Festival 411: BeachLife Festival Continues To Expand While Sticking To The Format

BeachLife Festival at Redondo Beach in Los Angeles has found a way to continue to grow while sticking to its initial successful formula — the same three-day format, 10,000 (or so) capacity and lineup size on two main non-stages (no overlapping sets), largely keeping its core concept of comfort, community and chill vibes on the beach for the mostly over-40 crowd that calls the Santa Monica South Bay home.

That doesn’t mean it’s the same thing every year, though.

“The lineup has turned out to be as eclectic as ever,” says Allen Sanford, co-founder of BeachLife. “Duran Duran juxtaposed with he Chainsmokers is new for us.” The two Friday-night closing sets may come from different generations but make sense in the BeachLife setting. “We made a decision to try to kind of increase our target market. We do very well with nostalgia and the bands where everybody knows the hits, but we’ve started to segue into more discovery and more kind of subculture bands like Peach Pit and My Morning Jacket.”   

With artist availability and budget always the chief factors in music festival lineups, BeachLife’s loose genre means headliners as well as the smaller font on the bill can vary quite a bit, with previous headliners ranging from Willie Nelson, Bob Weir and Brian Wilson in year one to Smashing Pumpkins, Incubus, Gwen Stefani, Jane’s Addiction, The Black Keys, Alanis Morissette and others.

“I like to think that some of this business is still relationship based,” says Sanford, who leads talent buying for the event, which launched in 2019 and only took off 2020 due to COVID. “We put on a very quality production that artists recognize, and word travels very fast in the artist camps. And, who wouldn’t want to play on the beach in Los Angeles? We do live in a corporate world where Live Nation and AEG dominate the landscape, and I’d be lying if i told you it’s not extraordinary difficult to compete and fight for oxygen in their world, but luckily we have a nice little niche that’s been carved out and enough artists know about us and want to play the festival.”

Headlining Saturday is SoCal punk favorites The Offspring, which Sanford says caps off a very beach-heavy lineup and “home run” that includes Slightly Stoopid and Joan Jett, while ‘70s singer-songwriting hitmaker James Taylor is Sunday’s headliner, which Sanford says reflects the reality of festival-goers often having to choose which day to attend based on personal tastes, work and travel schedules. However, the devoted BeachLife attendees can count on Sugar Ray, the only band to play each year as the Mark McGrath-fronted ’90s hitmakers get the party started early and draw large daytime crowds. Also back is My Morning Jacket, who were unable to play BeachLife 2024 when the last three Sunday sets were canceled due to high winds.

“We’ve started to deviate from what I would call the traditional festival programming where we’re trying to get the one person to come for three days,” says Sanford. “As people in our forties with families, I don’t think that’s realistic, so we’ve kind of changed our programming toward more single-day tickets. As a result, the ticket sales looked strong last year, it was our record year, with Lenny Kravitz and Alanis Morissette. Hopefully, we have the same this year.”

Sanford said ticket sales have come later, reflecting wider industry tends, but he’s hopeful of sellouts for Friday and Saturday, with all various VIP offerings sold out. Single-day general admission passes start at $189, with three-day passes $409. General Admission Plus (GA+) passes  allow unlimited reentry and cost $204, designed for locals to be able to go home between sets, let the dog out or feed fussy kids who may not be interested in festival fare.

With Sanford’s background in the restaurant industry, last year saw the addition of a permanent, onsite California Surf Club located on the BeachLife festival site, at the Seaside Lagoon at Redondo Beach. With two separate buildings, the Surf Club serves as a year-round restaurant but, during BeachLife offers prime VIP hospitality locations, particularly for extra-premium Captains Club pass-holders.

“It’s been great,” Sanford said. “If you can imagine opening a 22,000-square-foot facility during a festival, it caused a fair amount of gray hairs. But our systems and our operations are ready to go. We are on a waiting list now for membership, so we’re full on membership, which is fantastic. It’s a unique thing for a physical building to be designed for a temporary event, but the whole hypothesis of living the beach life every day has proven to be really effective.”

A comfortable setting and extra amenities on-hand still don’t change the reality that BeachLife is a single, independent event competing for space against tours, other festivals and any other live entertainment option in the sprawling entertainment mecca of greater Los Angeles. However, the formula seems to be working.

“You always want the music atmosphere and ecosystem to be healthy, and we always want more music around,” Sanford says, “but it was also a tip of the cap to our staff that, in a year where you’re seeing some decline in festivals in California, that we’re able to keep doing what we love doing.”