It’s early Sunday afternoon and already steamy and sticky in Manchester, Tennessee. We head purposefully to Which Stage to get close to see Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue. We got a late start, which sucked, because there was no way to get as close as we wanted. I was a bit shocked. After all, it was Sunday, half past noon. Most of Bonnaroo hadn’t stopped the Saturday party but four or five hours ago (thank you MGMT and moe.) In between me and the front row were several thousand fellow Bonnaroonians, excited to celebrate Sunday morning services with Mike Farris.

Farris and his band ran through a high energy, emotional run of songs that had the audience shouting hallelujahs and amens while shading their eyes from the still rising Tennessee sun. Mike Farris, beneath a smart hat and shades, sang and played with the passion of a believer. Sure, it was religious, which, as a twelve year veteran of the internal struggle between good and evil that is Catholic School I have come to regard with great suspicion. But this music moved me. This music took hold, got inside my head. No, I didn’t drop to the ground, speak in tongues or develop stigmata. I didn’t find God, get reborn or suddenly find religion. I was simply moved by the soul and passion in the performance. Dynamically, the band pushed the limits from blues to rock, soul and gospel and back again. And all the while, there’s Farris, all sweat and swagger, belting out both old and new with fire and power, holding the early Sunday crowd in the palm of his hand.

Seeing the energy and movement expended onstage, it was hard to believe that, just forty minutes ago, I had been engaged in a quiet conversation at a picnic table near Radio Bonnaroo with this same person. He, his wife and dog, and I traded stories about our respective Bonnaroo experiences so far. Reserved, holding the bearing of simple Southern grace, Mike was articulate, open and charming as we chatted. There was no hint of the bundle of energy and passion that I saw on stage.

AJ Crandall: So you are from here in Tennessee?

Mike Farris: I’m actually really close. My home town is about ten or fifteen minutes from here. My mom lives less than a mile, as the crow flies, from where we are sitting. I might be the only true local that’s ever played here.

AJ : So, who have you seen so far this weekend that you’ve been impressed by?

Mike Farris: David Byrne. Oh, and the Steel Drivers, I saw them yesterday and they were just amazing. They’ve got one of the best singers, in the world, in that guy, Chris Stapleton. We’ve got our little boy with us, so we took him to see, you know, a lot of the classics. Like Mr. David Byrne, Mr. Elvis Costello. We took him over to see Bruce (Springsteen) last night. I thought Bruce did a really great job, connecting with the people.

READ ON for more of AJ’s chat with Mike Farris…

AJ: I know. My brother and I were talking about how Bruce managed to bring Bonnaroo into his set. Jamming, over three hours. It wasn’t like, say, the Police, who were here a few years ago.

MF : Totally disconnected.

AJ: And Bruce was totally down with the program.

MF: And with the Police, it was like, they, I don’t know. At that point, I thought, maybe their music’s just not holding up like I thought it would.

AJ With Bonnaroo, it’s like, I don’t know. A pride, if you would call it that, in our music, diverse as it is. A few years back, Tool headlined and there were haters who said they didn’t fit. But they rocked it and Tom Morello joined in and it was a wonderful set, they connected. And the same was said about the Police, that they were borderline oldies act playing Bonnaroo that didn’t cross over like they should have.

MF: It’s like somebody didn’t give him (Sting) an update on everything. These people are not all Tennesseans. These are people from all over. There’s people from Japan here, you know what I mean? It’s not people from Manchester, Tennessee. And that’s what he kept saying, you know. He kept addressing everybody like that and I was thinking, he’s so totally disconnected man.

But I thought Bruce did a great job last night. I mean, he went down in the crowd, you can tell, it’s like, this guy’s having fun. It’s not an act. He loves that. And that inspires me. And it should inspire anybody who is a musician. Al Green I thought was just phenomenal. He brought it, man. And I knew he would.

I’m trying to think of who else we saw. You see all these bands and it’s like it’s just a haze. We saw a little bit of Booker T yesterday. And Allan Toussaint, we watched Allan play. It’s just so much; it’s hard to take it all in.

AJ: Have you played Bonnaroo before?

MF: This is the second time. We played last year at one of the tents out in the middle some where. Maybe the Troo music tent? And we got invited to come back and play one of the big stages this year, so we’re really looking forward to that. We’re very excited about it. (The second main stage, The Which Stage, is where Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue opened Sunday’s musical festivities).

AJ Do you have a different set list for the festival crowd than you would for, say, your regular Sunday night show?

MF: Same thing. Same thing. We don’t alter it at all. I mean once in a while a song comes and goes, but, yeah, it’s the same.

AJ: You have a really strong message in your music. It’s really spiritual, blatantly out there and generally well received. Is the music the message or is the message in the music? Are you more of the artist getting your music out there or are you the missionary truing to get the message to the people?

MF: I think you just, to affect anybody, in any way, the best way to do it is just not try to push your opinion on people or whatever, you just be. You don’t preach or whatever. That’s what all the great messengers’ quotes say. So, with the music, the message is there if you want it. Whatever you want to get out of it, it’s there. And you can take it or not, whatever. It’s not really about evangelizing, My personal beliefs just happen to coincide with the music that I love more than anything. This old, spiritual music. There’s something in that music that just warms me and gives me energy. And it does it wherever we play for people. And it don’t matter who it is, it’s the music. It’s good for me that all those things come together. I’m a happy guy, you know.

AJ: Tell me about the Screaming Cheetah Wheelies (Farris’ first band). Were they more music or message? The name doesn’t sound like you are in the same genre, am I right?

MF: No, it was like, when I first started out, when I was a kid, I really loved Van Morrison. I loved the way Van Morrison’s songs would paint these pictures and I would always go, ‘This guy must be on a spiritual journey’. Whether he is or not, I wouldn’t know, I’ve never met the guy. But that’s the way it appeared to me, that’s what I got out of it. So that influenced me with the Cheetah Wheelies, they were the only other band I ever had really. And I said, that’s what I want to do. I’m not a preacher I don’t do none of that stuff. I am on a spiritual journey. This is part of my life. And so I just want to paint these pictures and let people get what they want out of it. And that’s what the Cheetah Wheelies were, in a rock and blues kind of roots format. And, so, with this (The Roseland Revue), I just went straight back and did the music, focused on the roots of all popular music as we know it in the Western world.

AJ: Well, you’ve been at this a while, but you haven’t met Van Morrison. Who have you met who might have been one of your heroes that you could finally ask a question of?

MF: Mavis. I met Mavis last year. To me, the quintessential, my all time biggest musical hero was Pops (Staples). Pops really created something that nobody else was doing. It was spiritual music, but it was so unique and all to itself over here. You know, it was kind of dark. It was still kind of happy, but it had those dark elements, like the reverb in the recordings, the older, early stuff. No other quote/unquote gospel act was doing that and because he had this special thing that he was doing, it drew you in. If you weren’t a believer, it didn’t matter. You could still appreciate and love the music as an art form. There was just something, I don’t know. I just admire him a lot. Here’s a guy who’s a believer and such going, you know, “I don’t want to be in a church. I want to be in bars and stuff. Who says I can’t?” And here I am on this spiritual journey and I want to bring joy to everybody.
And also, another mission of ours, and I’ve been saying this all along; this music has kind of been forgotten.

When the British invasion came about, they kind of stopped at the blues, like with Son House, Blind Lemon Jackson, Robert Johnson, all those guys. That’s what they found, that’s what they loved and it did something to them and they went, ok, we’ll take that. That’s what they were looking for.Then they went back and did what they did with it, tweaked it, and they used it. I don’t know if they ever went back another step, probably not.& nbsp; But if they had gone back another step, they would have found the very roots of it. Old soul music and spiritual music like that has kind of been forgotten. And I see it as part of our mission to re-introduce that type of music to America. Particularly because that’s our heritage, that’s our musical heritage. And we show it to the world, look what we found. This is amazing. We need to dust this stuff off and show it to the people. Because it’s always relevant, it’s born out of struggle. That’s always going to be relevant.

AJ: It brings peoples passion out.
MF: Exactly. Everybody can relate to that. Everybody needs to have the belief that tomorrow’s going to be better. Consider tomorrow, if not the next day, the sun’s going to be back out. Or maybe just here in a little while, at twelve thirty over on the Which Stage.

AJ: Where to from here?

MF: Telluride. We do Lawrence, Kansas and then Telluride. And we are playing the Hollywood Bowl, with Patti LaBelle, then the Hardly, Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco. But, besides today, the next big one is Telluride. My guys asked me, how should we dress for this? It’s going to be hot, etcetera. I told them hey, you’re get ting ready to play one of the biggest festivals in North America, if not the biggest, you can get dressed up for an hour. Isn’t that what James Brown would do? Or Al Green the other day.

AJ: He just ruled the stage, didn’t he?

MF: He was smoking, wasn’t he? He came right out with what, as of late, is my favorite Al Green song, L.O.V.E He came right out with it and didn’t let up.

AJ: He should have had the steps Bruce had so he could get to the crowd like he wanted, give those roses out one by one.

MF: I looked pretty closely and there weren’t any thorns on those roses. That was the nice thing to do, de-thorn the roses. To think, someone spent an hour or more peeling off all those thorns.

Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue are appearing next at the High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy, California on July 4th and 5th.