Sons of Kemet, Bren Joy and More Kick Off Bonnaroo 2022

It felt a little bit surreal on Thursday to roll into Manchester along I-24, to sort out passes and pitch tents, and then race through the muggy heat to meet up with friends ahead of the afternoon’s first must-see performance. After all, the last Bonnaroo Day 1 happened in June 2019 — more than a thousand days ago, and months before anyone had the faintest idea that a pandemic was going to disrupt everything. Simultaneously, it seemed as if everything and nothing on the Farm had changed.

Throughout Centeroo, there were some thoughtful alterations: gravel paths paved over, stout oak trees planted, giant ceiling fans installed at the tent stages. It’s not headline-grabbing stuff, but these are the kinds of things you can and should do to mitigate potential sweltering heat and pouring rain when you run a festival on the same site for 20 years. Also a great idea that could have come sooner: working with a company called Turn to make reusable cups available to vendors. Amid a bigger variety of more-upscale food options, corn dogs were a little tougher to find; thankfully, arepa stands were present, though they weren’t open yet. Regardless of the notable increase in “brand activations” throughout Centeroo, buying a couple hot cornmeal cakes with cheese melting off their sides at 1 a.m. is an experience that sets Bonnaroo apart. 

One change has raised concerns, especially following November’s crowd-crush incident at the Astroworld festival that left 10 people dead and many more injured. Bonnaroo organizers decided to funnel everyone coming into Centeroo from the GA campground through one entrance under the arch. Despite a rumored lower attendance number, lines got very long on Thursday, and Reddit users reported dangerous crowd conditions. At press time, the festival had not issued an official comment.

From a musical perspective, Nothing was the perfect soundtrack for getting back into the Bonnaroo rhythm. Since the Philadelphia band emerged on the national scene about a decade ago, the lineup around bandleader Dominic Palermo has changed a good bit. The iteration that graced That Tent on Thursday afternoon featured a pair of newcomers, with second guitarist Doyle Martin (of Nothing’s Relapse Records labelmates Cloakroom) and bassist Christina Michelle joining singer and axman Palermo and longtime drummer Kyle Kimball. 

What remains consistent, however, is the strength of the material and the clarity of Palermo’s vision. Nothing’s fourth LP, 2020’s The Great Dismal, is the group’s strongest yet, and it made up the bulk of their set on Thursday. Many bands have mined the intersection of paint-peeling walls of guitar and wistful shoegaze melodicism before, but few have it down to a science like Palermo & Co., as you can hear on should-be hits like “Bent Nail,” “April Ha Ha” and others played Thursday.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” exclaimed one fan, giving a we're-not-worthy salute as he departed the pit — a nice reminder that while the folks booking ’Roo have largely turned away from non-legacy rock acts, the festival’s audience hasn’t.

The heat abated a little once the sun went down, but Nashville-born Bren Joy, who moved to Los Angeles earlier this year, cranked it right back up at the larger-than-ever Who Stage. He’s the total package: an insightful lyricist, a master showman and a superb vocalist who could sing your grandma’s meatloaf recipe and make it sound sexy. He had the sizable crowd on lock from the second he picked up the mic, and gracefully surfed on the tide of forward-leaning R&B whipped up by his band. It was an absolute joy to watch, from originals like “Freezing” to a spot-on cover of Childish Gambino’s “Redbone.”

Indigo de Souza has a distinctive voice; it tracks that the North Carolinian is labelmates on Saddle Creek with Big Thief and Hop Along. De Souza’s mystique lies in how she deploys said voice: a gut-wrenching warble one moment, an operatic falsetto the next. The din of surrounding stages threatened to drown out more intimate moments of her tunes. But wielding a golden Gibson SG adorned with a lightning bolt, she responded by emphasizing the between-song feedback and gnarlier sonic aspects of “Sick in the Head,” “Real Pain” and other bloodied-but-unbowed songs from her stellar 2021 LP Any Shape You Take.

On the stage at the Galactic Giddy Up, a new addition this year out in the campground at Plaza 5, Paul Cauthen offered up a boisterous set. The Texas native's backing band, which featured seasoned talents including Beau Bedford and Parker Twomey, provided the perfect accompaniment to Cauthen's deep, thunderous vocals. The hour-long set included an array of tunes from his latest album Country Coming Down, including “Roll on Over” and “Champagne & a Limo,” along with older gems like “Cocaine Country Dancing.” His no-holds-barred attitude and vibrant stage presence brought a much-needed jolt of electricity to the heat-fatigued crowd.

Back at the Who Stage, Garcia Peoples’ members locked into synchronous orbit with each other for some guitar-oriented rock that owes as much to punk efficiency as it does to the exploratory tendencies of the Grateful Dead co-founder who inspired their name. A friend suggested, correctly, that the overall effect was more “chooglin’ ” than “jammin’.” Their set captured the attention of some of the O.G. hippies in the crowd, while others seemed unimpressed, despite the instrumental prowess packed into the songs.

Sons of Kemet’s delightfully unhinged That Tent set was a big reward for Thursday arrivals. Contemporary jazz messengers whose music makes the listener think, feel and move, the quartet served trancelike dual-drummer badassery flanked by tuba and sax virtuosos in Theon Cross and Shabaka Hutchings, respectively. “It’s nice to hear musicians do this stuff, and not machines,” a passing showgoer remarked astutely, gesturing in the direction of the throbbing EDM beckoning from The Other.

As has been the case for so many artists through the years, Thursday’s set at This Tent marked a full-circle moment for Griffin Washburn, leader of indie pop-and-rockers Goth Babe. He told the crowd that his visit to Bonnaroo 2015 was the first time he’d ever been to a music festival, and that taking the stage was something he’d dreamed about while making music in his dorm at Middle Tennessee State University. His show was as much about joyful crowd participation — from crowd-surfing on beach floaties to playing air-guitar along with Washburn on a leg some mannequin had lost along the way — as it was about the music. That, at the very least, was the Bonnaroo experience exactly as it should be.

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