PEARL JAM, PLANT, LESH, METALLICA CONTRIBUTE TO WIDESPREAD BONNAROO SUCCESS IN 2008

With perhaps the most diverse festival lineup in 2008, Bonnaroo organizers have to be pleased with the continuous success of America’s Best Festival.

With perhaps the most diverse festival lineup in 2008, Bonnaroo organizers have to be pleased with the continuous success of America’s Best Festival seven years in. It’s hard to believe that back in 2002, Bonnaroo actually started out by word of mouth, without any promotion and pinned its hopes on the jam band community drawing a large festival crowd to the middle of a farm in Tennessee. But year in and year out Bonnaroo’s organizers, AC Entertainment and Superfly Productions slowly transformed their vision into the most diverse lineup and most successful festival in America. 2008 saw a wealth of artists perform at Bonnaroo like Pearl Jam, Metallica, Widespread Panic, Robert Plant and Allison Krauss, Jack Johnson, Kanye West, Chris Rock, My Morning Jacket, Willie Nelson, Les Claypool, Phil Lesh and Friends, BB King, Death Cab for Cutie, Tiesto and The Raconteurs to name just a small selection.

We caught up with the legendary Phil Lesh formerly of The Grateful Dead, who performed at the first Bonnaroo to get his thoughts on being apart the Roo community once again, this time performing Saturday night at Midnight and Sunday in a special acoustic set, with his ever revolving band of friends.

“I love this festival. I love coming to the festival. I go to as many as I can because it’s such a great thing to have happen, all these bands in one place. I think it’s a great thing. It’s always something that’s been part of human culture. In the Nineteenth Century they had camp meetings and people would leave town and go and camp out and play music and pray and do all kinds of good things and leave their lives behind. That’s kind of what this has become. It’s always good to see that that tradition is still holding.”

We also caught up with Dave Schools and Todd Nance of Widespread Panic, who have graced the stages more than any other band and who have headlined Bonnaroo seven times to get their thoughts on how much they’ve seen Bonnaroo grow since being a part of the first festival in 2002.

“Wow what’s special about Bonnaroo to Widespread Panic. You know, I guess it’s been seven years. 2002 and was the first year when we played two sets and it just went so well that first year, we just had to keep raising the bar. What’s special to us about it is, you know we are faced with a challenge of kind of trying to not necessarily out do our previous performances but make it a lot more fun for us and the folks that are still here. Yeah, try to keep it not so predictable. So, that’s our main goal is to not reinvent ourselves but try to something a little bit different than last year or the previous years.”

A few of the many bright spots in 2008 was the interaction between Robert Plant, former lead vocalist of Led Zeppelin and fiddle virtuoso Allison Krauss who thrilled the crowd on Sunday with music from their latest album ‘Raising Sand.’ Each year, Bonnaroo becomes famous for intriguing musical collaborations and in 2008, two of the most notable collaborations were by Eddie Vedder, lead vocalist of Pearl Jam, who joined Jack Johnson on stage for his set on Sunday and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett who performed at Bonnaroo’s Superjam which basically consisted of Gogol Bordello and Les Claypool on bass. Every year it also seems there is a few up and coming band who catapult off their success at Bonnaroo and this year was no different as Ghostland Observatory, the two piece electronic band from Austin, Texas certainly gained a new legion of fans after their 2am Sunday set. Another up and coming artist who turned some heads was Matt Morris who kicked off the festival by performing songs from his new album with guitarist Charlie Sexton. Although many fans seemed a bit disappointed in Kanye West taking the stage close to 4:30am on Sunday, instead of his scheduled time slot of 2:30am it’s hard to get caught up on that with the likes of Pearl Jam and Metallica thrilling the crowd as headliners on consecutive nights. Another high note from 2008 was B.B. King being given the key to the city, for his lifelong contribution to music.

Just a few of the bands rounding out the amazing lineup in 2008 was Stephen Marley, Mastadon, MGMT, Vampire Weekend, Jessie Baylin, Steel Train, Umphreys McGee, Cat Power, Iron and Wine, Against Me!, Lupe Fiasco, Chali 2na, Tegan and Sara, Aimee Mann, M.I.A., DJ Logic, Mason Jennings and Zappa Plays Zappa.