're going to Transylvania.
I know. I was like, Transylvania, isn't that a video game?
Isn't that like some movie I saw in 1989?
Oh, no, that's an actual.
Yeah, that's a village in Romania.
But anyway, I thought that was really cool.
I never heard of the Electric Castle. Boy, it's beautiful.
All right. To you guys. Thanks, everybody.
Also on The What Podcast
