Pipeman Interviews 1 Million Strong at Bourbon & Beyond 2025

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Bourbon & Beyond is the World’s Largest Bourbon, Food & Music Fest

Bourbon & Beyond Kicked Off America’s 8 Biggest Days In Music on September 11-14 In Louisville, Kentucky  

World’s Largest Bourbon, Food & Music Festival Featured Headliners The Lumineers, Benson Boone, Alabama Shakes (Thursday), Phish, Khruangbin, Joe Bonamassa (Friday), Sturgill “Johnny Blue Skies” Simpson, Jack White, Vance Joy (Saturday), Noah Kahan, Goo Goo Dolls, Megan Moroney (Sunday), Plus Dozens More Rock, Americana, Bluegrass And Alt Rock Artists Along With Elevated Bourbon & Culinary Experiences.  

The seventh Bourbon & Beyond welcomed fans from over 50 states and around the globe and over 120 music artists on five stages to Louisville, Kentucky over the weekend. The World’s Largest Bourbon, Food & Music Festival was held from September 11-14 at the at Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, Kentucky and featured an incredible music lineup of music legends and rising stars with headliners The Lumineers, Benson Boone and Alabama Shakes on Thursday; Phish, Khruangbin and Joe Bonamassa on Friday; Sturgill “Johnny Blue Skies” Simpson, Jack White and Vance Joy on Saturday; and Noah Kahan, Goo Goo Dolls and Megan Moroney on Sunday. The lineup also included Cage The Elephant, Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo, Collective Soul, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Iron & Wine, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Switchfoot, Third Eye Blind, Ringo Starr & His All Star Band, Pixies, Lake Street Dive, Dashboard Confessional, Foreigner, Blues Traveler and many others.  

This year, Bourbon & Beyond’s newly expanded footprint doubled the square footage of past layouts, and made greater use of the Kentucky Exposition Center’s infrastructure, creating a more comfortable and resilient experience for fans. In addition, all festival passes included FREE access to amusement rides inside Kentucky Kingdom.

This year’s festival was packed with unforgettable performances, surprise collaborations, and historic moments that will be remembered for years to come.   Take some zany and serious journeys with The Pipeman aka Dean K. Piper, CST on The Adventures of Pipeman also known as Pipeman Radio syndicated globally “Where Who Knows And Anything Goes.”  

Check out our segment Positively Pipeman dedicated to Business, Motivation, Spiritual, and Health & Wellness.  

Check out our segment Pipeman in the Pit dedicated to Music, Artistry and Entertainment.  
 
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, you love done too? Yes, that's true for see
why for you young, This.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Is the Pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man
W four Cy Radio, and I'm here.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
With Tommy Vajaka with one million Strong.

Speaker 4 (00:29):
Nice here at Bourbon and Beyond.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
That's right, see is go ahead to us.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
It is hot, it is it's so brutally hot.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
That's something happened to me in the last interview and
has never happened to me in fifteen years, ten to
twenty festivals a year. My recorder turned off from overheating
in the middle of an interview. Oh, like, that's hot.
That's never happened before. So we guys keep it protected now.
I live in Florida. How's but it's so brutal in Kentucky.

(01:01):
That's what I want though.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
That's right. Yeah, but you know what, it's a great
time here Bourbon and Beyond, and this is now day
two of what's set to be a really great weekend totally.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
And so tell the listeners who have never heard of
you what your organization is and what your mission is.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yeah. So one million Strong is really a movement and
it's cutting across fans and artists and the music industry.
And really aiming to show that when it comes to
our mental well being, one of the best things that
we can seek out is human connection totally. And so
what we're doing here actually both at Bourbon and Beyond

(01:37):
and then Louder than Life the following weekend is setting
up a really intentional space. It's our one million strong
Wellness Experience on site, a beautiful tent where fans can
come in and really just take a moment, catch their breath,
but more importantly find a sense of belonging and community,
because we recognize that even in a crowd it can
sometimes feel lonely. We just we want to demonstrate mental

(02:00):
health is really more accessible as a conversation than I
think it's sometimes made out to be.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Totally, And you made a good point there that made
me think, because I'm one of those people, so I
do what I do, so obviously I have a switch
on of extrovert. But then there's sometimes I like being
a loner too, like because you do stuff like this,
you want to just shut down. So I got festivals
like this, and while I'm done working, I'm out there
in the crowd.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
I have two feelings.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
I'm here with my one hundred thousand closest friends hanging
out and I'm all alone at the same time. So
you hit a note when you said that, because there
are times that I've been at a festival one hundred
thousand people and felt lonely.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
You know what. So we think about this a lot
when it comes to mental well being. It might seem
maybe like a heavy topic to think about at a
music festival, but to your point and what I just said,
it's easy to feel alone, right. This is an amazing
party and an amazing experience. It is transformative for anyone
to be at this kind of event, and this is

(03:05):
the power of music, sports and entertainment. But at the
end of the day, when that's all over, you know,
there can be this feeling of like what's next and
how do I live my life now? Right? And so
our goal really is to show that when it comes
to mental well being, this is accessible. Yeah, I mean,
this is something you can build anywhere. And so whether
you step inside of our tent or whether you never
see us and you're just out there on the fairgrounds,

(03:26):
part of this is just how do you show up
with other people around you and sharing this amazing experience
together and really be present.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Absolutely, And I've always said music's to best therapy, okay,
And I've also said to your point of the togetherness
with all the craziness in the world, which is causing
a lot of mental illness, I think the solution is
we should have one major music festival for the whole world,

(03:54):
and they're all required to tend Because when at a
Danny Wimmer festival, do you see people on different sides
fighting with each other, attacking with each other, You don't.
We're one big family and that's the way we could
solve our world problems.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
That's my idea.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Music, sports and entertainment are great uniters. And saw you
said it well, and just to hit on this point,
you're right. As a society, and particularly with the younger
demographic gen Z, there's a really big sense of disconnect
and isolation. We've seen this in our on site activations,
and then the studies report this as well. Gen Z

(04:34):
is silf reporting that they're one of the loneliest generations,
and yet it's a generation that also says they crave
human connection. Yeah, you know, it's interesting this experience that
we've created here. It's an alcohol free space. People can
come in and they can play all kinds of community games,
take a photo and a photo booth. We've got temporary tattoos,
a community wall where people can share just words of

(04:57):
encouragement for one another. But the whole experience is really
meant to demonstrate that earlier point we were just talking
about whether you're here and maybe you're not feeling too
well right, maybe you're actually having a really hard time
in the middle of a festival or perhaps or not,
but you get that kind of feeling of like, man,
I'm in a crowd but also alone. We want this
space to be an intentional place where you can come

(05:17):
in and say, you know what, let me actually find
that sense of connection. And so everything that we're doing
in music, sports and entertainment with one million strong is
really aimed at that point. How do we just show,
not tell people that when it comes to mental well being,
really human connection is one of the best things you
can do.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
No doubt.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
And I love what you say about substance substance free
because people tend to think that makes their mental health better,
or they're using to medicate their mental health and it
makes it worse. Like especially alcohols are depressive, and I
think even the connection makes it worse worse. I think
you become disconnected. You fig you're connected because of that

(05:56):
false courage or whatever, but in all actuality, you're really not.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, some of the folks who are here now, for
we've been a bourbon and beyond. Just to zoom out,
we've been here four years in a row. This is
our fourth year, and in the years past we had
more of an emphasis on substance use and recovery. But
when you actually go back the onion there, what you
see is that at the root of that, or at
the root of any kind of mental well being challenges,

(06:22):
is that feeling of isolation, is that feeling of disconnect.
And so for us, we thought, how do we grow this,
how do we expand this so that more people can
feel welcome in this kind of space. We keep it
substance free in honor of those who obviously are in recovery,
but at the same time we want to make sure
that we're addressing what's probably more of our root cause,
right and sort of tapping into something that I think

(06:43):
is more universal, which is that idea of finding belonging. Yeah,
and look, life happens to all of us. There are
all kinds of challenges people deal with. We can't predict
what those are, and every person is extremely unique. But
I think one of the most important takeaways that we
believe at one million Strong is that rather than shy
away from those challenges or feel ize disconnect yourself from

(07:06):
the world to your point of sometimes there is a
place where it might just feel good to go off
by yourself. But rather than do that, how much better
might it be if you say, let's actually go through
these hard times together. Yeah, And I've had those moments
where I feel like it's probably just going to be
better to be alone right now. But every time that
I've made the opposite choice to actually go be with

(07:27):
someone else, I found that they've improved my mindset.

Speaker 4 (07:30):
Well.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
I think part of that too is it takes your
mind off of it. When you're bought in solitude, you
just focus on it.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, right, what are you doing? You're living life. You're
figuring out how do you find new adventures, how do
you actually build meaningful relationships with people? And over time,
what you find is in doing that, you're thinking less
about yourself. Now your own personal needs those are foundational, right,
you need to have those met. But at the end
of the day, when it comes down to mental well being,
being of service to others and being able to contribute

(07:57):
to the lives of others is one of the best
things that we can do. So, yeah, get out there
in the world, right, Go be with people and figure
out what kind of cool things you might spin up together.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
I think also to add to that, when you're connected
to other people, first of all, you can find out
why they feel the way they do instead of attacking
them for feeling the way they do. And you could
find out why you feel the way you do because
you'll find people that feel the same way as you.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Yeah, I think you're hitting on a really important point.
When you actually lead with empathy and you lead with
understanding and you want to get to know somebody a
little bit better, what you find is you stop seeing
people as broken. And this, I think is one of
the challenges with the mental health debate. It's become such
a heavy topic right where every alternative. I mean, if
you ask people like how do you think about mental health?

(08:42):
You'll often hear clinical approaches, things like therapy, right, and
by the way, there's a place for all of that,
But what gets lost in the process is seeing people
as not broken but actually inherently strong, and then recognizing
that we all go through hard times. What we just
need is one another. That's the fundamental building from which
everything else after. Right, let's build on that, But it's

(09:03):
got to start with that human connection piece.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
And I'll even give a perfect example of something with
me is like two years ago, Leary in life, I
got a phone call mill of nite in the middle
of the festival. My best Brosin is like thirteen passed away,
Oh my gosh, and I had to leave the festival
to go to a funeral. But I came back to
the festival for one reason, one reason only, because that

(09:29):
would help me through it. And like coming back was
the best thing I could do because instead of sitting
around feeling miserable, I was amongst all my friends, amongst
music and an environment that made me just.

Speaker 4 (09:43):
For a little while escape, yeah and connect.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
So life happens, right, That's and thank you for sharing that.
Here's my takeaway from what I hear you saying. There
are plenty of people who might choose to bury themselves
in all kinds in their work at home, but you
choose to come back and be among people and there's
some life giving energy that you get from that. Now,
I don't know if you had shared with others what

(10:09):
you had gone through at that moment. I don't know
right how much of that you were open with others
and allowed them to help you through that process. But
sometimes you don't even have to, right, Right, Sometimes just
being in the presence of other people and letting some
of their energy and moods lift you up and see
the optimism in life and recognize that there is a
future gets you through some of the darkest times. And
so man, that's a thanks for sharing that. That's great.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, And it's exactly what you said. And I'll even
add to it, is escaping your own head in a
healthy way.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
I stress healthy way, because there's plenty of unhealthy ways.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah. I mean, if we're actually gonna build a sense
of resilience, and I think we need to when it
comes to mental health, then we can't disassociate or hide
from the hard times.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, no doubt, because it's going to crop up at
some point later. Yeah, the sooner you face it on
the sooner you could get through it.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yeah. Now here you and I talking about this, right,
and imagine if the whole world starts having this kind
of dialogue. So in part, what one million Strong is
doing is destigmatizing it the conversation. Yes, and a whole
lot of other groups that probably are as well. Right,
I think this is mental health thankfully has become more
of a common topic these days in society. But there's
a layer that's missing, and it's this layer. It's how

(11:26):
do we shift the conversation to focus more on our
relationship with one another, on the fact that our human
connection is a fundamental building block and we can do
that anywhere, no matter where we are. We don't need
a clinical setting to start that process, and that when
we do that, we're actually building resilience to our mental health.
The hard things that are painful to go through actually

(11:48):
make us stronger. That's what this is all about.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
And I want to get your viewpoint on this. I
have my own viewpoint, but there's a big thing out there.
That set is very popular now, especially because of social media,
to block people that are like, you're going through something
really bad and just block all the people in your
life that are not contributing in a healthy way. And

(12:15):
to me, I think that holds to what you're saying,
is like, then you're just avoiding opposed to actually getting healthy.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
That's right. I can't stress this enough. I think it's
really important to engage in conversation with people. I don't
know that you can just close yourself off to every
problematic thing we live in the world.

Speaker 4 (12:35):
Right, You're gonna have to deal with stuff that's.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Happening, and you can't hide from it. Right, And back
to that point about resilience, isn't this a skill strength
that all of us should cultivate, all of us should build,
because it doesn't matter what you've read today, It doesn't
matter what your friend or some random person said to
you today. You're gonna run into a variation of that tomorrow. Yes,

(12:59):
And if you can't figure out how to build that
resilience to navigate that difficulty, you're not actually improving any
of your mental well being. You're just coveting something that's
too sensitive, that needs it benefits from strength. Right. And
then through that, I think you find that you were
talking about this earlier, the shared humanity with people. So

(13:20):
we might disagree on something, that's okay, I'm not going
to hide from that. Let's find the shared humanity in
one another. That's what human connection piece is all about.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
No doubt, and we see that in the world over
the past several years. People aren't getting better or gain worse,
but they think what they're doing is healthier.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
That's right. I would almost actually draw an analogy to
this idea of when people say, I'm I'm just going
to take a mental health day. Again. There's a time
and place for it. But the challenge is are we
doing that to actually rest and get back to one
hundred percent or are we hiding from something? Are we
shutting out the stressors in our life instead of trying
to navigate them.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
Call number two.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, and that goes along with the example I gave before.

Speaker 4 (14:00):
It's the same thing.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
You still have to deal with your issues and your
problems and the problems in the world. It's not the
things you can control, but what you can control is
how you cope with those things.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, and you know what everybody's going through something. How
many times have you or I woken up thinking, Man,
I've got these problems that no one else is dealing with.
That's just not true. Everyone's dealing with them. And so
I think the sooner that actually on an individual layer.
We all recognize that we see ourselves not as broken,
and I think that's a really important starting point, right, Yeah,
that's sort of self respect to recognize, Hey, there's not
a brokenness to me. I have some really unique strengths.

(14:37):
And then it's that base that lets you grow and
build that resilience. Man, that's one of the most powerful
things we can do for our mental well being.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
No doubt.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
And again going to music festivals like Bourbon and Beyond. Okay,
first of all, there's so many resources for mental health here,
not just the vendors but just the people. But then
there's another side of it. You look at artists. I
get it too because I go and travel the world

(15:07):
doing music festivals and people always look at my social
media and like, oh, you're living the dream life. And
they don't say it in an encouraging way. They say
it in a I'm in a dark place and I'm
jealous of you, whey, But they don't see the other
side because it's not all dream and rainbows and sunshine,

(15:28):
and we still have the same problems they do and
may be worse and maybe less, but we all no
matter what level in the world we're at or what
we do.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
We all have certain mental issues.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Yeah, I'll take you back to when one Million Strong
first started four years ago. We began working with the
team here at Danny Wimer Presents that puts on this
incredible festival and Louder than Life and so many others
around the country, and at the time, much like many
other festivals around the country, the way in which people
treated mental health or recovery is almost wait until that
point of crisis. Yes, and so one of the things

(16:04):
that the Danny Wimmer team and our team were able
to do and really credit to any Whimer here is
we asked, what happens if we flip that script? What
happens if we start thinking about this more proactively and
don't wait until a crisis, don't wait to see a
moment when someone's really hurting, but actually try to figure
out how to address it at the front end, when

(16:25):
we can do something about it, when we can emphasize
that strength piece, the human connection piece, more than hey,
how do we cauterize the problem the bleeding so to speak? Right?
And so four years ago we launched that one million
Strong space. The turnout has been incredible every single year,
the fan feedback really exciting. And then we've done this
across music festivals around the country and we've partnered with

(16:47):
artists as well. And so last year Nico Moon, one
of the really phenomenal Nashville artist was performing here on
the main stage and right after his set stop by
the one million Strong ten and spent I don't know,
probably well over an hour wow, just meeting and greeting fans.
And what's powerful about Nico, because you find these kinds
of glimmers in the music industry is people who are

(17:09):
really passionate about driving home this message of how important
finding your sense of belonging and your sense of purpose
and just meaning in your life is. And Nico's been
a great partner, but he's so emblematic of what we're
trying to do at one million Strong, because you're right,
this is an issue that disproportionately impacts the music industry,

(17:30):
but that is exactly why the music industry is actually
well positioned to go solve it better than anyone else.

Speaker 4 (17:37):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
How do people reach out to you when you're not
at festivals to join your community?

Speaker 3 (17:45):
They can go visit us online one million strong dot com.
They can check out our social media pages, and then
more important than anything else, because what we're all about
is how do we get people to think differently about
this conversation. The takeaway here would be people are going
to be back in their homes, barbecues, among friends, at
their workplaces, and when they come to think about mental
well being, what I really want for your listeners to

(18:07):
hear is think about how to build that anywhere. Think
about how you can do that by starting just a
conversation or engaging in a difficult conversation and not shying
away from the hard things in life, and find a
way how to build that sense of community with those
who are around you, no matter where you are. That's
one of the best things you can do for those
who are at the festival. We're by the FOURK and
Flask stage here this weekend and next and folks can

(18:29):
come by purchase mocktails and with other people, get some
photos in our photo booth, or contribute to the community wall.
Like I said, we've got some temporary tattoos as well,
with messages and resilience on there. These are just fun
things to get involved, but sometimes we start with that
fun because it carries a deeper message. Yeah, and we
want people to take that deeper message home.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
And I'm glad you brought up the mocktails because that
was the thing I was going to close with because
I started to interview drinking one of your mock tails.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
That was fricking great, so good, unbelievably so.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
If nothing else, you gotta come check out their mocktails.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
They're delicious, man. Yeah, I'm all for it.

Speaker 4 (19:07):
There it is.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Any final words you want to give the listeners that
we haven't covered.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
No, I think we've hit it all again. Visit us online,
go learn more about one million strong and more than anything,
figure out how you can change this conversation and your
own home and in your own community. What it comes
down to is not what somebody else can do to
fix this for us, It's what each of us can
do to fix this for us.

Speaker 4 (19:26):
I love it well, I love it.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
I love what you're doing, and I hope to see
a lot more of you at the Dandy Women festivals
as well. And thanks for being on the Adventures of
Pipe Man.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Thank you for listening to the Adventures of fight Man.
I'm w for CUI Radio.