Bassnectar’s Ex-Staff Claim Star DJ Is ‘Narcissistic Tyrant’ – Rolling Stone 

T
homas was a 19-year-old metalhead when a friend persuaded him to attend his first DJ set in 2012. DJs were “corny” for not playing instruments, he thought. But after the show, his mind was blown — not only by the huge range of track selections and psychedelic visuals, but by the crowd’s genuine sense of community. One month later, he traveled to see the same artist and met fans who were on their 20th show. “You guys really go crazy for this guy,” Thomas recalls thinking. “Then I started to understand.”

The artist was Bassnectar, a long-haired neo-hippie from the San Francisco Bay Area who was then halfway through a two-decade journey to becoming a revered DJ, powerhouse producer, and festival-circuit legend. While associated with mainstream EDM, Bassnectar — whose real name is Lorin Ashton — came from the underground and was known for blending hip-hop and metal with thundering bass, amassing a flock of head-banging “bassheads” whose devotion was widely compared to the Grateful Dead’s Deadheads. 

Yet Bassnectar was more than just a master at cultivating spectacular throwdowns. He fostered a nationwide network of volunteers and nonprofit partnerships to promote “social involvement and community values,” loudly espoused progressive views, and laced his turbocharged sets with spiritual themes and speeches by Noam Chomsky and Martin Luther King Jr. In a 2007 interview, Ashton appears earnest and humble in describing his intention to use music “to create some type of magnetic field, something that attracts people … to the thoughts I’m having and to the information that I want to share.”

In 2020, though — right as Ashton was at the height of his power — the Bassnectar fan base and social mission collapsed when Ashton disappeared following allegations shared on social media that he had groomed and sexually abused young female fans for years. Several women shared similar stories, and three sued Ashton in 2021, claiming, per the lawsuit, that he used “his power and influence to groom and ultimately sexually victimize underage girls.” (Ashton has vehemently denied the allegations, calling them “fictitious claims” and stating that the “plaintiffs’ revisionist history that they are victims can and will be disproven.”) 

Ashton is now mounting an attempted comeback: He released a new album in August, and his first live performance in three years is scheduled for Oct. 6. Ashton maintains that he was “falsely accused” by “opportunistic” women, and is being targeted by a “campaign” of “hate and negativity.” Yet as some of Ashton’s past team members tell Rolling Stone, some of the self-serving and unscrupulous tendencies alleged in the lawsuit, such as disingenuousness and exhibiting a desire to control others, were experienced by many people he worked with. Employees and collaborators describe a domineering character whose worst impulses were indulged by the unaccountable power of superstardom and the “extremely intelligent” tactics they say he deployed to get his way. 

To those who worked with Ashton, says one former employee, it was understood that Bassnectar was not the collaborative project it was made out to be, but a chaotic and manipulative “dictatorship” that the former employee calls “a maze of pain.” Fans sometimes caught glimpses of this side of Ashton, such as when he berated them online for disagreeing with him. And insiders say the behavior has persisted: A fan who worked for Ashton last year alleges a “hostile work environment” in which onetime fans are subject to Ashton alternating affection with verbal abuse. 

According to both insider accounts and the 2021 lawsuit, Ashton’s progressive public image was a smokescreen for what multiple sources claim are “narcissistic” tendencies that enabled him to manipulate young women, pursue unquestioning allegiance from fans, and perpetuate what one source calls “jaw-droppingly abusive” treatment of employees. 

In a lengthy letter to Rolling Stone, Ashton denies all accusations of workplace abuse. Ashton’s attorneys did not address the specific accusations, but claim that Rolling Stone’s “list of questions suggests you are operating from a false premise based on the word of a few former employees who wish to hurt Lorin and damage the Bassnectar community.” “The current team … and the Bassnectar project as a whole are men and women who have known or worked with Lorin for many years,” they added.

Bassheads used to joke that their fandom was a cult, and Ashton even teased that his sets were akin to hypnosis. Now they say those comparisons feel all too real. 

“He realized the magnetic pull he had and just kept building on that. It was only getting bigger and better and louder,” says the former fan and employee. But “over time,” he says, “there were too many cooks in the kitchen, and it cultivated a ‘yes man’ culture around him until he became a deluded, calculated narcissist. People who were grounded and really care about you start to get replaced by people who only care about your success.”

Before the screens, lasers, and sold-out arenas, there was the sound. Raised in a Bay Area commune, Lorin Ashton, now 45, cut his teeth playing bass guitar in a death metal band before pivoting to electronic music in the mid-1990s. He gained local fame for DJ sets at Burning Man that integrated the slow tempos and heavy bass of U.K. dubstep with rap and trip-hop influences, ultimately forging the signature sound of both his sets and musical productions. Ashton studied to become a high school guidance counselor, but as his following snowballed, he said that music proved to be the most powerful way for him to make an impact on others. He became known for anti-establishment values, modest living, and sharing personal opinions on his blog.

By 2012 — having released seven albums — Bassnectar was touring the world, playing festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo, and throwing annual New Year’s Eve blowouts for his fans, which now included both mainstream bros and countercultural rebels. Like many bassheads, Thomas (who is using a pseudonym for fear of harassment from other fans) was drawn deeper into the Bassnectar world by its feeling of “hopeful warmth.” He eventually joined the Ambassadors, an inner circle of fans who distributed water during sets and participated in service projects like packing food to send overseas and cleaning up beaches. Ambassadors coordinated voter registration as well as food and clothing drives at the quarterly regional “gatherings” that Ashton organized in lieu of traditional touring. Between hotels, tickets, travel, and merch, Thomas estimates he spent at least $15,000 seeing Bassnectar about 60 times over 10 years.

Alyssa Papiernik, an Ambassador who went to 38 shows over the same decade, says she likely spent even more, scrapping together money for shows when she could barely afford them, inspired by the community’s investment in social change: “It isn’t just a bunch of people going to a concert and partying,” she recalls thinking. Like many fans, Thomas and Papiernik met most of their friends through Bassnectar, which along with Ashton’s intense performances kept them coming back for more.

“It was a dictatorship … We were mice in a maze of pain: You’d just go the way you had to go, [because] everything else is gonna be a world of suffering.”

“Avery” – former staffer

Attending a Bassnectar show was like going to hippie prom, riding an insane roller coaster, and watching a blockbuster movie all at once. Fans wished each other “happy ’nectar day,” trading homemade merch emblazoned with the Bassnectar logo and buzzing with fiendish anticipation until they could put their hands up and bounce to the first of many drops, in what resembled a quasi-religious experience. Bassnectar sets marshaled complete sensory overload: thickets of lasers blanketed the crowd as colorful visuals on multiple screens rapidly morphed between psychedelic animations, political statements, and inside jokes, all permeated by powerful, body-shaking bass. 

Fans describe Bassnectar shows as “hypnotic,” “intense,” and “very addicting,” and say they often catalyzed moments of personal growth. “Putting myself in these environments with other like-minded people definitely inspired me,” says Thomas, “and was very self-reflective or introspective a lot of the time.” (A Bassnectar show once inspired Thomas to contest a recent firing, and get his job back.) 

The world of Bassnectar, sometimes described as a “movement,” “was so damn magical and so important to so many people,” says one of Ashton’s former employees. “It had this feeling of infinite potential.” In 2020, however, it came crashing down.

That June, multiple women claimed online that Ashton had groomed and sexually abused them for years, beginning, in some cases, when they were teenagers. The stories — later echoed by the 2021 lawsuit and an investigation by VICE — suggested evidence of a pattern: Ashton allegedly met fans through Twitter or at his live events before switching to encrypted messaging apps and demanding total secrecy. His accusers claim he hid them in hotel rooms where he pressured them to have unprotected sex, then sent them home with unsolicited cash gifts. They claim he coached their life decisions and encouraged some to dump their boyfriends to be exclusively with him, while juggling liaisons with multiple fans at once, a gendered imbalance he insisted was natural. According to the VICE article, others alleged being slapped or pushed and feeling fearful in his presence. (In 2021, a rep for Ashton told VICE that the musician “has never slapped anyone in anger or in any threatening manner.”)

All this from a man who once themed an event around women’s health, claimed “treating women equally was a reflex,” and denounced the “degradation of women as weak sex objects.”

Ashton has stated that his past romantic relationships were “positive, consensual, legal, and loving.” According to Ashton’s response to the lawsuit, one plaintiff texted him four years after they met expressing gratitude for “everything I have learned from you,” while another told him in 2020, “you didn’t and never did anything wrong.” Still, fans became concerned by the stories shared on Instagram. Ashton’s first official response in June 2020 acknowledged past relationships with female fans, and implored other powerful men to “take an honest look at yourself, be open to learning from your mistakes, and how you can take accountability.” Yet days later, as more evidence surfaced, the tides began to turn. Past collaborators spoke out in support of the women. His team fell apart. In July 2020, Ashton tweeted, “I realize some of my past actions have caused pain, and I am deeply sorry,” yet he simultaneously declared that “the rumors you’re hearing are untrue.” He said he was stepping back from his career and nonprofit “to take responsibility and accountability.” Then without another word, he ghosted. That “felt like a giant slap in the face [to] his very, very loyal fans,” says Papiernik.

In 2021, two women (later joined by a third) sued Ashton, his touring company, his management, his philanthropy, and other entities associated with Bassnectar, alleging sex trafficking, child pornography, and statutory rape; and for the other entities, negligence. (A fourth woman joined the lawsuit as a Jane Doe, but subsequently dropped out after the court required her to identify herself. All of the defendants besides Ashton were later dropped from the suit. The trial is set to begin in February 2025.) According to the lawsuit and the VICE investigation, Ashton flew some fans across state lines, had sex with them as minors, and solicited nude photos that could be legally construed as “child pornography.” He allegedly presented himself as a father figure or mentor while exhibiting textbook grooming behaviors. To the women suing Ashton, the magnetism and guidance counselor-esque persona that enchanted the public proved a dangerous quality in private. 

“He did such a good job of coming off as a genuine, caring, loving, nurturing, supportive person,” one accuser, a former Ambassador, told VICE in 2021. But in the end, “you were never special; he never really cared about you.”

The revelations “hit me like a truck,” says another former fan who requested anonymity. “These allegations went against everything that I thought he and his community stood for.” Thomas compares Ashton’s departure to “the best significant other you’ve ever had” abruptly leaving after nine years, with “no real closure. ‘This is over now and it will never happen again, sorry’ — even though there was no sorry.”

“It was so obvious. He would propose that if [fans] see that women support Lorin, they’ll know that Lorin is innocent and didn’t hurt anyone.”

“Stephen” – former staffer

In a legal filing, Ashton’s attorneys claimed the accusers were “merely former romantic partners of Mr. Ashton who, in the era of the #MeToo movement, are jumping on the cancel culture bandwagon in an attempt to profit from the pressure they hoped this litigation would bring.” Among numerous defenses, they claim that the accusers “aggressively pursued” the musician and their “will was never overcome.” They also denied the claims of child pornography, adding that while he did receive adult images of each plaintiff, “he never solicited, nor knowingly received, any underage images.” 

In a letter sent to Rolling Stone disputing the allegations, Ashton vehemently denied the accusers’ “fictitious claims.” “It’s clear that these accusers have no way to support their outrageous allegations, and we are extremely confident that we will prevail in the upcoming trial,” Ashton’s attorneys, Mitch Schuster and Kim Hodde, write in the letter. “Meanwhile, whatever cancel culture mobs and their enablers in the media may want, Mr. Ashton will not be silenced and will continue to create music and perform for his fans.” 

I first reached out to Ashton’s team in January to inquire about an interview. A rep for Ashton replied that he was “definitely timid to be interviewed without a guarantee that the article will be 100% positive.”

On Friday morning, three days after Rolling Stone reached out to Ashton for an interview request and detailed list of accusations, the “Bassnectar Team” emailed saying, in part, that the “claims are false, our team is a happy team, our community is beautiful, and we do not deserve this excessive bullying from anyone, certainly not from a publication like Rolling Stone … Cancel Culture is un-American. It’s unjust. Either tell the truth, or leave us alone.”

The email also included 13 messages of support supporting Ashton and excoriating Rolling Stone. All of them were anonymous.

IF BASSNECTAR SHOWS RESEMBLED religious experiences that converted casual listeners to die-hard fans, the effect may have been intentional. Avery, a former Bassnectar employee who worked for Ashton for several years prior to the accusations and asked to speak under a pseudonym, tells Rolling Stone that the team explicitly aimed at amassing a “cult following,” and Ashton “saw himself as the charismatic leader of a movement — and presented the idea that the music was a recruiting mechanism for wider social change.” Ashton seemed to jokingly compare his sets to mind control, repeatedly performing a bit in which the screens turned to hokey hypnosis wheels as a voice-over encouraged revelers to “ignore the outside world … as you follow my instructions.”

Those who knew Ashton behind the scenes may not have found that so funny. Several people who have worked with Ashton describe him using coercive control tactics like gaslighting, sowing chaos, and offering effusive praise only to later revoke it (“to try and tear you down,” as one source put it) to maintain power over others. Two music-industry veterans say Ashton’s controlling behaviors went far beyond what they’ve experienced with any artist of similar stature. Avery describes Ashton as a “narcissistic tyrant,” adding that the idea of Bassnectar as a “collaborative project” was “a nihilistic running joke between everybody that I knew who worked for Bassnectar.”

“It was a dictatorship,” says Avery. “In which he’d say what he wanted to happen and you would need to do it or face a berating phone call that would gaslight you…. We were mice in a maze of pain: You’d just go the way you had to go, [because] everything else is gonna be a world of suffering.”

“He keeps people swirling to distract from the larger discourse.”

“Avery” – former staffer

Avery recalls Ashton waking them up via late-night calls in which they’d have to endure Ashton’s “random freakouts” for hours. “There was an expectation that I’d never say no, [and] the day he would say ‘thank you’ was incredibly rare.” Multiple sources say working with Ashton took a toll on their self-esteem, leading some to actively commiserate. “It was fascinating to be on calls with professional grown men at the height of the industry who were basically a support group for dealing with this artist who made all their so-called shortcomings feel like betrayals,” says Avery. “His perfectionism was impossible to achieve.”

Fans occasionally glimpsed this darker side of Ashton through cracks in the enchanting Bassnectar veneer. In 2018, after some people on his unofficial fan subreddit criticized a New Year’s Eve gathering — highlighting insufficient water access and “horrifying” experiences watching people unable to get necessary medical care — Ashton went on a rampage, imploring fans to stop posting criticisms publicly, denouncing large swaths of them as “haters” or “trolls,” and mocking one as a “clueless burn out.” (It was one of multiple incidents in which Ashton appeared to display contempt for fans who disagreed with him.) The women suing Ashton say they were subjected to similarly domineering behavior, claiming that Ashton used “manipulation tactics” to control everything from their relationships to what they wore. 

Avery views Ashton as “an extremely intelligent master manipulator” who intentionally surrounded himself with do-gooders, especially female ones, to bolster his image. When it came to his philanthropy — which over the years facilitated the cleanup of hundreds of pounds of trash, collected thousands of coats and meals for people in need, and committed hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes like racial justice and mental health support — Ashton’s personal commitment may have been less than fans perceived. Avery claims Ashton “totally farmed it out” and “complained multiple times when he was asked to engage,” believing that when Ashton put activists onstage, it was essentially an exercise in checking social-justice boxes. 

Ashton’s attorneys countered that he has “spent more than 20 years building a community of engaged fans who share his values and goals of merging the power of music to effect change in the areas of social justice, environmental causes and mental health awareness.”

“There is a long and well-documented trail of donations and charitable work that the Bassnectar community has performed across the country,” they write, “and it continues to be the focus of Lorin’s work in both his personal and professional life to this day.” 

Stephen, a onetime fan who worked for Ashton in 2022 and is using a pseudonym, claims that Ashton spoke openly about needing to ally with women or get them to speak on his behalf to legitimize his comeback. “It was so obvious,” says Stephen. “He would propose that if [fans] see that women support Lorin, they’ll know that Lorin is innocent and didn’t hurt anyone.”

In a 2020 open letter posted on her Tumblr page, Mimi Page, an artist who sang vocals on multiple Bassnectar tracks, detailed the difficulties she faced in working with Ashton, including inappropriate comments and lack of fair compensation. (Ashton has been accused of profiting off the uncredited work of other artists, including Black transgender producer Jordana and Canadian rapper Masia One.) Framing her letter as a “call-in” to someone she believes created “a lot of good,” Page described manipulative and psychologically abusive tendencies echoing parts of the accounts detailed above.

(Ashton’s lawyers dispute Page’s compensation claim to Rolling Stone, saying he has “gone out of his way to credit and compensate his collaborators, sometimes in excess of the contributions or revenues those collaborators’ work has generated for the Bassnectar label.” They added that Ashton offered Page the opportunity to appear at one of his shows and that Page “continued to espouse her love, affection and desire to collaborate with Lorin up through May 2020. Her about face, given how well she was treated professionally and personally, highlights the suspicious nature of her complaints.”)

In her letter, Page lamented discovering that many of Ashton’s alleged victims had discovered his music through their collaboration “Butterfly.” “My feminine, ethereal, and peaceful aesthetic helped diversify your musical catalog,” she wrote. “Many of these women were misled into believing those gentle, peaceful, and ethereal vibrations actually came from you.” To the world, Ashton was a wizard who conjured togetherness and hope, but in the eyes of those who saw behind the curtain, he was just a man orchestrating everything to his own nefarious ends.

“It was fascinating to be on calls with professional grown men at the height of the industry who were basically a support group for dealing with this artist who made all their so-called shortcomings feel like betrayals.”

“Avery” – former staffer

IN JANUARY OF THIS YEAR — after two and a half years of silence — Bassnectar fans received an unexpected email inviting them to unlock “The Other Side,” a new “centralized hub” for the fan community. An amorphous “We” — the email was unsigned — claimed to know “how deeply painful it was to experience everything that was so magical be torn down, but the pain we all felt is something we can heal together.” It made no further acknowledgment of the accusations or ongoing litigation. Similar to Louis C.K.’s post-cancellation “direct-to-fans” model, The Other Side offers a free tier that includes a motley array of games, interviews, and recordings of live shows, and, for around $125 a year, an “Unlocked” membership offering exclusive access to tickets for live events and first dibs on new music. (A new Bassnectar album, curiously titled The Golden Rule, was released to subscribers in May, three months before streaming services.) 

Fans flocked to online forums to discuss this development, which over the coming months expanded in fits and spurts so haphazard — pervasive bugs, infrequent updates — that some questioned if Ashton was involved at all. On May 22, he finally addressed fans directly on the website, claiming he’d been “falsely accused” by “trolling, abusive Cancel Culturists” perpetuating “the most surreal, most unimaginable, most unrealistic onslaught of hatred, cruelty, rage, disinformation, and mass hysteria.” (According to Avery, Ashton has long had “a constant practice … of playing the victim.”)

Some fans are celebrating the return. “His shows were all I looked forward to, and the only time I felt safe and secure [with] actual friends that cared,” says Bridget Avallone, a former Ambassador who says Ashton’s disappearance plunged her into a two-year-long depression. She hopes to attend future Bassnectar events even if Ashton is found liable, “because no other music makes me feel the way his makes me feel.”

Many had the opposite response. On the Bassnectar subreddit, two of the past year’s three most upvoted posts were critical; the top post, “The Hard Truth” declared The Other Side “an [echo] chamber with a paywall,” and — borrowing a common phrase from Ashton’s own lexicon — urged people to think for themselves and question. Another top post, titled “Bassnectar Owes US An Apology,” decried Ashton proceeding without any “explanation to the fans about the loss of their culture, their people, their family.” In a Facebook message to Rolling Stone, one former Ambassador says she felt “sickened” to learn of the comeback, and would boycott any festival or venue that hosts a future Bassnectar set.

Ashton’s current team seems to have anticipated such opposition. As advertised, the subscription model restricts event access to only those dedicated enough to pony up for membership and their guests, but the team’s plans may go even further: An administrator of a Bassnectar fan Facebook group who was recruited to work on the comeback tells Rolling Stone that Ashton floated the idea of purchasing a private warehouse where events could be held within a wide security perimeter incorporating a fan identification system. Ashton, the source claimed, said that this was intended “to keep out the trolls,” which the source took to mean “anyone who wanted to protest his events.” The Facebook administrator and another source claim Ashton spoke about taking over his unofficial fan subreddit by replacing its independent moderators with Bassnectar team members who would silence what Ashton has long referred to as “the haters” — a.k.a. anyone with negative views of Ashton. (Today, new posts on Bassnectar’s social media accounts are locked against comments.)

“When it all went away, it made it easier. I actually do have to stop now.”

Alyssa Papiernik, former fan

Ashton’s detractors have already succeeded in having a Bassnectar show canceled. On Aug. 30, the DJ’s team announced that Ashton’s comeback show in Las Vegas (his first performance in more than three years) would be followed by another event at Harrah’s Cherokee Center in Asheville, North Carolina. Within hours, a post on the venue’s Facebook page racked up nearly 2,000 comments, many angrily citing the allegations against Ashton. That evening, Harrah’s Cherokee Center announced that the event had been canceled. 

Ashton said the cancellation was the result of “a campaign of hostility, intimidation, and preposterous lies,” adding that “cancel culture” is “a modern form of domestic terrorism.” For Caeli Higgins, who started an Instagram page called Music Industry Watchdog to spotlight misogyny in the dance-music world, it’s “a slap in the face to victims of sexual abuse everywhere for Bassnectar to play a show despite his active lawsuits.” 

The cancellation was just another episode in what many fans have perceived to be an overall messy comeback. With much of the former Bassnectar team no longer involved, the Facebook admin says Ashton has been paying fans to help coordinate his comeback in what Stephen calls a “toxic work environment” rife with “controlling” behaviors.

As a longtime fan, the Facebook admin was willing to believe the claims against Ashton were exaggerated — until Ashton began to recruit him. He felt Ashton had a goal of “buttering you up, and then backtracking on all of that to try and tear you down,” which struck the admin as manipulative. “I was like, ‘Dang, he really does this right out the gate with people.’” The admin thinks the tactic would be particularly effective on fans, as “it was their dream a couple years ago to even talk to him,” he says. 

When on calls, Ashton “engineers the interaction so much that there’s not really room to question him,” says Stephen. Both he and the admin describe Ashton frequently going on confusing rants. “Every time I talked to him, it was like the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had,” says the admin. “He never comes across like a regular person under any circumstance.” Avery believes Ashton’s chaotic behavior is partly strategic: “He keeps people swirling to distract from the larger discourse.”

“It’s a slap in the face to victims of sexual abuse everywhere for Bassnectar to play a show despite his active lawsuits.”

Caeli Higgins, industry watchdog

THREE YEARS AFTER THE allegations against Ashton first surfaced, a fraction of what was once the Bassnectar fandom excitedly plots its Vegas reunion online, while disenchanted fans like Thomas question whether future events can recapture the magic of those that replay in their memories. On Reddit, posts from fans who support the comeback have at times been outnumbered by those reselling old Bassnectar merch, while discussion on the Ambassadors’ Facebook group has all but petered out; most seem to have moved on. The venue for Ashton’s long-awaited return has a capacity of 1,858; his last live event sold out an arena 10 times as large. Insiders say some major players from Ashton’s team “jumped ship” long ago, though in the letter to Rolling Stone, his lawyers claimed that “virtually every key production team member rejoined the crew for the upcoming shows on October 6th and 7th.”

Avery says that working for Ashton convinced them that the common music-industry notion that “you have to deal with crazy in order to work with genius” was fundamentally untrue. “I now think if you treat employees unfairly, you treat everyone unfairly.” Stephen says the lack of accountability on teams like Ashton’s is an industry-wide problem: “The music and the culture promotes PLUR [Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect] and a safe-space culture, but the bigger players are not on board with that.” As a direct result of the allegations, Mimi Page helped launch an eight-week campaign to address sexual violence in the music industry and promote healing for survivors. “We can turn this horrific experience into something beautiful together,” she said in an interview with The Mr. Bill Podcast in 2020: “This is the mass awakening that we can’t stand for anymore, the industry needs to change.” Yet many workers fear that speaking out will cost them future opportunities; of all the potential sources for this article, far more demurred to speak, citing fear of either retaliation or being associated with Ashton, than were willing to go on record. 

Fans tell Rolling Stone they’ve realized they don’t need Ashton to enjoy the memories and meaning reaped from their years of following Bassnectar, and the friendships they forged in a community oriented toward service and love. Alyssa Papiernik recently moved to Colorado, a place she visited multiple times to see Ashton play. A majority of her friends are still people she met through Bassnectar. “It was a huge part of my life,” she says. “I still have amazing memories with these people I will never be able to forget.” Since the allegations, she’s explored other types of dance music, rather than fixating on one artist. While she still thinks nothing compares to Ashton’s production, it no longer has the same effect on her. After earning a master’s in teaching in 2020, she knew she couldn’t follow Bassnectar forever, but “I couldn’t stop, because it was still there,” she says. “When it all went away, it made it easier. I actually do have to stop now.”

Over the course of multiple conversations, Thomas evolved from eagerly anticipating Ashton’s return, to feeling conflicted, to ultimately concluding he’d probably skip it. While Bassnectar shows remain “untouchable” in his mind, Thomas found the comeback “sloppy,” was angered by Ashton’s refusal to take accountability, and doubts that future shows will feel the same. Yet more than anything, crossing the country to see Bassnectar no longer feels realistic. Like other bassheads he knows, Thomas is now married with a serious job. He has other trips and priorities to juggle.

“Those were no doubt some of the best years of my life chasing him around, but I was also in a job I hated, using way too many drugs at his shows, and that eventually bled into my normal everyday life,” says Thomas. “I have been a better human by focusing on the things and people around me instead of auto-piloting life to the next show.”