Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is a five-day, multi-stage festival that brings together 80,000 audience members and some of the best performers in rock and roll, jazz, Americana, hip-hop, electronica, and just about any contemporary music you can think of. Rolling Stone magazine named this event one of the 50 events that changed the history of rock and roll. For the past three years, I have served as an independent consultant to Kel Executive Services and the Bonnaroo Festival. Kel is the Festival security contractor, managing a group of more than 600 sub-contractors, including safety monitors, mounted security personnel, gate and access personnel, and many others. I am part of a team of 12 that "audits" security operations at the Festival. We observe, report, solve problems, and frequently advise and act as referees for the security personnel as they perform their work. In my two seasons I've concentrated on the Festival access process: the screening of guests and vehicles as they first enter the Festival grounds, and again later as they enter the concert venues on foot.

This process is exciting, creative, very interesting, sometimes weird, and at times very, very intense, and it keeps me on my feet and moving for 12 straight hours. I prefer the cool nights in Tennessee in June, and so I'm on duty from 8pm to 8am. Night-time is the best time to enjoy the weirdness of Bonnaroo. The lights, the tens of thousands of people, the strange art and visuals, and the non-stop energy. I have been on the main stage (pictured above) during performances and looked out over a sea of 50,000 smiling dancing people while they grooved to the music of Metallica, Widespred Panic, Robert Plant, Bonnie Raitt, Dave Matthews, Beck, Sting, and lots of others. Why do I do this strange thing?!? Because it's fun, exciting, and different from anything else I do during the year! Each year during these six amazing and highly amusing days, I meet thousands of people from all over the world, and I have some amazing and memorable adventures.