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Really have loved all these lineups hope tomorrows looks just as good Esteban. Haven’t you been once or twice and if so what were your thoughts?
I took my oldest in 2022 for his belated xmas present since he couldn't figure out what he wanted to do. We had one Super VIP and one regular VIP. Plan was to swap off wristbands after I got snacks and let him just roll back and forth with the drinks (super was sponsored by Angel's Envy). Let me go to that old thread and grab the review. On a side note, we really loved Louisville and wish it wasn't so far of a drive since there's a lot to do and see in and around there.
Friday I ended up walking shaped like a Z with a left lean. I was laughing at myself because I was completely coherent yet no chance of standing up straight. We saw some pretty incredible shiz yesterday although we got in late afternoon. Lukas & POTR was pretty good again. Isbell was mostly good except also incredible for Last of My Kind which had me close to tears. Whatever song he ended the show with also great. Brandi was dynamite so she’s hit it out of the park 2 out of 2 for shows for me. Kings of Leon was also very good. Brandi’s Covers were Creep and Bowie’s space Oddity and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I had always skipped Kings and know like 2 songs at most, but they exceeded what I figured to get from them. Today is going to be great - Pearl Jam, St. Vincent, Robert Randolph, Reignwolf if Greta is good that will be a bonus.
Saturday Pearl Jam was awesome. Purple Rain, Elderly Woman, Jeremy, Alive , Do the Evolution, Garden. Quack that was a good show. St. Vincent was awesome but it was a dead crowd which we couldn’t understand because of how good the show was. I got to bs with Douglass about 20 minutes in the afternoon, so that was cool too. I gotta wake up but I’ll post some more later.
Sunday We had a blast today. I didn’t get in until about 4:30 EDT to go get my free Angels Envy Rye. Today wasn’t nothing so much for me but it’s whatever. Marcus King Band* was great. Voodoo Child was up there. He and his fiancé did Hey Now. Doobies was fun as shiz. Black Water into Listen to the Music finale was fun. Stapleton was pretty good too but I didn’t get Metallica covers so I will withhold judgment until the future. Your boy likes Kentucky and met a million hip people. But I got to sign out for annihilated level shiz.
Here was the overall writeup:
Here's the wrap-up, music first. Sound was great for every set I saw except Reignwolf was super scratchy. I didn’t care since he’s usually got the distortion cranked up. They have side by side main stages, so you don’t have to wait long between shows. The food and bourbon stages were also side by side and much smaller. They would get some bleed from the main stages, but that was to be expected. There was also a bar type installation which featured some live bluegrass and then piped in music. I wanted to do a top ten, but I went in late Friday and Sunday so only caught a handful of acts each of those days. It’s chickenshiz, but I came out with a 1A/1B/1C between Pearl Jam, Jack White and Brandi. It's not the best PJ set I ever saw, but I think it was my favorite Jack White. Brandi was Brandi, so these are very close.
1A. Pearl Jam
1B. Jack White
1C. Brandi
4. Jason Isbell & 400 Unit
5. Doobie Brothers
6. Alanis (I got one hand in my pocket…)
? St. Vincent
The rest:
Chris Stapleton was good, but I don’t really listen to country and don’t know any of his songs.
Caamp was more campy then when I saw them a few years ago. They did get in the first stanza of War Pigs which woke me up, but they should have played the whole song.
Always Sunny Podcast – That was in the bluegrass installation thing, but it was super packed and I couldn’t really understand what was all being said. I caught those guys earlier that day on stage with Chef Tiffani Faison helping her make porchetta and just taking swigs of whiskey and clowning. That was enjoyable
Greta Van Fleet – I couldn’t take this show seriously whatsoever. My middle kid digs them, but I was with my oldest son who does not and was not amused. I had seen them at ACL a while back and a concert at UNO that was actually pretty good. But he was in hater mode throwing an occasional heckle out there and just clowning the whole show. 4 different times he brought me to tears laughing, so even though there were some good rock parts, it was all coming off as a joke to me. The show started with the singer coming out in a one piece tight 70’s style rockstar outfit which outlined his small one which was annoying because 20% of the show was him on the big screens with the weenie sort of the middle of the shot. Between that and endless “what is this shiz?” in my ear, I enjoyed being at the show for its comedy aspects if not the show itself. On the flip side, I had people tell me they liked that show a lot so it hit home for some.
Revivalists – Solid as ever. They’re never a band that I seek out or go to their concerts, but I always have a good time seeing them. I got love love love love love and Wish I Knew You were my highlights, but the whole set was fun. For some reason I saw a ton of people wearing Revivalists t-shirts this weekend.
Elle King was decent if nothing special. I could only ever remember seeing her on a stream. I dug Chainsmoking, Hard Drinking Woman. She also covered Charlie Daniels Band Long Haired Country Boy which was okay but hopefully ironic. Quack him and his stupid shiz, but he’s dead.
Father John Misty was alright. He came out kind of looking like a retro porn star so we weren’t sure if he was pulling schtick or if he’s changed his image. Band was competent though I expected more from the set than I got.
Shakey Graves was pretty good. I didn’t remember giving a shiz last time I walked passed one of his sets, but he was sufficiently entertaining.
Japanese Breakfast was pretty decent. Seemed a little less pop and more jangly than what I’ve seen her do in the past. Nothing was great or very technical, but I appreciated the performance. I met her and her guitarist in the FJM crowd. She said it was her favorite lineup she ever played on and is a giant FJM fan.
Kings of Leon was alright. I stayed for the whole thing. It was a big show and mostly unmemorable for me except it sounded good watching it.
Lukas and POTR was also alright but sort of monotonous. No hate, but I saw him before and don’t probably need to see him again.
Marcus King Band – Energetic, rocked, a good time. I had actually forgot he was playing, so that was a treat when he came on not long after we walked in that afternoon. I had only ever watched him on streams but possibly remember him playing some of the Griz superjam at Bonnaroo.
Reignwolf was scratchy. He said he’s usually sleeping that time of the day. It was him with his guitar and kick drum and his drummer was also on this tour though he played on only about 60% of the songs. As usual, Reignwolf played behind his head, with his teeth, mike stands, while rolling on the stage, the drummer’s back, etc. He dedicated his last song to Pete Townshend ending by leaping onto his drummer, knocking him over with both of them crashing onto the stage together. Solid ending.
Shovels and Rope was kind of boring. I saw them once before so I knew it wasn’t really going to be much for me. It was okay, but they just don’t really ever seem to go anywhere live.
St. Vincent – This is the hardest one to write about. Sound was immaculate. The performance was quacking great but people just stared at her. Not many cheers or applause or anything at all. I know it was a rock crowd that night with Greta and Pearl Jam following her set. And she started off with Digital Witness, Down, Birth in Reverse and New York. So maybe people were thinking it was going to be a soft performance or whatever. She ended up playing a lot of guitar later on and did get some appreciation. But I just wasn’t understanding how more people there didn’t know her or were bewildered or whatever. It would have been my #4 show of the weekend had the crowd even not sucked just a little.
Festival Itself - Brisket Sliders @ Café 502 were good and the brick oven pizza was also pretty good. Lots of quality bourbon was available, but many of the roostertails were premixed. Luckily in Beyond we could get Angel’s Envy Rye with soda water, so I had my drink most of the weekend. They oversold what the specific installations were, but that didn’t mean they were bad or anything – just many of them overhyped for what was actually there. Like the “arcade” which had only 3 or 4 video game machines in it. Cell service got progressively worse each day as crowds filled in, so that kind of sucked. The grounds were fine and easy enough to navigate. The crowd was a late millennial into Gen X crowd which is on the older side/dad fest territory. If I had to characterize age, it would be halfway between ACL (which is an older crowd than most multi-genre fests) and Jazz Fest. So most of the people maybe between 35-50 with older and younger people there as well. It changed a little each day. Saturday, because Pearl Jam was playing, got packed. I talked to several people who were following them on a 3 night run (Nashville, Louisville, St. Louis). Someone said they were told it was the most sold day of B&B’s history. I have no idea if that’s true, but it was the most packed of the weekend. Sunday had more of a country crowd because of that day’s lineup. Not rednecks, more just older music fans of country. There was a decent sized police presence, but they weren’t really messing with anyone and several of them turned out to be pretty nice. I didn’t see any fights or anyone get arrested though there was one old guy who dropped out in the beer line yesterday and had to be wheeled off and a couple other people attended to – one of those was during Pearl Jam where they stopped the show to let the paramedics get to someone in the crowd. It probably cost us a song, but that’s the right thing to do. So hopefully that individual ended up okay whatever happened. I didn't feel like the fest was unique except for the emphasis on drinking bourbon which is a large plus for me.
Louisville – We came away with a very positive view on the city. Fleur De Lis were everywhere, so I was already happy about that. Most everyone we met was nice there too. We ate at the festival mostly, but we did get over to Grind Burgers. I didn’t realize until later but that was on an old Diners Drive-ins and Dives where the chef roasts her own veggies for vegetable burgers. I remember seeing the episode after the fact and would have gotten one of those if I could have remembered earlier. We tried to go to Mussels and Burgers, but they had a one hour wait. I had a great roostertail at a tasting we went to at Stitzel-Weller. We did a tour at Evan Williams. It was mostly a historical thing with lots of movies. But at the end it’s only Evan Williams. Finally we got to Peerless which was the distillery I enjoyed the most. That’s an actual working bourbon production facility. The tour was great. Upstairs you could see the yeast doing its work in the 6 tanks. Everything smelled of wood and bourbon and I was loving that. Tasting was good there too, so I bought a tshirt and a tin of bourbon smoked coarse black pepper. It smells wonderful, and we can’t wait to cook with it. My only knocks on Louisville are extremely minor. I assumed Uber/Lyft would be super easy. But with the festival in town as well as the people who came up for the FSU-Louisville football game, it was often impossible to get a driver. We saw scooters everywhere and some e-bikes. In hindsight, either having known about those or having checked out the bus service options, we wouldn’t have gotten stuck waiting a few times. There are a couple of spots down by the river where you can tell the sewer pipes are cracked as you’ll get smacked with a sewage smell randomly for like 3 steps walking on a block only to disappear - nothing major just notable. It's possible flow was just slow because it was dry and the river was super low as well. Otherwise, it was clean with trees and flowers everywhere. Also the lack of day eating options on the edge of downtown was kind of a pain. Trying to find an early open bar near the river distilleries was impossible. Not everyone wants a drink at noon, but we walked into Michter’s when it opened and it was already a 1 hour wait. I have no serious complaints and would go back to Louisville any time.
The one comedy aside was trying to figure out how to walk back to the hotel at nighttime. We went 0-2 until we got it right on Saturday. Thursday was insane because we thought we knew exactly where we were going. We ended up getting to what we thought was our hotel only to find one of our drunk friends sitting in the lobby proceeding to tell us, “what’s up? We’re at the wrong hotel.” The chances of both of us making the same exact mistake and ending up at the same wrong hotel on the other side of the grounds and airport was pretty slim. There are a dozen or so of them close by. But we got a laugh out of it. Shout out to LLL for some clutch late night food and alcohol and hanging out this weekend. Yo.
Appreciate that! Definitely depending on lineup might make it my first year. Hoping for something good.
Yeah for sure. The year we went, the festival went from +/- noon til 10:30pm Th and Su and from +/- noon to 11pm F/S. We had mornings free, and my friend who had been up there to visit before knew to book a few distillery tours. All the tours come with a walk through (if they are an operating distillery) that ends with a tasting. I can't afford to drink it, but Peerless was my favorite and probably Stitzel-Weller had the best grounds. My understanding is there are several 25-30 minutes outside of town that are supposed to be great, but we didn't go to any of those. The other problem we had was failing to check out public transportation - scooters, buses, etc. Maybe it was just the combination of the FSU people in town and people there for the festival, but Lyft and Uber were no dice a couple of times we needed them. notdarkyet lives up there and may be able to confirm if it was just a random weekend to not be able to find driver service or if that's a normal thing.
If you do have interest in the lineup and don't know anyone who lives there, the festival is what I think is called Highland Festival Ground which is roughly where the I-65 intersects with I-264. It's directly across the I-264 from the Louisville Airport, so there are hotels all around the perimeter. They weren't cheap, but it wasn't anything crazy. I'd probably look into Air B&B/Home Away/VRBO if I was going back and had anyone to split it with. No chance I can go this year, but I'll be looking forward to the lineup announcement.
I am looking forward to this lineup. It is my home town and only 3 hours away for me now. Can anyone tell me a little about the vibe of the festival and how it is ran? over all reviews?
DWP are great at festivals. Bourbon a chill vibe, love the site/grounds. I attended Pearl Jam 2022 and it was the largest 1 day attendance DWP have had in their 15+ years existence, but it was great. Ran smooth. Have been to the past 2 Louder than Lifes (the week after Bourbon) and there have only been a few minor hiccups; Parking lot was double booked last year for some reason, football games. Love the lineups, communication, vibes, and logistics
Post by Bluntmaster3000 on Jan 24, 2024 12:01:17 GMT -5
Holy fuck they have the best line up of the year. Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, MMJ, the national, TWOD, and more. They sent it to me, but I have no clue how to post. Purchasing tickets
I'm so trained to not expect anything in the middle lines of these festivals so it hits different when you see Soul Asylum, Son Volt and Suzanne Vega buried deep on the same line a dozen rows in.
This is the first message board I've ever been on, the only reason I joined is because I love Bonnaroo and wanted to read and talk about it all year long.
That Thursday is staggering. If it was sandwiched between Neil, Beck, Fleet Foxes and a healthy amount of bourbon I could even see Matchbox 20 being a vibe
Post by faye webster on Jan 24, 2024 12:41:47 GMT -5
That Sunday is one of the best music fest days for my taste that I've seen in a long time. Tyler, MMJ, The National, TWOD, SDRE, Dino Jr, Neal Francis, Yonder Mountain would be incredible.
