Bonnaroo: My Summer Adventure.

As I’ve mentioned before, I spent the summer before my freshman year on a five-week trip throughout China. This summer, I lacked the funds for such an adventure, but still managed to afford a trip to Bonnaroo music festival. Bonnaroo is located in Manchester, Tennessee. It is a four-day music festival, where music plays from noon until 2 a.m., and most of the 80,000 people who attend the festival camp out on the site that is commonly referred to as “The Farm.”

It’s a long fourteen-hour drive to Tennessee from Rochester, but I was carpooling with one of my fraternity brothers and three of his friends from high school, which made it a hilarious and entertaining journey. We arrived on Thursday at 5 a.m., after leaving at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday (Tennessee is an hour behind Rochester), and the sun was already up and it was 70 degrees when we got to Bonnaroo. Unfortunately, because it was already so hot, I was unable to get any sleep and ended up staying up for 36 hours straight. (The car ride had been too uncomfortable for me to get any sleep.)

My friends and I stayed in “Groop” camping where I met up with about sixteen of my fraternity brothers from all over the US and other friends of ours from school. It was so nice to see my friends from school and made me even more excited to get back on campus! My roommate David was one of those sixteen fraternity brothers, and it seemed like it had been forever after spending part of every day of our freshman year together.

List of musical acts that I saw (most of part of the set):
Milo Greene
Japandroids
Alt-J
Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue
Local Natives
Of Monsters and Men
Grizzly Bear
Wilco
Wu-Tang Clan
Paul McCartney
The xx
Animal Collective
Death Grips
Tallest Man On Earth
Portugal. The Man
Nas
Matt & Kim
A-Trak
Jack Johnson
R. Kelly
JEFF the Brotherhood
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Baroness
Kendrick Lamar
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Tame Impala
David Byrne & St. Vincent
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Here’s the full line-up from this year’s Bonnaroo.

With so many amazing acts, I had to make tough decisions about which acts I wanted to see. I was content with the acts I saw, but I know I missed some amazing performances. What made it even more difficult was the fact that it became 80 degrees by 8 a.m., every morning, which would effectively cook you out of your tent, no matter how late you went to bed. On Saturday, I ended up going to bed early and missing a few acts because I needed to catch up on my sleep so I could enjoy Sunday.

I highly recommend going to Bonnaroo or any other music festival. It was awesome to listen to so many amazing musicians and I was amazed with how friendly the other concert goers were! Bonnaroo also made me realize how college has broadened my taste in music, and I’m sure it has cultured me in many other fields as well. I hadn’t even heard of many of the artists, who were my favorites at Bonnaroo, until this year! Shoutout to Sam Silber for exposing me to so much music. I probably ended up spending a total of $500 on this experience between the ticket, food, and transportation, and I would gladly make the decision again. I only hope that next year’s line-up is as awesome and I have the money to attend!

Here’s a video of Paul McCartney performing at Bonnaroo. I’m pretty sure that everyone at Bonnaroo would attest to how moving his performance was. I never thought I would ever see a Beatle perform live!