Bonnaroo Recap

Last weekend, myself (Cannon) and Franklin headed on down south to Manchester, Tennessee to check out Bonnaroo and all of the awesome BRU bands playing there! After making the grueling drive down from PVD, we set up camp and after exploring Centeroo a bit before it opened up, settled on what we wanted to cover.

The Stepkids, from Bridgeport, CT, put on a super energetic show down there, playing Thursday afternoon (in full suits in the heat no less!).

Later on we headed over to The Other Tent for twenty one pilots and watched as Tyler Joseph of twenty one pilots rocking out over the crowd:

Walk the Moon, who played in the WBRU Dunkin Donuts Summer Concert Series last summer, also played a great set on Thursday, and rocked out in the Hay Bale Studios behind the scenes in the radio compound.

After Walk the Moon came Django Django, who played their hit “Default” of course, as well as a bunch of other stuff from them. Here’s them by the studio backstage!

Later on Thursday night, we were able to see Alt-J, who put on an awesome show, the tent was overflowing with people jammed to see them perform their interesting weird sound live.

Friday Local Natives played all their stuff on What Stage, cramming people as far as they could (all of the way back to the food stands) in on the Centeroo field in front:

 Passion Pit, who played our 2012 Birthday Bash down at Lupo’s in Providence, also put on a great show Friday afternoon, also filling up that stage’s audience space. Grizzly Bear, who played Which Stage a bit after also totally killed it, putting on a good show over there. Lord Huron performed their indie-folky sound, and we got to meet with them after the show there

We got a chance to catch up with Matt and Kim, and they gave a Rhode Island shout out (Kim has the RI flag tattooed onto her wrist, in case you didn’t know!).

They played The Other Tent Saturday late afternoon, and people crowded into and beyond the tent for their super-energetic show. They probably had about 15 people crowd-surfing at a time in waves, creating quite the security frenzy up front.

Sunday, the highlights had to be Macklemore and Ryan Lewis as well as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Macklemore of course made his show super fun. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes had a great set, with vocalists Alex Ebert and Jade Castrinos coming out into the audience to ask for both requests, and for people to tell them and the audience stories at one point.

Overall, Bonnaroo was quite the experience, tons of great music, loads of BRU bands to see, and we had a great time covering it.