“I smell hippies,” a marionette puppet exclaimed during Beck’s set. Every June for the last six years the pungent aroma of hippies has flooded a 700-acre farm in the sleepy town of Manchester, Tenn. Located 60 miles southeast of Nashville, the annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival becomes the sixth largest city in Tennessee for a weekend with the addition of 70,000 concert goers.
My mind was made up going into Bonnaroo that the scene would be way too patchouli and tie dye for my indie rock palate. It turns out I was only half right.
This year’s Bonnaroo had its fair share of hippie friendly bands like the aforementioned Phil Lesh and Friends, Oysterhead, Robert Randolph and the Family Band and Damian Marley, but the stages were taken over by a breed somewhat foreign to the festival, indie rock. Jam bands had to make room for such favorites as Ben Folds, Bright Eyes, Death Cab for Cutie, Beck and the arty juggernaut Radiohead.
Could the patchouli-scented hippies and the elitist-indie rockers get along for 3 long days while squished together like sardines in Centeroo and the surrounding campground? The answer, it turns out, is yes.
After being directed through a labyrinthine toll area, cars were searched by local police for drugs and other contraband, which would later seem futile as clouds of non-cigarette smoke wafted through stage audiences. I was then directed to the wrong parking area twice and found myself locked out of day parking because its attendant had already partaken in one of the many illegal substances that had been smuggled in, leaving him incapacitated and sitting in front of the locked gate mumbling unintelligible phrases. I eventually left the car in RV parking, which would later turn out to be a grievous mistake.
After surveying the land of Bonnaroo where the performance areas are annoyingly labeled What Stage, Which Stage, This Tent, That Tent and The Other Tent and weeding through seemingly endless vegetarian food stands, I made my way to Which Stage for the first performance on my agenda, Ben Folds. Folds’ set was lined with favorites from his days in Ben Folds Five and his more recent solo material. “You are a s—load of people,” Folds proclaimed between songs.
Folds was followed by Bright Eyes who was joined on stage by an all-star cast including bluegrass gods Gillian Welch and David Rawlings as well as Jim James from My Morning Jacket and Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals.
The next time slot put both the hippies and indie-rockers in a bind as the returning Oysterhead and Robert Randolph and the Family Band were playing at the same time and Death Cab for Cutie was playing at the same time as Cat Power.
I stayed and watched Death Cab’s set where the normally stationary quartet bounced from one side of the stage to the other while unleashing a barrage of hits from their back catalogue.
After moving over to the What Stage, headliners Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers took to the stage 45 minutes late with special guest Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac) and played a set that seemed more like a greatest hits record.
I then headed back to the parking lot where I would look for my car for the next four hours because it had been blocked in by an RV.
The second day of Bonnaroo I headed to What Stage to take in the day’s headliners Hall of Famer Elvis Costello, Beck and Radiohead. After more than stellar performances from Costello and Beck, Radiohead, the band most everyone had been waiting for, exploded onto the stage with a pantheon of songs from their back cataloge and some new tunes from their forth coming seventh long player to which the crowd swayed along. For the next two hours, the crowd tossed thousands of glowsticks into the air as well as at Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke who playfully tossed them back.
On Father’s Day Bonnaroo was wrapping up with only a few noteworthy bands playing for those of the indie rock persuasion. After a noisy performance by Sonic Youth I packed up my bags and headed home leaving the rest of Bonnaroo to the hippies and Phil Lesh and Friends.

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