Jay Farrar and Son Volt - what else do you see between The Streets and Matisyahu?

Sunday morning starts for me, not with the yoga class that many are enjoying at 8am but with a quiet walk throughout the festival grounds. This is kind of freaky as most of those who are actually awake have not yet been to sleep. For example, 2 guys called me 'princess' in exchange for my bottle of water. There are dozens of kids sleeping out in the fields but there is a quiet peacefulness all over the place. I wander around for a while as Bonnaroo slowly wakes up.

Musically our first stop is Soulive, then it's the seque of the weekend as we move from The Streets to Son Volt. This sort of range is what it is all about at Bonnaroo. I so dig that, and decide I'll be back next year for sure!

The enthralled Radiohead crowd doesn't notice it's been on its feet for three hours


Buy some more water, folks, it's time for the big Gomez set, which was raucous and loud and fun. A good crowd got to hear the new songs, and there were plenty of folks singing along with the old ones. This was the first time I was hearing the full band on the new songs. "How We Operate" got the full jam treatment, there was a re working of "Rough Stuff" and a great Bonnaroo version of "Get Myself Arrested"!

From there it's a pilgrimage to Beck back on the What stage, with a really clever stage show - a mini version of the stage was set up, and marionette versions of all the band members acted out the whole show. In the same outfits. Big screens to either side of the stage showed the puppet version of the performance, just like you'd see a live one - cut to a few minutes of PuppetBeck singing, then PuppetGuitarSolo, etc. Plus a funny little puppet movie. Weird and fun. Beck made fun of the hippies and covered Radiohead. "Loser" was great as the sun set at Bonnaroo!

Food and drink to clear the head (ha!) and we shuffle over to Radiohead. We find a spot in the bleachers and settle in for a set that seemed to last forever, in a good way. A great setting, fun people, surrounded by friends. Tom Gray from Gomez made a movie in the stands, interviewing the folks around us, and Ian Ball and this group of cute guys in red t-shirts all came by to dance and give us beer. Apparently the red t-shirts were part of their Mardi Gras parade costumes. Shout-outs also to Langton, Gretchen, Marla, Andrew and the cheerleading Johanna. I will never forget this performance. Cliché as it is, music has the power to transform and transport you and that is just what happened with this 3-hour set. It was awesome.

Dr. John was up next with a midnite performance of his 1960's psychedelic persona, The Night Tripper. I never thought I would get a chance to see this. Bonnaroo actually takes its name from a Dr. John tune, "Desitively Bonnaroo," so this is significant. This set is at the finish of the Mardi Gras parade so the characters are as much in the audience as they are on stage. Dr. John is in full feather headdress and the stage is all decorated. The voodoo is in the air as they run through "I Walk On Gilded Splinters" and "Mama Roux" - although most of the kids in the audience are singing along as "Bonnaroooo" instead.

Def time to call it a day! It's been a full one indeed. Tomorrow we begin the transition back to the real world as we'll be hitting the road in the afternoon.

Ben Ottewell of British band Gomez during a hot acoustic set

Starting out with a backstage Gomez performance set the stage for the day. How hot was it? It was so hot that all the Gomez boys were wearing shorts. You don't often see rock stars in shorts. We all braved the blazing sun at the (small, short-set) Sonic Stage, and recovered with cold drinks and pesto mozzarella things in the shade. Shade is hard to come by on these 93-degree days, and folks don't want to give up their spots!

But we couldn't linger anyway because Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint were kicking off their set on the main (What) stage. A high point for me was hearing Allen Toussaint sing "Brickyard Blues", one of his classics. The horns sounded great and Elvis seemed psyched to have the attention of the hot crowd. There was a fun reworking of "Watching the Detectives" and a set-closing "Yes We Can Can!" I highly recommend catching this show if you can. (They'll be in NYC at the Beacon in July.)

Gillian Welch collaborator and guitar-master David Rawlings

World Party opens up the Which Stage with a great set of mostly classic WP tunes. You get the feeling the crowd is being reminded of this great band as they work through their set. I'll get to hang with them in the backstage studios later so I'm thinking about the questions I'll ask. We hike a bit to go see Seu Jorge next - I was ready for some Brazilian sounds, and we convinced all our on-site friends to check him out. Seu Jorge is the guy who was featured as the singer in 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,' doing bossanova covers of Bowie songs. His set, including "Rebel Rebel," is great - there are three drummers with hand drums, a bass, and Seu on acoustic guitar. His songs are all in Portuguese and he completely wins the crowd. Once again, it's the bass solo that freaks everyone out!

Did I forget to mention Bright Eyes? They did a great afternoon set with special guests Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, plus Jim James from My Morning Jacket too.

After a snack of homemade hummus and crackers it's off to interview World Party. They play 3 songs acoustic and then we chat. I do the interview with Norm Winer who is a very cool radio guy from Chicago - he is WXRT. I'm gearing up now for my weekly Whole Wide World show for WFUV, which we send over the ISDN lines to NYC. Time to learn another studio setup. Technology is amazing. Engineer Tom Hansen (thx!) gets me connected to FUV and we're set. Or nearly set. We overcome a few big tech problems, but we get there, and it's good. Now the fun begins. Anyone who knows me knows that planning is not my strongest suit, so there really isn't much of a blueprint for the show tonite, just about a dozen invitations extended to artists to drop by and say hi. Matisyahu, who I dig, turns up at the very start of the show on his way to Shabbat dinner. With the sun sinking into the Tennesee sky we are told he doesn't have a lot of time to wait around so we just go on air as soon as he walks in the door. It's the not the way it usually works but it's obvious that tonight we just need to go with the Bonnaroo flow.

Then David Ford, Donovan Frankenreiter, G Love, Death Cab for Cutie all drop in. Way cool. You can listen to the show in the archives at wfuv.org. I gotta go catch just a bit of Tom Petty tonite on the big stage - so it's me and about 80,000 others all happy to have Petty back. It's a big stadium-rock show.

Bedtime? No, no way. We're looking for dinner. I whip up some guacamole in the RV and we enjoy some steak and chicken fajitas with veggies and a nice Stags Leap pinot noir. I love my friends! Then it's back out into the fray and fun until I realize I'm tired and need to call it a day.

Perhaps a solid nite of sleep and the biggest day of fun (no work!) tomorrow awaits as our friends from Gomez will be pulling in to Bonnaroo!

Rita Houston backstage at Radio Bonnaroo

David Ford kicks off Bonnaroo for us. You might think his emotional songs wouldn't translate in this context but he wins the crowd over with his one-man-band performance. He moves from instrument to instrument, looping and recording his parts and building the song live on stage. Brave stuff, and so cool to watch. I've seen him a bunch of times now and really dig him.

Bonnaroo is all about the bass solos - so you know the Wood Brothers were going to have a good time with their set. I'm a fan, so we head over to This Tent, (yeah, the stages and tents are called What Stage, Which Stage, This Tent, That Tent, The Other Tent, and Another Tent - really) after wandering about the grounds a bit. The place is packed, and the kids go crazy every time Chris Wood slaps his bass, and that's just during soundcheck. I realized then it was going to be a very different set than the one I'd seen at Joe's Pub. They rock it. As Chris says at the end of the set: "Thanks for listening, it takes balls to do this!"

The backstage area where I'm spending a lot of time working and playing is better than ever this year. At the radio compound we have about 8 trailers - 6 studios for live radio broadcasts, 2 studios to record bands and interviews, and 2 big tour buses with lots of industry friends and hospitality. (For your decoder ring, at Bonnaroo, hospitality=beer.)

Then there's the backstage artist area. Here's where you'll find food, snacks and drinks pretty much all day and nite and a bar serving beer and vitamin water cocktails for free! There are couches and TVs and free massages. Timberland has a booth set up offering free shoes and swag for people of import and influence. I pretend I am one, and get a nice pair of brown leather slides. So please go buy some Timberland shoes so I feel like I did my job with the freebie. They're actually quite comfortable - although not as comfy as my Crocs. My friend Mike told me that Mario Batali, who is always wearing Crocs, washes his in the dishwasher. Guess he's usually pretty close to one of those all the time. I'm not, I actually don't have a dishwashwer, but I plan to go to Otto next week and ask if they will wash my Crocs for me while I have dinner there. BTW, the olive oil ice cream there is yummy!

So my alter ego Tijuana Lady is gearing up for the local radio show at midnite. We go back to the RV to get all my music - a case of CDs and an iPod - and get back with just enough time to figure out how it all works. Mark Keefe, a good radio guy from North Carolina, is running the Radio Bonnaroo operation. Throughout the weekend dozens of cool industry people will get a chance to play their faves on the radio. I get a good reminder that everyone really wants to be a DJ and that a lot of people here know A LOT about music. The coolest thing is that Radio Bonnaroo is playing throughout the campsites and on all the stages between performances. I open my show with "Tijuana Lady" from Gomez of course, and also play Beck, Bjork, Daft Punk, Madness, Matisyahu and Tribe Called Quest to name a few. And then I forget to write the rest down.

2AM is not the end of the day in this world, so we wander around and check out the scene. It's a festival scene as you would expect, but with twists -- like the sculptures: giant spiders, bobbleheads and a huge mushroom fountain. There's drum circles and music playing all over and just ALL kinds of people. I want to take pics of all these characters but it all moves by too quickly. There's hippies and Mohawk kids, adults and college age guys and girls... We opt for the late snack of a Pestozilla wrap with fresh spinach, then it's off to bed.

Rita Houston Blogaroo - Thursday June 15, Late Afternoon

A long way to go and a short time to get there

We pulled into the festival site with ease under bright, hot, sunny Tennesee skies.

RV living was good to us - we drove 1,000 miles in our fully stocked rig. It's good to travel as a Bonnaroo vet! Three straight years and I've figured out many of the things you need to make this work like good food, varied beverages, rubber shoes (Crocs for me!), and baby wipes. We're also travelling with my Nespresso coffee maker, so we're living right.

BTW, I don't really think that camping in an RV with an espresso maker is camping. I know that.

Anyway, we're here and psyched to be here. Gotta shake off some of my New York work mode and get into the Bonnaroo motif. The weather forecast is good, the music lineup is unbelievable, and most important of all, the overall Bonnaroo vibe is here to grab and love!

We start by setting up our campsite - thanks to my neighbors Burt and Elsie, I have a huge tarp which we stretch across 2 RVs to create a shady patio. We hang our peace flag, our 'FUV and Rough Guides banners and call it home! Jack, our RV neighbor, helped us with lots of straps, spikes and gibs which we didn't have. We do have my pal Matt Hudson who seems to be capable of fixing and doing anything - another reason we're glad to have him in our travelling troupe. That and the cookies.

First up is a check in at the backstage radio area where I'll be spending a lot of time this weekend. This is where I'll broadcast from, where all the artist interviews happen and the temporary home of Radio Bonnaroo. Once again we're taking over a local radio station and turning it over to radio people like me from all over the country, who jump on the air with our IPods and broadcast locally all over the campsite and on the stages between acts (and on 101.5 FM and online at bonnaroo.com!).

My Radio Bonnaroo persona - Tijuana Lady - will rock it tonight from midnite to 2am. I'm psyched for that. Talking to all the peoples of Bonnaroo will be a trip. I think I'll play Yma Sumac. Later...