I do want to share some thoughts on all of this as well. There will be a million and one explanations for how and why we got here. Some will be fair. Some will be right. And plenty will just be hot takes with little to no real merit behind them. The festival market has changed substantially over the last decade, especially for camping festivals. It’s simply harder to get people to buy into the camping culture and experience than it once was. You don’t have to take my word for it — just look around. It’s evident across the entire festival landscape. Bonnaroo has also had a pretty brutal run of bad luck. There’s no point crying over spilled milk, but since 2020, The Farm has struggled to find any real consistency or footing. Between cancellations, weather and everything else that’s happened, it’s been a difficult stretch. Personally, I don’t have any major issue with preplanned fallow years for festivals. Glastonbury has done it for decades. It gives everyone involved a chance to reset, gives the talent pool time to grow — especially when one of the most common complaints is that every lineup looks the same — and gives the land itself time to physically recover and receive improvements. This announcement is very much in that spirit. Maybe a scheduled fallow year eventually becomes a permanent part of Bonnaroo’s future. Maybe it doesn’t. Nobody knows that right now. And two years is a long time. A lot can change between now and 2028, both for Bonnaroo and the festival industry as a whole. Until we actually start getting closer to a potential return, anyone claiming to know exactly what the future holds is mostly just guessing. At the end of the day, Bonnaroo has changed a lot of lives on this earth — mine included. The Farm is a special place, and whatever the road ahead looks like, I can only hope there’s plenty of life left in it. Long live The Farm. 🦉

Pretty Lights has surprise-dropped a new album: A Trip Thru Time Fantastic — his first in over a decade. You can stream it for free now at prettylightsmusic.com 🌀