In 2017, I was preparing for my very first Bonnaroo. Before I worked in the music industry, I barely knew what to pack, let alone how to survive four days off the grid at my first camping festival, surrounded by tens of thousands of strangers and no reliable cell service.
All I knew was this: my high school friends had gone the year before and returned home glowing with stories—sweaty, sun-soaked, blissed out, and begging me to join them for round two. So, without hesitation, I said yes.
When I asked my friends what our plan was, I got an answer you might expect from a group of 21-year-olds: there wasn’t one. The only detail they could offer was that we’d be camping with a group of 40-somethings they had met during the previous Bonnaroo. I started imagining the worst.
Would I be stuck in the Tennessee heat for four days with many washed-up wooks I’d never met, awkwardly sharing tent space and bathroom lines? The excitement in my chest turned to dread. I wondered if I’d made a colossal mistake.
Two years later, in 2019, I cried happy tears at the wedding of two random strangers I’d been so nervous to meet. They’re now my chosen festival family. My Bonna-mom and Bonna-dad. And somehow, we became something more than campmates through many shared sunrises, dusty dancefloors, and tent-side potlucks. We became a tribe.
As we return to “the Farm” for this weekend’s festival, here’s the love story of Chris Payne and Ginnie Hill, the radiant Kentucky couple who unknowingly became the heart of my Bonnaroo journey.
EDM Maniac: Let’s hear your love story! I don’t think I’ve ever heard the official story of how you met.
Ginnie: It was 2015, and I was with my girlfriends, Amy and Crystal. It was our second Bonnaroo, and I had been divorced, maybe six months at the time. It was Thursday, so we were taking it slow, hanging out, relaxing, and taking pictures under this huge oak tree. I guess Chris was napping on the other side of the oak tree, heard us, woke up, and offered to take a group picture of us.
We started to just chat him up because he’s our age demographic, which isn’t always that typical for festivals. Chris had told us that he was there by himself because his friend bailed two weeks before. After a while, we girls decided to pack up and make our way to the next destination. Crystal said, “Hey, should we get his number?” And Amy said, “Nah, if it’s meant to be, we will run into him again.”
The next day, I was just walking around camp, and we ran right into Chris on his way to get coffee near the Grove. Attendance at Bonnaroo that year was like 80,000, I think, and he was camped literally a two-minute walk from us.
After that, we pretty much adopted him into our group for the whole weekend. By Saturday, I got to know him a little more and started thinking he’s a pretty cool guy. I’m not thinking about hooking up, I’m in my mid-forties, but it was fun to flirt. I told myself I’d just see what happens. We hang out the entire weekend, I’m flirting with him, he’s not really flirting back, so I figured he’s just not into it.
At the end of the weekend, we did the whole “let’s keep in touch” thing that you do when you’re saying goodbye to someone. But then, a month later, he came to visit me in Kentucky from Chicago. We did long-distance for a while, which was hard because I had my daughter Fiona, who was 3 years old at the time.
After about two years of long-distance, he moved down to Kentucky to be with me, and a year after that, he proposed to me at Bonnaroo at the same oak tree we met at.
EDM Maniac: That feels like fate to me! What made you want to propose at Bonnaroo?
Chris: It was a special place for us. We are our best humans at Bonnaroo, sometimes under the worst conditions [laughing].
Ginnie: I always told him it could only go up from here because I met him sweaty and gross with no makeup on.
EDM Maniac: Your wedding is still one of my favorite memories. How did having your Bonnafam surround you on your wedding day feel?
Ginnie: We loved it. It was absolutely amazing. I felt like every single one of my mini worlds collided in such a beautiful way. Amy said it best herself: “I’ve never seen so many cool motherfuckers in one place.”
EDM Maniac: Now that I’m talking about it, I don’t even know how we met you. How did you meet my friend group that year I wasn’t there?
Chris: Oh man, this story is great. I brought the RV that year with some Chicago friends, but that was way back when RV camping was all the way by the highway and super far. We had plans to meet up with Ginnie, Jenny, Crystal, and Amy, and we kind of just moved into their campsite with them.
Your friend group’s campsite was next to the girls, and I remember walking by like, “What are these kids doing? They’re sleeping on the ground; all they have is a canopy and a tent that is barely set up.”
I brought a bunch of camping gear with me that we weren’t using, so I just started throwing air mattresses and blankets into their camp so they had something to sleep on.
EDM Maniac: OMG, I’m so embarrassed for them.
Chris: They didn’t even have food. They had a bag of bologna and some bread. But, of course, we had a whole setup, so we fed them food all weekend long, and from that point on, they were basically adopted.
EDM Maniac: That is such a funny perspective. From my end, my friends told me that we were camping with some 40-year-olds they met last year, and I’m like, “Who are these people?”
Ginnie: [Laughing] I bet you thought we were creepy old people.
EDM Maniac: Meanwhile, it’s my friends who are the menaces. I met you all in person, and I knew immediately it was going to be the best weekend of my life.
EDM Maniac: Chris, it seems like you’ve mastered attending Roo alone. Do you have any advice for those attending alone?
Chris: Don’t be afraid. Everyone is there to do the same thing you are. Be brave; look at it as an adventure. You’re never truly going to be alone.
EDM Maniac: Do you think you’ll ever bring Fiona to Bonnaroo with you?
Ginnie: Chris wanted to start bringing her when she was 8! I think maybe when we are too old to really party.
Chris: We will never be too old to party.
Featured image courtesy: Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.
The post Interview: Chris & Ginnie, A Bonnaroo Love Story appeared first on EDM Maniac.
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