Howdy y'all,

I finally have all of the dust cleaned out of my clothes, car and body parts from Bonnaroo 07. If you have read my stuff all of these years, you know this is my favorite music event. I have been to all six festivals and plan to go as long as I am not banned.

Usually my wife Elaine goes up with me. Bonnaroo falls on our wedding anniversary and we make a tradition of pretending that the festival is actually our anniversary party. If you squint your eyes and drink enough, it becomes true! This year, Elaine, our dedicated hunger advocate, decided to go to Washington and lobby congress to support the ONE campaign followed by a presentation on third world debt relief at Loyola University in Chicago.

So, I grabbed my 18 year old, Allison, and headed up to Manchester, TN to rock.

For those of you who have not been, it is not just the music that drags me to Tennessee. It is the smoozing, er, networking that goes on. The folks that run the festival make industry VIP's very welcomed. You can run into any agent, manager, lawyer, product manager, A&R type, promoter, building owner, club booker and label GMs that you would hope to extort favors from on site. Oh, I mean any you want to network. Retail was represented by Eric Levin from AIMS and Doyle Davis from Grimey's. Newbury Comics had a killer on site store and to witness Mike Dreese greeting the hippies was worth the trip alone. Bonnaroo sports the greatest concentration of people behind the talent of any event I have attended. I guess the Grammy's have more but you can't wear shorts and flip flops to that can you?

This year's lineup was spectacular. I was so conflicted about who to see because the schedule minder at Bonnaroo tried to kill me this year. I had to miss many acts that I wanted to catch but still walked away very happy. I am usually happy seeing all of the early bands in the tents. Standouts this year included The Little Ones, The National, Manchester Orchestra, Elvis Perkins and Cage The Elephant. The loudest great show was by the White Stripes. They were killer. In 96 degree heat, all of their crew dressed in all black suits with black ties. That had all of the locals chuckling.

The best show visually was The Flaming Lips who played the second stage on Sunday morning at 12:30 AM after the Police finished on the main stage. They had a massive crowd who partied for hours in the middle of the night. We caught about four songs there before we rolled over to what turned out to be the best show period. Gov't Mule performed with a ton of guests including Hot Tuna, bob Weir, Luther Dickenson, Michael Franti including a mid set comedy break with Louis Black. The highlight was when John Paul Jones joined the Mule for blistering renditions of Zep favorites 'No Quarter', 'Moby Dick', 'Livin' Lovin' Maid', and 'Since I've Been Loving You'. Aw man, it does not get better than that at 2:30 in the morning in a cow pasture.

(The Gov't Mule guys hope to be selling this set as a lossless download on Mule.Net by the weekend - highly recommended).

Speaking of John Paul Jones (JPJ), I have to tell this story. Our good friend, Marc Reiter of Q Prime Management attended Bonnaroo for the first time this year. We have been bugging him to do it forever and he finally made the trip. So, I get a call from Marc ahead of time telling me he is coming and is staying on a tour bus at the festival. Many managers and agents do that since hotels are ultra scarce and Nashville is tour bus central. He wanted me to know I was welcomed to use his bus to escape the heat and hang out. Obviously I did not turn that offer down. So, on Friday night I ate WAY too much food and maybe even drank a little too much at a cook out. I caught a few songs by Tool, who I just do not get, and decided to cool off in the bus.

My oldest daughter, Rachel, and her boyfriend, Bobby live in Nashville.

Rachel is an intern for Al Gore this summer and her longtime boyfriend works in Nashville's CAA office. Since they were at the festival, I wanted to hang out with them and invited them to chill in the bus. I might have even told them it was my bus. So, after a hike to the bus area we hook up with Marc and a buddy of his from Jersey. Marc says "Oh by the way, JPJ is using this bus as a dressing room this weekend". No shit! I look around this palace on wheels and did not see any rock stars. So we are all talking and hanging out in the front lounge when JPJ comes strolling onto the bus with his manager Adrian and his BASS GUITAR. Gulp. He introduces himself to everyone in that British gentleman kind of way and announces that he needed to go rest. I told him I had put my camera gear in the middle bunk and if he wanted that one, I could move my stuff. He took a look at me, grinned and said "I get the bed in back mate. After all, I am the rock star". To which I nervously said "Why, yes you are".

After about 15 minutes, JPJ came back to the front lounge and plopped down on the bench, all rested and relaxed. At midnight he had to play a super jam with Ben Harper and Questlove. They were doing Zep songs starting with 'Dazed and Confused'. We were all talking about how that was going to work when REM came over the Sirius on the bus. Marc Reiter made the comment that he always judged whether a band turned out to be a great one was by their first four albums. We all had a short discussion about the first four REM records with everyone except JPJ commenting on their favorite songs from those classics. Ignoring the obvious, others piped in with comments about the magic first four of U2, Tom Petty, Van Halen and a few more when finally, JPJ threw his hands up in the air and said "HELLO!" and began pointing at himself. It was really hilarious. From there he let us know that 'Physical Graffiti' was the best Zep record and no one argued with him. It was a surreal moment for all of us. Except him of course.

Finally it became time to leave to go to the super jam. I let everyone know that I would be following shortly. I felt horrid. My earlier gluttonous behavior was coming back to haunt me so I stayed behind. I was feverously plotting where I was gonna part ways with dinner while respecting tour bus rules. I got into the middle bunk determined to ride it out for a while.

BAM! It was two hours later and I was startled awake by loud crashing in the bus. I stick my head out of the bunk still half asleep only to find myself face to face with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. At that moment he knew that I had blown off his set and I was awake enough to realize that that I was so busted. He smiled and asked me if I were feeling better, totally disarming the situation. What a gentleman.

As the Roo guys can tell you, they humor me with a photo pass each year. I have to beg for it but they always come through. Photography is like golf for me. It is an expensive middle aged hobby for those even less athletic than golfers. As with music, I tried all of the digital toys and just like with music, I was not as pleased with the results as much as with analog.

Maybe I just don't know what I am doing but after extensive fiddling around, film just looks better to me. In recent years I have lugged gear around and learned to shoot live pictures at Bonnaroo. This year, a combination of the heat and a pinched nerve in my shoulder dampened my enthusiasm for capturing every band I saw. So I focused on a few acts that I love like Ben Harper and the John Butler Trio and spent more of my time networking. Oh, I also got into a pit of 200 elbowing photographers to shoot two songs by the Police.

That was fun.

I only display my pictures on facebook. Mainly because I am too damn busy to build out my own site but also because I love having tons of kids get excited about my photography. To check out some of my all film Bonnaroo pictures go HERE.

Just click on the first picture to blow it up and hit the next button. If you want to see more pictures, join facebook (it is easy) and become my friend. Yes, I am almost 50. What are you saying?