The road does go on forever and the party might never end (except for this young gentleman pictured below who passed out for about an hour during a concert), but Bonnaroo '09 had to eventually end, and today was the day, but not before three and a half more good shows were notched in our belts. 
After packing up our stuff, policing our camp site and closing up the pop-up camper for an easy get-away later in the day, we headed back into Centeroo to catch the last few songs of a noon set by Sons of Bill. These alt/country-Americana young 'uns from Virginia tore up the little Troo Music Stage (we still hate the set-up of this stage). As the band name might indicate, three of the quintet are brothers (whose dad is named Bill obviously). The lead singer is middle brother, James, who we got a chance to meet after the show and let us purchase their not-available-in-stores-yet sophomore CD, One Town Away. (We listened to it twice on the way home that evening and it is excellent.)
Next up was another short 30-minute set at The Sonic Stage by Erin McCarley, our lovely young songbird from Thursday night. She wowed us again as we sipped some great microbrews from The Brooer's Tent (see Rob's beer blog for more info on this). A quick walk back across Centeroo got us to This Tent in time to catch the start of Todd Snider's show (photo below) which was packed with great humor as well as his tremendous acoustic
balladeering. Rob was a bit disappointed that his favorite TS song, "Beer Run" was not included in the hour-long set, but the hilarious story of how Todd quit high school football to become one of the "burn-outs in the smoke pit" more than made up for it. We were able to move up closer to the same stage after Todd's set was over and wait about a half-hour to see the legendary Robert Earl Keen (photo below). Seeing this Texas troubador live was a rare treat because he hardly ever leaves The Lone Star
State and basically has an open animosity for nearby Nashville (long story). REK was tremendous and the crowd loved him. He, of course, included his epic signature song that is celebrating it's 20th anniversary this year, "The Road Goes on Forever."
On our way out of Centeroo and back to the campground to head home we caught a few minutes of Band of Horses on the huge Which Stage. These guys are an interesting rock band from Seattle that seem to have a great popularity among the young folks especially festival-goers without actually getting a lot of airplay or media attention...i.e. Phish (who was closing Bonnaroo '09 later tonight), Widespread Panic and The Grateful Dead. Their songs have simple lyrics and seem to focus more on melody. They sounded good, but we would have preferred a smaller venue. Just for a laugh and to say "we've seen him live" we stopped by the gigantic What Stage to see Snoop Dogg do whatever it is that he does. We really wouldn't call it music. All we can say is...at least he showed up when he was supposed to...unlike Kanye West last year...what a chump. We eased on back to the campground and then eased on home and were in the house before 10 PM - tired, but happy to say this year's Bonnaroo topped 2008 and we can't wait to see what they are gonna do to try and outdo it in 2010!
2 comments:
Hey, you remember the trip we made back from that RHA convention at Central Michigan? When we hit Indianapolis, we held up that "Who's the corpse?" sign?... LOL Memory lane has many loops and sometimes you come back to where you were!
lol...i do remember that and a few other signs in bad taste we were putting in the car window!!!
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