Metro Pulse/Music/Eye on the Scene

Bonnaroo Bonanza

This weekend, 70,000 music fans will descend on Manchester, Tenn., to hear the likes of Bela Fleck, Gran Torino, Trey Anastasio, Widespread Panic, String Cheese Incident, Ben Harper, Gov't Mule, Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, Ween, Blackalicious, Donna the Buffalo and Norah Jones. As visitors arrive for the Bonnaroo Festival, a production of New Orleans' Superfly Presents and Knoxville's own AC Entertainment, a sleepy farm 60 miles southeast of Nashville will swell to become Tennessee's fifth-most populous city, for five days only.

Surprised you haven't heard of the event through rigorous monitoring of print ads, radio spots and Metro Pulse calendar listings? Don't be. Bonnaroo's under-the-radar publicity is reflective of the festival's nature: a coming together of the close-knit, shareware-happy jam band set.

Promoter and AC owner Ashley Capps says his modus operandi was to first encourage word-of-mouth promotion.

"A lot of the fans of this music are very closely networked to one another," he says, and the fans also communicate with the bands via email and the World Wide Web. The bands, for their part, are happy to use the Internet to spread their sound, unlike Napster-loathing megastars who rely on record sales for most of their income. Jam bands are also more likely to let their fans tape their concerts. "The bands are the types of bands that don't necessarily get played on the radio, and they've built their audience the old-fashioned way... based on the concert experience," Capps says.

After selling tickets to hardcore fans on its website www.bonnaroo.com, AC planned to cater to the general public by working with Ticketmaster and taking out full-page newspaper ads as far away as San Francisco and Colorado. That shift never came. Bonnaroo sold out in 10 days, its weekend passes going for $100 to $140 a pop. (No tickets will be sold at the door, so if you're ticketless, skip the drive and head to Thursday's Sundown in the City for a Bonnaroo vibe [see Go, below]). "It was certainly exciting to break some new ground... and sell out without using the more traditional means of advertising and selling tickets," Capps says.

According to Capps, bonnaroo.com sold tickets to residents of all 50 states, Canada and Europe. Less than half the ticketholders are from the Southeast. The state sending the most people to Bonnaroo is Georgia, followed by Illinois.

While most Bonnaroo acts have been labeled jam bands, Capps says they exhibit a "tremendous diversity," encompassing gospel, blues, bluegrass, jazz, rock and hip hop. DJs will also entertain the crowd. And while not listening to music or catching scant shut-eye in their tents, the mostly 18-to-30something denizens of metropolitan Bonnaroo can take yoga classes, watch films and play classic games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man in the arcade tent. Or you just might find them gathered 'round a grill, orchestrating their next swift takeover of a quiet Southeastern farm.

Our webmonkey has one ticket for sale — e-mail [email protected] if you're interested.

Local CD Review

Lemon Drop Kid
MinimalAnimal (AmalgaMusic Recordings)

The Lemon Drop Kid is 21-year-old Daniel Swinney, a University of Tennessee student and electronica musician. He's quite a prolific musician at that—besides this CD, he's working on a double-disc LP under the name Shovelbearer and will be debuting two pop-rock bands, the Powerful Blue Shovels and Mulletproof. One of the recordings off MinimalAnimal, "Star Dust," was included on a national underground compilation, Wood: Choice Cuts.

If MinimalAnimal is any representation, Swinney has oodles of potential. The songs on this electronica disc are mostly laidback mood pieces. Jazz and funk tones permeate and a few of the tracks use vocal samples to soulful good effect. The 10-song album is particularly playful with percussion, jumping back and forth between organic sounding drum beats and electronic canned ones. On some tracks, cowbells and highhats are accented, with the keyboards and samples dropped into the background. The last track, "felt 2000," is a skittish, uptempo number that you'd be comfortable dancing to.

Unfortunately, there are times when the music tends to melt into the background or the songs blend into each other. It works nicely as background music, but probably won't be of much interest to anyone beyond electronica fans.

Still, it's a promising debut. It'll be interesting to see how Swinney uses his talent on his other projects. Here's hoping to hear more from him.

Go.

Thursday: The Dirty Dozen Brass Band brings its New Orleans sound to Market Square on the way to Bonnaroo.

Friday: The Bitter Pills give Pilot Light a dose of '60's garage rock in anticipation of their latest 7-inch release.

Saturday: Ahhhhhhhhhh. Check out the Lavendar Festival in Oak Ridge's Historic Jackson Square, where the Bleu Hound Grill will serve its first-ever Saturday lunch.

Sunday: Hear the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra's take on "Our Love is Here to Stay" at Fairbanks Roasting Room.

Monday: Learn "How to Audition," then try out for Pygmalion at The West Side Dinner Theater.

Tuesday: Celebrate A Mountain Dew Homecoming with an art exhibit at the Ewing Gallery.

Wednesday: Punk o' the week: Evil Beaver with The Pink Sexies at Pilot Light.

—Emma "Adult Education" Poptart with Tamar Wilner and Joe Tarr