Who TF Is Justin Time? (center, double fisting moonshine) with Big Murph (left) filming the video for "Mud This MFer"
Just four months ago, in June, at the very same off-roading park, the Redneck Rave made global news. One headline read: “‘Redneck Rave’ Descends Into Throat Slashing, Impalements, and Mass Arrests.” Indeed, all those things happened, plus a woman got choked unconscious and another person lost a chunk of finger. All in all, 14 people were arrested in June. I asked Time about the events of the last Rave, and if things tend to get rowdy. “A little bit, ma’am,” he said. “I call it a controlled chaos. Anybody that comes out here knows what they’re getting themselves into. They sign a waiver at the front gate.” Even so, when fights break out, Time told me it’s most often amongst friends “and it's always pretty much over a piece of pussy.” It usually ends with a handshake.“We like to have a good time! We just do it on a four wheeler instead of in a nightclub.”
An attendee spews water in the mud
“We just make sure everybody is having a good time, and put a smile on people’s faces,” Fender Hat told me. “Everybody’s out here just trying to be as wild as they can be, and free, and have no restrictions on what they do, other than wearing a helmet and their seatbelts.”
Many Redneck Rave attendees decorated their off-road vehicles with flags
DJ Seefoe (center) getting everyone hyped for the race up 1K Hill
While partying hard was an obvious draw, the Redneck Rave’s true core tenet is community. Over and over, people told me about the comfort they felt knowing they could let loose from the troubles of their regular life and be sure everyone would be looking after them. Whether their off-roader got stuck in the sludge, or they lost a shoe in the pit, someone would come through. Throughout the day, people, even in passing, checked in on me. They offered rides and shots of moonshine, took my trash to their camp when I had an empty bottle and didn’t know what to do with it, gave me a bag of Walking Tacos (a bag of Fritos topped with beans, cheese, meat, and other stuff), and helped me wash out a bloody cut on my knee.“I’m 100 percent a city boy,” Time told me. “I was adopted by all these beautiful people. One of the things that I love about it is the family-ness and camaraderie. If somebody broke down on the fuckin’ trail people will go out of their way to make sure they help them. It’s a you can’t leave a soul behind, kind of thing.” Still, that’s probably a bit easier for a white guy who’s got more charm than a field of four-leaf clovers. “I’m here to bridge the gap,” DJ Seefoe told me, his exquisite gold grills and a “Black Lives Matter” chain catching the sun as he sipped from a can of Cayman Jack margarita. While he admitted to some initial skepticism about the Redneck Rave, he decided he needed to be there every year and use it to fight division. “A person can’t be publicly racist out here because they’ll get beat up,” he told me. “I represent this shit. I’m here. I ain’t no redneck, but you don’t gotta be a redneck to be at the Redneck Rave.”“If you come here and you’re on some fuck shit, you might get your ass beat.”
Getting stuck in the sludge was pretty common at the Redneck Rave
Time made it clear that “if you come here and you’re on some fuck shit, you might get your ass beat.” He wasn’t the only one sounding off that very warning. “If you’re racist, I wanna fight you,” Paris, the Charlotte country rapper, told me. “My thing is, as an independent citizen, as a conservative, as a liberal, anything, you need to be educated in what you’re arguing or you’re just ignorant. You are the problem.”Fender Hat echoed that sentiment. “You come here, everybody fits in because it’s one big giant family. We don’t stand for any [racism]. It doesn’t matter who you are, we accept everyone and anyone.”Generally, politics and sociopolitical beliefs are tacitly put aside, even if someone is wearing a Confederate flag-print jacket or has a Trump flag on their truck. They’re there to party, and make a point to be good neighbors. “I feel like politics is politics,” said Seefoe. “It is what it is. When I break [racism] down to them though, they’re like ‘damn you right, Seefoe.’ The same people that got ‘Fuck Biden’ flags on their stuff, they’re just following a movement. When they see me, those same people cook me breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”“It’s a you can’t leave a soul behind, kind of thing.”
The mud was serious at the Blue Holler Offroad Park in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky
