Bonnaroo Day 3: The Best & the Worst
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Jenny Lewis / Photo by Michael Didyoung
Best Gentle Wake Me Up: Elvis Perkins in Dearland
It's hot at Bonnaroo. It's dirty. The sounds of 80,000 partiers makes it hard to sleep. All of which means that waking up is a long, delicate process. One that's best eased into. If I'd happened upon, say, metal monsters High on Fire after stumbling out of my camp site first thing Saturday morning (they're playing Sunday btw), my synapses would've shorted. Instead, thankfully, Elvis Perkins in Dearland christened the day for me with a warmhearted performance of Dylan-inspired folk-rock. Hearing bittersweet, ramshackle songs about friends, family, and lovers was a perfect gentle push into full consciousness. And when the lanky, all-white clad Perkins, a red carnation tucked into his shirt pocket, unfurled the moving lullaby "While You Were Sleeping," I was, for the first time on Saturday, truly glad to have woken up. -- DM
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Best Consolation for Missing Lucinda Williams's Set: Heartless Bastards
I'm sure she's heard it before -- and if her feisty songs are proof of her personality, she probably doesn't like hearing it -- but Heartless Bastards frontwoman Erika Wennerstrom comes off like she's listened to a helluva lot of Lucinda Williams (whose Friday night set I missed). The comparison is a compliment, though. The Ohio spitfire's rough-grained voice and plainspoken, poetic lyrics about loving and losing grabbed the attention of a sunbaked mid-afternoon crowd on the large Which stage. So did her band, who barreled forth with Stones-y raggedness and barroom swagger. If Williams is a little bit country, Wennerstrom is a little bit rock'n'roll. Both are forces to be reckoned with. -- DM
Best Ambassador for New Orleans R&B: Allen Toussaint
He wrote "Mother-in-Law" and "Working in a Coalmine," produced dozens of classic New Orleans hits, and has collaborated with everyone from Paul McCartney to Elvis Costello. Seeing Allen Toussaint hold court at the piano, though, is something else altogether. He's not the most versatile singer, but as the rollicking trills and glissandos he played in That Tent on Saturday attested, his hands more than do the talking for him. They might even be the voice of New Orleans itself. Whether reviving the ebullient R&B of protégé Lee Dorsey or reprising the bumping funk he produced with the Meters, the rhythms that Toussaint and his band commanded were so buoyant you could have sworn that they had a life of their own, which of course they do. -- BFW
Best "I Wish I Could Transport Myself Across This Huge Field" Moment: Gov't Mule Playing Radiohead's Creep
As the 10,000-plus crowd waited for Wilco to take the main stage, a peculiar sound blared overhead -- Allman Brother/Grateful Dead guitarist Warren Haynes singing Radiohead's "Creep" in his best falsetto as his band Gov't Mule ditched their jam shtick and ripped through the song's dramatic alt-rock riffs. Cue the heads curiously turning to each other, eyebrows raised, wondering if this was indeed going down. It was… and it sounded great, even from a distance -- as did their covers of U2's "One" and Neil Young's "Southern Man." -- WG
06.17.09 5:10 PM
Actually the Decemberists couldn't go on because the band playing before them, Of Montreal destroyed the stage. All their instruments, they microphones, the stands, threw feathers everywhere. So it took them awhile to clean up and when Decemberists tried to start none of the mic's worked.
Does anyone watch these shows??