Finding support on The Farm has never been easier
A growing number of Bonnaroovians are choosing to experience the festival substance-free, and in this episode of The What Podcast, we catch up with Patrick Whelan, founder of Soberoo. Soberoo has been a part of Bonnaroo since its inception and has grown into Harmonium Inc., a nonprofit that now supports sober spaces at festivals and concerts nationwide. Patrick shares his personal journey to sobriety and the transformative role live music played in his recovery. Whether you're in recovery or curious about trying a "Sober Saturday" on The Farm, Soberoo provides invaluable resources and support for a substance-free festival experience.
We also dive into the Bonnaroo 2025 lineup, spotlighting standout acts like King Gizzard's innovative three-night residency and the increasing availability of non-alcoholic options like Athletic Brewing. Plus, we hear from our audience as they share their lineup picks during our ticket giveaway. Also, be sure and join The What Podcast for a special meetup and live episode on The How Stage inside Planet Roo at 4:00 PM on Thursday during Bonnaroo! Lastly, Bryan Stone doubles down on his take that the 2025 lineup is better than the 2020 lineup. Do you agree? Join our Discord and share your thoughts! https://discord.gg/zShHTeCYGn
Listen to our full interview with Patrick here, or watch the episode on YouTube. Do us a solid and like and review The What Podcast on your favorite podcast platform!
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How to Enjoy a Substance-Free Bonnaroo Experience with Soberoo
The more love we give away, the more love we get back.
And the more we make people feel a part of,
the bigger our worlds get.
And if I'm constantly putting the Heisman out to people
that are doing it a different way than I think it should be done,
then I've really isolated myself like I did with my addiction.
And I don't want to be that way anymore.
I want a great big world these days.
Welcome back to the What Podcast.
I'm Barry, that's Russ, that's Brian.
It is late mid, well mid-January.
We've had the lineup out for a couple weeks.
And as we've said before, we're not quite ready to do the deep dive.
We've got some other things we want to talk about.
We'll get into the doing the deep dive later.
We've got a special guest on this episode.
He's a second time guest, Patrick Whelan, from Soberoo.
One of our favorite guests, right?
We've talked about it many, many times.
Patrick is one of our favorite guests for a couple of reasons,
as we mentioned, partly because it's a great topic,
but also because he's a great guest.
He knows what he's doing.
He's fun to talk to.
He's a good guy.
And we'll get to that here shortly.
And we spent about an hour with him,
so we've got a handful of things to bounce around to get to here
on this show this week.
And yeah, I'm excited as much as I was, but I have not.
I have not done a bit of discovery yet.
I've decided to wait.
It's not because I haven't thought about it.
I'm just like, I'm not hitting it yet.
Probably by February is when I'll start making my playlists
and start figuring out a little bit more.
I'd like to spend some time on that one.
I've done a little Dom Dala.
I got to be honest.
I was driving to work the other morning at 630.
I hit up Siri to play a little Dom Dala.
You listened to Dom Dala on the way to work?
At 6 in the morning?
I'm surprised you didn't hear it, because, man, I had it blaring.
It feels like that would make me hate it at 6 a.m.
It was interesting.
That's our guy David from Australia.
He's one of his favorite artists on the lineup this year.
I told you this was going to be EDM year for me.
I'm sincere.
I'm following your lead on that one, Barry.
I'm going to follow your lead.
I'm going to see more EDM than I've ever seen,
which is they won't be hard to see more.
Because I haven't seen much of any.
Even just one show is going to be the most EDM.
If you take Pretty Lights last year on the main, on what?
If you take that out, now we're talking about very little
other than drive-bys and walk-bys.
I'm all about it. I'm excited.
I've been listening more to King Gizzard.
I'm super excited for this residency thing they got going.
Three nights, three sets.
Three stages, three different genres.
The rumors are swirling on what this is going to be.
I can't wait.
That band is so hard to understand.
They've got 30 albums.
They make a new album every five minutes.
It sounds completely different than the last.
They've got a metal album.
They have a metal album.
King Gizzard is one of those bands that I know I should like
to know more about.
I've been listening to this for a long time.
I've been listening to this for a long time.
Many of my closest music festival head friends are like,
dude, what is wrong with you?
Why are you not over the moon on this one?
I know I should know better.
By the time Bonnarooo is over, this will be one of those cases
where before Bonnarooo I only knew who they were.
I will have gotten through all of their albums.
It's weird.
I said it when the lineup came out.
I said it last week.
I mentioned it in our interview with Patrick.
This lineup to me is really, really interesting
because there are a half a dozen or maybe more,
maybe closer to 10 acts that I would never see otherwise,
but I'm super excited to see Megadeth, King Goose again,
those types of things, plus the discovery, the EDM, like I mentioned.
It's a really cool lineup.
I think there's something every day.
I'm not going to go see Luke Combs anywhere else.
Avril Lavigne's.
Avril's got me real excited.
Luke Combs, I know I sounded ridiculous all day.
He's Fast Car guy.
Right, Fast Car.
Tracy Chapman.
Which I found to be a bastardization, but whatever.
He's a Fast Car guy, so now I know who he is,
and he got huge off, I feel like misappropriating a song anyway.
That's fine.
But anyway, we'll get into that.
Very excited about it.
Let's do the interview with Patrick, right?
We want to do a couple of these contest entries, right?
I thought we were going to do that after.
We can do that after, sure.
Let's listen to the interview with Patrick,
and then we'll come back and talk about our contest and the next question.
I was late for the pre-show meeting, guys. Sorry.
That's all right.
Here we go. Here's Patrick.
There's Patrick, weathering the cold in Louisville.
How are you?
Bridgid, man. I got a hoodie on inside.
Yeah, it's about to get worse, too, so get ready.
I have said many times on this show we are so lucky.
I love, we've had so many guests that mean so much to me,
but you've been one of our favorites.
We talk about it all the time, that one of our favorite shows was you a year ago.
Not only because of the subject matter, but you're just such a good guest.
You get it. We don't have to pull teeth.
You know what we're looking for.
You give the great answers, and plus you're doing great work.
So, welcome. How you been?
I'm good, actually. I've got a little viral thing.
I'm not sure I've got a hot tea. I'm a coffee drinker.
I have a teeth that's trying to clear out the phlegm.
I don't know what's going on. I wake up in my head.
It feels like it's 500 pounds.
So I've been struggling for a few days with that, but I'm doing well.
I'm excited about it.
2025, there's a lot going on, and the festival season is cranking up.
I'm excited to talk about Bonnet Route.
Yeah, and it's, I mean, everybody's got the crud, man.
You're just fitting right in with everybody else.
I wanted to say real quick, Patrick, thank you very, very much.
I hope I expressed that.
That unsolicited invited me to come up to Bourbon and Beyond last year.
What was that? I don't even remember now.
Late summer, anyway.
September, yeah.
Yeah, September.
And boy, it was everything I could do to not jump in the car
and be right in Louisville in five hours.
If it was 10 years ago, I would have been there.
In two hours, if it was five years ago, I would have been there
a little bit longer than that.
But I appreciate the thought very much.
Yeah, that's, I mean, wow, it's such a crazy lineup they usually have.
When they announce their lineup, it's just like, pow,
it's like something I would have liked.
You could put every band I listened to in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s
and just started throwing darts, and they just paced them on Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, Sunday's roster.
It's pretty well thought out.
Pretty wild how good it was.
Overall, how did, I know you've been before,
but the Bourbon Beyond 24 weekend, how was it?
I mean, I have to give them a shout out, man.
I think they won some awards for Festival of the Year.
They sold everything out.
It was record attendance for them.
It's a camping event as well, so they have camping right there on site.
They sell that out.
They give them credit.
They've got it figured out.
What is your criteria?
How do you judge?
I mean, for people who don't know, kind of a quick reset,
you started Soberoo, which is why we had you on the show a year or so ago.
You're like us, a veteran festival goer.
I mean, you go to all of them all across the country.
So you get to see them from so many different angles.
What is your criteria?
How do you judge a good festival?
Yeah, that's a good question.
Yeah, I mean, they start popping like this time of year, right?
Every week there's going to be another festival throwing a governor's ball,
you know, Bonnarooo and Lollapaloo.
We'll talk about that governor's ball lineup here.
I know. I got the idea.
At some level, they just start to mirror each other.
I mean, it's the same, you know, the same headliners.
They're doing Thursday at governor's ball,
and they'll do Sunday at another festival somewhere else.
And then they're just going from festival to festival all summer long.
So I see a lot of that just like kind of glosses me over.
It's like the same one they're doing over there.
It looks like a lot of the same.
It's the lower level band stuff that I start to kind of trickle into.
You know, I'm an older guy and I listen to like the music I grew up on,
but I like to listen to like Sirius XMU for indie stuff and what's happening.
And as I'm starting to find some of these bands that I've, you know, noticed mentally,
and I start to see and repeat, you know, let's go check those guys out.
When I get to that event, let's go see what they're all about.
Because I've heard one song they play on Sirius XM on.
You know, on rotation, but now I'd like to go see what a full show sounds like
and looks like with some of them.
So what's different about, you know, what Bourbon and Beyond does is
it is a lineup of the music from top to bottom that I grew up on.
And they're inconsistent in that.
It's not a lot of guessing.
There's no EDM.
It's not I'm not opposed to EDM.
It's just not that festival.
The weekend after that is a heavy metal event they produce called Ladoven Life
that's always got massive rosters on it as well.
And so who's who on that louder than life thing almost every time?
Really is. Really is.
It's not like, you know, Red Hot Chili Peppers.
You know, it's not like the roster that I see always abusing itself.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yes. Well, we were we got you on last year to talk about Sobri and Harmonium.
And we'll we'll link back to that show, not go full into that completely.
But I was curious with the explosion of people not drinking, right?
Like that's becoming more and more and more and more thing from all age groups.
Have you noticed your organizations from Harmonium to Sobri getting more attention
from random people, from people writing up, you know, some blurb online or, you know,
from the from the Rolling Stones to the pitchforks, right?
Like, are you hearing from anybody more than you used to or is it is business as usual?
Yeah, I mean, there's copycats group groups that are doing what we're doing much more,
much more well funded and much more connected, which is, you know,
a compliment, you know, so they're they're out there.
They're doing good things are tied to a treatment center and some other things.
But, you know, that's we're not we're just a fan facing experience.
We just want to bring fan fandom and love for the music back to the other fans
for showing up. So definitely more traction with people showing up.
Sober curious, asking questions, some of the events that we're doing larger and larger
population to people coming to the meetings that we have.
And, you know, that that's out of its, you know, definitely growing.
It's interesting because to with what was it?
Two thousand twenty one when it got flooded out, right?
Twenty one was here. There was a guy that was to come in and he was going to embed with us.
He got gotten permission at the festival. So, yeah, he was going to embed with his.
His name is Barrett Swanson. And he's a he's a long form of writer.
For articles for like New York Times and New York magazine rather, not New York Times,
but New York magazine, some long form writing that he does.
And he was all playing the gun and it got washed out.
So then I'd forgotten about it. And then about a year later, he reengages to say, I'm coming back.
I'm like, great, you know, whatever you need, let us know.
And he he showed up with this and he embedded with us and he recorded a lot of stuff.
And that was twenty two in December.
Just like last month, I started getting calls from from proof writers and fact checkers.
And I'm like, oh, I completely forgot this guy was embedded with us for like five days and recorded a lot of stuff.
And they would go over. There's a scene where you and I'm like, there's a scene.
I mean, what is this article going to appear in this magazine?
Supposed to be in the February issue of Harper's magazine.
I don't even know. You know, we'll find out.
It might be online between I keep checking on every 15 minutes.
I go online and check to see if Barrett Swanson's articles been published about sober yet.
And I haven't seen it yet. But that, you know, they're definitely, you know, traction, you know, within, you know, the, you know, the, the world with, you know, more more wellness stuff.
Alcohol is a depressant. There's no doubt about it.
And I used it as an energizer bunny method.
But, you know, it was certainly something that would take you to a dark, dark place at the end.
You know, I would run out strings of days in a row drinking whiskey and, you know, staying up and smoking cocaine and just like, you know, thinking, you know, you all don't know how to have a good time.
And I haven't slept or eaten in three days.
I just would wind down after it was all gone and just like, oh, my God.
I'm just so bad at taking care of myself that I think there's a there's an energy now behind people doing that.
Yeah. Everybody's story has got a little bit of that.
It's always it's always fun to hear.
It's interesting to hear you say that other people are now doing this.
One of the questions that I had and we'll start here and I think it'll lead to everything else.
What is and I don't think we asked this before.
If we did not maybe the way I'm trying to think of it now.
What is your mission?
What is your when you have board meetings or group meetings about what are we doing?
What what is it you hope to accomplish?
Is it and I'm asking that completely naive.
Is it if you help one person and I don't mean that I don't mean that snarky at all.
If you help one person at a festival, you had a good festival.
Or is there a bigger do you have you know, we need this many numbers.
We need we need to raise this much money.
What is it you guys talk about?
I mean, because you've done this a long time, 20 something years.
What is it that gets you up in the morning and says, here's what we got to keep doing.
Yes, well, it's a passion project. It's not my you know, not my full time job.
It's just, you know, something that I really love live music.
And and I love my recovery from from my addiction because I was, you know,
I was isolated and, you know, I was I was locked down by my addiction.
I couldn't do the things I told myself I would do.
So so having that freedom and knowing other people that have the exact same passion
to see live music and also enjoy recovery or just plain old fashioned abstinence is we're a safe harbor in a nutshell.
You know, we're a safe harbor for those that are in recovery from addiction or alcoholism
or simply choosing to remain abstinent that day, that weekend, that month.
You know, we're there as somebody else who's also not using.
So if they're getting into, you know, squirrely crowd with their usual friends
and their usual friends are annoying and they're not drinking and they realize how annoying their usual friends are.
They like, oh, my God, they'll walk away for a few minutes here.
They want to go and, you know, explore another conversation.
You know, we're there for that.
Most of the people that would come to our meetings, I use the air quotes here because we're not, you know, 12 step program.
We're just people that are kind of like huddling up and talking about the stuff we would normally talk about if we were in a 12 step meeting.
They're in recovery. The people that come to those are looking for that harmony.
But the general fan that wanders up and asks what we're doing
and gets a notion of it because they see the header says Silberoo and they're curious about it, but they have an idea.
And then they get that answer that we're just a safe harbor. This is a lounge.
What we're doing instead of our tent, is it just for our volunteer team?
Our tent is open for the fans to come inside, have a seat.
The festival's nice enough to supplies with some, you know, death wish waters.
And then we get a chance to, you know, stay out of the heat and have a conversation with somebody who's also maybe exhausted from what's going on around them.
And they're not inebriated and they're just really looking for some clarity on, I don't know what to do next.
Then we'll have, well, go with us. We're going to go over and see, you know, so-and-so play on the stage or we're going to get lunch.
I think what made me think about that is you've been consistent in that.
It'd be easy as a board because I've been on board. It's easy to get mission creep.
Right. Somebody comes in and they want to, we can do this too, or we can add that or why can't you've been very consistent right from the start.
This is what you do. We're not doing any of the other stuff. We're not going to overthink.
We're not going to get too big expand. Right. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, that mission creep is a it's easy to do.
Certainly is. We could be branded by a hundred different, you know, water companies or, you know, coffee companies.
We get like coal. We're just trying to like say, you know, we're not affiliated.
We don't we don't want to brand or tie ourselves to something that might offend someone for some weird reason.
You know, so we just try to say stay simple.
And what our mission is, is just, you know, a safe place for people, for fans in the community and not not say, you know,
we're we're we're also a Ford Motor Company made a donation.
So it's also sponsored by Ford. You know, it's not that we're not doing any of that large scale fundraising.
We don't we don't really have a need for it.
It's the non affiliation thing really seems to make people more comfortable.
Well, I don't think anybody would blame you if you wanted to go that route.
I mean, I wouldn't. I know that can cloud potentially your mission statement.
I mean, basically kind of just all danced around that that that could be a possibility.
What about these these for lack of a better word, competitors or these these other
organizations that are getting into what you what the cool kids were doing 22 years ago?
What were your first thoughts when you saw that?
I mean, were you threatened at all? I think I would be initially like, hey, this is my territory.
What are you doing now? I think I'd get over that pretty quickly.
But how do you think about that?
It was interesting, you know, sort of flattered a little bit that people like realize it.
They've done the fundraising and they got the money behind them.
Big time amounts and big time sponsorship of musicians and music people that are on their on their website, you know, which is great.
You know, that's you know, there's room for all of us out there.
And apparently the festivals believe that too, because we still have our space.
They have their space. Theirs is a little more.
They spend because they're so well funded, a lot of money creating this really warm welcoming large installation.
And ours looks more like a frat house.
You know, it looks more like we've just got tapestries hanging up and some balloons.
It looks like a party going on over here.
But over there, it's ferns and white furniture in the middle of like the farm.
And it's people to come in and they're they have a paid staff.
I mean, they do. And we're volunteer driven.
It's a different model for things, but they have kind of an in mission.
And ours is more just like we just want to make sure you if you came here and you wanted sobriety, you have a network and an opportunity to maintain sobriety.
And what you do after you leave here, we're not going to tie ourselves to you or hope you tie yourself to us.
We'll see you next summer.
And I kind of I kind of feel like maybe now it's a good time.
I'm glad we're having this conversation now because obviously the Bonnarooo Bonnarooo released their lineup.
There's all this excitement. It's a great lineup.
We all agree. So there's probably people out there thinking, do I want to go?
I want to go see my band. I want to go see this lineup.
But, you know, it's a it's scary. It's this. It's that.
I mean, we all went our first time and we all knew what we thought it was going to be.
And that's why I think it's important to have you on to talk about it.
It doesn't have to be whatever you think your fear.
You know what I mean? There is a way to go to a festival like this and be sober and have a great time and see great music.
And it doesn't have to be whatever you you fear or that it is.
Patrick, let me bounce off that for you to expand any on that in December of twenty two.
So leading up to the new year into twenty three before I went into treatment in February of twenty three.
So almost two years ago and I went to widespread panic in Nashville for New Year's Eve.
I used to go to panic every year for New Year's Eve, 15, 20 years ago.
And it's always been a constant, but not as much in my later years because they don't do it as much.
And this was kind of like, you know, this can be my last one.
I think, you know, it was not fun.
I had no fun at all because it was just a bad time in my life, a really bad time in my life, a transitional time that I look back fondly now.
But at that time I was lost and I was walking around Bridgestone Arena.
And I saw the sober people for all I know.
You were there. I don't know. But you had a big contingency there.
And I was like it was almost like, whoa, I wasn't even looking for it.
But I don't know what to go say to them. There's a show going on.
And there's people want to hear what they don't want to listen to me.
And I just I got so just intimidated.
And even in the moment where I should be the most interested because I'm about to embark on this, I still was like, get me out of here.
Give me back to Section 300 and give me a drink.
And I'm guessing that you you probably have to deal with people that see you guys and then they they want to just run away.
Like their mind doesn't know how to connect to it.
They want to, but their inner soul won't let them.
And any thoughts you have on that?
You know, what our space lets us do is is just have a space that might attract people to come over and talk, make it inviting and welcoming and open and have that free stickers and balloons, man.
Free stickers and balloons and candy.
You know, we've got tons of candy on the tables. I bring your family.
I love giving away to tootsie rolls.
I mean, you're not asking people to sign up for a timeshare.
Right. I mean, it's a comfortable space to Brian.
Yeah, point. I mean, I get where Brian's coming at, because that would be me.
It'd be like, I still walk in there, man.
I'm signing my name away and now I'm committed to a timeshare.
Yeah, it's just getting people's attention that there is life after if you're interested in that life after or if you're about to embark on a life after this type of network is out there for you.
You know, and if you think it's over and you're sitting there on your day nine and your treatment center and just just think this is just the worst thing that could possibly happen to me.
There is actually light at the end of the tunnel for you.
That's that's sort of what we put out there.
I remember I was going to Grable Dead concerts fully loaded and they already had their little, you know, look inside of there.
And I would see him at set break.
That's when they would all join up at the little table where they had their area.
There'll be hundreds of people around and they stand up and they'd scream.
I'm like, it's set break. What's going on?
Why is that little area so lively?
And they were all warf rats, you know, the warf rats.
I thought that was right. Yeah.
That's what panic, you know, that would have been the gateway.
And that's a group that I was a part of getting started as a fan group for widespread panic.
I mean, that's an old spread head and went to a lot of loaded widespread panic shows.
And then, you know, when I got cleaned up in 97 and thought it was over, ultimately the band, you know, let us start doing that and then followed that up into festivals.
And it's really it's great.
I mean, there's so many people are going to be like in their 40s and 50s that have already burnt out and they have quit or they found recovery.
And they are, you know, sticking their toe back in the water with their friends because they've been doing it for decades.
And then there's like the kids that are late teens and early 20s, mid 20s that are just getting started.
And they'll come back and not because we have came to go come back and start talking to us and they've got their nylon on and they're barely bikinis, you know, and they're just like, you're ready to go for the day.
They're going over to the other tent or to see that they're all EDM all day long.
And that's fine. But some of them are just straight edge kids.
They have never ever used or drank ever. And it's that concept is bizarre to me.
It is to me, too, that they're they're they're out there.
And then there's the other ones that are raging already that'll put their beer on our table and they'll tell us, you know what?
What you all do is great. Rarely do I have a real episode with somebody who's just violently anti what we do.
Mostly they'll they'll drop a beer and they'll pull their wallet out while they're talking to us and tell us about their family member who's been, you know, clean or sober for a couple of days or weeks or years.
Now, and they'll put money in a tip jar to help us, you know, with with donations.
But that's usually what the interactions are like more way more positive than ever having a negative.
Yeah. I mean, I just stumbled on you personally, Patrick, about three weeks before we did this show last year.
I didn't know who I was contacting. I just went through, you know, Facebook's and wherever else to find who's the leader of this thing.
But I've known of your organization for 20 years. I remember seeing it everywhere.
You know, at the Bonnarooo's to Panics to everything. I mean, we ran in the same circles. We just didn't know it.
What's a great name. I mean, it's a it's a it's a memorable you know what it's about.
Yeah, it sticks quick. And but I thought, boy, this is just the worst idea.
There's a lot of people that will walk by. They won't say anything to us, but they'll walk by.
They'll be 20 feet, you know, 10 yards away from the tent.
And they're like, hey, get a picture of me standing in front of the side.
Everybody thinks it's so funny.
Yeah, well, the dream probably holding up.
Oh, my God. So we'll all stand up and photobomb them with like, you know, like.
You guys got such a good spirit and attitude to the whole thing.
It's really cool to know that more and more as you know, as I now find it to be one of the coolest things in festival culture, you know, from I think it's a dumbest thing I've ever seen to one of the neatest parts of the whole thing.
And it's not just because we've gotten to know you. It's such a cool thing.
And I love to hear love hate to hear that there's offshoots and people coming in with big wallets and ferns just like the, you know, the levels of recovery programs are all over the place from state funded millionaire ferns and, you know, couches and beautiful settings.
So none of them are wrong.
I'm just saying there's lots of they all look a little different along those lines.
And Brian hinted at it or touched on it a little bit earlier and you did as well.
It is in the news a lot. We're seeing headlines. More younger people are not even sampling alcohol.
They're just they don't care. Or even the younger the 20 somethings who drank for a while now are like, it's too expensive. I just don't like it.
I don't care. They don't feel that pressure. And that was I know that for me anyway, there was definitely a lot of sort of peer pressure.
So much peer pressure. Yeah. So drinking. So, you know, I need to.
So it's it there's a change. Are you guys you guys seeing it?
I mean, again, you go to a lot of different festivals, not just Bonnarooo. Are you guys seeing it? And what what are you seeing?
Yeah, there's definitely a lot. There's a lot more people smoking weed, which weeds, I love smoking pot, you know, and there's a lot more dispensaries and legal states making it legal.
And it's out there. It's certainly taking over, which is fine.
You know, and with with, you know, not just smoking weed, but then you get your edibles and everything else that goes well with the culture around that.
So I think that's probably what is scaring the alcohol industry more than anything else at this point.
It ain't probably it's all. Yeah, that's very true.
And then, you know, I mean, you know, if I could get like a five dollar hit of acid, it's way more bang for my buck than a twelve dollar sixteen ounce beer for sure.
You know, and then forty of those later, I'm like, you know, bankrupt.
Just give me a five dollar hit of acid. Right.
Or and there's micro dosing and people use them that for their wellness, you know, and stuff like that.
Just a little enough to like, you know, give me some sunshine today in the middle of like these days when the sun's barely out in the middle of winter and it's I can't, you know, I don't cope well.
That industry's, you know, thriving and people are learning the balance, you know, I think between that.
The idea that my grandparents probably thought that they knew that I smoke weed, they thought I was like psychotic.
The worst, you know, those are only the crazy people like lobotomized time.
Right. Yeah.
I just that knowledge and information is transformed our way of looking at things and in the culture itself around alcohol.
We know that alcohol kills as many people in America each year as all narcotics combined.
I think people are still just kind of like saying, you know, it's just like, you know, if I don't have a balance here, let's just take a step back and see if I can find it.
Musicians that are California sober and then advertising that your jelly roll and guys and other, you know, music genres that are doing it.
They influence the fans of that genre and they're willing to take a chance on saying, hey, maybe I can have a good time doing it too.
And then they see they can and they'll come talk to us about that.
And that's their experience.
And we everybody, all of our volunteers, there's 12 of us each have our own experience.
And so it's not like we all are homogenized as a volunteer staff about what our experience is like.
They get a chance like, oh, you know what?
Let me talk Amanda. Come up here and talk to tell them about that story.
You were telling me last weekend.
We were in the boom and I handed off and they go and it's, you know, people that are trying it differently than alcohol is the gateway drug.
Right. Well, maybe maybe it's not anymore.
It's just people are just getting away from that overindulging.
That is an interesting point.
And it kind of goes back to my my earlier question.
Do you guys have one message with all your volunteers or is it just what you said?
You know, everybody's different and that's just the way we're going to present it.
Yeah, the mission statement is pretty straightforward.
It says we're a group of clean and sober music fans choosing to remain clean and sober at this event.
And that's it. We're not affiliated with any 12 step program.
We're not affiliated with the festival or any band attending the festival.
We simply are providing a safe place for people choosing to remain drug and alcohol free at this event.
And that could be that day. You know, it's my sober Saturday.
I was wasted last night, but today it's sober Saturday and I'm coming to hang out with you all for a few minutes and see what you all do.
And then they'll come to our meeting and they're listening and they'll hang out and then they go do their thing.
I mean, because I know you're going to say, Brian, because I want to ask you, because Brian has been very open about his road for whatever.
And anybody who knows Brian, Brian is not a joiner.
Brian likes to do things his own way. Contrarian a bit. Yeah.
Very contrarian. You've been very open about you're not doing 12 step.
You're not going to the AA meetings. You're not doing all those things.
You're doing it your way. And so kind of if I'm here and Patrick kind of the same, everybody can do it their own way.
It doesn't have to again. I mean, I'm I'd sound snarky when I say the 12 step, but that would scare me.
I'm a little bit in Brian's camp. I'm not signing up for the whole package.
You know what I mean? I want to do it my way. Yeah. Let me bounce off that way.
So please bounce off that quickly, Barry, because you were right.
You read my mind. I was where I was where I was going.
There's still an intimidation factor here for every for most people involved because it's so touchy.
So it's so important and life transformational.
And what I hear from you and I already knew this.
We talked last year, but it's in recovery spaces.
You get a lot of really not what you're talking about, right?
Like not a lot of leeway, not a lot. Hey, you got bombed yesterday, but not today.
Come on in. Like that's not exactly I mean, it depends on what you're talking about.
But overall, from my experience with inpatient treatment and then post outpatient treatment,
I mean, this idea of talking about, you know, micro dosing, a little bit of, you know, MDMA or something
or micro dosing, a little bit of THC or not micro dosing and tripling down, whatever.
That would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, shut it down.
Like, I mean, I've been told we're done with this conversation before because they didn't like where it was going.
The person who was the lead, if that's just what I'll call them, and it didn't like that.
And I, I, I immediately push back.
I'm I'm headfirst dove into the deep end of this recovery thing.
You know, I didn't just think about it and bring it up yesterday.
I've been doing it for a month now. And now I'm getting like, I'm like, are you trying to help me?
Are you trying to make this harder on me and make me feel like shit about it?
And I've got really turned off and I ran away from it when I was completely ready to be.
I wanted a community. I wanted people that I could to meet new people.
I wanted to to explore more and more and more. They made that hard for me.
Maybe that's me being a hard head about it. Your thoughts.
And it clearly that's not the approach you take.
And as I mean, so we always take the principles of the program over the personalities within,
because the personalities, the individual who thinks they're like the police for that group or the police for.
Hey, can ruin the vibe for everything. You know, it's.
But their intentions are good. I do want to say that. Sorry to interrupt there.
There is mostly the time it feels like their intentions are good, but they're just a little too much sometimes.
But go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Delivery. You're right. It's all about delivery.
I mean, if I'm talking to somebody that's alive, that has not died as a result of their addiction and they have a chance.
The last thing I want them to feel is unwelcome. Yeah.
Uncomfortable. The last thing I want them to feel is you are in the wrong place.
You're saying the wrong thing, especially public.
My greatest fear in my entire life still to this day is public humiliation.
And if I say something in the room that is wrong to your liking and you chastise me in front of 30 strangers, I'll never show my face over there.
And now that's my impression of it as a whole. I believe that it's all like that.
But yeah, it's unfortunate. You know, there are people that have an idea that has very strict and rigid rails.
If you're not in here, then you're out there still. And they're probably highly educated and very, very well versed.
You know, they're probably therapy. I mean, these are people who are not dumb.
They're not just jerks because they're ignorant, but it's still it's it's it's it's it's difficult.
And it's such a refreshing thing for me. That's the reason I went on about it.
And I'm glad you brought it up, Barry, too, is that it's and you are dealing with people who are internally struggling more than anybody can understand.
I mean, especially if they want to stop. Right. If you want to stop, but you know you can't.
I don't know if that's worse than not wanting to stop and just being oblivious.
I'm not sure. But it's internally a soul crushing feeling.
And when someone makes it hard on you, all right, I'll just go have a drink.
In 12 Step Recovery, they say the only requirement is that you have a desire to stop.
That's the only requirement. Well, that might be what they say.
I'm not sure if that's that's that's universal. Right.
But the personalities, right, will say, oh, you're doing it wrong.
You know, and that's unfortunate because what's right or wrong?
I haven't used all day long. That should be the right thing.
Right. You know, that's right. Right.
One day at a time. Right. I mean, that's the whole that's the whole thing.
That's the whole you know, the the word, the verbiage that a lot of people use.
But I got the a little bit of the oh, well, you've only been doing this for X amount of days.
Well, you don't even know, dude.
All right. See you.
I'm more like in the I'm more in the camp of you know what?
The board, the more love we give away, the more love we get back.
Right. And the more we make people feel a part of right, the bigger our worlds get.
And and if I'm constantly putting the Heisman out to people that are doing it a different way than I think it should be done,
then I've really isolated myself like I did with my addiction.
And I don't want to be that way anymore. I want to I want a great big world these days.
Patrick, what are you most proud of?
You know what? I've been married seven years.
And that's amazing because I'm typically a selfish guy that can't get along with people very well.
I've already got soulmates and we're soulmate.
So and my wife has has two kids and they're they're they're awesome.
You know, and so I'm step bad to these kids and they're they're great.
You know, they're not my children by blood, but you know, they're my step kids.
Their dad's great guy. Their mom's an awesome, you know, mom.
And, you know, I love that part of, you know, this life.
It's sort of like, you know, on this like way back in the book, right?
That part of me that, you know, you can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me on social media, you know, you can learn about me in 15 minutes.
But if you sat down with me and talked to me for a while, I'm proud that, you know, I've become a good family man, that I have really good friends.
And then I've been able to stay sober for a long stretch of time.
And that that is probably without that, I would have none of the other things without sobriety.
I would have none of the other things. So probably most proud of my sobriety.
But then, you know, right up there is, you know, my relationship with my wife, my family, my kids, my mom and dad.
They're both still alive. They're both, you know, 80 doing well.
And the fact that I participate, you know, when they need something, my mom's like, I can't get my car out of the parking lot.
We got 10 inches of snow. Like, you don't need to drive anywhere to stay inside.
But let's get your car out, you know, show up, bring you some food.
Stuff you couldn't do when you were a fall down drunk, right?
I would refuse to do it. I'd be like, I'll be over later in the later just like the dope man. I'm on my way. I'm on my way. I'm on my way.
I'll be there in five minutes. That's my favorite. Be there in five minutes. No one's going to be anywhere in five.
Yeah. Eighteen hours later, my mom's still looking out the window. I turned my mom into a crackhead.
Just wait for me to come help her get a car out.
That's funny. That's sad and funny, too.
Yeah. So those things, I think, you know, Barry's just real fundamental things in my life.
The things that I do every day that I, you know, there's no headlines, you know, for that I probably take the most pride in.
Brian, I was going to ask about the lineup, but I don't want to move on if you guys have more questions about Sobri.
So we'll definitely get to the lineup. But in kind of the space you were just in there.
So what are your long term thoughts and plans for this organization Sobri?
I mean, you're not going to be the leader, leader, even I know you've delegated a lot out.
You know, it's not just you. But what are your thoughts 10 years down the road?
You're not going to go to Bonnarooo every year of your life. We all think we're going to, but we're all stopped.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hey, hey, hey, I don't know. We all think we're going to.
But and even if you do go to Bonnarooo for the rest of your life, you're 90, you're still there.
What about the organization long term? Have you had those discussions speaking of boards?
Do you have people that are kind of like in a succession kind of move towards the future?
Or do you even think about that yet? Yeah, we do. We certainly talk about that stuff.
It's a really great question because we just we had our meeting in December, you know,
our virtual call talking about the year in review, the year in advance, you know, what are we doing?
And we agreed we would bring in more of our heavy lifting feet on the ground volunteers to the board.
You know, that needs to be we can't just have a separation between like head in the clouds and feet on the ground.
You know, feet on the ground do all the work.
Head in the clouds we meet once a year for and how are we talking about what we did?
And if we need the board's help, we'll do that stuff.
So we'll get the molding of the minds together with like things that they'll have ideas about.
They'll be engaged with, you know, staying active as a volunteer because they're not paid with our group because we need them to flourish.
And then more of that volunteer coming into the board makes it easy to, you know, have a succession plan.
We just had a young board member whose father was a founder of the harmonium with me and the other guys just finished law school and he's out in Los Angeles.
And Azar will kind of want to probably talk about like, you know, what we're going to do when that time comes just to be president, you know, which is just my title.
But I'm also both I'm a combination of your head in the cloud, feet in the ground guy.
I want more feet on the ground guys talking to the head in the cloud people.
But these are the struggles we're having.
This is what we need to get done.
And sometimes I forget those things.
So, yeah, there's there's definitely like planning about getting all the teams together that are making it work.
So there's communication.
If I don't wake up tomorrow, this has to sustain itself and it will.
Cool. Cool. Cool. Yeah.
Let's talk about the let's talk about 2025 and the festival season that we know of so far.
Let's just start with the one we do every week.
Bonnaroo. I mean, we were collectively pretty excited.
I know I was. Your thoughts, Patrick?
Yeah, I was excited about the depth.
Sometimes I just get sort of like glazed over, I see another Tyler, another Hozier.
I'm just like, OK, where are we going with this?
Tyler puts on a great show, like a really great show.
I mean, Tyler's decree is not my necessarily genre.
When I'm like looking at like entertainment, that's entertainment.
But all the headliners do it.
What the one that I super immediately got high on was I haven't seen Vampire Weekend for a long time.
Yeah, I'm really excited about seeing those guys again.
I know it's probably been five years since I've seen Vampire Weekend.
It was at Bonnaroo for me last time.
Yeah. Whenever a year that was.
When was that? Yeah.
Seventeen, eighteen.
Yeah, something like that.
I think I saw first it like the Vegas.
I think they played it.
You went to Vegas.
That was an offshoot of a Bonnaroo thing, right?
That was produced by Vegas Superfly and all that.
About Halloween weekend.
Yeah. Twenty years.
I think that's like the old five or six.
They did like three of them, maybe.
Yeah.
It's like the second row below like the headline of road, the second large font stuff.
Some of that stuff in there is exciting to me.
And I get excited because some of them, I'm like, who are they?
They must be more important than I know who they are because they are in a larger font than the lower.
Color coded.
Match the colors.
Right, right.
So like Mountain Joy is terrific.
Yeah.
In the middle of that one.
I'm excited about this rainbow kitten surprise.
I've heard great stuff.
You know, they're higher on the poster.
Let's go see what that's all about.
I don't know anything about them.
You'll love it.
OK, great. Great.
And Megadeth is like louder than life.
You know, that's like louder than light.
They come and now they're going to be at Patrick.
You and me, Megadeth, you and me.
We're doing Megadeth.
Are we putting them on the witch stage?
Are they going to go on the second big one and let's like have a large white show and let them play it dark?
Let's do that.
I got to think if corn plays a tent, so does Megadeth.
That's just where I go on that one because corn should be on the witch, I think.
But that that would be my guess either way.
Let's make a date of it.
I don't know about you all, but it's exciting.
I am about the lineup release.
I get more excited about the schedule release.
That's what I'm like.
Oh, I've been then the neurosis kicks in.
Oh, I'm so excited to see Megadeth.
Now I can't go.
You know what?
This this schedule for me and it's always this way with Bonnarooo.
But for me, this one, especially, I think, is the one that I'm going to be on.
This one, especially, is I'm going to get to see bands that I would never see otherwise.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I'm not going to see Megadeth.
Not going to see Megadeth.
I'm not going to see him at a club.
I'm not going to see Insane Clown Posse.
I'm not going to see Luke Combs, Dom Dalla.
I mean, they're just straight on down.
Queens of the Stone Age.
These are not bands that I would otherwise see in addition to the discovery.
I mean, that's always the thing.
The ones I've never heard of.
But this one, for some reason, especially, has a half dozen or maybe even ten bands that I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to get to see ICP.
You know, are you kidding?
Megadeth.
I remember ICP was here in town at one of our decent sized clubs many years ago.
And I went down just to take a look at the outside.
I was like, yeah, no, I'm not going to.
I'm going to go home.
I wonder how many I wonder how many ICP fans will make it over to Sober.
I wonder if there's any that have burned it out that are just like, you know, what?
I got the Shaggy D.A. face.
I'm coming over.
We will have to revisit that conversation down the road.
We will have to.
That's funny.
What about Queens of Stone Age?
You're a rock and roll guy.
You like that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That'll be awesome.
That'll be awesome.
You know, Sunday's tough.
A lot of times I leave early and I'm just like, OK.
That's I'm sticking around Sunday and totally like nine o'clock at night.
We'll see how that goes.
I'm schedule wise.
If I'm going to see Vampire Weekend, I will see Queens if they're not like conflicting
with one another between the two big stages.
I'm giving away my fan favorite here on my head.
I'm excited to see.
Oh, goose.
Yeah, goose.
They're back.
I got to see them the first.
Well, I don't know if it's the first time because sometimes I don't notice them when
they're on the really bottom of the poster.
But a couple of three years ago, they were played at the VAT tent and it was midnight
when they went on.
Might have been one.
I was just like, I'm so excited to see these guys here.
And it was packed and they shredded that tent that night.
And I'm excited to see them.
I'm sure it'll be another one of those like, you know, after midnight start times for them.
I don't know.
I was really excited about that, too, because, boy, they are good.
And we had a local show here that just didn't hit me right for all reasons that don't matter
to anybody else.
So I need to do over.
And I'm looking forward to that very, very much.
On Thursday, there's a band that I've really I'm doing some work with them on like their
clean and sober community because they got a new clean and sober community called the
rescues and the band is called Dogs in a Pile.
Yeah.
And they are they jammed.
They're jammed, too, right?
They're jammed.
They're jammed.
They're awesome.
Yeah.
Hey, I'll tell you.
Jago Donato is also in that jam kind of that, you know, country cosmic.
Cosmic country stuff.
And our sound checks, the stage, I've correspondence that do a lot of EDM traveling in a van kind
of thing.
We're telling us maybe more specifically me, Kitchen Dwellers, the band Kitchen Dwellers.
Give them a listen.
I haven't done it yet, but there's a you're jam guy.
You'll like it.
They're they're right next to Dogs in the Pile on the list.
Hey, you said something just a second ago, Patrick.
Are you working with a lot of bands?
Is that I mean, we talked about the fan.
Yeah.
Are the bands reaching out to you as well?
So not not just to me, but to there's a I'm not alone in doing this.
There's a lot of people that are like really active in this world that will get reached
out to.
And then subsequently, they'll say, hey, man, we're starting a new group or because of my
geographic location on mid-south can help like staff shows in the in the south for them
or help find a volunteer.
I have a because I have a large Rolodex of volunteers that are willing in this community
to do stuff.
I get reeled in a lot in this.
So I think what happens, there's a member of the band that went to a fish concert.
A member of Dogs on a Pile went to a fish concert and went to the fellowship meeting
at South Creek.
And then somebody recognized him and was talking to him and subsequently find out he's
sticking his toe in the water, seeing what his recovery life might look like, and then
brought this idea to the band.
And then they connected and they reached out by email to me and two other men and women
and say, hey, you know what?
This thing's going to launch.
And they they just launched it in October, the first tour with the table where there
could be volunteers showing up to stay at that table.
So that happens just sort of organically because of time and experience.
Very cool.
What about what other festivals are you thinking about?
You're you will be attending yourself this year.
Do you do you figure that out?
Do you do you make a list early in the year or do you make that up as you go?
Well, I just got a plot around our family vacation time when we when we do what we do.
Our kids look like they're going to be over in Europe this summer for their education.
So nice.
So we may take a May trip or early June trip.
So I might get off the trip and come right down to Bonnarooo.
So I might be jet lagged coming out of Europe, going right down to Bonnarooo.
And then later in the summer, it's it it it you know, the vacation stuff slows down.
Probably looking at maybe going back up to Lollapalooza.
It's been almost five years since I've been up there.
I'm excited to see what that line up roster looks like.
And then there's some stuff going on at Austin City Limits that I might go down there
because they are inviting us to do back a house at Austin City Limits for the stagehands and management people.
So I go down there and help with that launching, you know, just make sure the volunteers aren't like, you know,
getting a little, you know, anxious that we got a backstage pass, you know,
it's just to make sure everybody's on the same page.
Yeah, I remember last year you were telling us about some of the issues you've had with a little overzealousness maybe at times.
And I can completely understand how that could go.
And yeah, you got to you got to keep that under wraps.
You don't want to stomp on the people that are doing, you know, giving you all the help to, you know,
the resources you need to pull off what you want to do at these festivals.
And we just got we just I just had a call last week with we're doing the first year will be at Electric Forest.
So it'll be our first year there.
There's been a band sponsored table there for ever since it was Rothbury, you know, when it started back in 10 or so 12 years ago.
But that is now I think that that guy's that did that all that work.
Just one guy for on his own.
I mean, he put a lot of energy in to making it work.
He's he's older like us.
He's just like, I've just been feeling lonely the last few years there.
The crowds change. It's not Jan Band centric.
And so he graciously, you know, bowed out and they reached out and said, hey, we've got a vacuum.
And would you all fill it? So it's I think we'll be electric force looks pretty good.
I just pulled it up. It's not I mean, it's EDM heavy.
So yeah, what about a festival like that?
That is and we might talk about this later.
I don't know. We'll see. I just jotted down on my list of elements festival up in Pennsylvania.
That's similar to something like this.
What about when you go into that space and you have mostly only young people, whether they want you know,
maybe they don't drink just because it's just not in their their social group for whatever reason.
But they're not like actively trying to make sure that I, you know, spread awareness.
Is it harder in a situation like that when you unless just honest?
I mean, this is Jan. This is Jan Band 2.0 EDM world.
People do drugs and they go these shows. That's what they do.
That's what this is. Do you find that to be more difficult challenge or or how does that feel?
And along those lines, let me sorry to interrupt, but how do you choose?
Are you choosing which festival are you are you saying that looks like a festival that maybe needs us?
Or are they reaching out to you?
I mean, I think it's a good question. Jump on that thing.
Yeah, almost always it's that they reach out and say, hey, you know, we know what you do.
We used to work for them. Would you do it for us? That's cool.
That's good. Rarely, rarely have we, you know, pushed.
I can't think of an example where we've really pushed, but we have a pretty heavy handed board
that if we needed something done, could get it done for if we wanted to go in somewhere.
And the portfolio, it's pretty heavy with like sustainable, long term, long existing music festivals.
You know, the Bonnarooo's, Lollapalooza's and ACL's now Electric Forest.
The ones that sustain themselves that go year after year.
So the portfolio and that's just like on like this part of the country.
Electric Daisy Carnival, EDC, the EDM's that Insomniac started producing before they joined forces with Live Nation.
They do a hundred thousand people a day that go from sunset to sunrise that put these massive steel structure stages together
that have more steel in them than the Empire State Building.
That because it's a giant show of a DJ and electronic music.
There's two gentlemen on our board that came out of that world and they've been doing that for us with Insomniac music festivals for since we started.
So we've got a presence. Our group inside of that world, we call it Consciousness Group.
It's just sort of, we just take it from festival to festival in that world.
And they started about three years ago, EDC Orlando.
So they came over and they, you know, they're massive, massive festivals.
The EDM world is, that's why it's, that's why Bonnarooo's adapted to it.
That's why Lollapalooza and that's why.
Because the crowds and the energy is so charged, but it's not any different.
There's still a segment of the population that's either already gotten over the hump and they're in recovery because they almost died.
They're straight edge or they're just feeling their way through the crowd and seeing which one they are.
Interesting. Yeah.
I mean, I can just can imagine my main thought and reason for asking that about electric force or any of these others is it just seems like that's a daunting task to go into a basically go to a rave and tell them to, or not tell.
I mean, you're not preachy, but go to a rave and let's try to like talk about not doing this stuff.
I know I'm being, I'm simplifying it and giving it not the exact mission statement that it is.
It just feels like that would be a little daunting.
But I mean, if you can get there for the music, I find these people that are buying $500 tickets, $500 festival weekend passes or more.
Yeah, they're more expensive than Bonnarooo.
They're more expensive than Bonnarooo.
And that's as if you're buying like GA, you know, not even GA plus, right?
That's just your GA face value.
They're going to because they're doing what we did 10 minutes ago.
They're looking at the lineup.
They are. They're excited about the music.
They were. They're not wild like I was that you can't have a good time unless you're wasted at that concert.
At it dumbfounded me.
But there's a lot of people that are just excited about seeing music and they don't want the other experience that goes along with it.
They want to experience that singularly and they get high off of that.
And that I applaud them because I get it now.
I did not get it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, a lot of cases I know me, especially early on, it was, you know, I'm going to go to this environment because I can go and drink and whatever.
And, oh, there will be music versus I want to go hear this music.
And yeah, I mean, it's a completely different headspace.
Yeah. Yeah.
The adult beverage industry makes me think that it's like adult.
Like I couldn't go see concerts until I was certain.
A certain age. Right.
I was like, well, it's all hand in hand.
Right. Like going to a bar.
You filtered me out.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. What else we got, guys?
Um, Taco, you were telling us about what's what are they bringing to the farm this year in a space?
Yeah.
I got two things.
First of all, yes, they just announced Athletic Brewing is a beer sponsor.
They've got a lot of non-alcoholic options.
What do you think about it?
I don't know that we've ever had a, you know, a named sponsor like that high level of a non-alcoholic beer company.
I don't think so either.
Patrick has there been?
I don't think so.
No, there has not.
And this is going to be a big year.
I'm glad you brought it up because I was on a call last week.
They're like, don't rush and keep it until we launch it.
But they're doing a big presence for mocktails and non-alcoholic stuff this year.
It'll be a big and they want to actually like maybe even like, you know, somehow they're trying to figure out a partner with us without affiliating with us, you know, and keeping that separate.
But they might.
I don't know what they're going to do.
They haven't brought it to us yet.
They asked us for ideas.
But, yeah, do you yourself partake in non-alcoholic, like styles of drinks that are designed like mocks to to taste like that?
Do you yourself partake in things like does that help you or do you not need it?
No, fuck.
No, I mean, it was like, I mean, like, you're like the out like bourbon with no alcohol in it, like in a drink.
And it's like, no, no, that's terrible.
I mean, like vegan hot dogs.
What the hell, man?
Same fucking thing.
Why?
That's so funny.
Yeah, but now I just like, but I mean, there are super refreshing mocktails that don't have any essence of alcohol to them at all.
That's just fruit juice.
Mixers of seltzers and like juices and stuff and like mint sprigs or basil or lime and brightness and fruity.
Yeah, and they'll charge you the same amount as if it had four ounces of vodka.
They fucking got me.
I'm still an addict to that stuff.
I'll pay it whatever it costs.
I'll tell you what, though, the that athletic beer, though, serious talk, it's probably the best brand on the market for their portfolio of N.A.
beers.
There's it's not my favorite Heineken zero point zero.
If I'm going to have one, which I don't really want one, but if I'm going to, that's what I prefer.
But that athletic brand from the IPA's to the Pilsner's or whatever they make, it is a really high quality beer.
And if drinking a beer while you're at a show is something because it is still for me a little, it's not as much.
But that's a big deal that that to get that out of your head, to have that drink in your hand like everybody else, you don't feel isolated.
You feel part of everything.
I love the fact that athletics on because of all the things we're talking about.
And it's a great product.
And that's great.
Unlike liquid death or what did you call it earlier?
Death water.
Unlike that, which is just water in a can.
Yeah, I've had some of the athletic N.A.
beers and yeah, they're pretty good.
And even as someone who's not trying to stay sober, even after I've had a couple beers, if I want to keep drinking, but also I don't want to get wasted,
you know, after a few beers, the N.A. beers taste just as good.
Yeah. If you like IPA's, which I did once upon a time, that athletic IPA, I know you don't, but an IPA, like a snob, would like an athletic IPA.
That's kind of hoppy.
I got a lot of hop to it.
Oh, bitter and hoppy as hell, man.
Get that out of here for me.
Right. Right.
Well, for taco to drink anything other than a PBR.
He's already in a spot that's not catering to his needs at that point.
I'll drink anything.
That's not even close to true.
That is true.
I wonder if the immersive dome is going to have any like mocktail bars inside of it when it's overwhelming your senses.
And if you walk into that thing and it's like, I don't need anything else.
Just let me enjoy this.
I'm glad you brought that up.
What are your thoughts on that?
The new experience we you probably don't know or more or less than we do.
But your initial thoughts when you heard of that is Bonne Ruby and innovative.
That's what they do.
Yeah.
I mean, I mean, probably a lot of the same conversations took place.
But, you know, the technology behind the sphere, it's just like we can do it in a smaller scale because technology advances so quickly these days we can transport.
It's portable now.
Let's put it on the farm.
Where do we put it?
I don't know whether to put it on there.
I'm assuming it's going to be in an area that, you know, is usually got some space, you know, but we're guessing we're the comedy tent maybe used to be the cinema tent or whatever.
Let me ask you.
Yeah, that's one thing along those lines, because for people who didn't hear the first episode, you you like Brian, you basically been to every Bonnaroo, right?
Since the beginning and all these other festivals, what what has been the biggest changes that you've seen in this industry?
You know, the pay for camping was a big change.
Everybody adapted to that, you know, and that's what we're doing.
We're doing that, you know, and that's great.
And then all the all the campground experiences are, you know, growing and growing that.
What's that?
What's the in the woods?
That is really cool.
Where the woods is super cool, you know, and that used to be I think where they kept like the sewer porta potty cleaning guys used to have their stuff in there.
Now it's like decked out forest, you know, dance floor.
And that's a good experience for the fans that are just still kind of waking up late or, you know, going back out to shower at sunset and you don't necessarily want to see anything until after midnight.
You know, you can you can stay in the campground for a while, eat, drink and and hang out and stay comfortable.
You can go back inside the festival because I have to describe it to people all the time.
If you if I took my fist and like this is Bonnaroo, like the festival's like right here.
Everything else is like right.
You know, I've done that funny like here we go and then over here and you go down here and I'm over here.
Yeah, that's a big it's a big big it's a there's nothing like Bonnaroo just because of all the camping and 24 hours and all the walking.
And it's it's a very unique experience.
There's not anybody else that I know that's doing anything that like it.
It's hard. There was the one in Dover where fish did their Mond Green Festival electric.
What was it called? Firefly.
That one had camping and an element there.
There's there's places that can do it. But Bonnaroo's done it for 23 years now.
And it's growing because it's changing constantly.
Let me ask you about the lineup.
But going back to that for Bonnaroo real quick, I just want to mention it because I feel like we kind of keep missing it because it's off to the side on the poster.
But this King Gizzard three night residence set, you know, good call for bringing that up.
Yeah, I can only imagine King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is on your radar of something you're you're probably pretty into, Patrick.
But that's just me guessing.
Yeah, last one.
Put them put them up there with the DJ, man, and just let the whole thing or another DJ put them up there with like a white light show and let this thing turn them into a house band for one.
Of the three nights, you know, and just let all the DJs come up and just explode that stage.
What I'm curious what stage they'll be on.
That's what I'm hearing from fans is they hope it's three different stages that it's three completely different different guests, different locations, shows, you know, maybe one's a marathon, you know, or yeah, it's really cool.
Very exciting.
Do a sunrise set, you know, starting legendary stuff, something legendary on, you know, after the headliner on Friday, they take over what at midnight?
That'd be cool.
Yeah, go until the sun comes up because that there's another stage that's going to be playing until the sun comes up.
So that would be just a football.
Well, longer than a football field would be about three quarters of a mile away to get over to the other, which will be popping until sun come up.
I love that.
I'm excited to see what they do.
They could use them in a thousand different ways.
I'm sure pairing it down to three and getting them hooked up with some producers to make an unbelievable experience for the fans.
Keep us on our edge.
Why don't you just like tease us a little bit more?
I'm excited.
Yeah, no real wrong answers.
No real wrong answers with how they do that.
Yeah, the lineup is I'm excited, man.
Patrick, I am so excited.
So many different ways.
And I thought that that I thought my days of overly being excited about this lineup were starting to fade.
And I am really happy to know that that's not true.
So I'm really I'm really excited.
All right.
All right, Patrick, man.
Thank you so much for doing this, especially I know Brian just reached out.
Yeah, short notice.
Thank you.
So thanks for being willing.
I'm guessing you were happy to do something on a cold Sunday morning.
Warm me up.
Think about Tennessee in June.
Let's think about Tennessee.
It's something that makes me hot.
You got some football for the rest of the day.
We'll see how it goes for you.
That's your past time.
But thanks so much, Patrick.
It's been really cool getting to know you over the last year and get to know the organization more.
And it especially when when I first met you electronically, this was all new to me.
You know, it was all new to me.
And now a year plus later, it's it's it's still new.
You know, it's always going to have a little bit of slow incremental moving to where it's not still new.
But it's been it's been helpful for me to talk about these things.
I love to talk about it.
Sometimes I don't want to talk about it too much because then it's like, all right, enough about you, buddy.
And so it is nice.
And thank you very much for your friendship and your time.
I appreciate you all.
Thanks for the invite.
It's always a pleasure.
We'll see on the farm.
Yeah. So there you go.
I mean, again, that guy, I mean, it's amazing work that he does.
Plus, he's he's like us, man.
He just likes festivals.
He has just genuine, pleasant like tone and approach is just so refreshing.
I feel I feel like I have a lot in common with them.
I don't share that in common with them.
I don't I'm not I'm not a pleasant, quiet, comforting tone.
And he is very, very good at that.
And so, yeah, when people ask me what's Brian like, pleasant is not one of the things that comes up in my head.
Agreeable is what I shoot for.
But I might not get there the most pleasant way.
But yeah, thank you so much to Patrick for doing that.
Thank you so much to Patrick for doing that.
And I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I'm happy to have him on every single year we do this just as a catch up because there's no reason not to.
One thing real quick before we wrap up and I know we got to hurry.
Let's talk Govball for a minute.
Yeah. Yeah.
So this was your reaction when you saw that.
I don't know what the right word was, but preposterous might have been one of the words like.
All I could think was is and just for quickly for some reason, you didn't know the top three headliners are the same top three headliners upon on the same days to Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
The rest of it's mostly different, but it's also a much smaller festival.
But my first thought was what would happen if that line up and they know they weren't going to do this.
But let's just say they did.
They released Govball first and then we got the Bonnarooo lineup.
I don't think any of us would have looked at the Bonnarooo lineup and been any other like, yeah, this is Govball.
Interesting. What are you doing?
Now they produce both. Right.
That's C3. C3 does go.
And we have talked to what's his name, Tom, that puts on Govball.
We've had him on the show before.
Yeah. And so they were never going to do that.
They were never going to put out Govball first and then ruin the Bonnarooo thing because Govball is not an event to for the for the lineup.
I mean, for the lineup announcement, people don't it's not like Bonnarooo.
So they knew what they were doing.
And that's fine.
But what if it was the other way?
If it was the other way around, I think I might look at Bonnarooo and be like, well, nice to see you copy Govball.
Yeah, I think it would take some of the wind out of the sails when the reality is they were booked together.
Right. They were booked together.
Oh, yeah.
That was done by design.
And so Govball gets to me actually to one more thought on that.
It's it when all the talk with the survey that they did in the offseason, C3 and everybody involved with that, one of them was, do you want Bonnarooo to be two weekends?
And we all laugh that off.
And and this kind of feels like, OK, we're not going to make Bonnarooo two weekends, but we're going to make Bonnarooo North and Bonnarooo South a little bit.
I don't know. People had a blast at Govball last year.
I mean, Chapel took over.
Chapel was the star of the show.
But I'm not hating it's in New York.
I doubt I won't be going.
But Tyler, Olivia, Hozier, your headliners and you've got Glass Animals and Mountain Joy is on there, too.
I don't have in front of me, but it stops.
It doesn't go too much further where it doesn't.
It doesn't keep copying.
Right. It's just it's not not one for one.
Yeah, it's just at the top.
No. And then it feels like they pulled a few acts from Bonnarooo 2024 on there, too.
It feels like a little bit of last year is on there.
Yeah. T-Pain.
Yeah, T-Pain.
They're in a festival in this world.
We're going to hear.
We'll hear from Brad.
Speaking of our congratulations to Corey and his wife.
They had their baby.
Oh, that baby finally came.
Yeah. This past weekend.
Yeah. Reached out and asked.
And so good for him.
And so my my sorry, Taco.
My thought on that, that this lineup possibly could be on par, maybe or even better than the 2020 lineup.
Right. The 2025 Bonnarooo to 2020.
A lot of people, a lot of people had a response on that.
Kind of unleashed a waterfall of comments just everywhere about.
Let's just make it official then.
Let's make that our question for the week.
Our ticket giveaway.
Is this lineup better than 2020?
And your thoughts as to why or why not?
That's a that's a perfect one to go from there because I I promise, guys, this was not like hot take guy.
Let's just see what we can get going here.
I initially thought and I'll give you the main reason why Thursday five years ago.
Grand Old Opry.
I mean, there's nothing going on on that Thursday that matters to at all to me Friday through Saturday, Sunday.
Stacked this lineup Thursday all the way through, like all the way through.
And so to me on on quantity with quality that that might tip the scales.
But I can make that argument.
Like I said, this one feels very curated.
And so in 2020 was that way, too.
And I think Miley Cyrus in 20 was what made everybody's head pop.
And I don't know if that's Avril Lavigne this year.
She's certainly not on the same level stardom as Miley Cyrus.
But anyway, that's that's fun.
I'm glad I love when you guys interact with us.
It's a lot of fun.
Yeah, we love all the comments.
Is there anything that sticks out that needs to be read out loud or is it just just an overall disdain?
Just just yeah, we have a lot of disdain.
But tell that guy, isn't it?
Well, one thing about the twenty twenty lineup is if you remember, it sold out in March and that was kind of what made us all go, whoa, this is something.
Do we think speaking of ticket sales for twenty twenty five, do we think it will sell out?
I'm closer to thinking maybe not as much as they thought.
And part of it is because Govball.
Yeah, I mean, like, right.
That twenty twenty lineup didn't exist anywhere else in this country.
That's very true.
And this and we're now in the trend of and it was it was trending that way ever since and trending that way before that all the festivals are sharing the headliners.
That's just what it is.
Yeah, that was a little more special.
So yeah, that was not the case in twenty twenty.
Yeah, so that that point check mark for twenty twenty, if you're making you know, you're making a list and you're right.
Yeah, if you're going to do a B column.
Yeah, they get they win in that category.
This lineup wins in Thursday category.
So like if you were just to keep going down the list.
So but yeah, speaking of tickets and I did talk to Corey last week trying to find out if we had a baby yet.
And he did tell me ticket sales tickets are cruising is what is the way he phrased it.
So they seem at least positive on the way tickets are selling.
Good, good, good, good.
Buy up, buy, buy, buy, try to win from us and then buy, buy, buy.
So, yeah, the tickets go back to the contest.
We have to give away two tickets as in addition to camping.
We're giving we're asking a question every week.
You can go to the what podcast dot com dot co.
Right.
Slash win.
No, the what podcast dot com.
Just go there.
Or the short one is the what dot co.
There you go.
And you'll figure out you can email, you can call, you can send a video.
We'd love for you to send a video or you can send facts, facts directly to Lord Tacos House.
Yeah, and I got one.
We got another facts right here.
You want to share a couple of those?
Sure.
Yeah, I think, like I said last week, somebody was asking, oh, could we just fax it in?
And I think they were joking.
They don't think they knew.
I actually do have a working fax machine.
So it's not a joke.
Got that going.
Yeah.
You need an iPod playlist.
We got that too.
Yeah, I got that too.
And so this one came from Bosco, who's on our discord.
And I think at this point, he's just kind of committing to the bit as far as sending us all these faxes.
I like it.
He did say, I can't say I agree with Brian that this lineup is better than 2020, but it's probably the best since then.
I'm not even sure if it's fair to judge the lineups against 2020 anymore because of how big some of the names on the lineup have gotten now.
Example, Billy Strings is on the fifth line Saturday, 2020.
That's a good point.
At this point, there's a lot of people that were on that 2020 lineup much further down than they would have been now.
True.
But that's where they were in the pecking order then.
Billy Strings blew up about a year or two after that.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So yeah, thanks for the fax.
And then we did get some more submissions as far as voicemails and stuff.
And then this one I think I'm going to play is from Amy in Nashville.
Video one?
I don't think it's video.
I don't think it's video, but it is audio.
So we'll be able to hear it.
But she's also said that she's going to be at the Totem thing that's happening.
Actually will have happened by the time this episode comes out.
But I'm going to run up to Nashville and check that out.
So hopefully run into everyone there.
Cool.
So here we go.
Let's get into it.
Let's hear it.
Hey, guys.
This is Amy Rock in Nashville.
I've been listening to y'all since 2020, but this is my first time since then that I'm actually holding a Bonere ticket for myself.
Taking Ease has pretty much been exclusively my summer festival since 2018.
But with their reschedule to the fall this year, the stars have really aligned for me to make my long awaited return to the farm.
I've been following the hype this season really closely.
And when the lineup dropped, I was like, yep, hype is real.
Send it.
It's not like any of my all time favorite bands are on the lineup, but that's kind of a plus for a festival.
You know, you don't have to feel like you have to wait three hours to get in the pit or anything.
Like Queens of the Stone Age was my all time favorite one point and I was on the rail for them at Shakey back in 2018.
Always great.
Looking forward to catching them again.
But like we've been saying about this lineup, the EDM is so solid.
My two number one top EDM artists of 2024 are right there on the headline.
John Summit, who has collabs with some of my all time favorite DJs.
All the songs on his album are like hits.
I can't wait to dance in a huge crowd to them.
And the other artist is Justice, who I've been obsessed with since their 2007 cross album.
And I totally wore that out.
So I'm so ready to go dance with all my friends there.
And I need to hear more hype for this Thursday undercard act.
Joey Valance and Bray.
I caught them at Shaky Knees and I say this as the highest compliment.
They are the Gen Z Beastie Boys.
They're so crazy fun.
Don't miss them.
Right now I have like 10 immediate glance like gotta see acts.
But a good half of the artists I have no previous impressions on.
So I'm really excited over the next couple of weeks to sample them, figure out which ones are going to get in rotation and not to my got to see list.
But seriously, I'm just so stoked that I got my crew together and I can just start preparing for the best weekend of the whole year.
All right. Got to go.
I'm heading over to East Nashville to meet the folks at the Toto meetup event.
We'll chat with you guys soon.
Bye.
All right.
Thank you very much.
These Gen Z Beastie Boys.
Beastie Boys.
I will have to take a listen and report back to you what I think about that.
That boy that sounded good, too.
The audio sounded great.
However she did that, do it that way.
Yeah.
Well, when you don't use the phone and yet sounds pretty good.
But if all you got the phone, go ahead and use that, too.
Yeah. Call in facts, email, record a video or an audio message.
Send it in.
There's all the links are on the what podcast dot com so you can enter and we'll have more next week.
All right.
I think we're good.
What else we need?
Roscoe, tell everybody hugging howdy over there in East nasty.
I will.
I'm going to be headed over to East nasty right after this to the totem meetup.
And yeah, by the time this comes out, I will have been so, you know, a little annoying how the timing works.
But hey, we got to work with what we got to work with.
Thank you for your patience and for your interaction and interactiveness with the show.
It always makes the show better.
Really does.
All right.
See you guys.
All right.
We're out of here.
All right.
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Is Bonnaroo 2025's Lineup Better Than 2020?
