The New Breed Brass Band felt right at home leading an enthusiastic crowd of dancers, singing along in their eccentric hats and costumes, through a colorful, adrenaline-fueled second line parade at Bonnaroo.
They led second lines on two consecutive days, adding some New Orleans flavor to the Manchester, Tennessee, festival that takes its name from a creole blues and rock legend.
A few hours later, the young New Orleans musicians, all proteges of Crescent City hero Trombone Shorty, played a packed and rowdy club stage called The Christmas Barn, named after the Tulane University dive bar, Snake And Jake’s Christmas Club Lounge.
With more than 125 bands and 20 comedians performing over the long weekend, flavor from the Big Easy is always included in what is often described by artists and fans as “Disneyland for music lovers.”
The festival is named after Dr. John’s 1974 album, “Desitively Bonnaroo,” which means “a really good time” in creole slang, and that’s definitely been the vibe here since the festival’s 2002 birth.
Eighty-thousand music lovers annually flock to the place now known as “the farm,” which spans about 375 football fields and boasts at least 12 stages.
To give you an idea of the diversity of talent on display this year, here are a few highlights:
— A commanding headlining set by hip-hop star Kendrick Lamar.
— The newly “plugged in” Mumford & Sons rocking out the main stage.
— A gutsy performance by roots rock band Alabama Shakes.
— A late night dance party with electronic dance music guru Deadmau5.
— A raging blues set from Gary Clark Jr.
— Sets from longtime greats such as Billy Joel, Robert Plant and Earth Wind & Fire.
Bonnaroo vets on a wild ride
“This is a different world. It’s like going to Mars or a different dimension,” Jim James, lead singer of My Morning Jacket, told CNN.
A long-time favorite of Bonnaroovians, MMJ returned to the main stage for its seventh show at Bonnaroo. The band grew up here, and James, a spiritual fellow, describes each trip to Manchester as a pivotal moment in his life.
“For me, it’s all about stepping out of reality for a little while and just come to a place where you can be who you want to be and do what you want to do in this freeing way,” he said. “It’s just a good place to get lost and forget about life for a while — in a good way.”
When co-creators Superfly Presents and AC Entertainment organized the inaugural festival 13 years ago, it wasn’t like the festival scene today, when it seems like large-scale events unfold almost every other summer weekend in America.
This year alone will see about 1,500 multiday music festivals in more than 70 countries. The explosion of such events has dramatically changed the concert industry landscape — and the way fans experience live music.
This year, Bonnaroo’s promoters sold a controlling interest of their festival to Live Nation Entertainment, and the plan is to add more infrastructure to the musical landmark.
“It’s crazy the era of music festivals we are in because there is so much music,” said James, who thinks it’s a good thing and draws parallels to how much content is also available online. “There is so much information available to everyone right now, and I think we are just at a crossover point.”
And now for the superjams!
And perhaps nothing about Bonnaroo says crossover like the festival’s superjams, once-in-a lifetime collaborations that have become legendary.
This year’s “Throwback SuperJam Dance Party” began at 1:30 a.m. Saturday with Pretty Lights, DMC of Run DMC, Rob Trujillo of Metallica, Chance the Rapper, comedian Reggie Watts, saxophonist and singer Karl Denson and many more.
The first festival that members of Earth Wind & Fire say they played was the California Jam at Ontario Motor Speedway in 1974.
“They didn’t have a lot of festivals back then. You had one every five years, starting with Woodstock,” bassist Verdine White told CNN.
But don’t let White’s age — 63 — fool you. Chicago’s masters of funk and soul can still draw a crowd.
“Originally we were going to do the small tent at 1:30,” White said of this year’s Bonnaroo gig, “but because of the excitement on social media, we had to switch to the big stage. We just ride on that energy and feed on it.”
The festival made a push to get the Grateful Dead, who are celebrating their 50th anniversary with their Fare Thee Well shows, to headline Bonnaroo this year, but it didn’t pan out.
Bassist Phil Lesh, who was a large part of the festival for many years, says the spirit here is similar to what the Dead helped to build back in the 1960s.
“It’s been an unbroken progression from the bands in San Francisco playing in the park for dancers back in the day,” Lesh told CNN at Bonnaroo in 2008. “These kinds of festivals, the desire of people to put their lives aside and come together in this wonderful artistic setting is stimulating.”
Beyond it being a great event for young people looking to have their “rite of passage” summer adventure, Lesh credited the “variety, range, and richness” of the artists on the bill each summer with directly influencing the future evolution of music.
“Everybody who comes here for a particular genre, jam bands, country music, hip-hop, whatever the subgenres are, anything. All those musicians will go away with some new ideas. It’s the little elements that can creep in and change the music within,” Lesh said.