Over a hundred festival goers danced in the sprinkling rain Friday afternoon outside a navy-blue school bus to the tune of the new King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizzard album, “Phantom Island.” The gathering wasn’t just a listening party for the band’s 27th studio album, but a place where fans built anticipation for their favorite band to make history at Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in less than seven hours.
Friday to Sunday, King Gizzard was set to perform three sets for three nights, for the first ever “Roo Residency.” They arrived in Manchester as part of a 50-date world tour that kicked off in May and included seven residency sets along the way.
But the sprinkling rain turned into a downpour, then lightning. By the time King Gizzard was supposed to finish its first performance of the weekend, the festival was canceled.
“It didn’t hit me that hard at the time,” said Chris Kelley, five-time Bonnaroovian and host of the “Phantom Island” listening party. “[At first, I thought] ‘It’s been like this before, it’s just rain, there’s not a lot of lightning, they’ll figure it out.’”
To pass the time, he played a video from a previous King Gizz residency, this one at The Caverns in Grundy County.
“People wanted to hang out and it was just everybody dancing in the rain,” Kelley said. “It was before the rain was a problem.”
Brad Parker, Bonnaroo festival director, said King Gizz — which performed at Bonnaroo in 2022 — would have been “the ideal band” for a ‘Roo Residency.
“King Gizzard have obviously been on an incredible run over the past three years, and their last performance at Bonnaroo was a massive hit,” Parker said in an interview with music website Consequence. “When we pitched the idea to their team, they were just as excited as we were.”
Bonnaroo and King Gizzard have yet to release a statement on the cancelation. The band continues its world tour in Philadelphia this July.
Despite all that went wrong, Kelley, among others, cherished this moment on the outskirts of Bonnaroo’s festival grounds.
“It was great. It makes me glad that I did it,” said Kelley. “The peak experience for me this year was getting to host the listening party and get to hang out and meet all those folks and listen to the album with everybody. However bad I’m feeling, I [would] feel much worse if we hadn’t pulled that off.”
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