Superfly Co-Founder Rick Farman on the Origins and Future of Bonnaroo

The What Podcast?

Which bands this year that matter?

Looky, looky, looky, the team's back.

We got Brad back.

Barry Courter, Brad Steiner, Lord Taco.

Thanks for dressing up today.

Yeah, I put on pants.

He's got that 70s, what is it, that aerobics collar thing

going.

Did you cut that yourself?

70s aerobics collar.

80s, whatever.

You cut that collar out yourself?

When I think of Lord Taco, I think of aerobics.

He's a maniac, that guy.

What are you guys been up to?

Haven't seen you forever.

Missing you.

I miss you.

Yeah.

You all moved in.

I'm glad.

Do you like the new set?

I love it.

I feel like Oprah.

And I've got a brand new set to show off.

I love it.

Love it.

Yeah.

Glad you guys are so old.

What if it was all just a green screen?

I made this up.

Just like Taco.

It's not even real.

This is a green screen.

Yeah.

How's everything in New York?

You know, it's getting there.

It's been a tough landing, to be totally honest.

The move was a little stressful.

The getting the stuff was a little stressful.

But nothing will top the stress of bringing in two dogs to a city

and one of the dogs not knowing how to shit on a leash.

Yeah.

We had several discussions.

Can I tell you the stress and the worry and the anxiety

of every moment that you're in this house, he's going to take it.

Do you want to shit on him?

And then you take him outside, he's just got so much ADD

because he doesn't know what in the world he's sitting in.

Nothing around him is new.

He's a southern dog.

And you move him up into the big city.

He's a New Orleans dog.

You took babe into the big city.

I took babe into the big city.

Yeah, that's what I did.

So that was a little strange.

But I feel like last weekend we finally got our feet under us.

We live right next to Prospect Park, which is this beautiful,

beautiful park.

So we spent damn near all day getting lost in there.

And it finally started to feel comfortable.

I'm not going to lie to you.

No, man, I really miss New Orleans.

I really, really, really miss New Orleans.

Especially right now at Jazz Fest going on.

And it's crawfish season.

Oh, God.

Seeing my friends post about crawfish and Jazz Fest,

I literally want to get off of social media.

Just delete.

Have you not found a crawfish place there in New York yet?

You know, if it turns out.

You've gone down this street and asked them for a little crawfish.

You want to suck the head?

No.

I think you could probably go down Long Island

and find some Chinese crawfish.

But no, no, it's not the same.

In fact, I even contacted a guy named Crawfish.

Yeah, actually, the Bonnarooo Crawfish guy.

He will mail you crawfish boiled or live.

And so if I wanted to, I could get like 10 pounds of live crawfish

and do like a boil on my stove.

I don't know.

I'm going to figure out how to do this because I am dying.

Nice.

Well, go down the street there to your bar and ask for some.

My bodega and ask for some crawfish.

Sweet tea and some crawfish.

Yeah.

Let me know how that goes.

Have you found a Powell's replacement yet?

Oh, so the Powell's.

I do have a funny story about a bar.

So, you know, everybody, if you listen to this show,

you know, my favorite bar in the world

is a place called Powell's in my neighborhood in New Orleans.

It's the greatest bar I've ever been to in my life.

So we take a stroll around our new neighborhood

here in Brooklyn and I found a bar literally a block away

from me called Best Friends.

Best Friends.

How ironic is I go from Powell's to Best Friends.

Couldn't find a chums.

No.

Yeah.

Every move again is to make up acquaintances.

Acquaintances, yeah.

Someone I know.

I just have a hard time seeing Brad Guy at a Best Friends.

I went to go to Powell's.

What's wrong with the Best Friends?

Go to Powell's, go to Best Friends.

OK.

Whatever.

Yeah.

But it's been going OK.

What about you?

How's dad?

How's taco?

How's everybody feeling?

Everybody's great.

I'm great.

Just got back from Shaky Knees in Atlanta.

Oh, yeah.

I went to Shaky Knees.

Shaky Knees was fantastic.

I'll tell you what, if ticket sales are down,

it wasn't evident at Shaky Knees because it was just as big

this year as it was last year that I could tell.

I thought that Shaky actually did well.

He did great.

Everything that I heard, see through is really happy.

Yeah.

Yeah, good weather too, right?

Good weather.

Excellent weather.

Great lineup, obviously.

Yeah.

Great lineup.

If we could have that weather for Bonnarooo, perfect.

And you understand you got to play celebrity

for a little bit.

Three times.

Some in the crowd came up to me and said, oh, you Lord Tango

from the what podcast?

I said, yeah.

So two of them were named John.

Weird.

And then we had Aaron, who was actually on the show back

in 2020 before everything shut down.

So I'm pretty excited to see them.

I handed out stickers.

I'm out of stickers now, by the way.

All right.

Oh, God.

OK.

I thought we did our head stickers.

Didn't we do head stickers?

You did a few.

Didn't we do?

I haven't ordered any.

We need to start doing those again, huh?

Well, I'm waiting on a deal from Stickermill.

Yeah.

See, very sticker.

I feel like I got another one around here somewhere.

Well, now that I have my own head,

I got to get my own stickers.

Yeah, but yours would have to be a huge sticker.

Based on that.

What?

Huge sticker.

You saying I got a big head?

Sticker.

Yeah.

That head that Brad had made is a little oversized.

Well, I got the digital version.

I mean, they can cut a sticker any size.

Yeah.

So who'd you see us shaking?

What was the standout show?

Standout show for me was Godspeed, You Black Emperor.

It was absolutely unreal.

I've never seen it before.

What?

I don't even know the words you just said.

Godspeed, You Black Emperor.

Is that an anime?

No, they're like a post-rock band.

They were, I think they were most well known.

They had a song on the 28 Days Later soundtrack.

But.

Of course.

I love that movie.

What?

I don't even know what movie that is.

Oh, that's right.

You don't watch movies.

I like movies.

Godspeed, You Black Emperor.

Yeah, they've got a, I mean, it's like a 25 piece band and it's like they've got violins

and drums and guitars and you know.

A Canadian post-rock band which originated in Montreal in 1994.

Wow.

They've been around forever.

Yeah.

Cool.

All right, Barry, I'm going to give you some names of albums from Godspeed, You Black Emperor.

All right.

I'm going to give you a name of the album.

You tell me if it's a real Godspeed, You Black Emperor name or totally made up off the top

of my head.

Okay.

Number one.

Lift your skinny fists like an antenna.

Got to be real.

That's absolutely real.

That is real, yes.

Of course.

Beyond infinity, the cat killed curiosity.

Sounds real.

That is fake.

Totally fake.

Good for you.

All right.

That's good pull.

How about this?

All lights fucked on the hairy amp drooling.

Wait, that's a taco Twitter post.

These are taco tweets, yes.

No, I'm sorry.

That is an actual Godspeed, You Black Emperor album.

Wow.

Wow.

What an odd pull this is, taco.

Totally odd.

And the best part was their visuals.

They had a guy with four projectors in the back, real film projectors, like eight millimeter,

and he was running film strips through them to project just colors and patterns.

And it was just bizarre, but it was all real.

I mean, this wasn't like a screen.

And at the end, he would actually run it through and slow it down.

So it would get heated up by the lamps and it would just straight up burn.

So like the end was just like, it was crazy.

Cool.

Wow.

Okay.

Very cool.

Well, you taught me something today, buddy.

I did not see that coming.

Did not see that coming.

So the show today is actually one that we've been trying to work on for a few years now

because we have multiple times on the show, Dr. Ashley Capps from AC Entertainment.

But a lot of people don't know AC Entertainment had a partner when they started Bonnarooo.

It wasn't just AC Entertainment and it didn't just operate by AC Entertainment,

even though for us being in Chattanooga for all those years, AC Entertainment was right

up the road.

So they were the ones right off the top of our head and we had close proximity to it.

But the partners that started this whole thing with AC Entertainment was a company called

Superfly.

Superfly ran by four guys, one of which is Rick Farman and Rick Farman, one of those guys

that started Bonnarooo is our guest today, going deep into the history of Bonnarooo and then

what he's up to now and then the future of festival life in general.

It's going to be a lengthy one, a very lengthy one.

Yeah.

He gave us a lot of time and he could have gone another two or three hours.

I don't even think he could.

I expect him to.

We're going to do this again because I want...

We wouldn't even touch.

I know.

So I know.

We didn't even scratch the surface of some of the nerdy things that we really want to

talk about when it comes to Bonnarooo festivals.

But they also produce outside lands and they've got another project that they're going to

work on too in the next year or so.

I really loved it.

Rick is a dialed in dude.

Yeah.

This guy knows his stuff.

I'm glad we got him and you're right.

We actually, with AC Entertainment, we've had because as you said, proximity, we've

talked to him and Jeff Quay are.

I don't think we avoided Superfly.

We just never...

We just didn't know anybody there.

Didn't know anybody there and this was great.

It wasn't until I got to New Orleans where I started hearing names and the people that

were operating Superfly.

In fact, I didn't know Superfly was still operating because they weren't necessarily

in New Orleans anymore.

It just turns out they sprawled across the country and they're doing incredible work

still with outside land.

So that's really, really exciting today.

I hope that you enjoy this.

It's a big one.

So if you got to pause and take a break, do it.

And if you do pause and take a break, please rate, review the show.

It'd be very helpful.

All right.

Here we go.

Rick Farman on the What Podcast.

All right, y'all.

Perfect.

Look at that.

Look at that dream boat.

Looking good.

Trying to match the energy on the other side here, guys.

I hear you.

Where are you these days?

Where are you set up these days?

I am in Berkeley, California.

Okay.

Because it's weird.

Superfly has kind of taken on a little bit of a...

It's a sprawl these days.

Where's the main office now?

Still in New York.

We just reopened a new office here.

I mean, a new office in New York about a month, month and a half ago, something like that.

So, you know, obviously with everybody, like everybody, we were kind of fully shut down

in terms of, you know, in-person work and stuff like that.

How big has Superfly gotten?

Because the...

Isn't the legend, there are four guys and then when did it become the major entity that it is now?

Yeah.

Just for starters, are we starting yet?

We can.

Okay.

This is what we do.

We just shoot the shit for a little while.

Okay.

Cool.

I'm used to sort of just knowing when we're, you know, when we're live, when we're going

and when we're not.

So...

Yeah.

You want me to...

Barry knows when he's around Brad, everything's the show.

Yeah.

Once you record, you better be on point because it'll show up somehow.

I mean, the reason I ask is because, you know, not only do we have such a long history with

Bonnarooo, the legend of Superfly and then AC Entertainment and then this guy, you know,

moves to New Orleans and I hear all about the Superfly cats and then I, you know, I

two months ago, pick up and moved to Brooklyn and, you know, it seems like I'm just following

Superfly's path.

Come out to the West Coast here, man.

You know?

It might be next.

It might be next.

So, yes.

So, sorry.

What was your question about, like, how big of a deal you had there?

Yeah.

How big is Superfly got in these days?

We're about 100 people today.

Wow.

We do kind of three different things.

We obviously create, you know, festivals and events and experiences that we create the

IP for and like we, the brand and everything.

We have long had a marketing services business, so an agency that helps, you know, different

businesses create meaningful marketing programs.

I mean, a lot of that kind of frankly got born out of work we did at Bonnarooo very early

on.

You know, we kind of came up with this basic ethos of how we work with brand partners and

it was all around if we're going to get a brand involved in one of our experiences,

there has to be a value for the fan, right?

As you know, at Bonnarooo and, you know, other events that we created, we don't have your

typical stage signage and presented buys and stage names and all this kind of stuff.

We always felt that if a brand was going to be part of one of our experiences, then they

needed to, you know, have something really tangible, you know, that the fans felt was

benefiting them, that it was adding to the experience and to the community.

And so we did, you know, that so well early on and we onboarded a lot of brands into that

kind of way of thinking that we ended up, you know, kind of starting a business, you

know, kind of a complimentary business around helping brands do stuff like that.

And so we get to do some fun stuff.

As an example, this year we will be, you know, producing a bunch of different events for

companies that, you know, bring together their fans, their fandom, you know, generally media

companies and things like that that have, you know, kind of talent and, you know, content

that there's a lot of fandom around.

So we love to do, we love to bring communities together and people together in whatever format

we can.

Well, when it was just the four of you, how old were you when you really started getting

this Superfly thing together?

Yeah.

So I'd say the very beginning of Superfly was a part-time affair, right?

That was really our first ever event.

We actually just celebrated this past February the 25th anniversary of the first ever Superfly

show, which was Take Funk to Heaven, Mardi Gras 97.

And it was a show at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.

And when I say it was at the Contemporary Arts Center, I say that loosely, it was in

the parking lot in a warehouse that was half covered.

So it was not in the beautiful, gorgeous building that is the Contemporary Arts Center.

It was in their ramshackled, you know, parking lot.

And so that was the, you know, the beginning of it was really doing things like Mardi Gras,

Jazz Fest.

Then we started to become a regular concert promoter.

And it wasn't until kind of I graduated that it was like a full-time thing, right?

So that was, you know, a few years later, 19, really probably 2000 was when we were

kind of like, okay, let's see if we can do this for a living.

And what I mean by that is like, can we pay our bills, right?

And literally, we used to joke that we ran the thing as like a socialist organization

because we would pay each other based on what our expenses were.

You know, if one guy had a car note and, you know, the other guy had, you know, student,

you know, student loan and somebody had, you know, $200 in rent, the other guy had $300

in rent, that's how we figured out what you get paid.

Just list your expenses.

And that's what we're going to cut checks for just so we can do this.

I hope nobody included the girlfriends in some of these expenses.

It was pretty above board.

You know, fortunately, we were in New Orleans where it was, you know, generally inexpensive

to live and we were all, you know, doing a little other things on the side, bartending.

Well, this is where I was going with this because I spent so much time in New Orleans,

the very good friend of mine, Hallie Kaplan, reminds me every time I talk about Bonnarooo,

he oftentimes reminds me that don't worry, Brad, the reason Bonnarooo exists is because

of the Howlin' Wolf because the Superfly guys started right here.

Well, that was certainly one of the venues that we were working in heavily.

You know, the Howlin' Wolf, Tipitina's, Maple Leaf, and then like a lot of, you know, venues

that were sort of off the radar, like the Riverboat, Cajun Queen, and the Masonic Auditorium

that's on the 13th floor of 666, no, no, sorry, 13th floor of 333 St. Charles Avenue.

We did some shows up in there.

And then as we kind of started to graduate a little bit, we started to use some of the

theaters, the Sanger Theater, the Orpheum, the State Palace, and, you know, really, you

know, our Jazz Fest event, and it's, you know, relevant right now because the first weekend

of Jazz Fest, sorry, the second weekend of Jazz Fest is just kicking off today right now.

My wife's down there having fun.

And, you know, that event, like our night shows during that, and the sort of the energy

that was formed around that really became the basis for us thinking, oh, you know what?

Maybe we can take this energy and do it in a place where we could have full control,

where, you know, people could come and camp and kind of create a much deeper experience.

But in a lot of ways, it was similar because we were working with a lot of the same artists,

and there was sort of a community thing that was starting to happen around these night

shows that we were putting on.

That's where I wanted to go back.

When you were talking about it, so you, Superfly was basically five years old in 2002 when

Bonnarooo started.

So, and it reminded me, we had Ken Weinstein on a couple of years ago, and he told this

story, and I want to get your take on it.

It was basically a phone call to him that said, hey, we've got this event.

We don't even have a name yet, I don't think.

And it's going to happen in, what did he say, Brad, like six months or eight months?

It was pretty soon.

But then he remembered that moment when you and I guess your partners and Ashley all ended

up on the stage on Sunday night looking out at that ginormous crowd and thought, I think

we can do this.

This might be a thing.

First of all, did he remember it right?

And if he did, what was, tell that, tell your version of it, I guess.

Yeah.

Ken who, just to remind everybody who's listening in here, Ken has been, was from the very

beginning and is still is the publicist for Bonnarooo.

Incredible guy, incredible business partner to us as we were getting this going, a lot

of the early work around how we message what the festival's all about to the industry and

all that kind of stuff, Ken was really influential in.

And yeah, I met Ken because he represented the band Galactic and we were managing Galactic

at the, right around the time we were formulating the idea around Bonnarooo.

And so, you know, we just started this friendship around that and working relationship.

And so he was the first person, you know, I thought of when we needed somebody to help

us with the PR messaging.

And yeah, that moment that you were talking about there, Barry, it's kind of a little

embarrassing almost that we did that, you know, it's something none of us would ever

really do again and we didn't ever do after that.

But I think there was a tradition, you know, in the music world of, you know, where the

promoters and the producers would sort of, you know, emcee a little bit.

Bill Graham did that famously, right?

You listen to a lot of, you know, old, you know, Grateful Dead, you know, bootlegs or

whatever where, you know, there's somebody introducing the band and it's Bill Graham.

And then, you know, you know, Quint Davis, who's, you know, a huge legend in the, you

know, music festival scene, the guy who created Jazz Fest, you know, he does some emcee stuff.

But I think those guys is like they have a different level of stature, almost or something.

And, you know, so we, I think, felt like this thing at the end of that first event to like,

oh, we should go say thank you.

And so we all went up on the stage and did that.

I think we were all deer in the headlights.

We have no business being up on stage.

That's not what we do.

We should be in the background.

And so my recollection of that moment was, why did we just do that?

Like, that was a little scary.

And let's never do that again.

But there also was a celebratory moment, of course, the fact that we, you know, that it

actually happened, we actually pulled it off.

You know, it's, you know, you can have a lot of dreams in your life and you can put a lot

of dreams out there.

And when some of those things come true, it's pretty profound.

And I think we just felt a certain level of gratitude at that point that we wanted to

express.

Let me follow up real quick.

Was it, I mean, you had just graduated college.

You guys all met sort of college age.

So you, was it a little bit that hubris of youth that made you think you could put on

an event that size?

I mean, that's, that's, it was pretty, you did it without marketing.

You did it without advertising.

You, you did a camping event in the middle of Tennessee, which now, you know, all of

us looking back now say, well, yeah, it's been a huge success.

But at that time, I mean, I'll be honest with you, even at my paper, which is 64 miles

away, we didn't care until the morning of when we got the word that the traffic was

backed up from, you know, here to Nashville.

And then it became an issue for us.

Was it, was it just that sort of hubris?

Was it just naivete of youth or did you, you feel like you knew what you were doing and

you knew it would do, it would do well?

Yeah.

Well, two things I'll pick up on there quickly, Barry, you know, that story you just told

about you guys not really kind of paying attention until then, it wasn't just you.

I mean, even the local community and even some of the powers that be that we were dealing

with, I think because it was, you know, pretty underground, in other words, you know, like

you said, we, there's no traditional advertising.

It sold out right away.

I think there was a lot of skepticism in general locally of whether this was real or not.

And I have some great stories about the aftermath of that that I have to share sometime later

but to answer your question, you know, we, you know, I often, when I'm advising young

entrepreneurs, which I like to do from time to time, often kind of tell them that story

about the fact that like we didn't know what we didn't know and that was very beneficial.

Like, I don't know if I knew what I knew now, would I have ever started Bonnarooo, right?

So I'm not sure if it was hubris as much as naivete, but I think it was, you know,

naivete a little bit, you know, like, I think we, you know, the atmosphere that was surrounding,

you know, the formation of Bonnarooo, there were a couple major things that were going on.

First and foremost, the Superfly partners, we were all going to a lot of festivals and

events and we were looking really at the landscape of that stuff, just as much as fans, as we

were from a business perspective.

You know, we'd see these lineups of all these European festivals roll out and we're like,

oh my God, like, if we could just go to something like that, that would be so fun.

And none of us had the resources or ability to do that at the time.

I think one of my partners maybe had been to a few European festivals, but for the most

part, you know, it wasn't that accessible to us.

We were going to a lot of the smaller domestic festivals, things like High Sierra and Telluride

Bluegrass, and there were a bunch of small festivals in the Northeast that don't exist

anymore, you know, Berkfest being one of them.

And we were sort of seeing what was going on there with the camping thing and sort of

what there was forming around that.

We had our Jazz Fest experience.

So that was sort of like the soup that we were like, okay, like there is this thing

going on here in terms of festivals that isn't happening in America, but it's a thing that

goes on in other places.

And, you know, could we use the basis of what we were doing during Jazz Fest and some of

these things that we're experiencing in a smaller fashion, could we do a mega version

of that here, right?

Like that was a lot of the real initial thing.

Now from a business side, what you had going on was this is really at the beginning of

the formulation of what Live Nation is today, right?

You had basically the consolidation of the concert industry, kind of coming together.

And I think at that time, you know, most of the, you know, general industry was not focused

on things like this.

They were focused on the amphitheaters.

They were focused on, you know, sort of the things that needed to come together in order

to have that consolidation happening.

Remember, this is in the wake of Woodstock 99 that was, you know, obviously, you know,

publicized as a, you know, disaster and all that kind of stuff.

And so you had this sort of, I think, a little bit of like, you know, festivals are not as,

you know, interesting for the mainstream industry.

And you had a lot of the other parts of the industry, like the agencies and stuff like

that, because they were seeing this consolidation, they were encouraging folks like Superfly

and AC Entertainment to get together, to know each other.

And in fact, you know, one of the ways that Ashley and I first connected was through,

you know, an agent, Tom Chauncey, who's a great friend of all of ours and represents

a lot of amazing artists.

He kind of was one of the facilitators of like, hey, you guys should know each other,

you know, in this sort of consolidated business, the independent guys can have some strength

by coordinating.

And so, you know, that when we all kind of got around this, you know, look, our expectation

was not that it was going to sell out in two weeks, was not that we were going to sell

70,000 tickets the first year, to be clear.

We would have been happy if we just, you know, got it done and we got out of it alive and,

you know, didn't lose money.

And you know, if we had sold 30 or 40,000 tickets or something like that at that time,

I think we would have felt like, wow, we did a festival of this big and that's great.

And we got the poster.

That was always an important thing to us is getting, you know, the poster with all the

names on it, the Superfly logo and that kind of stuff.

Like that was really our expectation.

So I think it was part, you know, just youthful enthusiasm and naivety and part, you know,

having our finger on the pulse of kind of where the fans were at because we were the

fans, right?

We would have been the first people to buy a Bonnarooo ticket.

I promise you that if somebody else had done it, we would have been the first in line,

you know, flag waving, ready to go.

And so I think a lot of it was really, you know, coming from that place more than anything.

When you started putting this together and you, I mean, as a really first go around and

making a festival, what were some of the challenges?

What was the biggest challenge that you ran up against?

What was the thing that made you say, I don't know if this is going to work?

Well there was, you know, one big factor that we had that gave us a certain degree of confidence

that we could pull it off.

And look, the biggest thing that Superfly had done before then was, you know, a series

of concerts during Jazz Fest, the biggest venue being, you know, 3,000 people and no

camping or anything like that.

Ashley had done a small festival called, I believe, Mountain Oasis, but it was, you know,

a few thousand people or something.

So he had a little bit of a framework for that.

But what we really benefited from early on is that we were able to tap into the team

of people that had put on the large scale fish events.

And so, you know, fish was on their hiatus at that time.

And I had built a relationship with the fish team through being one of the sort of facilitators

of creating Oysterhead because Oysterhead, the band Oysterhead with Trane Estacio, Les

Claypool and Stewart Copeland was sort of formulated around one of our Jazz Fest superjams.

That's where the superjam comes from, by the way, for, you know, Bonnarooo, which, you know,

we can talk about that if you guys want at some point.

But the genesis of that, that had been a concert series very similar to what happens at Bonnarooo

now that we had been doing for many years during Jazz Fest and other times a year in

New Orleans.

And we got to know, you know, some of the people in the fish universe through that.

And so when we were initially talking about this, I started to call a bunch of them, you

know, starting with John Paluska, who was Fish's manager at the time.

And I think from his perspective, you know, he wanted to keep that team together a little

bit.

He would be, you know, he didn't want them to just kind of all go their separate ways

and not continue that sort of muscle memory of doing things at this scale.

And they also, I think they had like a lot of equipment that they wanted to rent to us.

So there was a way, you know, it was beneficial for them.

And to their credit, they were incredibly gracious and generous with, you know, advice

on, hey, if you're going to do it, here's how you do it.

And so we really, from an operational standpoint, the fact that we were able to tap into that

crew of people, you know, it gave us a lot of confidence.

Of course, you know, some of the challenges that unfolded, right, the traffic and some

of the logistics.

I mean, when I think back on the level that we produced the event at the first year, you

know, it's not something I like, I'm that proud about.

I'm proud that we did it and that it was safe and that, you know, everybody got in

and out eventually.

And, you know, was, you know, obviously, you know, the basis for what it became.

But as somebody sort of who was intimately involved in the operations and the setup of

it, you know, we all knew that we had a lot to improve upon after that first year.

You did have a second one, so that's huge.

We did.

And we learned a lot in that one, too.

And we learned a lot in the third one.

Which year do you think you finally hit the, started getting things right and organizationally

making sense?

And when do you think you finally got in the pocket?

Well, I had sort of said to everybody at the beginning, after the first year, I would say

that I wanted to be really good at it after five years.

And I wanted to be able to just show up after 10 years.

Now that didn't really happen.

But closer to reality than not.

But I'd say it took us a good four or five years.

You know, we needed to experience a wider range of things, right?

And we needed to build a certain amount of infrastructure, like, for instance, the exit

into the site, right?

Like we needed that.

We needed to build more roads.

We needed to put drainage into the property.

We needed to put in permanent electrical and things like that.

But I felt like after five years, we kind of had lived enough of it.

We had had horrible rain.

We had had dry seasons before that caused dust.

We had sort of experienced most of what the variability of elements and situations are.

And I felt after 10 years, we were getting pretty good at it.

There's two things here.

Yeah, because I always said that that torrential rainstorm in that third year really felt like

a game changer.

It was one of those we're going to test you to the nth degree and shake you as hard as

possible and we're going to see if you're going to survive this.

And then a couple of years later, you had the dust storm that was just absolutely awful.

It really sort of crafted the space a little bit differently.

But all of that becomes a lot easier.

You correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of that comes a lot easier when so many of the

other things were done right.

Like for instance, the user experience.

You talked earlier about not naming the stages.

And one of the very first shows that Barry and I ever had was the reason I love Bonnarooo

so much is because they always took into account the user experience.

And I don't feel like I'm getting sold to every time I turn around.

I've said that since the beginning.

I don't feel like they have their hand in my wallet.

That's right.

And so when you get some of those basic things that so many festivals miss, I think the other

stuff eventually comes around and becomes a little bit easier because you're not worrying

about the things that you have to hire 15 PR teams to do.

Yeah, you know, it really relates to what I said earlier.

We were the fans, right?

We knew that some of those things would not be done in a way that maybe they were happening

in other places wouldn't work for the Bonnarooo demographic that we thought would want to

come to this.

And because we were the same, it was easy to know.

And look, we had the advantage of success too at the beginning.

Look, art and commerce are difficult.

And it's always hard to manage how you put something together that you really want to

truly be a valuable creative experience and really like something that people really back

benefit from.

And at the same time, you're running a business and you got things that you're responsible

for.

And look, I don't think this is that different than what artists have to deal with, right?

Artists are both a artistic expression.

That's why they do it, but this is their livelihood and it's a business.

And so figuring that out is always a challenge.

And the more that you can do it in ways that you put yourself in the shoes of who you're

trying to serve, right?

And you kind of try and use your creativity to meet some of the needs that you have from

a business perspective to marry that.

That's where I think the basis of our success around the things you're talking about has

come from is that that was really our volition all along, which is, hey, how can we make

it feel good if we were the fan and how can we make it also feel good and be a win for

the various business elements that we were serving as well?

And we still operate that way to this day on so many levels.

That is guiding principle for what we do as a business, no matter whether it's something

we're doing for ourselves or something we're doing in service for somebody else.

That's how we work.

I want to say this, Brad and I have said this on the show many, many times, but you and

Ashley and the guys that founded this have given me personally so many unbelievable moments,

concerts and shows from McCartney to Radiohead.

I mean, just on and on and on.

And thank you.

But I don't know if you remember, you were also there sitting right next to me at one

of my all time favorite funniest moments ever on the farm, which was the, the, oh God, oh

God, here it comes.

The Mr. T. It's a, I didn't know.

I don't know.

Was Rick there?

I didn't know Rick was there.

He was sitting right next to me in the golf cart.

Yeah, I had to bring it up.

You won't remember.

We were doing the media tour and you and I were in the golf cart.

Quaillard, Jeff Quaillard was driving.

Brad was in the back and we were driving into where in the woods, which was brand new.

And we were around the corner and they had moved the Mr. T. giant head.

And one of the great things we love is to pick on each other and Brad hates to be wrong.

And so he, he blurt out, Hey, it's Mike Tyson.

And it's like beat one, beat two, beat three.

And Quaillard couldn't stand it anymore.

He was so nice cause he's leading the tour.

Right.

And he finally says, no, it's Mr. T. I don't think we can read that.

He was sitting right next to me.

Cause I remember we were doing a tour together.

I had to bring it up cause you're on the show with us.

And of course it's an opportunity to embarrass Brad.

I thought, I honestly thought you were going to say the day, cause that was at the same

day that we walked to the what stage on Wednesday.

And I looked back and I said, I think that was the year before.

Yeah.

That's another legendary podcast issue.

Okay.

Just because if you're going to, if you're going to, if you're going to, if you're going

to bust my chops here, I'm going to make something very clear that we have been fighting over

for years, Rick, and you can be the judge and jury on this one because you're from new

Orleans.

You've driven up and down that street.

Is it Calliope or Caliope?

Come on.

I think it's Calliope.

My man.

My man.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

The stage of Bono is Calliope.

I had to think about that for a second.

Because of that, I wanted to make sure I wasn't getting my things confused, but yeah, I think

it's pretty, pretty sure it's Calliope.

I'm going to die on, they moved the hill and it's Calliope.

We resolved this last episode with Kyle.

I don't care.

He's literally the guy that started it.

I'm going with him and not a guy named Kyle.

I want to talk about what you, I want to transition and then talk about what you got going now

with Superfest, but you'd be as good as anyone.

What do you think, where do you think music festivals are today?

2022.

I know we're coming out of an unprecedented event that sort of hit the pause button.

Yeah.

It seems from where we're sitting that we've got a bunch of festivals, unbelievable number.

Fans have a ton of options, not just Bonnaroo, but boutique ones, big ones, small ones.

Some of them in their backyard, some of them they have to travel a great deal.

Where do you see the industry right now?

Well, look, I honestly don't pay a ton of attention to sort of the day to day machinations

of what's going on out there.

Pretty focused on the things that we work on.

But I think what you said is the case.

There's a lot more, I would say diversity of festivals and it's become more and more

niche here and there, right?

Which is something we saw happening pre-COVID shutdown and I think is just continuing to

pick up kind of where it left off, which is interesting to me.

I'm not sure I would have expected it that way.

But I think things being sort of specialized and focused, whether it's an artist doing

it or a second or third tier city doing something, just starting to become more and more niche

sort of experiences.

We've always looked to Europe as sort of where the future is because when we first started

this, that was the case.

Everything in Europe was many, many decades more advanced in terms of the evolution of

the festival market than it was in America, all the way down to even the equipment that

they had frankly over their tents and the like, comparatively to what was available

over here.

What you had certainly at the peak and I don't know where it is at now, I haven't followed

as much, but European and particularly the UK festival market, you saw a similar thing

where there were just a lot of really niche orientated events that kind of spurred off

of the bigger things that had been around and have been around for decades.

I think it's a natural evolution of things.

I think from a consumer standpoint, it's probably really awesome to have this amount of options

and diversity and choice and accessibility to these things.

In many ways, the creativity being expressed through this is a real positive.

This has been going on for eons, people gathering in this format, all the festival, whatever

it is, it's been happening forever kind of thing.

Nobody invented this and it'll continue to happen and evolve and morph in ways that people

driven by producers and people's imaginations as well as what the market opportunities are.

I think we're just kind of in another kind of interesting evolution of that with the

weirdness of coming back after COVID.

I hear you when you say that, but do you think that the big three, at least the big three

American festivals, do you think they're in any sort of trouble?

I don't think so.

No, what I'm seeing out there, I mean, look, first off, one of the really nice things for

the market of that stuff is that you do have very big companies that have a lot of resources

and a lot of incentive to continue these things on at a very high level.

I think that for the most part, that is a real benefit of the consolidation of our business

is that you do have businesses that can withstand the ebbs and flows of these things because

that is the nature of it.

You're always going to have like any kind of business, you're going to have your high

points and your low points and really, it's having the access to capital and the ability

to withstand those low points that make things durable.

That's very hard for small business and it's not easy, but easier for a large business.

I think we sometimes lose sight of why some of this can be a good thing.

It's easy to maybe look at what could be a negative around when businesses consolidate

and things like that.

There are good reasons for it and sometimes those things are very beneficial to consumers

and so I wouldn't underplay that in any capacity.

I think, look, what I'm seeing with things that I'm still involved with, I'm seeing

really good signs.

We're doing great with a bunch of our experience related stuff and some of the remaining festival

stuff that we have.

I just think you're going to like anything, things are going to evolve and change and

be lumpy a bit and that's the nature of business, that's the nature of marketing.

The thing that you're involved in now that's sort of in the same vein of highly curated

specialized event operations, right?

Is that what Superfest was sort of born from with that idea?

Well, Superfest is a new thing.

I'm happy to talk about that.

The other thing that we still produce these days is Outside Lands, the festival in San

Francisco's Golden Gate.

How is it that all these that we've never been outside lands?

It is one of the great ones in the country and have never been.

Especially knowing what we do.

I'm only going to blame you for that.

Thanks.

Well, now you're getting the hang of the show, Rick.

It didn't take long, Brad.

So no, man.

I mean, you're crazy.

You've been to New Orleans Jazz Fest.

This is a very sort of subject in this house.

We moved to New Orleans two days after Katrine, I mean, two days after Mardi Gras, three years

ago and then two weeks before a global pandemic sent us all to the house.

We rented a house inside of the Jazz Fest neighborhood.

We were on Ursuline and we got that house specifically so we could walk to Jazz Fest.

I get a job that brings me to Brooklyn in the city a week before Jazz Fest.

A month before Jazz Fest.

And you've never been to Jazz Fest?

We missed three Jazz Fest, yes.

But you've never been prior.

No, we got one Mardi Gras in us and then we got zero Jazz Fest.

I love Mardi Gras, by the way.

I'm a huge Mardi Gras fan and personally, I'm more interested in going to Mardi Gras

than Jazz Fest.

I love Jazz Fest too.

It's just for my personal things I'm interested in these days.

It's the great two weeks of my life.

It was legit two weeks of that.

Mardi Gras is amazing.

Underappreciated event nationally, I think.

People have a warped perception of what Mardi Gras really is.

That's exactly right.

I mean, most people think it's boobs in the French Quarter.

You don't see any of that.

None of that exists.

None of that exists.

Yeah, so very deep cultural event with many, many layers and flavors.

By the way, not to get off on the tangent here, but the best part of Mardi Gras for

me was Skull and Bones waking up on Mardi Gras Day, which is very, I can't tell you.

If you don't like doing things afternoon, you wake up at five o'clock in the morning

and you go to Treme, which is the oldest African American neighborhood in the country, and

you watch this crew come out in full outfits, and the whole point of Skull and Bones is

to walk around the neighborhood and beat on the doors and wake people up on Mardi Gras

Day.

They chant through the streets.

They've got an incredible drum circle that they create.

It was one of the most magical moments of my life.

It is very cool.

Super fast.

So where were we?

So, well, we were at Outside Lands still.

So you got to make it to Outside Lands.

You maybe go to Jazz Fest first.

Although we have Outside Lands in August this year.

You guys are all invited.

Come on out and come check it out with us.

It will feel very different and very familiar at the same time.

You will notice the style that we produce at and how things are done and some of the

look and feel.

The line looks incredible.

Who is mainly, are you guys booking yourself?

Most of the booking for Outside Lands really happens with Another Planet, our partner on

that festival.

So kind of like we partnered with Ashley at Bonnarooo, we partnered with the preeminent

local Northern California promoter, Another Planet.

They were sort of the principles behind Bill Graham Presents after Bill passed away.

They for a time ran that business and then kind of went off on their own and started

What is Another Planet?

They are awesome people.

They are really close friends.

They operate all the awesome venues here in the Bay Area like the Fox Theater and the

Greek Theater and the Bill Graham Civic and all that kind of stuff.

Because they are so good at and so entrenched in the regular day-to-day booking of talent

through this region, they really handle that.

Like you said, they do an incredible job.

It's hard.

It's really hard to book a festival.

Some of the insight to share on that just quickly is that people are always questioning,

why don't you have this band or that band or why is this band at the same time?

Let me tell you, it's not for reasons because of the way the person booking the festival

wants it to be.

If they could just wave a magic wand, it would all be perfect, but that's not how it works.

You got a lot of masters to serve there, all the different artists, their representations,

their schedules, their production.

It's a jigsaw puzzle on top of a jigsaw puzzle on top of a jigsaw puzzle.

I mean, it's a really difficult job.

So the people that do that, that do it really well are incredibly talented.

We still do it mostly independently too.

We're very fortunate to be in business with those folks.

Actually, sorry to interrupt, because you said jigsaws, I heard somebody describe it

as putting a jigsaw puzzle together without a picture or shapes.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, it's probably pretty good.

And having to negotiate with some pretty strong-willed people on the other side of the coin.

That's that.

Come out to outside lands though.

It is what really is for us, for the way that I kind of, for our history interpret it, it's

in between Jazz Fest and Bonnarooo.

It's taking the best of both.

You have sort of the advantages of a city festival in terms of the comforts that you

get along with that and that format.

And then you have this incredible Bay Area culture to play with.

And then you have the creativity of our team and what we do there.

It really is a special, special land.

How many years is this for outside lands?

I think it's 14.

It's been a minute, hasn't it?

Yeah, we got to pre-dial down.

I mean, it's just really...

What a fantastic festival.

Congratulations.

So, tell me about Super Fest.

I read a little bit about this.

It sounds exactly like you were talking about though.

It sounds exactly like you were describing where the industry, where festivals, where

live experiences are going in general.

Yeah, although with a big differentiation in how we're doing it and what the idea of

it is, it's almost sort of we're kind of trying to reverse engineer how one creates a festival.

So typically, somebody like us comes up with the idea and figures out all the P's and Q's.

Where is it going to be, who's going to be performing, what you're going to spend on

it, all those things.

And then you put it out to a community.

You put it out in the world and you hope that people want to attend it.

You hope in the case of Bonnarooo that some sort of foundational community forms around

that.

That's what you're hoping to achieve when you do something like this.

And what we're trying to do with Superfest is kind of the opposite.

We're kind of trying to start with the community.

This is the idea is let's assemble a bunch of people who have a passion for festivals

and experiences and music and culture and art and see if we can create something together

that in a way sort of is a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

That because we're doing it with the community, we are going to know exactly what to build

as much as you can before we do all of that work that I just mentioned before.

And the reason that we're doing this now and what is sort of helping to pave the way and

facilitate this is a lot of the things that have arisen in the sort of broader world of

crypto currencies and Web 3 and that whole sort of world of NFTs and things like that.

I know I probably said a bunch of words that some people know what I'm talking about and

a lot of people probably don't, which is totally understandable.

And so I can walk you through it a little bit, but the way to really process it quickly

is that what we're really trying to create is almost like a membership model, right?

Where people are joining sort of this organization, this thing, right?

It's Superfest with the intention of being a member, right?

And the way we're really kind of positioning it is like where people are really co-founders,

right?

We're inviting a community to help us create this thing from the ground up.

And we're doing that in a way that sort of comports with how communities are being created

around the crypto blockchain NFT sort of Web 3 universe of things.

And the way to think about a lot of that is really an evolution of how people are communicating

and coming together to create communities, right?

A lot of what precedes this is all the communities that have been created because of the internet

and because of digital communication and social media and things like this.

And what's been plugged into this is a way of really creating sort of value and ownership

and digital ownership that applies to people coming together to support or participate

in something collectively.

And so we're hoping that we become great facilitators, right?

We become the ones, the professionals who know how to do this but can help a group of

people coming together with that volition of creating something new and interesting

and progressive.

And like I said before, you know, like being done by the fans in the same way when we started

Bonnaroo, we were the fans.

Well, you know, we're not as much anymore, right?

I'm a guy in my mid 40s with, you know, family and kids and, you know, I'm not out there,

you know, as much as, you know, understanding.

And yeah, we have amazing people that work for us that do.

But when you really bring together the fans to build something, you know, we think we

can do something great.

And Brad, I'll give you one other reference point too for you guys.

One is Mardi Gras, right?

Like think about how Mardi Gras is created by the people that are going to Mardi Gras.

Yeah, you have a little bit of your floats and your, but those are the same thing.

Those crews that put on the big Mardi Gras parades, they're just collectives of people,

right?

Who are pooling their resources together and paying their dues into those crews so you

can have an endymion parade or an orpheus parade or whatever it may be, right?

The other reference point is Burning Man, which has been hugely influential to me.

You know, I started going, you know, midway kind of into Bonnarooo, producing Bonnarooo.

And frankly, a lot of the things that sort of became more of the community of elements

of Bonnarooo were because we were inspired by going to Burning Man.

And at Burning Man, most of the content there is created by the audience.

It is created by people collectively coming together and saying, I want to build this

really cool thing.

And the reason I want to do it is I want other people to have fun with it.

I want it to have a positive impact on other people.

And that's what we're trying to do.

I hear exactly what you're saying.

And especially the Mardi Gras reference makes a lot of sense, but you're obviously creating

something that's not linear.

So this is a hard question to answer.

But how far along the process do you think that you are?

Oh, we're early.

We're really early.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We are just forming the community.

We've got right now about 3,000 fairly active people in our Discord server.

Discord is a platform that many of the crypto projects and Web3 projects sort of use as

their sort of social communication platform.

And it's active.

We did this thing yesterday called a Super Jam, not surprisingly, where we opened it

up to the community to have a creative brainstorm on things around what do we want to create?

What kind of format do we want this experience to be?

Is it a traditional thing with bands on stages or is it something a little different than

that?

And so we had an amazing dialogue.

You actually can go in there and listen to it.

It was incredible listening to people who have been inspired by some of the things that

we've done say, hey, I wish we could do this at a festival.

I wish we could think about it this way.

Are you doing this on a regular basis?

So how do we find it?

So go to the Twitter handle first.

It's at Superfest.

And the Superfest is spelled with a three for the E. So it's S-U-P-E-R-F-3-S-T.

That's at S-U-P-E-R-F number three S-T. That Twitter feed is sort of the starting point

for communication.

From there, you can click on the link to get into the Discord server.

And that will unlock that whole social experience that I just talked about, being able to sort

of interact with the whole community.

And so yeah, go spend some time in there.

Check it out.

The way these things work is there will be a moment within sometime likely in June where

we'll do what's called a Mint.

And a Mint is where people essentially buy their membership.

That's the way to think about it.

And so we're going to be issuing essentially 3,000 founder membership tokens, the ability

to sort of buy that membership.

The initial group will be 3,000 people.

Now as we sort of go and figure out what we're going to do and figure out how to marshal

the resources to do that, we'll do other future Mints that will give people access to the

events and things like that.

But that's the starting place of how we're doing it.

And very different way of doing things.

Do you have any sense of how big or is it too early?

Do you not want to try to put a limit, a boundary on it?

Okay.

Yeah, it's really too early.

And the answer to many of these things, not everything, right?

There are things like safety and security and operational plans and business modeling

and budgeting that will be the domain of Superfly, right?

But most of the things are going to be around that are going to feed off of what the community

wants.

This is not for me to be making the decision as a producer.

This is me to be facilitating what the community wants.

And so some things will be conversational, right?

Brainstorms and just getting general input.

Some things will be a vote, right?

And each Superpass holder will have one vote.

You buy 10 Superpass, you can have 10 votes.

But essentially, we are going to put up a whole bunch of things for the community to

decide on or give us guidance on, right?

And that is kind of it's new.

This is an experiment.

It could be a disaster.

It could be amazing.

It won't be a disaster.

That means you guys haven't really done one of those yet.

In terms of when I say a disaster, I mean like, hey, maybe nobody will care, right?

Nobody will be interested and it won't be anything.

In terms of the actual producing of the experience, of course, you guys know how we do it and

we would never do something that wasn't going to be safe and run in a way that was appropriate

for taking care of people as they come to something that we create.

That's 25 years of history of delivering that.

We always will.

But this has never been done before.

This has literally never been done before.

Nobody has ever started a festival this way.

It's the first time anybody has taken this approach.

We think it's a really cool way to be thinking about things right now.

To your point earlier, Barry, frankly, I don't have a ton of interest in just going to build

another traditional festival.

I'd never say never in the right situation, the right moment.

If I feel we can do something that adds value to the world, then fantastic.

But the idea of doing it this way, this really lights me up.

This is exciting to me to take our skill set, experience, our history and apply it to this

new mode of doing things and to do it in a way that, frankly, hits on some of the things

that as I mentioned, the way that some of these other experiences are produced that

are affecting me, my life very positively.

If we can create something that has a similar dynamic for people.

I think it's just fascinating given what we've talked about for the last hour because you're

combining that, I won't call it naivete because you don't have naivete, but you're trying

to, it sounds to me like capture that sense of we don't know what's going to happen and

that's what's exciting coupled with we do kind of know what's going to happen because

we have 22 years worth of doing this.

So I would think part of the challenge is for you with your experience to get out of

the way basically.

You don't want to be the guy at the table saying that won't work and here's why.

You want to be the guy saying that's a crazy idea.

Let's figure out how to make it work.

Let's do it.

Let's give it a try.

It may work.

Well, yeah, you're right.

I mean, Barry, it's a really astute perspective you're having and I'm going to have to do

my best to do that because my role for a long time in our organization was to be the pump

the breaks guy a little bit and be the, hey, yeah, that's not that practical.

And so we actually had a conversation about this this morning on this project that one

of the things that I found interesting when we did the super jam yesterday is that a bunch

of the people who were throwing out ideas when I was giving some feedback, they were

like, oh my God, this is so great to have a professional who knows what they're talking

about and has done this to help inform us of what really can happen and what maybe shouldn't

happen.

And so that's a responsibility I'm going to take really seriously on this is not to

be a dream killer, right, because it's easy to be that.

And at the same time, you know, be a responsible, practical steward of trying to enable this

community to build something that really can happen.

And that is the that's the goal.

That's the volition.

We need to create something that really represents the wishes of this community in a way that

is safe and fiscally sound and all that kind of stuff.

And that's a cool challenge to do.

It's a cool challenge, a hard challenge to do when you're just dealing with a couple

of business partners.

It's a whole nother ballgame when you're dealing with thousands of people.

But I feel like the people that are going to be attracted to this are going to have

the right volition of doing something great and doing it in the proper way and following

the guidance that we have in terms of the things that really matter.

And so it's already been a pleasure, literally at the very beginning of this.

So I invite everybody to come check it out a little bit.

This is not to be meant to be, you know, a replacement for the kind of festival experiences

that people have.

Right.

Like, you know, I think if you go to Bonnarooo, you'd want to go to this as well.

Maybe not instead of it.

I don't think so.

Right.

But it's a very different experience than what you would get with something like Bonnarooo.

And you know, one of the things I want to just say, I got to probably run in a few minutes

and it's been delightful talking to you.

But one thing I wanted to make sure I got in before we ended here is that I am so excited

to go myself to Bonnarooo this year.

I am beside myself, to be honest, that I can now go experience Bonnarooo.

Is it because you haven't done it as a fan before or is there certain things about the

lineup, the festival that you're really excited about?

No, no, because I've never done it as a fan.

You know, I mean, my Bonnarooo experience has been working.

Now are you working?

It's Rick Farming camping?

I mean, not to say that.

I got extra room in the bus.

I got too much potentially negative karma that if I camped at Bonnarooo, I am confident that

everything bad would happen to me.

No, I'm going to stay in an RV type of situation because that's what I'm used to at Bonnarooo.

And at this point in my life, that's the comfort that I need.

But I, you know, my Bonnarooo experience, although don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of fun

moments out there and I've experienced the festival, you know, in a really enjoyable

way.

But, you know, I was always had a lot of responsibility, you know, whether it was to the business part,

whether it was to having lots of friends and family and business people that I'm hosting

there and like a whole, it was, you know, major, major part of our, you know, livelihood

and business life the whole way through.

And so now that I get to just come going with my brother, a bunch of our friends, my wife,

you know, we're just going to go have a blast.

I just, the idea of being at Bonnarooo and not having to worry about where I am at a

particular time or who I have to go meet with or what thing I have to go do or I like, and

I want to do all this stuff that like my friends have been doing for years.

Like one day I want to go get breakfast at Waffle House.

I've never done that.

You know, I've never done a lot of the things out there that, you know, many people...

Did you ever, in any of the days, did you ever go to the Christmas bar late at night?

Did you go to any of the late night parties on TA?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, a little bit.

Yes.

No, I've experienced it all in that regard, but always with like some, you know, not in

a full blown way, right?

I've always had to sort of, you know, just be, you know, in the moment and, you know,

this was work, right?

Like I have not been able to ever fully let loose and just enjoy Bonnarooo.

I love the idea that Rick's idea of letting loose is going to Waffle House in the morning.

That is pretty good.

Well, that's part of it, but it's just not having responsibility, frankly, you know?

It's like, you know, I don't know, like the only analogy I can give is not a good

one, but like things like this, you care so much about them.

They're almost like a child, right?

Like you care about it so much and you have such a responsibility to it, you know, that

like, you know, what have...

Some ways, the way I feel now is that like our, you know, child is an adult and it's

able to fully care for itself and I can still, you know, experience my child, right?

As I know many of my friends who have adult children who are like, now I can go hang out

with my adult child as a peer, as a friend, you know?

And I think that's what Bonnarooo is going to be like for me, right?

Which is like, it'll still always be something that we feel, you know, very connected to

in the creation of, but I don't have the responsibility of being that steward.

And again, for the first time in a long time, you get to be a fan, you're going to bring

a notepad?

You're going to take notes just to share?

Okay, all right.

No.

Good.

I'm just...

Yeah, you don't have to look around and take something into that garbage can.

Just...

Somebody should pick up that cup.

I get it, man.

I get it.

No, no, I'm just getting it going for you, you know?

Well good for you.

You know?

I want to, first off, thank you so much for the time.

It's tremendous and you know, what you and Ashley did, I said it to Ashley, Kaps, and

Barry makes fun of me, but it really did change lives.

You affected so many lives and you damn near saved the music industry.

So you know, thank you for that.

Thank you for your time.

I want to hopefully at some point pull you back into this ridiculous hemisphere, maybe

before Bonnarooo, and tell some Bonnarooo stories and just go deep into your well of Bonnarooo

information.

I'd love to hear some perspective from you on that and then maybe after Bonnarooo, hearing

about how it was as a fan.

Well, I appreciate you guys, love what you do, love that you're propagating the Bonnarooo

culture and vibe.

And you know, for as long as I'm here, I'm going to be doing that.

I care deeply about the festival and the community around it and I want to continue to do everything

I can to push that forward.

And so thanks for what you guys do and for your time and happy to ship with y'all whenever

it works for you.

Also, what are you playing right now?

What's on the turntable back there?

What's the last thing you play?

Well, things have been broken for a while.

Much to my wife's chagrin, every time she comes in here, she kind of gives me a little

like...

The record player's got COVID.

...because she loves that.

Most of these records, frankly, are her.

I'm a digital guy living in a digital world.

I joke with her.

She's an analog girl living in a digital world.

And so she gets frustrated that she can't just put something hard and press a button.

But no, there's so much good music out there these days, man.

Well, you got my favorite band in the world right now at the Outside Lands Wetleg.

Oh, they're great.

Absolutely.

I'll check that out.

Thank you, Rick.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right.

There you go.

Rick Farman.

I'm going to say part one of our conversation because I feel like we've got multiple more

to go with them.

I hope so.

I hope so because yeah, you know he has some stories, the funny stuff, the behind the scenes

stuff.

I mean, you ask him about what were the challenges.

I felt like we could have gone deep.

Yeah, we could have gone an hour on that kind of stuff.

I mean, I want to talk to him just about the rainstorm of the third year because I can't

imagine how that changed everything.

I told the story a hundred times when I woke up that morning after the major rainstorm

and we were two feet sunken into the ground and a random kid with an ATV was pulling cars

out of the mud.

I mean, it was an absolute shit show.

If I was them, I would look around and be like, I don't know if I want to do this.

I remember going to bed that night watching the lightning thinking I'm going to die because

I'm in a pup tent.

I'm not going to survive this, but also the dust storm.

Two years later, the dust storm.

I remember walking out into the center room and the parade and thinking, oh, they're putting

off smoke bombs.

These people spare no expense.

And then I realized it was dust.

And then I thought I've got Legionnaires disease.

I'm going to die.

I didn't know how much of a hypochondriac you were, Barry.

Jesus.

I'm breathing.

I couldn't see my hand in front of me.

I thought this is people's funk.

This is not good.

So yeah, they've overcome a lot of things.

You know, to hear him talk about they didn't expect 70,000 people that first year.

Imagine that, you know, it's the old you throw a party and invite 10 people and a hundred

show up, you know, kind of a big deal.

So it was great.

It was great talking to him.

Yeah.

There's a lot of area area to cover.

That's for sure.

Guys, I miss you and I hope I see you again soon.

You cut off my Shaky Knees.

Oh, is there more Shaky Knees?

Well, yeah, that's fine.

I'll just I'll throw out a shout out to the dashboard mom.

She wanted me to mention her.

Are you at a dashboard, mom?

Yeah.

Oh, what else did I miss on shaking these talks?

What else do I don't know?

You cut me off.

So I'm sorry.

I was trying to get to Rick.

We got a long show.

We got a long show.

Yeah.

Right.

Hold, hold, hold that conversation about, excuse me, hold that conversation about shaking

these and we'll talk about it next.

You need to hold up a picture or tell her any specific you got any any messy, you know,

that it she asked for a shout out.

So I had to throw it in.

Well, there you go.

Well, I want to hear more about shaking these.

I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to cut you off.

So put a pin in that and we'll come back to it next week.

OK, OK.

Because hopefully next time it turns out we need content for next week.

And I got another.

Well, hopefully next time we'll have the schedule.

It should be coming out pretty soon.

I've asked and not gotten any answer, so the times and all.

You think it would come out?

Is it normally in the middle of May?

I guess it is.

Yeah.

OK.

All right.

Yeah.

So we got schedule and shaking his talk for next week.

Put that in the books, kids.