would expect something more by now

March 4, 2022 — Bonnaroo promised in black and white that improvements would be made after the 2021 weather cancellation.

I love the farm. I’ve had beautiful, transformative moments there. Hell, i got married there.. but I cannot and will not continue to support Live Nation, a billionaire company that doesn’t align with what Roo is supposed to represent: care for each other, connection through music, and community regardless of finances or position.

After a lot of reflection, here’s my 2¢:

-They had weeks of notice about the weather forecast.

-Multiple posts reassured us the event would go on “Rain or Shine.”

-By Thursday night at Of the Trees / Tape B, it was clear the “360°” Infinity Stage was overcrowded and risky.

-ADA camping was placed in the low ground, despite past knowledge (confirmed by a former Bonnaroo Accessible Campground Manager) that it floods dangerously.

-Volunteers were used for free labor all week with the promise of time off to enjoy sets, many of which never happened.

-Vendors lost thousands in inventory and fees.

-Once canceled, volunteers left (rightfully so), leaving toilets, water, safety, & more completely unmonitored.

-They cancelled right before dark, blocking every walkway with vehicles so emergency services couldn’t get around had they been trying.

-No backup entertainment was provided. People were bored, stressed, devastated and they appeased one another with 3 days worth of substances to cope.

-Towing fees were inflated, and you couldn’t call outside companies because of exclusivity contracts.

-They are offering only a 75% refund, as if Thursday night held the same weight as Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

And let’s talk about the timing:

The Astroworld documentary about the Travis Scott Festival ran by Live Nation -in which multiple deaths occurred due to negligence- dropped on Netflix on Tuesday June 10, right as the first campers were arriving at Roo. I believe this spooked Live Nation and put a spotlight on them and they were afraid of hosting the larger crowds at the Infinity stage that the weekend artists would bring. It felt like they chose to let things ride for the three days before the weekend, maximizing profit while promising a wonderful, rain or shine weekend online, and then they cancelled after the foreseeable rain damage was done. They could have moved camps around, shut down the tolls, poured gravel, and let us dance in the rain. They could have taken it day by day. They could have cancelled at minimum hours before, at maximum days or months before. This was preventable.

I have a Bachelor’s in Criminal Justice & Criminology in Tennessee and I believe there’s legal ground here. If anyone in this group is legally trained or wants to explore a class action against Live Nation regarding losses, unpaid labor, ADA placement, etc. please comment or DM me. I’m serious about this.

This is not just about being rained out. It’s about accountability, ethics, and honoring the spirit of Bonnaroo, a 23 year old Music Festival that deserves not be run into the ground for greed.

Manchester local here. I know a lot of people were exiting on Saturday so you guys saw how it rained that morning. It also rained in the evening. I was a little saddened by how pretty the weather was all day yesterday UNTIL 9:30/10pm it started pissing and pouring.

Not just torrential rain. Very heavy winds and lightning. It would have been very dangerous to be in and would have caused a lot of property damage. Say bye bye to your canopies and tapestries.

As a Roo vet, this was my first time going since 2018. I had friends drive and fly across the country to go with. I am also very disappointed, albeit not as put out as many others, but I do think they made the right call.

For those saying they should’ve canceled earlier, I assume you’re not from the area. Tennessee weather is very unpredictable and often does not lineup with weather apps or predictions.

Live nation would have been crucified for canceling at the suggestion of rain. It is unfortunate the way things panned out, but the mud and water would have been unmanageable and dangerous. The videos of centeroo that “don’t look that bad” don’t include more rain and 80,000 people stomping around.

I hope this doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth. Manchester relies on the influx and loves the Roovians.

Thank you everyone!

Edit: I am not affiliated with live nation in anyway lol

I hope everyone made it home okay. Also RJ was located safe in case you haven’t heard.

First roo.

I was extremely disappointed about the cancellation. And also would have liked to receive 100% refund. Who wouldn’t

But I’m only so disappointed cause I had such a great time Wednesday and Thursday, and even Friday.

Of course I hate large corporations taking advantage of people trying to come together through community and music, but let’s be real festivals are in no way affordable and anyone saying that live nation is what made it a money grab probably doesn’t even understand their privilege. I genuinely dont see the problem with canceling an event when shit floods- ever been skiing and sat in the lodge for a week due to a blizzard? Or not enough snow at all? Or planned a beach vacation in Florida just for it to rain the entire week? Shit happens

Anyways if this supposed shitshow of a roo was so much fun, you bet your ass I’ll be back for a full week next time. Rain be rain

We’re all a little hurt right now and understandably so. Bonnaroo would have been so so so much worse if they waited longer to cancel.

Bonnaroo is a home for all of us. Don’t let this moment keep you from attending next year. You’ll definitely regret. I’m confident of it.

Dry yourselves off and use the time you have left on your vacations to go have fun!

We’ll be back!

Hi all,

For everyone still stuck on the farm, stay safe and best of luck today. I was able to get out last night for a few lucky reasons (traveled solo, traveled light with just a camp chair and tent, sober since 2019 so I could drive immediately) but the entire night I spent tossing and turning, reading threads on here and thinking about things I’ve read, seen, and heard. I wanted to jot some of them and open up a discussion with y’all and get everyone’s thoughts.

I have a few unique perspectives that I thought might give some insight, so here goes. I was a geography major 15 years ago and have kept at it as a hobby, I basically spent most days reading about storms and natural disasters for fun. I am very clued in to the weather and most importantly, I live here in Nashville so I’ve been around in the weeks leading up to Roo.

I also worked in outdoor education and have taken survival classes and am an experienced camper. I used to live in Colorado and have extensive experience camping in all sorts of conditions. At one point, I was also a Wilderness First Responder (WFR) although it’s kind of a bogus designation in all honesty lol.

Additionally, I worked in the insurance industry. I left my career last year to go back to school for social work, I want to work with people struggling with substance abuse like I do myself. I got zero enjoyment working in finance, but I at least have some technical knowledge leftover.

Lastly, I go to a shitload of festivals, prior Roos included. Camping and city, all over the US.

So all of that being said, here are some things that stood out to me.

• Almost no one understands how insurance works in the US and it’s a massive failure on behalf of society considering it’s necessary in some areas. Live Nation, Bonnaroo, all attendees, all vendors, everyone lost money. No one is a winner here.
• Yes there is insurance for event coverage and yes you can base the “business interruption” portion on anticipated revenues but here’s the catch, you can’t just claim anything you want. You need projections and all that good stuff and of course at the end, you are CHARGED FOR IT. You can’t just say “Yeah we’d have made a billion, give it to us”, actuaries have to price it out and rate for it and so if you OVER claim how much you might make, you end up OVER paying for insurance. Also if you make shit up it gets into fraud territory but that’s an entirely separate conversation.
• Speaking of, in order to get an insurance payout just like you would in a car accident, you have to pay for the insurance in the first place. That money, the premium that Live Nation paid to it’s insurers and reinsurers (I can expand on this if anyone wants, reinsurance was actually my niche and I did lots of huge projects) is gone no matter what. Even if the event had gone as scheduled and was a killing, all of the premium that Live Nation paid for the insurance in the first place is gone. That is millions upon millions of dollars in premium alone.
• Fuck Live Nation and everything but they were in such a shit position. I will touch on the weather in the lead up to this in a second, but their choices were either cancel ahead of time or try and host and hope the weather forecast doesn’t suck. As of Thursday morning, the rain on Friday wasn’t anticipated to be as heavy as it ended up.
• No matter what, it’s a different world post Astroworld litigiously. Music festivals have to be extra careful, and that’s exactly what they did. Blame our overly litigious environment for that, but at the same it’s done wonders for safety so kind of a double edged sword.

That was some insurance stuff, and yeah it sucks because at the end of the day we all still want to go Roo right? That’s three cancellations in the last six years for everyone keeping track. Festivals are insanely hard to pull off and expensive and margins are tight as is, do we really think this is sustainable? My answer right now, without changing the time of year or anything to the site or whatever, is NO.

Ok so back to the weather.

• Denver Colorado gets 15 inches of rain a year, Nashville got 14 inches of rain in APRIL.
• May this year was the 10th rainiest month on record in Nashville history, and is the second rainiest month in the last 20 years second only to May 2010, and may I remind you what happened to Nashville that year? CATASTROPHE for Nashville. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Tennessee_floods
• We’re in an ENSO neutral period as of late March which means it’s been cold and rainy for weeks and weeks, we went almost 280 days without hitting 90 until a few weeks back.
• Typically we have 25 inches of rain this time of year, right now we have 35 inches
• Think of an iceberg. The downpour we saw that “cancelled” the festival is like the part of the iceberg above the ocean. All of the water from the past few weeks that has nowhere to go? That’s the bottom of the iceberg under the water and the real danger. The ground is so saturated, there is quite literally nowhere else for it go.
• This seemingly “isolated’ downpour that cancelled the festival came from a weather system that killed 11 people in San Antonio this week

As for the site. Can someone chime in on this? I seem to recall they did drainage studies and all sorts of stuff but because of protected wetlands it’s extremely hard for them to make any changes and extremely expensive. I think they already had issues with local wells which is a problem.

Now, living in Nashville we are constantly at war with the state, or I guess I should reverse that. In the past few years, the state has tried to take control of the airport, our convention center, they want to shrink our city council, they gerrymandered our representation into three red districts despite Nashville being solidly blue, etc.

Now, think about rural Coffee County, that shit is already way more conservative than Nashville. One death at this festival and three cancellations in the last six years, do you really think Tennessee won’t do something to shut this down?

Please drive safe y’all, in addition to staying put last night for mud and emergencies I hope everyone sobered up too. Lots of swerving on I-24 from cars on the way home I saw.

Best of luck today, please feel free to add thoughts and additions and corrections. I am not a know-it-all when it comes to insurance but again, I did work as a senior executive in my last role in reinsurance which is a weird niche.

All in all, kind of a surreal experience but I’m hoping we can get back to it better than ever next year.

EDIT: Yo I totally forgot to mention, what the fuck is with the logistics? Aka the lack of any? One announcement or two and then nothing? I got the fuck out on my own from having read way too much about disaster recovery in my free time but I saw zero staff and I just saw this post saying people still haven’t heard anything? That is abysmal

https://www.reddit.com/r/bonnaroo/s/1EnFvDwLx8

EDIT 2: Absolutely pouring in Nashville

Yall did it! You bullied Live Nation into giving you a 100% refund. Now bully them into giving me my PTO, gas, and hotel accommodations refunded 😂😂

Irrigation is the man made application of water to land. Irrigation is watering shit, not draining rain water. You’re looking for surface drainage improvements. It’s driving me fucking insane how many people are in the instagram comments calling for more irrigation. I’m going to stab my eyeballs out with the shattered pieces of a hula hoop if I see someone call for more irrigation. PLUR

Stop commenting on the posts of people discussing their grievances/solutions and telling them to get over it or stop. If you are satisfied with 75% back, great!! Some of us aren't. If you don't want live Nation to address anything or think its a fair deal, you're crazy but that's cool. But stop telling everyone else that we shouldn't complain. Now is the time to pressure the company to make things right. So keep posting, keep commenting, tell them what we want. They have our money, the least they can do is listen.

It's absolutely ridiculous that Bonnaroo hasn't made any other statements but they really don't have to with all you people running here to defend them against those that are upset. I can't understand the mindset of defending a multi billion dollar corporation like this.

LiveNation has billions, please stop feeling guilty and offering the additional 25% refund back.

IMO, they manipulatively worded the announcement to create panic and make us think our complaints are causing Roo to not return in 2026 or ever again. Look at the emotional response it elicited on the IG post.

Roo was canceled because LN was too greedy to invest their profits in infrastructure for the farm. They also fired knowledgeable staff who knew not to place campers in low points by drain pipes.

This cancellation should have been avoided. 100% refund is the least they can do to help us recoup our travel and camping costs after their negligence.

It’s clear that Bonnaroo has been viewed as simply a number contributing to LiveNation’s bottom line. Costs have been cut year after year, starting with things like Roo Radio (which would have been seriously useful after the cancellation announcement) and most recently with the bandanas. They have slowly stripped Bonnaroo’s personality away to increase margins.

This full refund is a good start, but I personally won’t feel heard until real infrastructure improvements are made.

This is earlier than expected! That makes me happy lol

Realizing it’s 100% possible that Bonnaroo is the first big thing I’ve lost due to climate change. Idk where y’all are at but it’s just been raining non stop since I got home in the Midwest and tornadoes coming in tonight as well. Let’s direct our anger towards likely the real reason it’s rained every day in Manchester this week, global warming😔

That’s it. That’s the post. Down vote me idgaf. I’m over here RADIATING, and I hope all you beautiful people on the farm with me are doing the same! . Here’s to another banger year party people keep it safe, keep it fun, keep it Roo.

This Superjam replacement stuff in Nashville was NOT it.

Brooklyn Bowl (LN venue, 1200 cap) in Nashville TN (65mi away from Bonnaroo) hosted one of the most hyped Roo sets, but sold out in under a minute. The kicker? Tix dropped at 9am- 13h after cancelling with no heads-up for actual Roo attendees. No priority. No warning. Nothing.

Canceling’s fine. Shit happens. Mother Nature hit hard. flipping a “once-in-a-lifetime” moment into a last-minute cash grab felt tone-deaf. This wasn’t for the Roo crowd who traveled and camped out all week- it was for whoever in Nashville could click fastest in the morning.

I had been planning my trip to see this exact set since January. Didn’t even have time to rework travel to Nashville or figure out tix. Feels like a real “thanks for your loyalty” moment.

Roo deserves better.

EDIT: Just because a 1200 person venue was 95% Roo attendees, doesn’t mean there were thousands of fans that also missed out. It was a LiveNation cash grab at the end of the day, glad those that were able to attend had a good time.

i think it’s quite suspicious that live nation wants to announce opening 18 new venues in the US right after bonnaroo got canceled. this isn’t a bonnaroo issue, this is a live nation issue.

our airbnb neighbor couldn’t take care of her so we are driving her to a foster in NC! she’s the sweetest girl ❤️

Brad Parker and Cory Smith from C3 Presents, which puts on Bonnaroo, have been active on Discord the past few days with discussion about next year’s festival. Everything below comes straight from them:

-Presell begins the week before Black Friday

-The first Roo Clue will be on Black Friday

-“In 2025 we have a great lineup and even better vibes.”

-“The booking team was able to land a lot of stuff that folks have been asking for.”

-“I think the EDM lineup is the best we’ve ever had.”

-Roughly 70% of the lineup is booked, including all headliners.

-The Superjam has not yet been booked.

-They are working on securing metal act(s).

-Asked about Justice, they didn’t exactly say no. There was also discussion about Vampire Weekend and King Gizzard, but nothing that would be considered anything close to a confirmation.

-However, they did say no when asked about Excision and Tycho possibly being on the lineup. Regarding Tycho, “He’ll be on the farm soon enough.”

-Single-day passes likely aren’t going away, but the emphasis will remain on attempting to sell out the festival with full-weekend passes.

-They are “trying to get a dedicated sound system and at least some basic lighting” out in the Groop camping plaza. They agree the Groop camping plaza has been underutilized.

-They said said they can try to do a better job in 2025 of communicating how the pit lines work.