Red Hot Chili Peppers and Brittany Howard Play Bonnaroo 2024 | The Spin

“I'm sick and tired of them telling us we should hate each other, that we should divide,” Brittany Howard said, addressing the sweat-soaked crowd assembled at Bonnaroo’s Which Stage Saturday afternoon. “We are all brothers and sisters.”

In a world as hectic, fragmented and hot as ours — and everyone on the Farm was definitely feeling the “hot” part — the search for community and spiritual fulfillment has become increasingly important. It’s easier than ever to see massive social and political problems in great detail, but all that information can be so overwhelming that it’s hard to figure out where to start coming up with a solution. Howard’s two solo albums, 2019’s Jaime and this year’s What Now, share thoughtful perspectives about how to care for yourself and those closest to you, as groundwork for loving your neighbors better.

The two albums also absolutely slap. Howard and her collaborators turn inspiration from soul, funk, jazz fusion and even house music into a vibrant, distinctive style that pretty much demands you move your ass. She and her eight-piece band — consisting of a bassist and drummer, two keyboardists, two singers and two guitarists (three when Howard picked up her guitar) — were unstoppable during their hourlong set, building grooves up and breaking them down with an athletic grace that seemed like they could maintain all night.

A short walk away at What Stage, dynamite musical polymath Jon Batiste and his band kept the theme going. Everyone in his group is an exceedingly gifted musician. While they generally stuck to one instrument for the show, Batiste played just about everything onstage from guitar to grand piano to sax (he also wailed on melodica) while reveling in the role of frontman. “Where I'm from in New Orleans, people aren't as still as y'all are when we play this kind of music,” he chided us gently. “I need y'all to give me your soul power. … We're all made of stardust and water, we should be shining and flowing at all times.” It’s still hard to decide what the coolest part was: Batiste teaching different parts of the crowd interlocking vocal melodies to sing together, or he and the band building up the beat in real time for the dance-inflected piece “Worship,” which appears on their recent LP World Music Radio.

“You wanna hear a love song?” Chris Carrabba asked the Bonnaroovians pouring out of This Tent as the sun went down. You betcha they did.

Over the next couple of hours, hundreds of fans, mostly in the 35 to 45 age bracket, scream-sang along with the Dashboard Confessional frontman to “Stolen,” “Screaming Infidelities” and heaps more non-Dashboard songs during the Once More With Feeling(s) Emo Superjam. With the heat dissipating, it was a great time for looking back on how loudly emotional music (and perhaps questionable haircuts and clove cigarettes) helped a generation get through the general bummer that is adolescence. It also served as a kind of live-band karaoke moment for a ton of singers, starting with Carrabba and followed by Thursday’s Geoff Rickly. Before we had to bail, Mayday Parade’s Derek Sanders took his turn on a standout rendition of Blink-182’s 2003 hit “I Miss You.”

Cage the Elephant, Nashville rockers by way of Bowling Green, Ky., made their return to the festival, taking What Stage by storm after playing just about every other stage on the Farm during previous visits. Frontman Matt Shultz was plenty active, if seemingly less likely to take a flying leap into the crowd than in days of yore. The band dug in hard and took full advantage of the massive canvas that is the main stage, presenting its widescreen variety of garage- and psych-schooled rock ’n’ pop with pyrotechnics added in. In May, the band released Neon Pill, their first new LP since 2019’s Social Cues, but new songs made up a fairly small portion of the set. “Cigarette Daydreams” and “Come a Little Closer,” from 2013’s landmark Melophobia, served as a one-two punch to close the show, and got just as strong sing-alongs as the Emo Superjam.

The shoulder-to-shoulder audience for Cage wasn’t just folks staking out a spot for the headliners, either — over the hour between sets, it felt like more than half the field changed over. But it was back to brimming when a portion of Edgard Varèse’s “Amériques,” a discordant early 20th century composition that conveys the sense that something big is about to happen, played Red Hot Chili Peppers to the stage.

Red Hot Chili Peppers
Photo: Victor J. Reed

The veteran funk-punk outfit kicked off their third go-round as Bonnaroo headliners in fine form, with bass madman Flea, drummer Chad Smith and guitarist John Frusciante going for broke on an instrumental jam. The band has had its share of noteworthy guitarists over the years, but seems to really find another gear when Frusciante is part of the crew. Back in the fold since 2019, he’s now on his third tour of duty with the Peps, and was grinning a mile wide Saturday as he unleashed a torrent of riffs and solos from his Stratocaster, playing so hard it’s a wonder it’s still in one piece.

Soon singer Anthony Kiedis bounded his way to the stage and the set began in earnest with “Can’t Stop,” which could easily be the band’s mission statement. For the next hour-and-a-half, they goofed hard — no one was really expecting them to show up at the nearby Waffle House as Flea said they would, but would it have surprised anyone? — and rocked harder. Shoutout to drum tech and touring keyboardist Chris Warren, who brought the melancholy Mellotron flutes to “Californication,” among other things.

The set featured a few songs from Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen, the pair of double albums the band released in 2022; one standout was “Eddie,” a salute to the late, great Eddie Van Halen. But they dug back as far in the catalog as “Me and My Friends,” which is also a pretty succinct description of the RHCP ethos. The original version’s verse about founding guitarist Hillel Slovak, who died in 1988, has been updated to reference Frusciante, who’s been with the band for some of their most definitive moments. “Under the Bridge” and “Give It Away,” two all-timers from 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, served as the encore, and a surprising number of songs from 2002’s By the Way were also set highlights.

The Chili Peppers wear the “legacy act” mantle well — which is to say, in their case, that they haven’t lost their teenage sense of humor, and they play like every show is the last one they’ll ever do. The feeling of brotherhood translates into ensemble playing that only this ensemble could pull off; it’s dazzling to watch and heartwarming to be present for.