When I lived in New Orleans—which I did for the first four years of this current decade—the drive to Bonnaroo was much less daunting and much more manageable than the drive from the northeast. Being much closer to Tennessee, the trip to our annual motel stay in Chattanooga only took about eight hours. In these later years we decided stopping in Chattanooga was the best way to take our time stocking up on supplies, getting a good dinner, gassing up the car, and enjoying one last night of air-conditioning and running water before the weekend’s mayhem began. Similarly we’d often hit up a hotel in Alabama on the way back to break up the journey home, to shake off the festival’s scars of debauchery and to scrub off the caked on dirt and grime that had accumulated. We’d enjoy the return of such amenities while reminiscing about the weekend’s events as if they happened a world ago, perhaps in an effort to cement the memories in our minds for longevity’s sake, before the cruel dance of hours took them away from us.

Endless miles of green and blue adorn the often beautiful (yet sometimes boring) road to Tennessee.

The drive up from New Orleans to Tennessee was always a mixed bag. Most of the journey up I-59 through Mississippi offered no real visual stimulation, save for some hilarious über-conservative billboards peppering the tree line, and the blooming magnolias planted every several hundred yards along the highway median. Once we hit Alabama, things got a little more exciting, driving through Birmingham and the northern portion of the state, which became hillier and hillier the farther we went, swarms of large deep green leafy trees popping against the bubbly white clouds and hazy blue hue of the southern summer sky. Once in Tennessee, Chattanooga appeared almost immediately, looking snug and cozy along the banks of the Tennessee River as dusk enveloped the city with warm fingers of yellow and orange intertwining with the deep indigo of approaching night.

Despite some of the more boring legs of this route, there was always something random to see along the way. My friend Amy introduced me to an iPhone app called “Roadside America,” which is often packed with regional landmarks and oddities like “The World’s Largest Pickle Jar.” Crap like that. On one trip, she and our friend Pete and I stopped in Tuscaloosa to see a giant sculpture of a fallen-down robot on the University of Alabama’s campus. We took pictures straddling it in the 100-degree heat, the sculpture’s iron burning our crotches through our shorts.

The first year I drove up from New Orleans was an interesting one. We hadn’t yet figured out the advantages of leaving a day early and staying at a nearby motel, so instead we left early that Thursday morning, hoping to arrive just in time to catch some of the evening’s sets, which are the first ones of the weekend. Thursday night is often the time Bonnaroo utilizes to showcase some of the newer, lesser-known talent on their bill, and those shows end up being some of the most memorable ones of each weekend: Mexican guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, Scottish dance rockers Django Django, SoCal lo- fi darlings Wavves, and soulful hip-hop/RnB hybrid artist Janelle Monáe all made appearances during Bonnaroo Thursdays, and remain some of the finest performances I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing down on the farm. Perhaps my favorite

Thursday night lineup came during their 2008 edition, when psychedelic rockers MGMT, math-rock pioneers Battles, and then-newcomers Vampire Weekend played back-to-back sets at This Tent, making for a memorable first night that has still yet to be beaten. In 2010—the year we first drove up from NOLA—a similarly impressive lineup was in store, including harmonic indie rockers Local Natives, sultry dream pop band The xx, and Swedish experimentalists Miike Snow. We were all really excited to catch all of these acts, but ultimately, we would be disappointed in the long run.

For some reason, in 2010, Bonnaroo was toying with a new traffic pattern, most likely to ease the often-overwhelming line of cars clambering to get into the grounds, often causing heavy delays on I-24. The letter sent with our tickets instructed us to stay on the interstate until exit 112, but before we could get fairly close to said exit, an electric traffic sign—the kind you see around construction sites—was beaming a message in bold yellow letters:

BONNAROO TRAFFIC EXIT HERE FOLLOW SIGNS

Confused, I glanced over at the mile marker, and we were some ten to fifteen miles away of where we thought we were supposed to exit. I turned to Amy (a.k.a., BonnaMom) who was in the passenger seat, also perplexed.

“Wait, so do we get off here? Or do we go to the exit like it says on the paper?”

“Ummm, I have no idea,” I replied. The exit indicated by the flashing sign was quickly approaching, and in the distance I saw yet another sign, blaring the same message across its screen.

“I guess...we should get off?” I hesitated a moment, trying to think rationally about which of our directions was the more reliable source. I ultimately decided that the sign was the best to follow, because, who knows? Maybe they couldn’t get the exit they had originally intended to secure, so now they were resorting to highway signs to get us lowly festival-goers headed in the right direction.

“Ok, here goes nothin’,” I said, as I indicated with my turn signal to Carol and Pookie’s car behind us that we were heading off the exit. Sure enough, there were signs everywhere directing the Bonnaroo traffic away from the highway, and then up a wide country road. I started to feel surer of my decision as we sped along into the impending twilight.

For the first few miles we were fine, and then...everything stopped dead. There, in the middle of nowhere was a line of what looked like a million cars, the vast array of brake lights looking like a demonic chorus of flaming masks, staring back at us in anger. Nothing was moving, and after resting my own foot on the brake for a good fifteen minutes, I finally followed suit with most of the cars in front of us and put the car in park.

And there we sat.

Goldie 1971, the giant fallen robot at the University of Alabama

It wasn’t hot anymore, the harshest hours of the day behind us, the cooler air coaxing the bugs to venture out from their nests. There were a few houses loosely packed on either side of the rural route we rested on, and fireflies were starting to perk up in the tall grass to our right. I noticed one house on the right, across a ditch and up a neatly manicured lawn that seemed to be having some sort of gathering. I could see a dozen or so people gathered on the porch, others sitting lazily on the bed of a large pickup truck, all with some kind of beverage held in their hands. There were a few ice chests strewn about, and a grill that was sending up sparks like a delicate orange-red mist.

I looked at the people drinking and muttered jokingly, “Damn, I wish that was us right now,” realizing halfway through my sentence that I really did want to be them. I wondered what exactly it was they were celebrating. Just another Thursday night in Tennessee maybe?

Then I observed something strange. The house on the other side of the street was doing the same thing as the one on our right. And so were their neighbors. And the neighbors of the first house. As far as I could see, everybody on that street was having some sort of party. And they were all looking at us.

I suddenly felt naked. Were all these people just sitting there watching all these freaks sit in line, idling away the evening like a bunch of lemmings? Were they making fun of us? Was this a thing? Like some sort of demented parade?

I started speaking quietly, pointedly, between my gritted teeth to BonnaMom. “Dude, I think they’re here to watch us.”

She looked around quizzically, and visibly came to the same creepy realization as me. I was horrified. I don’t like being put on display like some spectacle (unless I’m doing it to myself). The whole thing felt pretty shady. Like Deliverance shady.

As the sky grew darker, my mind raced with paranoia, as the glow of everyone’s grills became brighter and brighter. I know now that it was because of the growing contrast between light and dark, but I had this horrible image that they were just warming up the fires to fix up some good-ole hippie pie. I started feverishly smoking cigarettes and drinking beer from our stash in my trunk, open container laws be damned.

After a few minutes I realized how ridiculous I was being, but then I remembered that practically everybody in Tennessee owns a gun. But just as my paranoia was about to take over again, the line of cars began starting up their engines and finally, we were moving forward again. I breathed a sigh of relief—as did BonnaMom, and probably everyone else in that line—and though we suffered through another half hour or so of traffic, at least we were moving. Freaks on parade.

I began to laugh at how ridiculous I was acting before—maybe I was a freak after all—and gathered that yeah, it’s probably pretty nuts to see 80,000 people funnel into this tiny town each year, so why not have a party and watch it all happen? I’d probably be doing the same thing. Regardless, I was relieved to get moving again.

No matter from where, though, and what happens along the way, the drive to Bonnaroo is always one of my favorite parts of the whole experience. You feel a tug when the journey begins, starting in your foot as it is lowers onto the gas, then moving up your side to the hand that is surfing on the wind blowing by the open window. Then it moves inwards to your tummy, filling up with butterflies with each state line that is crossed. Finally, it moves up to your heart when you see the lights in the distance, the hordes of cars in line, their passengers leaning out the sides and rising out of their sunroofs. We exchange knowing glances as we all feel that pull, stronger than ever, as we inch closer to our home for the next few days.

Each time at Bonnaroo feels like the first time because we allow it to feel that way. We allow ourselves to get excited and to give into the gravity of the festival that has pulled us in from all over the country, no, all over the world. We all keep coming back because we all want to re-live that first time. We try to recapture that first moment we blasted into the unknown, down the dirty road heading into the sunset.

Ben and I got to the hotel in Hagerstown, Maryland, not too long after crossing the border. We only elected to stay for a few hours, as we were already pretty far behind, thanks to the standstill traffic we had hit in NYC and NJ. We celebrated this semi- midpoint with a shot of Jäger or two, and slept for a few hours. When we left the hotel, dawn had still not come, and the hotel staff was only just beginning to set up the meager continental breakfast in the lobby. I grabbed a banana and a pre-portioned container of Cheerios, and we were on our way.

The pale face of early sky was beginning to brighten as we stopped for gas just over the Maryland/West Virginia border. It was muggy and oddly chilly, even though it was probably seventy degrees. It’s strange how different the temperature can feel when it’s dark out compared to when the sun’s out, even when you aren’t in direct sunlight. Looking back, I can credit this sort of weird discomfort to the moisture in the air, having since spent several years in New Orleans where it is almost constantly at least 60% humidity. I shivered slightly as I was pumping gas into the van, and I welcomed the steaming cup of coffee that Ben was bringing towards me, handing it to me at a rather serendipitous moment, just as the pump stopped with a muffled clunk.

A warm salutation to the road ahead.

We left West Virginia after only a few miles having only passed through the northeastern part of the state, one of those little arms at the top of the state that look like mini chicken wings on a map. Virginia was easily the longest time we were in one state, as Interstate 81 basically follows the state’s northern diagonal boundary for more than three hundred miles. We were greeted by a gorgeous sunrise that turned the sky from milky periwinkle to muted shades of orange and yellow, as the misty blue mountains started to pop up to our left along the southern edge of the Shenandoah Valley. The dragon on the dash traced swirling patterns of smoke that mingled with the A/C and danced along to a soundtrack alternately curated by Ben and myself, boasting old favorites like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin as well as some of the bands who would be playing the festival (Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine, Kings of Leon). Ben also played me some of the smaller acts on the bill, most of which I had never heard before, namely Rilo Kiley, Keller Williams, John Butler, Amos Lee, and Dr. Dog.

Crossing into Tennessee was incredibly exciting, as it always is². The sun was high and hot in the sky now, and the mountains had closed in on us from both sides by this point, and for much of our initial penetration we were marching down a meandering canal of highway through the northeastern portion of the state. I had decided to take a break from driving, opting to take a snooze in the passenger seat, but I couldn’t due to the excitement. Other Bonnaroovians began passing us in their vehicles, some only identifiable as such due to their equipment obscuring much of the windows in their cars, while others took to alerting other drivers of their endpoint through the use of markered windows that read “Bonnaroo or Bust!” or simply “BONNAROOOOOOOOO.”³

Thanks to a tip from Ben’s hometown friend Chris who had made it to the festival earlier that day, we learned of a shortcut that allowed us to circumvent the city traffic of Chattanooga and the festival traffic heading north on I-24. We cut across along the northern portion of the state, past Knoxville along I-40, until we hit US-70S in Cookeville (about halfway to Nashville from Knoxville). As the highway faded behind us, the road narrowed and the landscape broadened, peppered with humble homes boasting worn yet welcoming porches and vast lawns, punctuated with shady oaks that reigned over small murky ponds or supported tire swings that dangled from tree branches like giant spiders. Much of rural Tennessee looks like this. There aren’t any stately homes or grand gestures in architecture, just simple, usually one-storied cottages and farmhouses with vast yards and a couple of rusty cars in the driveway.

The landscape was simple yet breathtaking, and as the road meandered southward, and with every glance at the atlas, our excitement built to a fever pitch. As the tick-tock numbers on my odometer clicked and whirred with every passing mile, our hearts would jump, murmuring beats of wicked apprehension. Within ten or so miles from the grounds, we started seeing permanent white signs bolted to telephone poles on the median: BONNAROO TRAFFIC: KEEP LEFT. The sky above was manic and huge against the flattened terrain of central Tennessee, a frenzied battle between blue and grey, the clarity claiming victory every so often with rays of bursting light. Eventually we arrived in Manchester, and coming from the north, we were placed in a noticeably shorter line of cars than what was crawling up from I-24.

The last glance of real Tennessee rarely changes with each time I go to Bonnaroo: the line of cars filing one-by-one into the grounds past a single gas station loaded with people buying last-minute ice and water and filling up their tanks one more time, just in case. It’s a familiar sight, but one that always brings me back to the very first time I felt I had actually made it, with the whole world vanishing behind me, and some great unknown lying just ahead, ready to swallow us whole.

² Coming from this direction, “reaching Tennessee” is always rather misleading, as there are still another three or four hours to go from the border.
³ I’ve since learned doing stuff like this on the roads leading up to Bonnaroo is a rookie mistake. Basically every cop in the state of Tennessee is waiting for any reason to pull someone over, search their vehicle, find any trace of illicit substance, and ruin their entire weekend. Out by the state’s border it isn’t much of a big deal, but get in around Chattanooga and you’re asking for trouble

The Journey Continues Tomorrow ... Stay Tuned.