Bonnaroo 2011

It’s been five days since Bonnaroo ended, and my lungs are still covered in Tennessee dust. This year’s festival was dirtier than usual, with hot, rainless weather and 80,000 people combining to turn the festival into a mini Dust Bowl. In all the nighttime photos I took, the air looks like it’s swimming with brown snowflakes.

People don’t go to Bonnaroo to be comfortable, though. They go there for the music, for the experience, for the novelty of music-filled evenings in which Atmosphere, Wanda Jackson, My Morning Jacket, Arcade Fire, and Lil Wayne all play consecutive sets. And Bonnaroo, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, never disappoints.

If you’re new to the festival, here’s how things work. There are two outdoor stages and three covered amphitheaters, as well as a handful of smaller venues (a beer tent, a lounge, a solar-powered stage). Music starts around noon and lasts until 3 or 4 in the morning. It’s always hot — unless it rains, in which case it’s muddy and hot — which results in a somewhat illegal lack of clothing with some of the Bonnaroo attendees and an inordinate amount of sweat with everyone else. Most importantly, the bands all seem to realize they’re playing to giant crowds of sun-baked, tired-limbed people who’ve braved the heat for the sake of a good concert experience, and most of them deliver solid performances as a result.

Highlights: watching Ray LaMontagne’s set from the front row before running over to Florence + the Machine, just in time for their encore of “Dog Days Are Over;” seeing Julian Casablancas come out of his too-cool-for-school shell during the Strokes’ performance, but only long enough to blow a kiss to some girl in the audience; riding the Ferris wheel at 3:30 a.m. and catching snippets of the late-night Girl Talk show while in mid-air; squeezing myself into the pit for Arcade Fire’s headlining show; singing along with Mumford & Sons while they played a folky version of “Amazing Grace” with Jerry Douglas and Old Crow Medicine Show. Eminem was pretty stellar, too.

Leaving Bonnaroo is always the toughest part, because you’re inevitably tired and sick with the Bonnaflu, a disease that results from the ingestion of dust and festival food. Then you have to go back to work and catch up on a week’s worth of assignments, thus delaying the composition of the article you originally attended to Bonnaroo to write. But it’s worth it. It always is.