South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Fall is Tortuga Music Festival time
2021 event now set for Nov. 12-14
It’s been a year since the Tortuga Music Festival, a joyful, skin-baring spring tradition at Fort Lauderdale Beach Park, first didn’t happen.
The 2020 edition of the popular country-music festival, set for April 17-19, was canceled amid coronavirus hand-wringing about six weeks out, so close you could smell the SPF 50.
An attempt to reschedule it nearly six months later, Oct. 2-4, 2020, also didn’t happen. When organizers announced the festival would be pushed back more than a year after that, bypassing spring 2021 altogether, they seemed like overly conservative scaredycats.
Now they look like visionaries. Cramming 25,000 people from all over the country together each day this weekend? Shoulder to sweaty shoulder and, c’mon now, not a face covered? We’re not there yet.
The eighth edition of the Tortuga Music Festival will take place Nov. 12-14, 2021, with a lineup led by the same 2020 headliners: Miranda Lambert (Nov. 12), Luke Bryan (Nov. 13) and Tim McGraw (Nov. 14). Lambert is Tortuga’s first female headliner.
There have been some changes from the original 2020 lineup, understandable given the unpredictability of travel this year.
Among those missing are Kelsea Ballerini, Toots and the Maytals, Jordan Davis and the quartet Gone West (singer Colbie Caillat departed the group last summer).
The most notable absence will be Morgan Wallen. At the beginning of 2021, the singer appeared poised for a rare level of stardom with the January release of the double album “Dangerous,” until a video surfaced on TMZ of Wallen using a racial slur.
While Wallen has been working to rebuild bridges, he was suspended by his record label and eliminated from consideration for top country music awards, including the 2021 Academy of Country Music Awards, airing Sunday on CBS (WFOR-Ch. 4, WPEC-Ch. 12).
But there are new additions to the Tortuga 2021 bill, including Walker Montgomery, son of John Michael
Montgomery, and Rita Wilson, a singer-songwriter whose most recent album is 2019’s “Halfway to Home” and whose husband is an actor named Tom Hanks.
The rest of the eclectic lineup includes Pitbull, Barenaked Ladies and Vanilla Ice; crooners Jon Pardi, Lee Brice, Cole Swindell, Kip Moore and Billy Currington; bro-country favorites Hardy and LoCash; pop-leaning Nico Moon; and resurgent Nashville veteran Tracy Lawrence.
Two new voices to look out for are Gabby Barrett, recently announced as the ACM New Female Artist of the Year, and singer Jimmie Allen, a nominee for the ACM’s New Male Artist of the Year award.
Tickets for Tortuga 2021 are on sale, starting at $138 for a single-day ticket and $239 for a three-day pass. The three-day VIP pass costs $1,249. Super VIP three-day passes ($1,999), as always, sold out quickly.
Passes purchased for the 2020 festival passes will be honored on the new dates.
For information on tickets and day-by-day lineups, visit TortugaMusicFestival.com.
Kane Brown tour
Country star Kane Brown, riding high with the critically lauded EP “Mixtape Vol. 1” (an ACM Album of the Year nominee), is bringing his 35-city Blessed & Free Tour to AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami on Dec. 2. Openers include Jordan Davis and the band Restless Road.
Brown’s only other Florida stop will be Dec. 3 at the Amway Center in Orlando.
Tickets for the concerts went on sale Friday at KaneBrown.com.
SunFest ticket deal
A spring-season favorite in downtown West Palm Beach for nearly 40 years, SunFest was canceled by the pandemic in 2020, and the attempted sequel set for April 30-May 2 of this year has likewise been called off.
Paul Jamieson, SunFest executive director, said that, given the chaotic travel situation, there was no way to confirm a lineup consistent with the standards festival fans have come to expect.
The new date for SunFest is April 28-May 1, 2022.
As a reward, fans who have held onto their 2020 tickets will get a two-for-one bonus next year.
“We want to say thank you to our fans for their loyalty, and we are offering a ‘share SunFest with a friend’ ticket option — those who are holding onto a ticket from 2020 can now bring one friend to SunFest 2022 on us,” Jamieson said.
For more information, visit SunFest.com.