Matt Shultz, Bowling Green celebrity first and international musician second, summoned 20,429 fans singing strong  in Manchester, Tenn., to come a little closer.  The crowd swifted as a roller-coaster in an attempt to touch his hand.  Personal space down to zero, obeying Schultz sultry command reached impossible. Instead, Schultz drops into his fans hands like the weekend rainfall--getting closer than they’ve dared imagined at the stage titled “Which” in Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.  Unmistakably so, the answer was Cage The Elephant for their Saturday hour-long set starting 5:45 p.m.

 

“You’re pretty hot …. if you make it here. This stage has the biggest visibility. They (Cage the Elephant) got gigantic,” Chris Lock of Baltimore said before seeing Morning Teleportation’s Travis Goodwin and Cage The Elephant’s Matthan Minster go at it with a keyboard solo while wearing metallic royal crowns. 

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Though Bonnaroo attracts 100,000 die-hard, happy camper music fans, the world proves to be small. Lock and his friend Nolan Center, music students of Peabody Institute of the John Hopkins University know of Bowling Green from their stay with Will Johnson, a Elkton freshman.  The two experienced frontman Shultz crowdsurfing on top of them. 

 

Cage the Elephant determined to impress and push boundaries with their return to the multi-stage music festival after their first appearance in 2009.   

 

“I’m doing well! “When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade,” Shultz talked to the crowd during a diminutive technical difficulties moment. It didn’t faze fans, but excited them for the intimate time to engage. 

 

Within 15 minutes, the VIP section yelled “yeah, Bowling Green, Kentucky!” Shultz responded with a one word shout out: “Tidball’s!” 

 

“Given by our performance we’re doing well so far!” The crowd responded with screams, with one finishing in a cry for her love of Schultz body before undressing out of his shirt mid-set. 

 

Though all weekend through festival chats and hangouts, fans said they don’t mind any ‘Cage’ tunes the Kentucky quintet made for the vying setlist. 

 

“ ‘Ain’t No Rest For the Wicked.  It’s like ‘ahh!’ said Bonnaroo staff-member Marlee Slack, 19. “ It’s like the original Cage the Elephant song.” Though, Slack and her co-worker also fond their new single, “Take it or Leave it,” featuring Juliette Lewis. 

 

Indeed, Cage the Elephant included Slack’s favorite into the setlist before they dropped it to the audience, along with throwing drumsticks. 

 

The second time around as performers for our Kentucky quintet, included a late Friday night arrival in Nashville for rehearsal determined to seduce the tracks from ‘Melophobia,’ meaning fear of music. Though a fear Bonnaroo flock seems to merely mind is missing the music. 

 

The performers, doubled as attendees and scheduled Ice Cube’s show full of ‘old and new school vibes’ for their Friday night on the same stage they will rock the the ‘roos.’

 

Vocalist Christian Zucconi,  of  American rock band Grouplove, said they were disappointed to miss their friends show. 

 

“Our set is before theirs and we have to go to press right afterward. It’s a bummer too that we have to miss them,” Zucconi said right before learning of ‘The Square’ and Spencer’s Coffeehouse from friend and talking of visiting Bowling Green with him another time. 

 

More than 40, 000 fans that used the schedule PC and mobile app Bonnaroo provided, with half those booking the Bowling Green natives in their ‘Roo weekend. Saturday night offered the benefit to see the indie troupe exchange energy with the audience in a music industry showcase level, for work and play.

 

Participants have strategized schedules, attending hours early for demanded shows with a peculiar stage name system. Tents are named “This,” “That,” and “The Other” and stages named “Which,” and “What.” “Which” stage is the second biggest set-up for Bonnaroo goers, flooded with sweaty half-naked humans, to enthrall in a pure ear-ecstasy paradise. 

 

“I’m going to be here all day. For Cake. For Cage The Elephant. Just to be up front,” said Matthew Pittman, 22, from Cummings, Ga. Pittman started his day for the ‘Which’ stage at 2:15 p.m., saying he scheduled his movements on the 700-acre farm two weeks ago, making Cage The Elephant a prime band to see the first time and check of his ‘Bands to See Live’ list. 

 

The audience opened arms figuratively and metaphorically to Schultz yells, conversation and crowd-surfing signature moves. Appropriately, “Come a Little Closer” serves as a seamless anthem with the lyrics focusing on loneliness and hallucinations of a substance enhanced state.  

 

Deep in the crowd, an elated 19-year-old, Anna Schnuck attended for part of it before going to a tent featuring  Phosphorescent.  Although a Western Kentucky University sophomore and deejay for the progressive student-run radio station, Schnuck has not yet to embrace the college-town night scene Cage the Elephant dedicatedly visits in Bowling Green.

 

“I’ve never seen Cage the Elephant because they perform at the bars and I’m not of age,” Schuck said.  “This is my second year at ‘Roo and I was very surprised when I saw how many people scheduled Cage!” 

 

Schnuck began to trek with high-school aged friends from Paducah to the 700-acre farm, arriving 8:30 p.m. Wednesday and escaping the chance of standing in an eight-hour long line with Cage the Elephant in mind all weekend. 

 

Though, Schnuck is a few hours away from Manchester, other Bonnaroo goers stretch to the southern hemisphere. Flags from Australia pitched beside tents at the camping grounds. Next to that tent,  a Canadian flag. 

 

Multiple Grammy Award nominee Susan Tedeschi, of Tedeschi Trucks Band, addresses the atmosphere as way to step aside from technology during a press conference Cage the Elephant briefly attended before headed to back-to-back interviews with national name recognition, including Billboard magazine. 

 

“It’s a community. It’s a beautiful thing,” Tedeschi said. 

 

The Bonnaroo 2014 performance for Cage the Elephant marked the ten year anniversary the group first arrived to the festival as attendees.  Shultz recalled a moment they met a man ‘tripping out,’ but saying they would play Bonnaroo one day after hearing them play guitar from outside their camping station. That stranger was twice right.