Bonnaroo 2024 Artist Spotlight: The Garden

Like we’ve been doing for many years now, we’re making it our mission to help you get acquainted with many of our favorite acts from Bonnaroo‘s 2024 lineup. After roaring back to life in 2022, after two years off due to Covid and weather, and feeling fully like its old self again with a great fest last summer, this year marks Bonnaroo’s 21st installment (and 23rd anniversary), boasting not only another great and varied lineup, but also a continuation of some of the big changes and improvements rolled out over the last couple of years, with more flexibility in ticketing and camping, a reimagined “Outeroo” campground area, new activations, and further new ways to Roo. Back once again in its usual June 13-16 timeframe, we’re counting down the days until another great weekend on the farm.

As we dig through the entire schedule, we’ll highlight a spread of performers spanning across genres and stages, big and small, new and old, to bring you some of the most interesting, lesser-known, and most highly-recommended among this year’s crop of artists. And as our time at ‘Roo approaches, we’ll also be bringing you some special features and full list-style daily lineup guides, to help you plan your weekend ahead of the fest. While these previews won’t span every artist, and might omit some more obvious must-see acts, we hope they’ll serve as a way to help you navigate Bonnaroo’s gargantuan lineup, and to make the most of your busy weekend at the fest!

Grab your tickets right here if you haven’t already, and read on for our Bonnaroo Artist Spotlight!

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Twin brother experimental rock and off-kilter punk group The Garden hail from Orange County, California, and played initially in another band, M.H.V, in their teens, before splitting off as a bass and drum duo, influenced by hardcore, art and electro-punk, and boasting an oddball sense of humor, stylish fashion sense and classic good looks (which has landed them professional modeling opportunities), and an ever-evolving and near-impossible to accurately classify sound, which they’ve dubbed Vada Vada. Embracing a DIY ethos and a conventional punk trajectory, the band’s early efforts were more scrappy, lo-fi, and under the radar, landing on buzzy (and now controversial) 2010s indie punk label Burger Records for early efforts like introductory tape Everything Is Perfect and debut LP The Life and Times of a Paperclip. Over the years, the duo- Wyatt and Fletcher Shears- have adopted a more polished and full sound, incorporating guitars and synths and broader genre influences, and resonating with a wider audience after signing to Epitaph Records and dropping sophomore LP haha in 2015, followed by Mirror Might Steal Your Charm in 2018. Both also have solo projects- Wyatt with Enjoy and Fletcher with Puzzle- which had an especially prolific output in the mid-2010s, just as The Garden began to tour more relentlessly, and appear a plethora of fests like Coachella, Riot Fest, and Camp Flog Gnaw, acclaimed for their energetic and wholly original live show. 2020 fourth album Kiss My Super Bowl Ring would attract even more mainstream attention, and featured some production from 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady and guests Ariel Pink and Khalif Jones, making a further evolution to the more frenetic, hyper, and pop-infused experimental punk sound that has informed their last several years of output, with their latest, 2022’s Horseshit on Route 66 adopting a similar vibe with even more punk bite and electronic flourish. The band don’t often make it to Nashville, which makes their appearance at Bonnaroo (perhaps one of the more underrated artists on this year’s lineup) all the more essential!

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