Featured photo by Skyler Wendell
Story by Bailey Brantingham and Hannah Carley
Manchester, Tennessee: known to some as the home of about 13,000 people, nestled in the shadow of Monteagle Mountain and an hour southeast of Tennessee’s capital city. For everyone else? It’s the site of Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.
Before 2002, few Manchester residents could have guessed how some acreage east of the small, southern town would change the community. Bonnaroo opened its gates on June 20, 2022, as a jam band festival that turned Interstate 24 into bumper-to-bumper gridlock. And love or hate it, over two decades later, Bonnaroo remains a polarizing topic for those who call Manchester “home” for the other 51 weeks of the year.
Bonnaroo returns to The Farm June 13-16, with top-billed acts like Post Malone, Megan Thee Stallion and Red Hot Chili Peppers, a three-peat alumni of the Coffee County mega-fest.
“You couldn’t hire someone to advertise for Manchester, Tennessee, better than Bonnaroo has advertised for us,” said David Pennington, retired Coffee County mayor and local business owner.
Born 22 years ago, Bonnaroo was created in the wake of a double-whammy death of Tennessee music festivals. After the cancellation of Knoxville’s Hot Summer Nights concert series in 1999 and the low-sale failure of Manchester’s Itchycoo Park Music Festival in the same year, AC Entertainment co-founder Ashley Capps was determined to solve Tennessee’s then-lacking music festival scene.
Bonnaroo set itself apart from other music festivals with its all-genre lineups, managable capacity and positive energy. But, for one weekend every June, the echo of the festival and flocks of visitors can be felt in the town mere miles away. And not every local appreciates a major music festival in their backyard.
With tourists overrunning local property and low-bass rumbles rocking buildings miles deep into downtown, there’s one aspect of the festival that keeps locals satiated despite the noise: city-wide profit. Bonnaroo generates more than $5 million from taxes, but campers and other Bonnaroovians provide $287 million of the total $339 million profit that impacts Manchester’s residential employment, local businesses and tourism rates, according to a Tennessean article published earlier this year.
Pennington believes Bonnaroo offers more than an experience for people to kick back and enjoy good music. It’s a generous business.
“Bonnaroo is one of the better things that happened … as far as business-wise,” Pennington said. “Bonnaroo’s not just a music festival, it’s a business. They’re a production company. They employ, like, 10,000 people, and that’s not just for the week of Bonnaroo … they’ve got people working all the time.”
Each year, Pennington welcomes hordes of hungry tourists to his family-owned Jiffy Burger diner with open arms. He starts off his day at 4:00 a.m. during the festival season, prepping around 1,500 hamburger patties in the kitchen each morning.
“Look at all the people they draw, look at all the tourism that we get from them,” Pennington said.
Pennington’s home includes a makeshift Bonnaroo museum, where he stores troves of festival memorabilia from past shows, courtesy of his relationship with Capps and Farman. Collections of autographed guitars, artist photo albums, framed lineup collages and classic ‘Roo posters are a few of his most prized possessions.
On a large scale, the festival draws traffic to Manchester’s restaurants and shops, resulting in a payday for local small business owners. For nearby residents, though, the payout of festival season isn’t so great. Some locals who don’t own businesses or earn festival wages see it as an inconvenience, longtime Manchester resident Margina Wood said.
“We just leave town,” Wood said. “Traffic, when everybody gets in, is not that bad. But it used to be horrible, usually backed up all the way to Monteagle Mountain.”
Two years after the inaugural Bonnaroo, Coffee County created an entrance to the interstate, allowing tourists to arrive earlier to ease the flow of traffic, Pennington said. Locals unable to get away for the weekend can buy discounted tickets, while festival promoters provide free admission for residents who live within a few miles of The Farm.
“My house backed up to the field where we could hear all the music and stuff. We were in the ‘loud zone,’” Wood said.
Local officials protect the festival because of the communal revenue it provides, according to Pennington. So, those with complaints about Bonnaroo might just have to take a number — it seems likely that the show will keep on “radiating positivity” for summers to come.
Hannah Carley is a staff writer for MTSU Sidelines.
Bailey Brantingham is the Lead Lifestyles Reporter for MTSU Sidelines.
To contact the Lifestyles Editor, email [email protected].
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