Pulling together a multi-day music festival with numerous stages, a wide variety of talent and stretching it throughout the Port of San Diego — from Broadway Port Pier to the Hilton Bayfront Park, which is about a mile and a half of festival territory — is certainly no easy undertaking. However, partners Paul Thornton and Ernie Hahn of Wonderlust Events, LLC have gone all in with their Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival.
The inaugural festival will take place Friday, Nov. 22 through Sunday, Nov. 24 and will feature performances by more than 120 artists including Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, Miguel, Pepper, Pennywise, Tyga, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, X Ambassadors, Phantogram, Grandson, Walk the Moon, Big Gigantic, Migos, Slightly Stoopid, MGMT, Vince Staples, Flatbrush Zombies, Nicky Jam, The Vandals, X, Frankie J, Los Tucanes de Tijuana and more.
Thornton played baseball at the University of San Diego and now splits his time lbetween Mission Beach and Austin, Texas and Hahn is a lifelong San Diegan. The pair each have experience presenting large-scale events and festivals and came together a few years ago and over some drinks, while taking in the panoramic ocean views the Port of San Diego has to offer, began to plot Wonderfront.
“We both remembered the San Diego Street Scene,” Thornton said. “We remembered how fun that was. It had gone away quite a few years back and we were looking at a great city that didn’t seem to have a festival that brought the whole city together and was very inclusive while celebrating the culture of the city. That’s what we’ve tried to put together here and it was years in the making.”
At Wonderfront, there will be music on land and sea. While traveling from stage to stage during the festival, patrons can hop aboard water taxis or take the Marietta Boat, on which there will also be live performances and multiple bars. Scooters, WonderFred cars and trolleys will be made available to guests and, unlike most festivals, ins and outs are not only allowed, but encouraged.
“We also wanted to integrate the city into the festival,” Thornton said. “Most festivals lock you in and you’re stuck for 12 hours and a lot of them do that for money reasons, but we wanted people to be able to come and go. They can pop out and enjoy lunch at the Gaslamp Quarter, rest up back at their hotels and go shopping in the village or downtown corridor. There’s a ferry you can take over to Coronado Island and rent bikes and hang out and then come back for the evening entertainment. We wanted from the beginning to be able to allow the guests to completely customize their experience without having it jammed down their throats and holding them hostage in a festival for three days.”
Aside from the live music there will be several artists live painting gigantic murals, a sprawling craft beer village featuring some of San Diego’s finest breweries, a variety of local food vendors on-site, an area for salsa dancing lessons, yard games and kayaks, personal watercraft and more will be alternative options for entertainment as well. The festival ends each evening at 10 p.m., however Wonderfront-related fun continues in multiple venues in downtown San Diego and there will be an EDM party on the Broadway Port Pier until midnight on Friday and Saturday.
The diverse line-up was more geared toward emerging artists rather than splurging to highlight numerous big-name acts, Thornton said.
“That’s not to say no one has heard of them,” Thornton explained. “They’ve all had hits on the radio, but this may be the first time some of the guests see them live. We wanted people who were out on a new album cycle and we wanted it to be inclusive and have a little bit of something for everybody. That’s why you see rock music, indie rock, reggae, there’s EDM and hip-hop and lots of Latin music.”
Wonderfront also sought the opinions and support of three San Diego icons — skateboard legend Tony Hawk, baseball Hall of Famer Trevor Hoffman and surfer Rob Machado — when it came to curating the festival.
“We wanted this to be for San Diego, but didn’t want to turn it into a big corporate festival where you see the same lineup you’d see everywhere else across the country,” he said. “We wanted it to be unique and when we thought about who the heroes were for San Diego, those guys stood out. All of our investors and partners are San Diegans, so it’s really geared around people not just putting in their money, but also getting involved like Rob and Tony asking themselves, ‘How do we make this a festival we would want as locals?’”
Hawk is bringing in a skate ramp and will showcase numerous top-level athletes and is reviving his Huckjam for Wonderfront that includes a stage with performances by bands he came up with including Suicidal Tendencies, The Vandals and Pennywise.
For those who can’t splurge on a festival ticket, Wonderfront has created some free entertainment outside of its gates for the surrounding community to enjoy.
“When we were creating this we said that everyone deserves music, so we have some free stages and things so anyone can just show up and watch,” he said. “Not everyone can afford a festival ticket these days and we just wanted to make sure we could make it accessible to everyone.”
Wonderfront announced last week that it has partnered with America Salutes You, a benefit concert to support active duty military, veterans and their families, with its Sunday closer, Guitar Legends 3, featuring ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Toto’s Steve Lukather, Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr, Gov’t Mule and the Allman Brothers Band’s Warren Haynes, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, and drummer Kenny Aronoff, as well as the LA All-Star Band. They also revealed that George Thorogood had been added to that lineup, which will be taped for a 90-minute special that will later be broadcast nationally and internationally. All of the proceeds from that event will go to No Greater Services, LA Fire Department Foundation and the Entertainment Industries Council.
“When people hear about this, it all sounds really big, but when they get there they’ll be able to see how it’s all worked out,” Thornton said. “What we’ve done is worked on a map on our website and the schedule for each stage is now live, but it is a hard festival to explain in the world of eight seconds and eight words that we live in nowadays.”
Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival
When: 3:30-10 p.m. Friday, Nov. 22; 11:45 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23 and Sunday, Nov. 24
Where: Various locations in the Port of San Diego including Embarcadero Marina Park South, Embarcadero Marina Park North, Seaport Village, Ruocco Park, Hilton Bayfront Park and Broadway Port Pier.
Tickets: $79 Friday general admission; $375 VIP Friday admission; $99 Saturday or Sunday general admission; $475 Saturday or Sunday VIP admission; $239 three-day general admission passes; $1,200 three-day VIP passes; $199 three-day general admission passes for military (I.D. required). All passes are available at wonderfrontfestival.com.
