San Francisco Chronicle

2-day music festival set for Sonoma

- By Aidin Vaziri

The promoters behind BottleRock Napa Valley are launching a two-day concert in Wine Country called the Sonoma Harvest Music Festival, which is scheduled for Sept. 22-23 at B.R. Cohn Winery in Glen Ellen.

Headliners are roots rock acts the Avett Brothers and the Head and the Heart, according to an announceme­nt Monday, March 26, by BottleRock Presents.

Others on the bill include Lake Street Dive, Shovels & Rope, the Suffers and Royal Jelly Jive, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, ZZ Ward, Rayland Baxter and Con Brio.

“This is a different festival than BottleRock Napa Valley in that we essentiall­y created this festival for people that do not like largersize­d music festivals but still love live music,” said Dave Graham, one of the promotion company’s founding partners. “That said, one similarity to BottleRock is that we built the lineup in a way that is approachab­le to both a young and mature music audience.”

BottleRock Presents promoters, who are working in partnershi­p with LiveNation, said that attendance at the festival will be capped at 3,000 people per day, in contrast to larger music festivals that typically draw 30,000 to 70,000.

Two-day festival passes, ranging in price from $255 for general admission to $1,200 for VIP status, will go on sale at 10 a.m. Wednesday, March 28. Single-day passes will be available at a later date.

A portion of ticket sales will benefit the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation.

B.R. Cohn served as host of the classic-rock-oriented Sonoma Music Festival, one of the North Bay’s most popular annual music events, for close to 30 years until the concert moved to a different venue in 2015 and then was unexpected­ly canceled in 2016.

“It’s a quintessen­tial Wine Country venue,” Graham said. “They have a wonderful team, and music, food and wine have always been a part of their brand. Those were big factors in our decision to reboot the festival.

“There was pre-existing demand for live music at B.R. Cohn, and we felt like we could tap into that demand while providing and delivering on a different customer experience.”

Like BottleRock Napa Valley, the festival will serve as a showcase for the region’s food and wine offerings, with stands by the Girl and the Fig, Glen Ellen Star and Zazu Kitchen and Farm. Aidin Vaziri is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop music critic. E-mail: avaziri@ sfchronicl­e.com Twitter: @MusicSF

 ?? Republic Records ?? The Avett Brothers headline the B.R. Cohn Winery event.
Republic Records The Avett Brothers headline the B.R. Cohn Winery event.

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