Music In The Dust

Caitlin Johnston:

MANCHESTER, Tenn.

Ukulele and smoke filled the heavy air of the Tennessee hotel room. For $58, the members of the Applebutter Express had themselves two beds with cigarette burns in the comforters and a chair dotted with brown stains.

“You don’t come here to mess around,” said fiddle player Joe Trivette, 25. “You come here to smoke meth in a cheap hotel room.”

Or you come here because you’ve landed the impossible gig — the one that puts you in front of not tens or hundreds of fans, but some 80,000 music lovers. You come here because in two days, this remote town in Tennessee will become, for the duration of the Bonnaroo festival, the seventh most populated city in the state. You come to the burned beds and the stained chairs so you never have to again.

But for now the room offered what the four members of the Tampa band needed: a hot shower to wash off last night’s grime and a mini fridge to keep the beer cold.