California’s Desert Daze festival has brought an abundance of critically acclaimed musicians to the state since its debut in 2012. This year’s festival was scheduled to have a lineup that would likely impress a wide swath of music fans, including sets from the likes of Jack White, 100 Gecs, Jeff Parker and the Mars Volta. The poster also promised “Remote Midnight Messages” from David Lynch, John Lurie and SNL‘s James Austin Johnson. It sounded like an excellent way to spend a weekend — right up until the announcement that this year’s festival was off.
“As an independent festival, an increasing rarity in today’s festival market, Desert Daze is run by a small team of people who love live music and this community,” the festival’s organizers wrote in a post on Instagram. “Unfortunately, due to rising production costs and the current volataile festival market, it is no longer possible to execute the festival as planned.”
They went on to declare that “we will be working in the background to deliver another special experience for us all to share in the future.” Details on what that might be were not provided, and commenting was turned off on the Instagram post announcing the cancellation. The festival’s website does still contain a number of “Desert Daze Presents” concert listings in California and elsewhere that do not appear to be affected by the festival’s cancellation.
It’s been a challenging time for live music — at least for artists who are not Bruce Springsteen or Taylor Swift. And it leads to one logical question: is this a further sign of trouble ahead for the live music ecosystem? On one hand, it certainly doesn’t seem great for any of the artists who’d expected to play the festival and are now presumably scrambling to fill a financial hole in their schedule.
On the other hand, while the pandemic seems to have exacerbated some trends in concertgoing, organizing festivals has always been challenging, with the implosion of All Tomorrow’s Parties a decade ago being an especially fraught example. In the Los Angeles Times‘ reporting on Desert Daze’s cancellation, August Brown pointed out that that Desert Daze founder Phil Pirrone has also been involved in a legal battle over the venue Pappy & Harriet’s.
When It Comes to Music Festivals, Nostalgia Is in Vogue
Whether or not that’s a good thing remains to be seenStill, it’s not hard to see that at a time when even the most prominent festivals are experiencing turbulence, it’s going to be a challenging time for everyone. A festival like Desert Daze that isn’t focused on nostalgia could be a harder sell in 2024; the fact that it’s not part of a larger company that puts on multiple festivals a year is likely to have been another challenge. Time will tell if Desert Daze will actually return. For now, the festival circuit just got a little smaller.
More Like This
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.