The lineup for BottleRock Napa Valley, which was postponed several times from May 2020 and is now taking shape for Labor Day weekend 2021, has just undergone some major changes.
Gone are several previously scheduled headliners, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dave Matthews Band, and Janelle Monae. Stevie Nicks and Miley Cyrus remain onboard from the 2020 lineup. And now the festival is bringing back 2017 headliners Foo Fighters, along with 80s rockers Guns N' Roses, and younger acts Run the Jewels, Megan Thee Stallion, and Oakland's own G-Eazy.
The festival happens over three days, September 3 to 5, on the Napa Valley Expo fairgrounds in downtown Napa. Tickets for the postponed fest are available for early access now (even though the front page of the website still says there's only "pre-registration"). Three-day general-admission tickets are $397 this year, and single-day tickets are going for $187 right now.
Given the ravenousness people have for events and restaurants right now, these are likely to sell out fast — much like Outside Lands single-day tickets sold out in two hours last month. (Normally in mid-August, Outside Lands has been rescheduled to the potentially very chilly Halloween weekend in Golden Gate Park.)
A festival in Napa over Labor Day is going to be HOT, weather-wise. The proximity of a lot of homes around downtown Napa means that the festival has abided by strict curfews since it first began in 2013 — including pulling the plug on Foo Fighters right at 10 p.m. on the final night of the 2017 fest, mid-song. And while the event has only gained in popularity, it had a bit of a rocky start, with stagehands and vendors saying they went unpaid for many months after the first iteration of the festival. The organizers changed in 2014, and BottleRock happened six more times on Memorial Day weekends until 2020 came along. The fest was initially rescheduled (like Coachella) for October 2020, and then moved twice more.
Also on this year's lineup are LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy doing a DJ set, Brandi Carlile, JJ Wilde, Cage the Elephant, Portugal. The Man, Young the Giant, Maren Morris, Black Pumas, Future Islands, Jimmy Eat World, Finneas, Mavis Staples, Jon Batiste, and Digable Planets, among others.
And like Outside Lands, BottleRock typically has a culinary stage, with musicians stepping in with chefs to do cooking demos.
As SFist noted of the last BottleRock in 2019, there are a few tiers of VIP experiences, and regular VIP was not worlds different from GA. If you're looking to splurge and have the means, you'll want to go for the SkyDeck or Platinum options for premium viewing spaces and other perks.
And, as with most multi-day music festivals, Friday is usually the best day with the most energy — but who knows with this year? Everything could be off the chain.
It should be noted that the state of California has not yet provided specific public-health guidance for large outdoor music festivals, or said definitively that they will be allowed to occur without restriction. Thus, Coachella organizers still have not committed to new dates this year, and Outside Lands is just hoping things will be mostly normal by late October.
Related: Nine Takeaways From BottleRock 2019
Top image courtesy of BottleRock (2019).
