Bonnaroo 2010

I was in Tullahoma the weekend before Bonnaroo 2009, and my friend Dennis

tried to get me to stay for it. He had a hookup that was enticing but "maybe next year." Well, it actually came to fruition. Me being in the music biz and never attending the festival in my backyard (actually owned a home outside Manchester just three miles from the farm and hunted on the property when I used to do that sort of thing) was an injustice which had to be rectified. So I agreed to help Dennis and Butch in the name of the Rotary Club get attendees into the grounds by becoming a human traffic cone, wearing the shirt in the picture, in exchange for a staff band to enjoy the remaining three days of the festival. Little did I know that I would spend ten hours as a traffic cop without a break in order to attend just over four hours of Bonnaroo on Saturday. The pics below were snapped as our group arrived to take our shift at 2 PM. Things were smooth and orderly coming through the ticket lanes, merging into two steadily moving lines of vehicles heading into the grounds. At around 4 PM, a parking staffer comes to me and says they are closing half of the gate since lots were either flooded from the previous two days of rain or already full. "Are you sh!*#ng me?" Nope. Stayed closed for all but 90 minutes of the remaining 7 1/2 hours we were there. Those two orderly lines became 12, entering in SINGLE F#&*ING FILE!, most waiting another 30 minutes or so to be released into the flow of traffic. We heard that cars coming from Nashville, normally an hour drive, took 9 hours to get to us at our temporary entrance off westbound I-24, and we had to make them wait more! But you know what, these concert-bound partiers were 98% unfazed. What a great bunch of people! And not just kids...I saw an RV with four generations inside, for example. Of course, I'm all into putting on a little show for the patrons, too, telling jokes, tipping my hat, hand gestures, laughing, yelling, slapping high-fives...many knew what our staff "pay" was and said they would look for us inside during the weekend. How cool was that for a guy old enough to be the father of many of them, or to quote an early Cheap Trick lyric, "I might even BE your daddy!" And the variety of music emanating from these cars was amazing. My favorite moment was three girls absolutely singing their collective arses off to a Sonia Dada record that came out when they were probably five years old! God, I wanted to just hug 'em, but I would've probably gotten into trouble....

Would I volunteer to be a traffic cone again at Bonnaroo? Absolutely.