Jon Hamm Gave His Bonnaroo Artist Wristband To A Chattanooga Waitress
Basically, Jon Hamm and Zach Galifianakis won Bonnaroo. Neither of them were officially scheduled to perform at the festival, but they both spent most of Saturday like some sort of comedy Batman and Robin, popping up at various places to do silly things like sing “We Are The World” or feed gummy bears to Belle And Sebastian before disappearing just as quickly.
As it turns out, however, the superheroics didn’t end there. After their busy day on Saturday, Hamm and Galifianakis stopped in for a bite at the Tupelo Honey Café in Chattanooga, TN, some 70 miles away from the festivities in Manchester. The two celebs struck up a conversation with their waitress, a Chattanooga local named Abby Swartz, and as they were getting ready to leave, Hamm took off his Bonnaroo wristband and handed it to Swartz, saying, “Take this wristband and go to Bonnaroo. This will get you anywhere you need to go.” When she asked him if he was serious, he responded affirmatively and told her to “go to Bonnaroo and have a great time.”
To add another twist to the story, that evening was also Swartz and her boyfriend’s one-year anniversary, and they already had plans to celebrate. But he and her co-workers urged her to go, and she couldn’t pass up the opportunity: “I just moved here, I’ve never been to Bonnaroo, and now I have this pass that gives me access to anywhere,” she told local publication Nooga. “I had to go.”
Reportedly, Swartz did indeed have a great time, catching sets by Florence + The Machine and Billy Joel — some of the day’s best — among others.
“It was the highlight of my life,” according to Swartz. “Throughout the night, I kept thinking about how lucky I was. I’m not a very outgoing person, so I didn’t talk to too many people in the artists’ hospitality area. I mostly kept to myself. But there were times when I would just smile and think, ‘There are thousands of people here, and I am the only one who is, basically, Jon Hamm’s stand-in.’ I would love for him to know that I went. It was so important. Jon Hamm is amazing, and I would love for him to know that he made my life.”
For his part, Galifianakis gave Swartz a 250 percent tip on the bill. Hamm and Galifianakis strike again!