Note: this is Part Three of a multi-part series about Louder Than Life 2024. I’m not sure how many parts there’ll be, but it seems like it’ll be five at least. Here are the first two. There are supplemental parts also.

The big story going into Day Two was the weather. Hurricane Helene was rampaging up through the southeast, causing untold devastation throughout North Carolina and elsewhere, and Louisville was expected to get some incredibly heavy sustained winds, with gusts up to 80 mph. Like every other outdoor music event I’m aware of, Louder Than Life is a “rain or shine” event, and we knew for certain that rain was going to impact us on Friday and Saturday (at the time, I was seeing chances as high as 80% on Sunday, as well). The wild card in this situation was the wind. I won’t pretend to understand anything about the logistics of putting on a multi-day music festival with an estimated 4-day attendance of almost 200,000 people, but I do have a basic understanding of how insanely powerful and damaging wind can be, and I know that there are some big, heavy things set up at an outdoor music festival – things like speakers, tents, screens, and stages, to name the obvious.

The day started off with some sad but expected news: the opening of the gates was going to be delayed. The DWP team was monitoring the situation, and they would keep us all updated with new start times whenever the information became available. I was bummed, but also kinda relieved. This was the second morning in a row that I woke up feeling gloopy from overindulgence, and I took advantage of the delay by staying in bed a little longer, and by having a nice long soak in the tub, both of which made me feel like a new man.

The day continued on with no news (which, in this case, ended up not being good news), and we had lunch at the hotel and relaxed, hoping beyond hope that we’d get to rock ASAP. The day wasn’t quite as stacked for me as the others, at least in terms of quantity of bands, but the quality of the Friday lineup was really first-rate. It was, in fact, the one day about which Sheila was most excited. Here’s the Friday Clockwise Circle Pit-Approved Lineup, in order of start times:

• Powerman 5000
• Gel
• High Vis
• Sevendust
• Clutch
• Ho99o9
• Anthrax
• Fugitive
• Till Lindemann
• Juliette Lewis and the Licks
• Lorna Shore
• Tom Morello
• Fuckin Slayer

Not a clunker in the bunch, and we even had to shave a couple off the final list due to overlap.

At approximately 3:45 PM, DWP announced that they were shooting for 6-7 PM start time, and that the city of Louisville had agreed to extend the noise curfew so that more bands could play. Shortly after this news broke, a schedule started to show up on the LTL fan group socials which was (allegedly) the schedule given to the load-in crew.

It was very exciting to have some potential information, even if it may not have been true. The headliner set times were a bit intimidating, and if they were accurate, Slayer, Tom Morello, Lorna Shore, Ho99o9, and Juliette Lewis & the Licks were all gonna be overlapping with each other, and Sevendust was just missing entirely.

Sometime after 6:00 PM, we boarded the shuttle along with maybe 5-10 other people, and off we went, to pick up the second wave of riders over at the Marriot. Several more people boarded the bus, then we sat and waited for the next shuttle to pull up behind us before departing, as is procedure. Shortly after that, we all heard over the driver’s radio that a Shelter In Place order had been enacted (I honestly don’t know whether it was by the city or by DWP, but either way, it was a good idea). We all sat on the bus and watched as tree branches fell onto the sidewalk and into the street. We saw several people eat shit on the slippery-ass sidewalk. We saw at least two umbrellas get turned inside out.

Fifteen minutes later, we heard over the radio that DWP was calling it: Day Two was officially cancelled. After watching the chaos outside (and seeing the potential schedule posted above), I can honestly say I wasn’t terribly disappointed. On the ride back to the hotel we decided to walk over to the casino and see if our middling luck might carry over into the slot machines. I was looking forward to trying my hand at Invaders from the Planet Moolah, which is my go-to machine when Lucky Larry Lobstermania is unavailable. Some jabronis (jabronies?) were parked at the Moolah machines, so I wandered around until something else caught my fancy. To make an unnecessarily long story shorter, I ended up winning 50 bucks playing Texas Tea, and Sheila brought in another 20-30.

We walked back to the hotel and went up to Al J’s Lounge, the bar in the conservatory/skywalk between the two towers, to spend our “hard-earned” money. As always, the bar hosted an interesting mix of patrons (there was a dental convention in the Galt House along with the usual dirtbags who were attending LTL). We struck up conversation with some pretty cool people, and then the requisite metal blowhard showed up and held court about what was great and what “fuckin suck(ed)”.

A few choice nuggets of wisdom from Mr. Blowhard (emphasis on the word “nugget”)(as in “turd”):

• Metallica has fuckin sucked since 1983.
• Ozzy (Osbourne) has fuckin sucked since the early 90s.
• Judas Priest without KK (Downing) ain’t even Judas Priest no more.
• He never even heard of fuckin Gojira until the fuckin Olympics.
• Vince (Neil) is a fuckin fat fuck and needs to fuckin hang it up.

This last one is especially fun. I don’t body-shame, just as a general rule, but this guy kind of invited it on himself, so I will testify in court that if Vince Neil is a “fat fuck”, then Mr. Blowhard is an even fatter fuck.

While we were chillin at the casino and, later, the hotel bar, a few pop-up shows happened with bands and artists who were slated to perform that night. Silly Goose apparently played in the parking lot for the people who had already arrived on the grounds, then played another free show later at Mag Bar, and Tom Morello and Grandson played a free show at Whirling Tiger. By the time we found out about the Tom Morello show, it was already packed beyond capacity. I guess we weren’t so ready to rock after all.

That’s pretty much all I got about Day Two. It’s less exciting than the other days, but they can’t all be RBI doubles. Tune in next time for my write-up of Day Three, which was much more eventful than Day Two, and much, much wetter than Day One. Thanks for reading!