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One might assume that Ashley Capps has run out of memory for more bands.
For the last 15 summers, Capps has thrown a party—sometimes for as many as 100,000 people and sometimes with more than 100 bands—on an enormous farm an hour southeast of Nashville. That would be Bonnaroo, one of many projects from Capps’ long-running, Knoxville-based empire AC Entertainment and one of America’s most mammoth festivals. Since its 2002 inception, Bonnaroo has perennially put the biggest musicians in the world, from Billy Joel and Elton John to Kanye West and James Brown, onstage just after the blistering Tennessee sun has set.
Somehow, though, Capps not only remembers the last name on 2006’s 118-band roster, capped by Tom Petty and Radiohead, but also that very act’s set. That year’s performance by the then relatively unknown Zac Brown Band lingers with Capps. “It was one of those shows where you realize you’re watching someone who’s on the cusp of really connecting with a larger audience,” remembers Capps. Watching the Atlanta-based Brown, he expected the group would soon be famous, just as his friends from Georgia had told him. “There was clearly this connection, and there’s an energy with that where you can feel it.”
He was right: Only two years later, Brown would release his triple-platinum breakthrough The Foundation and become a strange modern-country superstar, known as much for his omnipresent and meticulously groomed beard as for his willingness to push his roots-rock act into unexpected realms. Before that, though, he was an early member of an ongoing, entirely circumstantial fraternity of motley musical acts when he stepped onstage in Manchester, Tennessee—that is, the fraternity of the last bands listed on the Bonnaroo poster.
Determining the last act on the Bonnaroo poster each year isn’t exactly a direct process. Between the initial lineup announcement and the moment when bands arrive on the grounds in early June, the roster—and with it, the poster—can shift through many iterations. As the festival has worked to stay unpredictable with movie events (Lebowski Fest in 2009, for instance) or cadres of comedians (in 2005, eight comics were tacked onto the end of the bill like forgotten punchlines), the last lines can get messy. The festival maintains a detailed online repository of its bookings, though, each meant to serve as the year’s final poster.
“You look at some of the artists in that group, like Zac,” Capps says with a chuckle, “and you say, ‘Well, maybe I want to be last, too.’”
Indeed, though Brown may be the most famous person in that list of 15, he’s certainly not its only success. Strangely, Toots & the Maytals were the last band on the 2003 Bonnaroo poster, after having served as reggae icons for four decades. Warpaint became the ninth official afterthought in 2010, months before the four-piece released its Rough Trade debut. Among the other acts with this peculiar distinction, there’s erstwhile old-time standouts the Biscuit Burners and mash-up progenitor Z-Trip, affable Malaysian singer Zee Avi and peripatetic troubadour Willy Mason.
But there are a few acts for which a Bonnaroo postscript remains a pinnacle, the crown on what may have, at that point, seemed like promising careers. British alt-rock group Your Vegas played in 2008, two months after releasing its one major-label album and two years before breaking up altogether. Though former frontman Coyle Girelli seemed eager to be interviewed, being the last band at Bonnaroo wasn’t a topic he wanted to entertain (upon learning about this piece’s focus, he soon stopped responding altogether).
Likewise, the New York electronic-pop duo Tiny Victories held that final slot in 2012 and are now on hiatus. Singer Greg Walters, however, talks about his Bonnaroo experience with great enthusiasm and detail. Months earlier, Tiny Victories released its first EP and were surprised by the amount of attention its emphatic, colorful little tunes earned. And then, days before Bonnaroo began, an email arrived asking the band to make the half-day drive to Tennessee for a last-minute, late-night set on a tiny stage for those fans who weren’t ready to go to bed after the headliners were finished. As 80,000 people dispersed, Tiny Victories would give them one more chance to revel.
“We started setting up in the middle of the night, in the middle of the main square, where all these people would walk past to go back to their campgrounds,” Walters remembers. “We were the last band on the bill, but goddammit, we had one of the best slots.”
Just before Tiny Victories were about to play, however, rain began to fall. The ad hoc stage included a lot of high-end electronics but no basic cover overhead. “It was the only stage at Bonnaroo that was not ready for bad weather. They had a great sound system, but they did not have a tarp. And we’re an electronica band, so we can’t just unplug,” Walters says. And so, Tiny Victories took the loss. “We had barreled down to get there and taken time off from our jobs for this one show,” he recalls. “But we got back in the van and drove back to New York City.”
Because Tiny Victories hadn’t actually performed at Bonnaroo, organizers asked them to return next year. They accepted and advanced four slots to the right on the 2013 poster, where they led the final line rather than closed it. That distinction went, instead, to Nashville guitarist William Tyler. “I wasn’t aware that was my spot,” Tyler says now. “This makes me wonder if it’s better to be the last four lines in the NCAA Tournament or the first four in the NIT.”
Still, the opportunity had a profound impact on Tyler’s musical trajectory. When Bonnaroo reached out to Tyler’s booking agent, festival organizers asked if his full band could play. To date, though, the longtime Lambchop sideman had only issued three albums of solo guitar instrumentals. He had no band, but the offer sounded like a welcome challenge. For Nashville musicians, playing the massive festival to the east seemed like a necessary rite of passage.
Tyler quickly assembled an electric quartet and reimagined many of the quiet songs of his past. His next EP, Lost Colony, featured that same crew and set the stage for the ambitious Modern Country, his first full-length effort with a full band, anchored by Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche.
“That Bonnaroo experience made me realize, ‘OK, you can play instrumental music and connect with people who wouldn’t necessarily be into it, if it’s loud and it moves—like a jam band, basically,’” he says. “That was my first experience thinking of my music outside of insular, experimental, private folk music. I realized, ‘Oh, yeah, we can sound like the Allman Brothers if we want to.’ And that’s led to so many other things.”
Four years after Zac Brown ranked last on the Bonnaroo roster, the frontman returned to the festival. With Hot 100 hits now in tow, Brown had climbed from the bottom rung to the seventh of more than three-dozen rows of artists, displayed just beneath LCD Soundsystem and the National but far above the likes of the xx, the Crystal Method, and clear stylistic forebearer, Kris Kristofferson.
For Capps, watching such an ascent remains one of the thrills of his lifelong business. “It’s always fascinating to see how it all turns out,” he says. “There are a lot of great instances where a band that’s an ‘opening act’ steals the show. It’s a very unscientific process,” Capps admits. This year, Zack Heckendorf, a songwriter who seems descended from former Bonnaroo co-headliner Dave Matthews, will take those last-slot honors. “There are always moments where the hierarchy gets reversed later on, and I still find that really exciting.”