BottleRock, the Napa Valley music, food and art festival, has come a long way since it’s inaugural year in 2013, when the founding promoters lost their collective shirts on the event.

I didn’t make it to the first BottleRock, which featured headliners Kings of Leon, The Black Keys, Zack Brown Band and Further. But I did attend the 2014 festival—described by the festival’s new promoters, Latitude 38 Entertainment, as a “rebuilding year” in an interview with the Napa Valley Register.

Indeed, the 2014 festival had the feel of an event that was held together with superglue and duct tape. Things were working, but it was far from perfect. In particular, the parking situation in 2014 was a total mess: as I was attempting to leave, I asked a multitude of staffers where to find the shuttles to take me back to the offsite parking lot, which was several miles away. Ultimately, I found myself standing on a bridge overlooking the Napa River and nowhere near where I needed to be.

This year was different. Though I didn’t use the offsite parking, exiting the festival I did see much more staff directing foot traffic; the fully functional mobile app, was integrated with Spotify and Facebook and pinged me with reminders of the bands I wanted to see; festival wristbands were digitized, with tiny chip-embedded medallions, which I used to enter the festival every day; and there were far more food vendors that I could have hoped to sample over the course of my three days there.

All in all, BottleRock 2016 seems like a festival that’s all grown up. I look forward to next year. Until then, check out a collection of pics from this year’s event below, or check out the full gallery here.

For the full gallery, click here.

As the opening bookend to the Bay Area’s summer music festival season, the avid weekend warrior would do well to think of BottleRock as a warm-up. The three-day celebration is packed with some of the biggest names in pop, as well as plenty of amazing, lesser-known acts—not to mention the culinary celebrities, beer, wine and food.

Fitting all of that food and music into three days is a daunting proposition. However, compared to the logistical nightmare of crisscrossing Golden Gate Park for three days in an attempt to catch all the best headliners and indie darlings at Outside Lands, the Napa festival is a breeze.

Nonetheless, just as it’s important for families to have emergency plans, it is advisable to head into BottleRock armed with a lay of the land, a list of must see performances and appearances, and sunblock.

Getting a list started is easy. No-brainers include Stevie Wonder, Florence + The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Lumineers and Death Cab for Cutie. On the Culinary Stage there are some pretty obvious choices as well: Gordon Ramsay of Hell’s Kitchen and Masterchef; comedy duo and masters of the munchies, Cheech and Chong; and Masaharu Morimoto of Iron Chef.

But what about all these other names on the bill? The ones that don’t immediately call to mind platinum-selling records or uber-popular Food Network shows? Don’t sweat it. That’s where we come in. Here are our picks for five can’t-miss performances and foodie presentations at BottleRock 2016.

The Pharcyde
Some of rap’s greatest artists rose to prominence in the early ’90s. Even grandma is familiar with the biggest names from hip-hop’s golden age: Biggie, Pac, Nas. The Pharcyde isn’t as much of a household name, even though most will recognize the L.A. group’s biggest hits. With their loopy, loping boom-bap beats, gymnastic flows and penchant for absurdist observation, this SoCal quartet is responsible for the iconic “Passin’ Me By” and uproarious “Ya Mama” from Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde and Latin-jazz flavored “Runnin’” from Labcabincalifornia. They haven’t dropped a proper album since 2004’s Humboldt beginnings, but that’s fine. After all, anyone attending a music festival in wine country ought to know, some things only get better with age.

K.Flay
Since graduating from Stanford University, Kristine Flaherty—better known as K.Flay—has forged a career as a rapper and producer. Born in Chicago, she moved out to California to study at The Farm. After that she moved Brooklyn for a time and was briefly signed to RCA Records. These days her base of operations is Oakland and she’s no longer on the major label (she left after refusing to squeeze herself into a more easily marketable mold, as execs there suggested). Nevertheless, she self-released the full-length, Life as a Dog, in 2014, which has earned her favorable press. Flaherty just dropped a new single, “FML,” an ode to split personalities.

Deap Vally
This high energy garage rock duo sound a bit like The White Stripes—except both members are blonde women who hail from L.A. instead of Detroit. You can almost hear the Southern California sunshine glittering between the dusty, overdriven guitar stabs and tambourine shakes on their latest, blistering single, “Royal Jelly.”

Tre Cool & Mike Dirnt
The East Bay’s pop-punk success story, Green Day, won’t be playing this year’s BottleRock. However, the band’s drummer and bassist—Tré Cool and Mike Dirnt—will be taking to the culinary stage. The pair surely have learned some interesting food hacks over their years spent living in and out of tour buses. And Dirnt is himself a restaurateur. He is part owner of Rudy’s Can’t Fail Café in Oakland.

Dwight Clark
The young BottleRock festival is only a few years old, but it has already established certain traditions, such as inviting professional football stars to participate in its live food presentations. This year, 49er faithful will receive a special treat, as Dwight “The Catch” Clark will take to the Culinary Stage.

We’re coming in from the cold. As the Bay Area emerges from some of the chilliest weather we’ve seen all year, two major Californian summer music festivals—Coachella and BottleRock—have announced their 2015 lineups. AC/DC, Jack White and Drake top the two-weekend, six-day bill at the Indio Polo Grounds this year, while Imagine Dragons, No Doubt, Robert Plant and locally bred Fritz Montana have signed on to rock the bottle up in Napa.

As always, Coachella has more bands than you can shake a stick at. In addition to the big three, the lineup also includes Tame Impala, Interpol, Flying Lotus, Cloud Nothings, The Weeknd, alt-J, Ratatat, Run the Jewels, Parquet Courts, Kaskade, St. Vincent, Circa Survive, Built to Spill and a whole shit ton more.

The BottleRock bill is a little more manageable, though not as densely packed with buzz worthy artists. Highlights from the third installment of the festival include The Avett Brothers, Foster the People, Passion Pit, Snoop Dogg, Cage the Elephant, Portugal. The Man and Public Enemy.

Who are we most excited about seeing? That’s really hard to say. But at Coachella Run the Jewels has to be at the top of the list:

So are the S.F. by way of the South Bay indie rockers Fritz Montana:

Could there be a better act to play the uniquely Northern California festival BottleRock than Santa Cruz’s own Camper Van Beethoven, with their conjoined twin band Cracker in tow?

After all, Camper is the group that on their 2013 album La Costa Perdida delivered “Northern California Girls,” perhaps the ultimate NorCal anthem—meaning an anthem that’s way too laid back to actually be an anthem.

“Right, it takes seven minutes to get where it’s going,” admits David Lowery, the frontman for both Camper and Cracker. “The drums come in a little bit like three times before they finally kick in about three-and-a-half minutes into the song.”

Lowery had already written his share of great California songs for both Camper and Cracker over the years—most recently, “Where Have Those Days Gone”—in which he mistakes Good Times’ astrologer Rob Brezsny for Thomas Pynchon in a bar in Mendocino County—but also “Big Dipper,” “Miss Santa Cruz County,” “Come On Darkness” and more.

But with his latest cycle, he’s outdone himself. While La Costa Perdida was a NorCal-influenced album, the songs on Camper’s latest, El Camino Real (which comes out June 3), are all set in, or otherwise related to, SoCal.

“We wrote these songs at the same time, then thematically we broke off most of the Northern California ones for the last album, and then kind of took these songs that were Southern California, and built another album around them, by adding another five songs or something like that,” says Lowery. “There’s kind of this opus going now, this theme going. There’s also a Cracker album, which comes out next year. It’s a double disc—one is Berkeley, one is Bakersfield. One is the punk side of the band, one is the country side.”

So, basically, four albums worth of California songs. And it all started because of … Joan Didion?

“I think it started with me and Victor [Krummenacher] and Jonathan [Segel] reading a bunch of Joan Didion,” confirms Lowery. He can’t remember which collection of essays specifically sparked it, but it would almost have to be the first section of Slouching Toward Bethlehem, in which Didion rips to shreds the “golden dream” of the Inland Empire—where Lowery, his Camper bandmates Krummenacher and Segel, and Cracker co-founder Johnny Hickman all grew up.

“Those essays really captured the feel of it. It’s not really that flattering about the area, but that’s sort of what people from the Inland Empire are proud of,” says Lowery. “There was actually some sort of referendum on a theme for the Inland Empire, like ‘Virginia is for Lovers’ or how California is the Golden State. And we all wrote in: ‘We will kick your ass.’”

The most noticeable difference between the two Camper albums is the overall feel—La Costa Perdida is more easygoing and gentle, while El Camino Real is darker and more intense, with a deep streak of paranoia that runs through songs like “The Ultimate Solution,” “It Was Like That When We Got Here” and “I Live In L.A.” Clearly, Lowery has very different views on the two halves of the state.
“Yeah, but I like ’em both,” says Lowey.

At the BottleRock festival in Napa May 30-June 1, Lowery’s bands will join an eclectic mix of five dozen other acts across four stages, including the Cure, OutKast, Weezer, LL Cool J, Robert Earl Keen, TV on the Radio and Smash Mouth.

Some of those musicians have been around longer than Camper, while others benefited from the college-radio-to-gold-records trail that CVB and Cracker blazed in the ’80s and ’90s. It’s very likely, however, that Camper is the only band on the schedule that has been reunited longer than they were originally together.

After recording their first album in Santa Cruz in 1985, the band imploded on a European tour in 1990. But after reforming in the early 2000s, they’ve been back together now for over a decade. Part of the reason, Lowery says, is that they all agreed to do the band on a more part-time basis, or at least do fewer tours, which puts less pressure on them as a group. But maybe it’s even simpler than that.

“Jonathan says it’s just because we’re not in our twenties,” says Lowery. “And it’s kind of true.”

INFO:
Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker
BottleRock Napa
May 30-June 1 at the Napa Valley Expo, Napa.
$149 for single-day pass; $279 for a three-day pass
bottlerocknapavalley.com

Organizers for BottleRock Napa Valley announced the daily lineup for the festival, headlined by The Cure, Outkast, TV on the Radio and Weezer.

A few more names were also added to the lineup, including Railroad Earth, Mayer Hawthorne, No Age and Noah Gunderson, and single-day tickets are available now for $149 per day. Three-day passes are going for $279.

Daily lineup:

Friday, May 30: The Cure, TV on the Radio, Sublime with Rome, Matisyahu, Railroad Earth, Mayer Hawthorne, Robert Delong, Third Eye Blind, Moon Taxi, Gin Blossoms, Empires, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Spin Doctors, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Miner, Ben Sollee

Saturday, May 31: Outkast, Weezer, Matt & Kim, Heart, De La Soul, No Age, Blues Traveler, Robert Earl Keen, Howie Day, Smash Mouth, Tea Leaf Green, Cracker, Moonalice

Sunday, June 1: Eric Church, The Fray, LL Cool J with DJ Z Trip, Black Angels, Keep Shelly in Athens, Barenaked Ladies, Deerhunter, Thee Oh Sees, Camper Van Beethoven, Jon Batiste and Stay Human, Noah Gundersen, James Otto, Delta Rae, Ed Kowalczyk, The Stone Foxes, Victory

Read more via SF Station.