When June reels around every year, I hear the siren call of Tennessee’s mega-music bacchanal, and despite the rabid heat, grungy camping, and general hassles involved, I’ve made the ’Roo pilgrimage the last four years in a row, including this one.

Bonnaroo stands outside the hamlet of Manchester, TN, on a 700-acre farm, an hour south of Music City. Every summer, Bonnaroo becomes Tennessee’s sixth largest city, and the festival even publishes its own daily newspaper, the Beacon. This isn’t the little hippie-fest-that-could anymore; though jam bands are still well-represented, it’s become something else: America’s arguably biggest, most musically diverse, and probably best music festival. It’s the Woodstock for the digital age.

I arrived this year on Friday morning; though it technically starts on Thursday, few bands play that evening. I spent that night in Nashville on honky tonk row, getting in shape for the upcoming events. It’s a good thing too, because thunderstorms soaked the area all evening.

We set up camp in the late morning. Rows and rows of cars piled up in the green fields; tents wilted under the Southern sun. Strains of music wafted through the humid air, and the Ferris wheel’s red neon beckoned. Bonnaroo opened its charms in the hazy sunshine. Sensory overload sprayed me from every direction, and instantly I remembered why I keep returning. This place almost has the feel of a state fair, just a much freakier one—folk art displays, batting cages, carnival wagons, silent discos, karaoke barns, to entertain us in between the music. Friday and Saturday tattooed the heart of Bonnaroo, and the music choices were endless. With six stages, the magnitude of it all can be overwhelming. It takes at least half a day to get used again to Bonnaroo crowds. With well over a hundred bands playing the entire weekend, I’ll focus on my highlights.

Lucinda Williams and Al Green’s respective sets overlapped early Friday evening, and their artistic range typified the norm here. Two of my favorite singers ever, Williams and Green both hail from the South, and exude soul in almost-quantifiable ways. Williams’ wracked rasp of a voice oozes a sultry grit that she ladles through all her best songs. With her cowboy hat, biker boots, and acoustic guitar, she led her band through a Southern odyssey of sorts, name-checking cities like Baton Rouge, Greenville, and Jackson until her broken twang distills all the poetry implied in her roots travelogue.

After the popularity of last year’s New Orleans-themed Jazz tent, soul music seized the stages at Bonnaroo this year with the titans’ trinity of Al Green, Allen Toussaint, and Booker T accompanied by the Drive-By Truckers. Green glided out on the main What Stage, still dapper-handsome, dressed in a three-piece suit and tossing roses to the front row ladies. From his new song “Lay It Down” to the classic strains of “Let’s Stay Together”, Green’s aching falsetto lingered over the crowd with sweet temptation. It’s easy to swoon when this man’s mile-wide smile shines down in ever-increasing wattage. Memphis soul reigned supreme on the Tennessee stage this night.

At the day’s press conference, Lucinda Williams tried to define her role in the current music industry: “I fell in the cracks between rock and country, which now has been filled up by Americana. I was fortunate because I was able to get into the business before it became completely fucked up. Can you imagine Dylan or Neil Young getting signed today? It’s so much harder now in some ways.”

Another unusual blend of choices offered this evening was one of the New York City variety: The Beastie Boys following Green on the What Stage, and David Byrne following TV on the Radio on the Which Stage.

The Boys’ boombox din loomed large over the packed field, and their kinetic rap-rock mixed samples, distorted guitar, and major attitude. They brought out Nas for a new song, and now in their mid-40s, they spent two-thirds of their set playing instruments instead of freestylin’ across the stage. If no longer the adolescent punks of our collective memory, their bratty mélange fired up the young crowd with their still-righteous raps. How can you resist “Shake Your Rump” with DayGlo-painted fans doing just that everywhere in sight?

However, it was David Byrne’s pumped twilight performance that really jacked up the pulse. Resplendent in his white suit, Byrne led his band and a troupe of dancers through a two-hour tour of his back catalog. He describes his music as “folk-electronic-gospel,” and that’s as accurate as anything else. He played many songs from his work with Brian Eno, both past and present collaborations, especially from the 1981 landmark My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. His world-music beats, polyglot rhythms, and loopy phrasing echoed over the swaying audience. Rapture shrouded the field at about 10:45pm when he broke out Talking Heads hits like “Once in a Lifetime” and Al Green’s “Take Me to the River.” For the encore, he donned a tutu, yes he did, and shimmied across the stage to the funky staccato beats of “Burning Down the House.”

All of this set the stage for the late-night performance of Phish, jam band supreme, I suppose, and a favorite of this festival’s attendees. If Bonnaroo was originally inspired by the Grateful Dead, whose legacy still reverberates through its sandal-wearing acolytes, it’s Phish who probably get closest to their inspiration. Virtuoso musicians one and all, Phish played a long midnight set that weaved oddball covers like AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” and the closing encore Beatles number, “A Day in the Life”, with their own music.

The problem is, unlike the Dead, Phish lack their own canon of great songs. Taking away their musicianship, their light show, and their audience’s rapt adulation, what remains are some mediocre songs that loop and meander through various time changes, guitar doodles, and obscure lyrics. You get the sense that the Phish cult is an insular one, and doesn’t translate well to outsiders. Few songs are memorable, and I’m grateful for the shorter 10-minute ones on their setlist; yes, I know this is jam-band heresy 101. So be it.

Bonnaroo may have once been defined by the jam-band ethos, but that’s no longer the case. Average, interchangeable bands like Widespread Panic, Ratdog, and moe. still play the festival every year, and young hippies respond with requisite glowsticks and hacky sacks—but these bands don’t form Bonnaroo’s raison d’être anymore.

Saturday’s best bands prove this. In a last-minute surprise appearance, Jimmy Buffett joined Ilo and the Coral Reefer All-Stars, opening the sunny afternoon up with a solid, if edgeless, set of his breezy, good time songs. What gave his predictable set some extra juice was his introduction of Ilo, an African singer he’s helping. Ilo’s rollicking roots-pop sounds more American than African, and the noon crowd stood in approval.

Buffett explains at his press conference: “I met him at the Festival in the Desert in Timbuktu, Mali, and immediately knew he had it. Ilo has spent the last few days in Immigration, trying to get to Bonnaroo. I know more about Homeland Security now than I care to.”