The acclaimed Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is moving from hippie to hipper in its fifth year.
Instead of the usual jam-band favorites, this year’s headliners include Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Radiohead.
This weekend’s Bonnaroo lineup has always been diverse, but industry experts say the four-day festival is changing to keep up in a competitive summer-festival market.
Ray Waddell, a senior editor at Billboard magazine, said Bonnaroo organizers are smart to add more mainstream bands.
“You want to be broad to an extent,” Waddell said. “When you bring in Tom Petty, Beck, Radiohead and Elvis Costello, you’re showcasing a great rock lineup that’s not tied to any niche.” The festival that started Thursday features plenty of indie rock, with Death Cab for Cutie, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Bright Eyes.
“Looking at the lineup, it’s actually hip,” said Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of Pollstar Magazine. “The bands are coming from a lot of different genres, and they’re pulling major musical players from all these different styles.”
Bonnaroo – held on a 700-acre farm 60 miles south of Nashville – had instant success, attracting fans eager for the sprawling improvisational rock performed by Widespread Panic, the Dead and former Phish front man Tre Anastasio.
But jam-band concert attendance has waned in the last few years, Waddell said.
Last year, Bonnaroo sold some 76,000 tickets, nearly 14,000 fewer than in 2004. This year the festival was capped at 80,000 and sold out Monday.
But festival organizers say they have no intention of abandoning the music that has brought them this far.
Rick Farman, co-owner of festival co-producer Superfly Productions, points to Bonnaroo favorites Anastasio, Phil Lesh, Robert Randolph and Les Claypool as just a few among the many returning jam bands.
“Do I think we will have a slightly different audience? Yeah, probably,” Farman said. “But I think it goes back to the diversity thing. I think a lot of people who have gone to this show before are Tom Petty fans and Radiohead fans.
“People’s music collections reflect the kind of programming we do,” he said. “I think most people in that iPod generation listen to a lot of things, not just rock music or just hip-hop.”
The changes are obvious to Thurston Moore, whose band Sonic Youth will return this year after playing Bonnaroo in 2003 with headliners the Dead, Neil Young and the Allman Brothers.
“I knew that they were trying to … approach expanding the language of what a jam band could be,” Moore said. “I’m very intrigued by the fact that the headliners are maybe a bit more kind of contemporary.”
Bonnaroo faces competition from established summer festivals elsewhere, such as Coachella in California and the Austin City Limits Festival.
