Why Ohana Is One Of The World’s Best Small Festivals

There’s lots of reasons why Ohana Festival keeps taking home Pollstar Awards for Music Festival of the Year (Global, Under 30,000 Attendance).

One of the biggest reasons is immediately apparent on arrival at the Dana Point, California, collaboration co-founded by Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and the band’s manager Mark Smith, along with Live Nation’s global tour promoter Rich Best. As the real estate manuals would say: it’s location, location, location. The three-day festival is produced by C3 Presents.

Two stages and plenty of green space front the white sands and blue waters of Doheny State Beach — roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego and just up the shore from where Vedder learned to surf. The late September schedule often means the marine layer keeps it feeling muggy during the afternoon, but once the sun starts to slip towards the Pacific waves, those onshore breezes are a becalming force. As this year’s Night Two headliner Hozier said while singing from a mid-crowd B-stage, the breezes rippling his famous locks, “There’s just something about being by the sea.” The views are spectacular — and not just when a SpaceX rocket streaked across the sky, as one did during Night Three second-liner Cage The Elephant’s Sunday night set.

Indeed there is and the marriage of music and chilled-out California beach culture is a potent mix at Ohana. A dedicated space that hosts lectures on conservation, Indigenous culture and more neighbored an art gallery that featured surf and sea themed paintings and photos, plus plenty of excellent performance photography from the weekend’s artists. With relatively low capacity compared to some outdoor events, lines for food and bathrooms are short, bleacher seating is plentiful and it’s possible to take in the music from a blanket spread on the grass well into the day.

And the music? The music rarely stops. The side-by-side stage set-up keeps the lineup hopping along with little delay and no overlaps and getting from one set to the next is breezy.

In addition to Hozier, this year’s headliners were Vedder and his band The Earthlings — featuring the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith and Josh Klinghoffer, plus Andrew Watt and Glen Hansard — and the always excellent Green Day, who all but wrapped their touring cycle with their festival closing performance Sunday night (there was a show at Yaamava’ two days later that officially ended the “Saviors Tour”).

There’s no on-site camping at the festival, though certain ticket packages offer lodging at nearby hotels. While there is on-site parking, street parking in Dana Point is plentiful (and free) with shuttles and public transit options make getting to and from a light lift. No camping and easy in and out makes single-day ticket buys a useful option and it’s clear Vedder and C3 keep that in mind with lineup curation.

For big stay-in festivals, there’s a tendency to build each day’s lineup to serve as many audiences as possible to keep as many fans engaged as possible. At Ohana, the days aren’t separated by genre necessarily, but each day certainly had a different feel.

On Friday — the day capped by Vedder — there was a strong appeal to elder Millennials and their Gen X siblings. The legendary Kim Deal played a set both sweet and appropriately rocking in the mid-afternoon. Welsh rockers Stereophonics were as excellent and tight as ever. Lukas Nelson showed off the songwriting chops that put in him in high demand. And Garbage? The volcanic Shirley Manson and her bandmates sounded as vital and energetic as they did 30 years ago with they burst from Wisconsin — of all places — to offer something just a little different than the grunge and post-grunge that dominated the radio waves.

If Friday was the rocking warm-up, Saturday was for chilling out and nodding your head by the beach to the good tunes while admiring the surfers cutting through the waves (Vedder himself, cruising the grounds on his e-bike, took time in the VIP tent to snap some iPhone shots of the surfers; he looked both delighted by their endeavor and envious he wasn’t joining them). Old-school Texas country duo Chaparelle urged the crowd to dance. David Duchovny — yes, him — played a breezy set. Margo Price kept the country traditions going. Australian breakthrough act Royel Otis gave the afternoon some volume and beats before ceding to the unrelenting talents and jams of the Tedeschi Trucks Band. Leon Bridges — Ft. Worth’s ambassador of unvarnished cool — delivered a set both intimate and exhilirating ahead of Hozier’s uplifting, inspiring and inspired finale.

And then Sunday was a whiplash of punk rock. Capped as it was by Green Day, the easy-to-sing-along-to gateway to punk for now 30 years of teens, that was clearly on purpose. And the crowd showed it. Mohawks, brightly dyed hair and head-to-toe black (a bold choice under the late September sun) replaced what had been softer interpretations of festival fashion on the first two days.

The day began with the high energy of Skating Polly (Exene loves them) who have grown from the tween viral favorites they were 15 years ago into fully-formed riot grrrl revivalists. England’s Lambrini Girls and Australia’s The Chats were unadulterated punks that drew at least one 13-year-old girl into her first mosh pits. The big surprise of Sunday was the halfway act that no one recognized when the lineup was posted — Amanda Reckonwith.

That was, in fact, a little smirk from Vedder himself, who played a surprise set and cooled the punk rock jets with an acoustic run of solo tunes and Pearl Jam songs. Vedder also took the time to gush about his festival taking home the aforementioned 2025 Pollstar Award (Ohana has also won the same trophy two other times), saying it was a testament to the community that’s built up around Ohana over the last nine years.

James, one of the seminal Madchester acts, kicked off the last hours of the festival (lead singer Tim Booth joked that if the crowd hadn’t known any of the other songs from the band’s 43-year catalog, they’d surely know the finale, as the band leapt into their biggest American hit “Laid”). Wet Leg’s return to live performance was a blessing and big bruising beating heart, a reminder of why the Isle of Wight act burst out of the pandemic with such verve and buzz. Cage The Elephant kept the crowd moving — no small task after what was by then a long day of pogoing with precious little time to take it easy — ahead of Green Day, always triumphant on stadium and festival stages.

Given the shoreside draw and the name recognition Vedder brings, Ohana would likely be successful without the killer lineup and all the details — the VIP area is fitted with much-in-demand cabanas in addition to the relaxing barside tent, for example; in GA, a boardwalk-style food and beverage area is a nice hang-out, as well. But what’s clear — and why Ohana keeps winning the awards — is that Vedder and its organizers care deeply about making Ohana stand out beyond its great location.

The lineup is well thought out, getting to and around the festival is not a slog, the days run on time and efficiently (another location-based blessing: severe weather is extraordinarily unlikely to throw a wrench in a festival in Orange County) and Vedder’s incorporation of conservation, art and surf culture sets Ohana apart from other mid-size weekend fests.

And, yeah, as Hozier said, there’s just something about being by the sea.