Dominoes Falling?

A podcast for Bonnaroovians by Bonnaroovians.

Welcome to The What. I'm Brad. That's Barry. It's Lord Taco.

Around the room, big day, short show today.

We wanted to pop on and get into some news that we have,

some news that others have had,

some questions that I have for our local expert,

our resident writer in Barry Courter.

But first, hi guys, hi gentlemen.

Hey.

I had to smile when you said gonna be a short one.

Every time we do that, it's like the longest one ever.

I know, but I kind of just thought you were going with the dick joke.

I thought you were gonna get dirty there for a second, Barry.

I leave that to you. I leave the smut to you.

The smut to you.

The smut?

Yeah, I've got the smut. You've got the hoopin' and the holler.

The hoopin' and the holler.

Welcome back, Taco.

Hey, thanks for having me.

We missed you last week during the booking episode.

I missed you.

But it was a good episode.

Yeah, it was actually really informative.

In fact, industry people have even reached out to me to talk about it.

When I'm teaching the head of a label a few things about something like this,

that's pretty impressive. I actually like that a lot.

Let's start with some news.

I've got news.

You have news?

I've got news.

Okay, who wants to start with their news?

That's that Russ go. He's excited.

I love this.

We don't see Russ excited very often.

The news is about PBR.

PBR follows exactly 69 people on Twitter, and I became number 69.

I'm PBR's 69th follower.

This is the biggest day in the history of podcasting.

Oh my God, there's not a higher honor in Lord Taco's life than being the 69th follow of PBR,

which used to be owned by John Cena there for a while, wasn't it?

That's right.

What happened to John Cena? Did they unfollow the Cena?

They lost a follower.

Maybe somebody deleted their account or something,

but it came to their attention that they were only following 68 people,

and they fixed the issue by following me.

Yeah, but what happens when another person drops out, then you become 68,

and a whole other 69 shows up?

I only need it this one time. This is all I need.

He is such a simple guy.

I can't take it away now.

I've got the screenshots.

You've got hats and t-shirts printed out.

Oh my God. Oh, Taco.

I know you're not a sports guy, but we need to get you a PBR football jersey with the number 69.

That would be awesome.

Can we do that?

Yes, we can. I'm sure we can do that.

PBR, dear PBR, send us a football jersey with Lord Taco's name on the back and number 69.

We beg of you.

And he will wear it on the show.

That would be amazing. I'll wear it every day.

I'll sleep in it. I'll shower in it.

Everything he does in life, we have that stupid jersey on.

I'll never take it off.

That's a really big deal. I'm very proud of you.

It's a very big day for our pride and joy, Lord Taco.

That's my big news.

A lot of beers earned.

What I love about Lord Taco's love affair with PBR is that when he goes on that...

You know, what is that app where you check in all the beers, taco, on taps, right?

Yeah, so it's for beer nerds, for beer snobs, and for the guys that love the craft beer

who want to show off all the, you know, neato craft beer they're drinking around the country, right?

Well, you check in a different beer every time you have it,

and you win awards and people follow you and they gawk at your amazing beer palette.

Well, Lord Taco has checked in how many beers since you've been on untapped?

How many beers have you checked in?

369 times for one beer.

And every single one is a PBR.

I don't know if you can see that.

He literally checked in the same beer every time he has it.

I always give it four stars.

I was going to ask if the scores fluctuate.

Four out of five, you know. It's pretty good.

They can do better. They can still do better.

We're getting into ham territory now.

Alright, let's go with this.

I'll start with my Domino's reference that I made a couple of weeks ago.

So I can say this now because I feel as though I've gotten enough people to tell me this,

but the Domino that I was referring to is not any of the festivals that I've announced over the past couple of weeks,

and it was not about the situation on the farm,

which we'll get into here in a little bit,

the shows that they're doing over two weekends coming up on, I guess, Bonnarooo Farm.

Neither one of those are the thing.

It's Lollapalooza. Lollapalooza is going to announce in the next three weeks.

And what is crazy about Lollapalooza is that they're doing it in the last week of July,

and it is the first, not only is it the biggest festival,

it'll be the biggest piece of news that we've had in all of this pandemic.

Apparently the city is on board. They've gotten all the approvals.

It's not going to be, you know, have some sort of like half capacity.

No, it's going to be a full on Lollapalooza.

Granted, all of this could, you know, change drastically.

I think that, you know, asterisk is in everything we say,

especially when it comes to something I said a couple of weeks ago

in that I was told straight up that Tame Impala wasn't out for Bonnarooo.

I don't think that's true anymore.

I will go back and even change my own piece of news from a few weeks ago

in that when Tame Impala essentially said no to coming to America,

they've even changed their mind.

I think of what happened with the lineup that dropped in Las Vegas the other day.

Now I'm totally off this idea that Tame Impala's out.

The other thing that I found out from numerous people,

Bonnarooo's going to announce too.

And Bonnarooo's going to announce in the next 10 days.

I know that what's his name, the Hams guys, the father and son of Ham, right?

Parker and his son Jake.

Johnny Ham and Doug Ham, right?

So I know that they had some sort of random 323 day.

That may be it.

I give them all the credit in the world.

If that's what they meant by that weird tweet that they put out one day

that just said 323, then they nailed it

because everything's setting up for that to be actually true.

From the multiple people that told me Bonnarooo's going to announce

not just in the next two weeks, but maybe in the next 10 days.

With all that being said, I know Brittany is a go.

I know that the lineup is at least 60% of what it was.

And then finally, I'm not going to go out and say the other band

that I know is an add to the lineup.

But if you've listened to this podcast at any point,

it is one of Barry Courter's favorite bands in the world

that it was absolutely confirmed to me to be at Bonnarooo's.

I think that covers essentially what I needed to clarify.

Did I miss anything, Barry? Do you think I missed anything?

No, I can't think of anything other than I just wanted,

as we talked yesterday, stress the point,

and you said it, that we've heard from multiple people.

As we've sat on here, you and I try to go get the answers.

We try to go to the sources and get the answers,

but we also don't try to burn bridges with those sources.

So if you hear it from one person or I hear it from one person,

that isn't enough.

Yeah, one person is not enough. It's just not enough.

Not enough, and especially if it, you know,

even if it looks like it could be traced back,

which is something we just have to deal with, I won't do it.

I know you won't do it because we don't want to burn bridges

because we wanted to be doing this for a while.

Well, you are a far different entity than I am.

I mean, you are a professional newspaper reporter.

I'm just a guy who tells fart jokes on the radio.

So, you know, when I have one person tell me something,

I think that lends to informed speculation and informed opinions.

But when I get multiple people in completely different aspects

of this industry tell me the same thing, then I'm just, you know,

at that point, I am just, I'm going to share it.

So, I would almost be derelict of duty if I didn't.

With that being said, is there anything I'm missing?

I feel like I've missed something.

I feel like there's a piece in this that I've sort of let slip by.

Not that I can think of that was on your list.

I've got my list in front of me, and I'm sure we'll all come back to it.

There's a lot happening in Manchester with the farm,

but as far as announcements, I've heard the same thing you did,

not about Lollapalooza, but that Bonnarooo is soon, very soon,

for multiple people.

I have not heard performers and stuff like that like you have.

So, but there was a lot that came out yesterday that I didn't,

I mean, some of it, we knew was coming.

Some of it surprised me.

Some of it, the way it was announced, surprised me.

A lot of it just sort of slipped under that I got confirmed

that we're going to talk about here in a minute.

Let's get to that here in a second.

But reaction, if you have any, to this Bonnarooo thing actually happening,

but Lollapalooza at the end of July, I mean, talk about brave.

Really, really brave.

Look, I said it to you a couple of weeks ago.

We know the ways in which this country operates.

We know how Americans operate.

If we get 200 million people vaccinated, do you think that the majority

of Americans are going to care about the next 100 million?

I hate to be this cynical about it, but do you think that they're going to say,

you know what, we'll hold out.

We'll keep everything closed until you guys can.

And the other thing too that's odd is I don't think, based on everything

that I've heard, they're not going to be asking for the nation card either.

I found it to be both surprising and not surprising.

I think I was more surprised that they're holding on to the date

and they're going to go forward with their original sort of slot

that they always find themselves in, Lollapalooza does,

in that first weekend of August, that last weekend of July.

But still at the same time, it's still a little surprising.

It's surprising to say anything like this anymore, to be honest with you.

No, absolutely.

And the thing that I keep hearing is there are a lot of events that are booking dates.

And in some cases, it's simply to hold the date.

They don't want anybody else to get it should they be able to get it.

I'm not saying that's the case with Lollapalooza,

but I know of other festivals that are.

Oh, no, they're lineups done. Lollapalooza lineups,

and one name on there is actually pretty surprising.

I don't really want to get into it, but it's a full-fledged Lollapalooza.

Right. And so the interesting thing is everything that you and I,

the three of us have been talking about for a year, literally a year,

especially the last seven, eight months, is still in play.

Just like you said, the vaccine, you know, the paperwork,

you're going to have to have it, infrastructure, all those things are still in play.

And to get that all moving would be really impressive.

In the case of Bonnarooo, I've asked that question.

Especially Bonnarooo.

And quite honestly, nobody that I've talked to has an answer.

But they're planning on doing it Labor Day weekend in September.

How that works, I don't know.

You asked a great question yesterday when this announcement came out

that we're going to get into.

Russ, especially, was asking about camping, you know, why no camping?

Because camping is safe.

And as you pointed out, until you have to go to the porta potty.

Yeah. All right. So what happened to Great Stage Park?

What happened to Great Stages Park?

And why is it all of a sudden called the Bonnarooo Farm?

The Bonnarooo Farm. That is official. It has been changed.

I didn't get this directly from anybody official, but I think it's the reality is

we all either call it the farm or Bonnarooo.

Nobody calls it Great Stage Park.

And they just said it's a bad name.

Well, you know, I know, but it tells me that that idea of doing multiple festivals

through the years, not going to happen anymore.

Because the reason why they called it Great Stages Park is because they didn't want to brand it Bonnarooo

so that they could use it for other events throughout the year.

Yeah. So now that they're owning the Bonnarooo Farm, I think that that whole

let's do some events throughout the year ain't going to happen anymore.

Well, that's what this is. It's exactly what this concert series is.

I know that. I know that. But this is under the Bonnarooo umbrella.

It's C3. Where an Exit 311 fest was not.

Which, so name me the other events that have happened at Great Stage Park.

No, no, I know that. But that's but do you remember they always said

they kept saying over and over and over when we buy the property, they didn't say this.

But people would say when they buy the property, then you're going to have events throughout the year.

I'll have a second Bonnarooo. It'll be a country Bonnarooo. And no.

Yeah. But the only people who ever called it Great Stage Park are the people who write the news releases

and me, who have to rewrite it and put it in the paper.

Everyone else calls it either the farm or Bonnarooo.

So, you know, my sort of quibble, if I will, is the way that just sort of snuck it in there.

You know, when it came out yesterday, there's not been an announcement that they've changed it, rebranded it.

That was a little strange. Yeah. I thought the whole thing was strange yesterday.

The reason I think it was strange is probably because it wasn't done by the people who normally do it.

People who normally do it are furloughed and not around anymore.

So that's my bet. The people that are mostly behind this side event that's happening with the Avett brothers, Billy Strings,

who's actually running this? Who actually put this together?

So I had three questions. And I knew Live Nation was involved. So my question was how is Live Nation involved?

Did the name officially change? And then what was the third one? Oh, the point of it, I guess.

And so the name did change. It's now the Bonnarooo Farm. It is C3 Presents and AC Entertainment are producing it,

which are both subsidiaries of Live Nation, as we know.

And then it's part of that. This is their effort to use the farm more than once, you know, more than just for the big festival.

I'm betting. Now, C3 has turned into an operation that is more fluid these days than a Live Nation is,

mainly because they kept a lot of their employees employed, frankly.

So my bet is, and I'm just guessing here, believe me, this is not informed in any way, but my bet is C3 did most of this.

And because AC doesn't really have any employees right now, you didn't get the normal sort of touches

that you would have normally gotten from a Bonnarooo-like thing, because AC usually does that kind of stuff.

You know, C3 is the ones, you know, making the festival happen.

They're the ones that are booking artists and helping with costs and finding the stagehands and buying the equipment, etc.

AC is just, you know, sort of operating it and doing the press releases, making it feel the way that we all know that it feels.

So without those people doing that and without those people helping,

I highly doubt that you're going to get a Bonnarooo-level press release, if you will.

Well, and, you know, it sort of occurred to me after thinking about it all afternoon, is you, the three of us geek out over this kind of stuff.

I mean, we're going to parse every word and every nuance and what does this mean and what does that mean?

And that's true. To your point, you know, maybe they don't. Yeah, that's true.

Calling it the Bonnarooo farm and putting that on the label like they did. I mean, we all went right to that, right?

I mean, what? What does that mean? So, you know, I think you're exactly right.

And I think I know you're right about like the AC people and the normal people.

They were involved, but not at the normal level that they are.

OK, I want it to be successful. I don't know how it's going to be.

The ticket price is quite high. And when you break it up into the pod, so the pod can have how many people in it? Four. Four.

So take that top price, which is two hundred and fifty dollars when it's all said and done, divided by four.

That's a pricey trip to Manchester, Tennessee. Yeah, it's still a good price.

And by the way, are you staying there? I know what you're saying, but I keep thinking of the caverns where people have done it, the drive in things where people have done it.

So maybe there's something unique and special about these that that we're not that I'm not thinking of or aware of.

I'm with I'm with you. I mean, for me, Bonnarooo is the camping and the hanging out with friends and the whole experience.

It's not about 90 minutes of an act.

Taco, you're literally in a camper. I'm literally in a camper. Could you could you sleep the night there if you parked? Could you just like hang out for the whole night?

I don't know. I don't know if they're going to make everybody leave afterwards or, you know, if you do stay overnight, you know.

Yeah, I don't remember if it says there's camping in that area or not. No, there's not. There's not. They just have parking.

Yeah. All right. So would you go? Barry's not going to go. It's just too he doesn't do things at night. But Taco, would you go?

I don't think so. Not with no camping. I don't see myself going there.

Fascinating. What about the what about the other lineups? Anything else pops out? You know, all the other lineups that came out last 10 days or so.

Why we're still on it just because it's come up. And again, it's way inside baseball stuff, but it is important on August or April 6 rather.

I think the council up there will hear public opinion on whether to annex the farm or not.

Well, that's I wanted to get into that so separately because I am totally confused about this.

OK, I'm going to openly say I don't even know what annexation means. I have no idea what this is supposed to be.

So can you explain this to me? Take me to school and start from the very beginning and explain what it is that they're trying to accomplish?

Sure, I can. And I will give a lot of credit to Daniel at the robust because he had one of the aldermen on Ryan.

And forgive me, Ryan, I can't think of your last name. But annexation means you become part of the city, which means you get part of the city's benefits.

Typically, that means street lights, garbage pickup, sewer, plumbing, those sorts of things.

Since the beginning, A.C. and Ashley Capps and I have been thought, you know, I joke about it.

I've written about them planting grass and trees more than I ever would have imagined. But it's important.

They added the sewer. That's important. The reality is Manchester is not equipped to handle one hundred and ten thousand people all of a sudden flushing toilets.

As we talked about earlier, the roads in and out are not equipped to handle one hundred and ten thousand people.

That's why you have the 18 hour waits for some people. If they annex, they likely will widen that road.

They will likely hook up to full sewer, water, some lighting, some roads.

OK, but can I stop you here? They already have that.

Not the widening of the roads.

I know, but they already have they've already built the water lines. They've already built the sewer lines.

Yeah, but Manchester, the county is not equipped. So it's basically you've got a park that has it and then it funnels down into, you know, a funnel.

It gets funneled and then it's not able to handle. So that's why you only have the two or three bathroom shower facilities, not full.

So currently, so currently a farm that is privately owned in the city of Manchester, it's actually Coffee County is the real.

OK, that doesn't everyone says it's in Manchester. It's not. It's in Coffee County.

OK, but but but if it was just a private citizen, would they have to go through all this process to to get a road?

Cities rarely annex private cities, citizens. No.

And in a lot of cases, annexation has a lot of I mean, that would be like whatever small city is near you.

It'd be like the big city going out and grabbing it. Sure.

A lot of people don't want it. They don't. That's the reason they live where they live.

They don't want to be part of your big city. It's in most cases, it's a tax.

Some would argue it's a tax grab thing, but it does come with sewer rather than septic.

It comes with garbage pickup, things like that garbage pickups, another big one.

You know, things like this, like I said, are inside baseball.

Yeah. And you don't think of them unless you're the guy that has to haul that garbage off.

But but I thought that I thought that Bonnarooo had an agreement that these things were sort of covered and paid for anyway.

In some ways, they compost a lot and they've done a lot.

But this gets them all the other things that are being part of a city municipality would get you.

Now, it's just so strange because they already are in the city.

They're not. They're in the can't know they're in the county.

That's what I said two minutes ago. They're not in Manchester.

It's a coffee county. OK, they only have so this is where the confusion is for me because they're actually not in Manchester.

Correct. No, not OK.

They're very close, but they're not inside the city proper so they don't get city.

OK, so now so now I understand where at least my confusion was.

This is actually for the first time in 15 years.

I'm finding out that it's actually not even in Manchester.

No, no, never has been.

It always gets put on the dateline and all that.

And in fact, the Alderman mentions that everybody thinks it's Manchester, but it's not.

I didn't know that. And so one of the questions.

Look, I go by street signs. If the sign says Manchester with the arrow to get me off the interstate, I'm in Manchester.

I mean, I recommend going to listen and I don't want to take too much.

I don't want to take anything away from Daniel and his podcast because it was really good.

It was fascinating. But some of the questions will will there be an issue then with that?

Will they have to quit early because they have to follow city guidelines?

And basically, he said, no, we know what they do.

They're not going to ask to be annexed and have to change.

We know what they do. Yeah.

So interesting. It's very interesting.

I mean, yeah, I know baseball, but it's important.

No, it is important. Look, I mean, the reason why this podcast started to begin with is because I looked down and I saw power lines.

You know, when we when we walked to and from our camp, we looked down and we see, you know, these these just forever long power lines and tubes that, you know, power lines are inside of.

And they run along the side of the roads back there.

And it hit me. Oh, my God. They've got to create power somehow.

And they've got to imagine. I kept I was obsessed that one weekend of how much cable, like how many like feet of cable do you think they have just here?

I mean, just millions and millions of feet of cable.

And then that's when we just started nerding out on the weird, small, tiny little things about this this little city that was created.

And that was the birth of the this dumb show. Yeah.

Yeah. Russ, you've noticed that too, is right.

You get there and you get there and you can't believe how massive it is.

And yeah, it's a farm. And so they everything they have to bring it in.

There's nothing there except just land.

So they had to get all the power and facilities and all that.

I think the only permanent structure is the wet stage, right? All of the others they build.

That's before that, it just I think I'm going to think about this conversation, the booking agents, especially Ali, Ali said last show that it feels so much easier for a city festival to come back.

And by the way, I knew about the law was the thing when we talked about the booking agents, I was trying to lead her into that path of, you know, trying to say this information so that I didn't have to.

But, you know, she was saying how, yes, city festivals are going to come back a lot easier than a camping festival like Bonnarooo because cities have all these things that are already ready to go.

Hotels, especially. It's pretty easy to get somebody into a hotel, a lot harder to get them into a campsite when the CDC is saying, you know, camping, not the best idea.

But yeah, she didn't take the bait on that.

You know, that's what I have this week. Do we have anything else?

I think that was it. No, I think that's it.

Okay. By the way, new Patreon tiers coming, right? We've got new Patreon tiers.

We're going to get those tiers up.

Yeah, so we've got new gear. Oh, I'm so excited about the new gear. So excited to announce the new gear coming with the Patreon levels.

We have big plans. We have big plans. And I guess we should say if these lineups drop as we predict, we'll be back sooner than later, right?

Yeah, we might have a late night in store for us pretty soon.

Yeah, hope so.

If you see, I don't know, us online on Twitter, say Monday night around midnight, you probably know something's up.

You probably know something's up. We're probably doing a show and reading a lineup.

Yeah, if you see anything from Barry J.C. on Twitter after, say, 6.30 at night, something's happening.

6.30 p.m. Yeah, something's going on. That's right. I can't believe it right now.

All right. Quick one today. Promise you that. That's Lord Taco. That's Barry. I'm Brad. We'll talk to you next time on the What Podcast. Love you, bye.