The campground gates opened at noon on Wednesday and by Thursday morning the farm was packed for the night’s unofficial opening. What Made Milwaukee Famous, Newton Faulkner, Back Door Slam and Grand Ole Party were among the small group of artists filling the tent stages (the two largest stages, “What” and “Which” not opening until Friday,) with newcomers Vampire Weekend and Dark Star Orchestra both putting on excellent shows and attracting the largest crowds. When Dark Star’s set of carefully selected and brilliantly reincarnated Grateful Dead tunes wrapped up with “Tennessee Jed” the swell of excitement from the packed and overflowing tent made it pretty clear we were all about to have an excellent weekend.
Friday’s festivities began with the Drive-By Truckers opening up the “Which Stage” just after noon. Stephen Marley filled the largest “What Stage” right next door and the surrounding tents boasted smaller names but just as much crowd enthusiasm. I caught both Jose Gonzalez and indie rock goddesses (so named by me after witnessing their obsessively adoring fans sing EVERY word to EVERY song the twins played) Tegan and Sara before heading over to the main stage for the Raconteurs, by far one of my favorite sets of Bonnaroo. I’ve always been a fan of the White Stripes and loved their show at last year’s festival but as I watched Jack White strut around that giant stage, flinging his leather jacket to the side with his carefully sculpted hair style slowly disintegrating in the Tennessee summer heat I completely fell in love with the Raconteurs. And I don’t even know what the hell a raconteur is. White alternated yelling, whispering, spitting then giggling out the lyrics to “Keep it Clean” (also known around the internet as “The Coca-Cola song”) with magnetic gusto and personality.
Other notables of the day were Rilo Kiley, Willie Nelson, M.I.A., The Swell Season and The Bluegrass Allstars (ft. Luke Bulla, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer & Bryan Sutton,) all pretty indicative of the festival’s hugely wide range of tunes simultaneously blasting into the fields. Just before Metallica took to the main stage Chris Rock cracked up what appeared to be every single person currently on our side of the Mississippi River. My pals and I settled for listening to the comic from a spot approximately 137 miles away, as getting any closer was a complete impossibility. This was probably due in part to Metallica following Rock by only 15 minutes prompting people to line up for the show hours in advance.