Four days of nonstop concerts. Over 100 artists and bands. 700 acres of farm land. Over 80,000 people gathering together to experience the same thing. This is Bonnaroo.
From June 7th-10th I had the experience of a life time. I had gone to my first music festival. Let’s start at the beginning of the journey. Two days prior to the opening day I left home with a group of people who later became a family to me. We traveled for two days driving down the east coast to our destination: Manchester, Tennessee. Pulling up to the “farm” was a feeling of excitement I’ll never forget.
How the festival works: there’s a main area where multiple stages are set up with hundreds of vendors spread all around the grounds of the festival. Then surrounding these are multiple campsite areas where you spend your days living with your camp group. Each day concerts begin at 2pm and go non-stop, back to back until 3am. Every second in between is a new artist or band playing their hearts out to thousands of people.
Bonnaroo wasn’t just one genre of music. I had gone from seeing Chance the Rapper to FLUME to U2 to Louis the Child to Red Hot Chili Peppers to Marshmello all in one night. Concerts go on all night so you spend your time hopping from one stage to another experiencing new music and a crazy show each time. The best part is discovering so many talented artists that you didn’t listen to before.
It’s hard to put into words the actual experience you get. You’re in an environment of no judgment surrounded by people all there for the same reason, to just have the best time of your life. People you have never met before become family to you and having to say goodbye to it all once you leave is one of the hardest things. Post-concert depression hits hard as you drive away from the campsite blasting all the music you saw live this past week. And then the countdown to when next year’s tickets go on sale and each day that passes is one day closer to being back at one of the happiest places on earth. It’s hard to put this experience into words so my advice to find what it’s like is simple: go buy your ticket and experience it firsthand. This is one place you don’t want to miss.