Devolver had broken up in Feb of 2002. A more accurate description would be Andy left the band. It was not the same without his wailing wail. Then in April I had gotten laid off from my job as a production assistant at Keystone Machine, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. When Bonnaroo was first announced, I was pretty psyched. Widespread Panic was headling the first 2 nights and Trey was headlining the third. 2 sets by SCI, Galatic, Les Claypool and Moe. It seemed it was highlighting the second generation of jambands, with the Dead, Allmans, Hot Tuna, and Little Feat being the first generation.
We got our tickets on the first day and within a week it had sold out. One has to remember that at this time, there really wasn’t a huge festival scene in the US. Europe has had big festivals for years but Woodstock ’99 left such a bad taste in people’s mouths that it seemed like big, multi band festivals were a thing of the past. Without Bonnaroo, no Coachella, no All Tomorrow’s Parties and the myriad of other fests that are around today. Yes, All Good and Gathering of the Vibes had continued on through the 90’s and up to this day, but neither of them was on the scale of what Bonnaroo was attempting to pull off.
A lot of people from Hanover were heading down but my group was limited to Wendy, Andy, Adrian, and myself. Adrian and Andy went in his car and Wendy and myself rolled down in the Shempmobile AKA a 1995 Ford Escort station wagon that I had just purchased that Feb. We left in the early afternoon with an estimated driving time of 12 or 13 hours. I led the way. Our best route was to take Interstate 81 South down the backbone of Virginia. This is one LONG drive through VA. Something like 7 or 8 hours total. You hit the Richmond split and you think alright, half way through the state when it’s more like a third of the way through the state. While driving, a bird decided to make its acquaintance with my front grill. Going along smooth when Boom! An explosion of feathers engulfed the front of my car. Adrian was following us and said it looked like a feather pillow had exploded. After double checking everything was all right with my car, we continued our journey.
We hit Tennessee and begin our long trip across it as Manchester was located nearly smack dab in the middle of the state. For whatever reason, we were going to approach it from the south. The interstate took a little dip into Alabama, which had a huge fireworks store right over the border. It was well after midnight by now and the radio said there was a 10 to 12 mile traffic backup to get into the festival heading southbound. But as I said, we were heading in from the south, so we were northbound and had only a few miles of backup. To quote Mr. Burns, “Excellent”.
We hit the backup just as the sun was rising. As I said before, I had just bought the new and improved Shempmobile in Feb, so this was its first real road test. As we were sitting in traffic waiting for the US-Germany World Cup quarterfinal match from South Korea to begin, my car began to overheat. I found out later that the fan that cools the engine never worked. So to prevent an engine meltdown over 1000 miles away from home; I had to turn on the heat to draw the fever off the motorblock. This made the car very uncomfortable to be in. Andy still swears he suffered heatstroke from this and even gave a speech on it during his matriculation at the Bradley Academy for the Arts. But then again, he did quit Devolver, so fair is fair.
We eventually had to turn the car off and I pushed it into the gates of Bonnaroo. A cop at the gate said “You’ll have to do something about that car”. No shit Officer Sherlock. At this point, I just wanted to get it inside and setup our campsite. The car issue could wait until we left.
While waiting in line inside the gate, the only station Adrian could find the football match on was an AM Spanish radio station. Adrian’s family, who are Italian by way of Argentina, speak their own unique language. It’s a mashup of Italian, Spanish, and American English. So he was able to make out most of the match. Some guy in front of us didn’t want to know any of the details. Why, did you record it on your VCR for post-festival viewing? Remember kids, this was 10 years ago. No DVR’s. Adrian wisely ignored him and we got to listen in real time. The US put up the good fight before losing to Germany 1 nil.
We finally made it to our campsite. While pushing my car in, we ran to 2 girls from the Hanover area, M and K. I’ll use their initials because now they’re respectable members of society. I dated K for awhile so it was cool to run into her again. In a strange twist, Adrian had dated M. What can I say, that’s how we roll on Tour. Parked the car and raced to setup our tents and QuikShade, as space was at a premium. We set up and Andy and Wendy passed out under the QuikShade. Adrian and myself wandered around to soak up everything.
The first day was long and hot. I remember Govt Mule and Les Claypool being the highlights of the daytime shows. Ween played, only knew Roses are Free. Andy and Wendy had set up their chair in the misting tent. Brilliant! I was really geeked about the seeing Widespread being the headliner for the first night. They delivered a solid show but were saving the high quality dank shit for the second night.
Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe and the Keller Williams Incident were playing late night sets. SCI/Keller was so packed it was pointless to even try to get in. I checked out most of Karl Denson until I fell asleep on the ground and was kicked by several people. I remember running into Cary Lutz at some point that night. As I was walking back to the tent site after the show, I heard Galactic breakout Big Bottom Girls by Spinal Tap. They had 5 bass players for it. Sorry I missed but had been up for almost a day and half straight and still had 2 more days to go. I found my tent and crashed.
Adrian had run into M and K at some point that evening. He ended up sleeping in their tent the first night. Everything was setup for getting fitful rest until their neighbors decided to have incredibly loud sex in a field full of nonnoise canceling tents. Ahh to be in the land of dirty free loving hippies.
The first Bonnaroo was held over the Summer Solstice weekend, with the second day of the festival being the longest day of the year. The sun rose at the rather early hour of approx. 5:30 AM. I had my tent setup so the first beams of light came right through my front door. Way to go Gallielo of Ganja. So my tent was rather hot in about 15 minutes time. I crawled out of it and slept in the shade of my car. I needed my rest ‘cause I had a full day of music.
After some consultation with Adrian, he made a few good points. This was the first time either of us had seen the North Mississippi North All-Stars and they kicked ass. Adrian was also blown away by the John Butler Trio and said I had to mention Blackalicious performed without Blackalicious. Galactic played 3 times during the festival. I only caught the daytime set but Stanton Moore is the Man!
Adrian and myself ended up hanging with M and K for most of the day. The lineup on the Main Stage was String Cheese and then Widespread Panic. We were ready for liftoff by the time WSP hit the stage. While I didn’t know it at the time, WSP guitarist Mickey Houser was dying of pancreatic cancer. He looked bad but played his heart out. It would be the last time I’d see him perform. But he left it all on the stage.
The highlights included Steve Winwood joining Panic for Glad and Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. (He also sat in with SCI for I’m a Man, a staple of the golden era of Devolver). The peak moment of the weekend came at the end of the first set. The boys brought out Dottie People and the People’s Choice Choir while the lights were down. They then proceeded to unfurl an all time, peak moment in my existence, musical or otherwise. They had a gospel tent revival for 40,000 people. My mind is still shredded. I got goosebumps writing about it. I’m kind of glad that I didn’t know about Mickey’s condition. The emotions would have been a little too overwhelming.
Can’t recall anything else about that night lol. See, some of my memory is impaired. Rest up and get ready for the third and final day. One thing about Bonnaroo is the unique musical collaborations that occur. I mentioned the Keller Williams Incident before. On the last day they had Col. Bernie’s Bucket of Brains, featuring Col. Les Claypool, Bernie Worell, Buckethead and Brain. We saw Buckethead walking around before the show. But really, how can you miss a guy over 6 feet tall with a mask and KFC bucket on his head.
It was a mostly improv set with the respective masters of their instruments tearing it up. We ran into Beard of Frank Miller’s Beard at one point. He was telling us the story of how he was squatting over a toilet that wasn’t all that clean. Through the danger that is gravity and keeping your balance, he fell out of the portapotty. Adrian had remarked earlier he was trying to hold it in all weekend because of the condition of the portapotties. I remarked the ones I just used were clean enough to eat in. He thus took one of the most satisfying shits of all time. This was the only time it rained the whole weekend, and then it was just enough to settle the dust.
Later that day, we met up with M and K again for one final day of insanity. M had broke her sunglasses the day before and lost one of the arms. As we settled in for the late afternoon set of Phil and Friends featuring Bob Wier, we found her lost sunglass arm. In a giant field, we somehow managed to end up in the same exact spot as yesterday. Phil’s set was solid with the highlight being Tennessee Jed. But the Cryptical>Other One>NFA>Cryptical> I Know You Rider was pretty fucking good as well. You can stream it here.
http://archive.org/details/2002-06-23.paf.schoeps.lutch.10263.sbeok.flacf
Trey was the last night’s headliner. This set is famous for a few things. One,
Trey is fucked up out of his skull. He is gushing over all the love he has for this place and overwhelmed by everyone’s support. Now remember, at this time Phish was broken up and A LOT of people expected them to reunite at Bonnaroo. He also spent a lot of time thanking the Green Crew for cleaning up after shows. This was also Trey’s solo Afro Cuban Funk before Phish 2.0 band’s peak as far as I’m concerned. They tore it up. The show is so long it takes 4 cd’s just to contain it all.
There was no music after Trey so our plan was to head out right after Trey ended. We had packed up out campsite and drove our vehicles closer to the exit. Which a lot of other people had done as well. While we were waiting in traffic to get out, my car began overheating again. Now it wasn’t very hot out at 1 or 2 AM but that didn’t matter. Wendy was supposed to ride home with me but had to work Monday night so she rode with Adrian and Andy braced himself for another journey in the Devil’s Limo.
We pulled over by the exit and just threw out tarps and sleep on them. The car next to us was still partying hard, doing lines of coke to Oasis. While I do like Oasis, listening to jacked up people singing along with Champagne Supernova at 3 AM is not awesome.
Once the sun was up, traffic was moving pretty steadily so we hit the road. While rolling out, we ran into Kim and Jess. Back in the day, these 2 could out party pretty much anyone I knew. It was early AM but they were hanging out drinking under a tree. Found out later their crew was waiting on them so they could roll out of the site. D’oh!
Somewhere in VA we hit a drive thru to get grub for lunch. While waiting in line, my car started steaming. I thought if we could just get back on the highway and get air flowing over it, which would cool it down, we would be golden. While driving at 65 mph, my timing belt gave out and the whole car shut off. Andy guided it to the side of the road safely. Wendy had left us her cellphone in case something like this happened. I called Triple A and they said it would be an hour until a tow truck arrived. At that moment a state police cruiser rolls up and got a tow truck in 10 minutes flat. Damn thank you officer for not noticing how bad us dirty hippies stank.
The tow truck driver was a redneck and big Dale Earnhart Sr. fan but luckily I knew enough about NASCAR to shoot the shit with him for the 4 hours it took us to get home. I have premium service with AAA so the first 100 miles were free but I still had to cough up 140 bucks for the rest of it. I still smoked cigs at the time and had the ash fall off and burn right through my Phil Lesh Miller Light t-shirt. (Lesh filling Bass great)
As I’ve said before, Tour can be tough. I was unemployed at the time so I had more than enough time to come back to reality after one of the most amazing musical weekends of my life. While Bonnaroo has devolved into a more typical music fest with nonjamband headliners and even really shitty hiphop (looking at you Kanye), the first one will always hold a special place in my heart and soul for the great times with my friends.
Dave Kemp
BA American Studies
PhD in Rock and Roll
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