BottleRock producers to debut Festival La Onda, two days of Latin music in Napa, in June 2024

Latitude 38 Entertainment on Tuesday night announced the launch of Festival La Onda, which will feature a variety of musical acts for Latino audiences. The new festival, named for a Spanish word that can mean “wave” or “vibe,” will take place at the Napa Valley Expo Saturday and Sunday, June 1 and 2, 2024 — the weekend after the 11th BottleRock, scheduled for May 24-26.

Latitude 38’s partners Justin Dragoo, Dave Graham and Jason Scoggins announced Festival La Onda on Tuesday evening during a community forum at the Expo’s Third Street fairground, which has hosted every BottleRock since its 2013 debut.

The producers described the new festival as a way to better serve the Latinos who represent a major portion of Northern California and more than a third of Napa County — and to answer a call from BottleRock fans and others they say has grown stronger in the decade of that event’s existence.

“We felt it was time,” Graham told about 70 residents of the Expo’s neighborhood during an hour-long meeting to discuss Festival La Onda, and the traffic and crowd control measures planned for the event.

“Over the last 10 years, we’ve been hit up by family and friends and others to do something,” he said, describing the trips many Latin music fans make to Southern California and Las Vegas to hear their favorite acts. “We felt it was time to do something in Napa.”

Producers on Tuesday did not announce which acts would come to Napa for the inaugural festival. However, Graham told the audience Mexican acts would likely comprise most of the first year’s slate, including regional acts as well as pop, rock, mariachi and cumbia genres. Organizers later announced the festival also would feature reggaetón, banda, norteño, bolero and other acts.

The music lineup and ticket information are set to be announced at 8 a.m. Monday, Latitude 38 announced Wednesday morning. Tickets will go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, Dec. 8, at LaOndaFest.com.

Dragoo said Latitude 38 has a goal of daily Festival La Onda attendance about 10,000 to 12,000 below that of BottleRock, which organizers have said has attracted some 120,000 spectators over a three-day schedule in recent years.

For each day of Festival La Onda, the Expo will open to fans at 11 a.m. and all concerts will stop — with public address speakers cut off if necessary — at 10 p.m., in line with Expo ground rules for BottleRock.

By staging Festival La Onda one week after BottleRock, Latitude 38 will keep the two main stages and much of the infrastructure in place at the Expo, only fully dismantling stages and seating after both events end, according to organizers.

Producers and law enforcement agencies will expand their street control measures from previous BottleRocks in the hope of softening the parking and access problems the festival has posed for homeowners nearest to the Expo.

Plans shared with neighbors for BottleRock and Festival La Onda include a hard closure of Fairview and Hennessey drives at the Silverado Trail, which bracket a neighborhood directly east of the fairground. A California Highway Patrol officer will staff the Fairview intersection.

Meanwhile, “soft” closures — marked with signs and staffed by a traffic control vendor rather than CHP — are planned where Davis Avenue, Hennessey, and Linnell and Hoffman avenues meet Coombsville Road.

Existing street shutdowns during BottleRock will also take force for the two days of La Onda. Third Street in front of the Expo will be off limits to vehicles from 8 to 11 p.m. on show nights, and Juarez Street will close from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Law enforcement in the coming months will refine how to restrict access to neighborhoods near the Expo, and in particular how to deter illegal parking by festivalgoers while not blocking homeowners’ families and friends, according to Sgt. William (Brad) Bradshaw of CHP, which is responsible for traffic safety around the state-owned fairground during BottleRock.

“The hardest thing to regulate is: Who lives there and who doesn’t?” he said at the forum.

Among the Expo’s neighbors, news of a second music festival nearby appeared to garner a mostly polite response and thanks for keeping residents informed — though with some continued concerns about lack of parking, crowding, littering and noise, particularly during the weeks of setup.

“The three days of music are fine; it’s the month ahead of it,” Marne Fate, who has lived near the Expo for nearly three decades, told the Latitude 38 directors, who took over BottleRock before its second edition in 2014.

Afterward, Fate held out some hope that more closures would lessen traffic and parking problems next year. However, she added, neighbors still must cope with portable lights, noisy generators and other annoyances during festival construction — and then watch festival crowds make daily life a hassle.

“We are prisoners — we hunker down,” she said after the meeting. “You grocery-shop (in advance) for the weekend; you don’t leave the house; you don’t have friends over. If you drive your car, your space is gone.”

Scoggins of Latitude 38 urged the Expo’s neighbors to keep in touch with organizers about trying to head off any quality-of-life problems before they arise during the festivals.

“If you hear anything, please, inundate us,” he told the audience. “We’ve got this. You just have to let us know it’s happening.”

The new festival will become the second Latin music showcase to debut in the Napa Valley in nine months. In September, Silverado Resort and Spa played host to the inaugural Sabor + Ritmo, which combined a slate of nearly a dozen Spanish-language acts with food service from eateries in the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group.

Sabor + Ritmo is produced by Wine Down Media, which is owned by Julissa and Will Marcencia and operates radio stations KVON-AM 1440 and KVYN-FM 99.3, “The Vine.” (KVON became Napa County’s first all-Spanish station at the beginning of 2022.)

Dragoo said after the forum that Latitude 38 would partner with Wine Down in marketing Festival La Onda. (Messages left with Will Marcencia had not been returned as of Wednesday.)

“The more people bring great-quality Latin music to the Bay Area, the better,” he said.

Similarly to BottleRock, La Onda will pair its concert slate with a variety of food, drink and entertainment, according to Latitude 38. Amenities will include local and regional Latin cuisine, a spa, dance club and a silent disco.

Information about La Onda is available at LaOndaFest.com as well as the festival pages on Facebook, X (the former Twitter), TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.