Sonoma Music Fest Canceled

The festival, which ran for 28 years as the B.R. Cohn Fall Charity Concert, was to have taken place Oct. 7-9. Toby Keith, John Fogerty, and the Steve Miller Band were booked as headliners for the festival, which was to take place at Sonoma Calif., venue Field of Dreams. Previous festivals took place at the BR Cohn Winery in Glen Ellen, Calif., but a sale of the property forced its move last year.

Cohn told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat that he intends to revive the festival next year. This has been an especially tough year for Cohn who, in addition to selling his winery, ended his long relationship as manager of The Doobie Brothers.

Ticket sales were reportedly down drastically, and Cohn attributed the huge drop to competition from the Desert Trip festival in Indio, Calif. One of the two weekends of Desert Trip coincided with his Sonoma Music Festival.

In previous years, the Sonoma festival attracted as many as 6,000 over two days and featured performers including Graham Nash and David Crosby, Willie Nelson, Huey Lewis, Leon Russell, Taj Mahal, Heart, Bonnie Raitt and many more.

Cohn did not return a call from Pollstar to discuss the cancellation. But he did express optimism the fest could be resurrected in the future.

“This is the end for this year,” Cohn told the Press Democrat. “It’s not the end of the festival if we can salvage it. We’ll have to see where we end up. I’m working with my board of directors to come up with ways to make sure everybody is properly reimbursed.”