This Way To Bonnaroo: Ashley Capps

Ashley Capps is a concert producer, music impresario, music-experience innovator, and all around superstar who founded AC Entertainment, a music promotion company in Knoxville that has helped create some of the most immersive entertainment experiences like Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, Forecastle Festival, Sloss Music and Arts Festival, Big Ears Festival, and more. The company also manages over a dozen venues across the southeast including the Tennessee Theatre and Bijou Theatre in Knoxville and presenting over 1,000+ concerts annually and offer other event-related services like marketing and promotion.

In 1979, Capps started promoting jazz and blues concerts his senior year of college and worked as as radio host and producer at WUOT. After graduating with a degree in philosophy and religious studies from UT, he opened a nightclub called Ella Guru's in the Old City (where the Melting Pot is now). Ella Guru's eventually shut down but Capps became more ingrained in the entertainment industry when he founded AC Entertainment in 1991. In 1992, they began producing outdoor shows called "Hot Summer Nights" in World's Fair Park which ended when construction began on the new convention center in 1999. When Capps visited Germany, he noticed that the North American festival space was missing mega-sized multi-day outdoor festivals that were common in Europe. Work began on presenting the first Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in 2002 to be held on a 700-acre farm in Manchester. Without traditional advertising of any kind, the festival sold out 70,000 tickets in only two weeks of online sales. 16 years later, Bonnaroo has become a major music festival and a household name across the nation.

I remember the first time hearing about Bonaroo was when I was too young to attend the festival, but saw images and videos from the local Nashville news reporters broadcasting from the festival and always wondered how a giant music festival exists in rural Tennessee, and after some researching I learned a few things about Capps and AC Entertainment. I wrote about him for this blog to share his story more with friends because a lot of people don't know that Capps graduated from UT and started Bonnaroo in Knoxville.