Show must go on — at home
Napa’s Bottle Rock festival, delayed till fall, will stream vintage sets in weekly series
Bottle Rock Napa Valley, the threeday outdoor festival that has become the unofficial kickoff for the Bay Area’s summer music season, is hoping to keep the festival spark alive despite having to postpone until the fall due to the coronavirus pandemic by offering a streaming series featuring performances from its sevenyear run.
Rock’s The weekly YouTube series channel, on Bottle called (re) LIVE Bottle Rock, starts at 3 p.m. Saturday, May 23 — which would have been the second day of this year’s festival — with 2019 performances by Imagine Dragons and Tash Sultana and 2018 sets by Muse and the Head and the Heart. This first installment will be hosted by Allison Hagendorf, the global head of rock at Spotify, and Bottle Rock’s culinary stage host Liam Mayclem. After that, the series will continue at 5 p.m. Fridays for the next 18 weeks with a rotating roster of hosts, a mix of past festival highlights from the music and culinary stages, “plus a variety of new content featuring many of the musical and culinary stars that help make up the unique Bottle Rock Napa Valley experience,” according to Bottle
Rock Napa Valley officials. viewable The performances during (re) LIVEwill only Bot be tle Rock sessions. While free to watch, viewers must subscribe to Bottle Rock’s YouTube channel and are encouraged to donate to two charities: Crew Nation, a fund created by festival promoters Live Nation to help music crews who have been directly affected as live events have been canceled due to CO
VID19, and the Napa Valley
Food Bank.
“We would have loved to be able to share our festival’s great music, wine, food and incredible
Napa Valley hospitality in person this Memorial Day weekend,” said Dave Graham, CEO of
Bottle Rock Napa Valley. “For now, we are really excited to share some vintage performances, along with some new and innovative content with the hope of raising much needed funds to support those who have been financially hit hard by the pandemic.”
Festival organizers also confirmed that Bottle Rock 2020 is still slated for Oct. 24 — the same weekend as Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, San Francisco’s free music festival — with headliners Red Hot Chili Peppers,
Dave Matthews Band and Stevie
Nicks. Other acts on the bill include Miley Cyrus, Khalid, Zedd and Anderson .Paak & the Free
Nationals, among others. All passes for the original dates will be valid for the rescheduled outdoor festival. For more information on the fall event and the new web series, visit www.bottlerocknapavalley.com.