I turn to the man to my right and ask, “So where are you camping?” He and the other journalists and photographers at the table start laughing.
“We don’t camp out there,” said the woman next to him in a hot pink skort and cowboy boots. I realize I am the only one burnt and unshowered.
I’m in the media tent behind the main stage of Faster Horses — one of the largest 3-day country music festivals in the country. Staff keeps asking to double check my credentials. Each time I show them my media and photo wristbands their eyebrows raise in disbelief. I have “random crazed fan-girl trying to sneak backstage” written all over me. The room is filled with middle-aged men in T-shirts and cargo shorts, wielding very big camera lenses. My Canon Rebel T3i is the laughing stock and I know it. I don’t try to pretend to be a professional photographer, or a professional journalist for that matter — instead I weave between the realms of media and fans, observing yet never belonging to either.
“Alright, photographers line up,” said a staffer who looks like a drill sergeant at the entry to the main stage.
I look around and follow the much bigger cameras into a line.
“You know the drill,” Staff Sergeant announces. “Stay around the front of the stage, and return to the media tent after the first three songs.”
And then we start to walk. We walk out into a cheering crowd, into the space in between the front row and the stage. The drunk and crazed fans stretch their hands out to me, high five me, pose for me.
I look around and realize the other photographers are positioning themselves, prepping, taking test shots. Then, the interim music ends, lights come on, and Frankie Ballard begins.
Before this festival the extent of my country knowledge was an occasional Zach Brown Band at a darty, that song about fried chicken, and all the other songs about getting even with a cheating ex in a truck with a gun. I didn’t understand it and I didn’t really want to. The night before I left for the weekend I went through and listened to at least a few songs from every artist that was on the line-up and made brief notes. My note for Frankie Ballard reads, “Album 2014 called <em>Sunshine and Whiskey</em>, also popular song title, lyric: ‘Every time you kiss me it’s like sunshine and whisky’ it’s about a girl and a beach and wanting to hookup with her with gun allusions.” So why am I so giddy right now? I didn’t even know who he was 48-hours ago.
From a pure performance stand point he shocked me. He is spectacular. He interacts with the audience just enough so you feel like he really cares, but not so much that you feel like he is trying too hard. He rips off his jean jacket and throws it in the heat of the moment, only to politely ask for it back because; it is in fact his favorite jacket. He promises the lucky recipient something else.
Three songs end in the blink of an eye and we are escorted back to the tent. The other photographers make similar comments on his animated performance. Everyone sits down and starts looking at their photos, checking their email, scrolling through their assorted screens. I get confused. The show is still going on, things are happening, and they sure as hell aren’t happening inside this tent.
I leave the tent, the media, the stage and wander back to the camp inside the speedway race tracks — where the real story is.
This camp, referred to as “infield,” houses a large portion of the 40,000 attendees to the festival. Trailers, trucks and tents line endlessly inside a fenced-in track — creating a dystopian alternate universe. Men wearing horse heads patrol the grounds in the back of pick-up trucks. You know the movie Mad Max where people revert to tribal behavior while driving trucks in a barren wasteland where oil is currency? Well it’s like that except the currency is ice. Because it is so challenging to get out of camp and return, all meat and produce is kept fresh in coolers that are refilled with ice daily. Because the small convenient shop in the center of camp knows they have a monopoly, ice is ten dollars a bag. The food and water is similarly priced. Rumors heard in the bathrooms suggest that discounts are given to women who flash their breasts. Discounts. Women aren’t even getting free ice for exposing their bodies. The horror.
A few girls in my camp encounter a notorious man in the infield whose wife had gotten significant breast implants and sits with just duct tape over her nipples. The man announces that he “paid $40,000 for those tits” and then encourages girls or certain men to touch them.
During my stay in the infield I realize that the festival does not center around the stage, but rather on the camp. People spend days without even going into the festival, trailers and converted buses host parties at all hours, and it is rare for anyone to leave for the festival until close to dusk.
After the headliners on the main stage end around midnight, everyone rushes back to the infield. The open area surrounding the bathrooms in the center of camp become a gathering spot. Next to the bathroom are two large tents with a homemade stripper pole with a fluorescent sign reading “Cameltoe Bar.” It is unclear whether it was an establishment receiving money for the alcohol provided, or if it is just a very friendly man pouring mystery juice into peoples cups. Two rows down to the right is a bit quieter, less rowdy “bar” called Pilgrim. It is a wooden bar next to a converted trolly of some kind, with a tent covering it and tables in front of it for drinking games. The alcohol is poured out of plastic bins — payment also unclear. But the real hot spot of the infield is on the main road leading to the entrance to camp. It is a double decker red bus revamped to allow for maximum capacity with speakers on either end. Music blasted day in and day out. (I lost my lens cap there one night and, when I returned in the morning to a middle aged woman sweeping layers of cans, she very kindly found and returned it to me.)
A storm came and broke our tents and scattered our food. Trash littered the yard. I strained my Achilles and sought help from the single medical tent in the infield where I was treated with a wrap and Benadryl by a one-eyed-doctor. I began verbally sexually harassing men as they walked by me in an ill-thought-out attempt to retaliate against the constant chirping. Extreme things happen in extreme places. But amid the chaos was an indescribable camaraderie. Between the artists and their fans, between strangers who happen to stand next to each other in line, between neighboring camp sites. Within this microcosm the people you knew for a day felt like old friends. The world may be a constructed absurdity, but the relationships built felt authentic.
I came to realize that it is this idea of authenticity that lies at the core of country music. On the first day I skeptically asked my campmates what was so great about country. One said, “It’s the only thing that is easy to relate to. They don’t hide behind metaphors. There are good stories and they are real. They are honest.” That was the point of it all. I didn’t find this raw, unedited, dirty, exciting truth inside the media tent. I found it in the infield.
It was full of contradictions. It was real yet the stories sound fabricated. I can’t decide if I want to never do it again or do it next week. Some elements I know I will never culturally understand, but I’ve accepted not understanding. Last night I was driving on the highway in the dark and my Spotify turned on Thomas Rhett’s “Crash and Burn.” I rolled the windows down, turned it up and remembered the weekend I survived Faster Horses.