All photos by Lisa Kaler, Cannapolian.
BeachLife Festival 2024 in Redondo Beach, CA set off the festival season with a packed line-up that drew in a record crowd.
BeachLife Festival is a “family friendly” festival of three days right next to the water in beautiful Redondo Beach, CA. This year it kicked off on May 3-5. Headliners include Sting, Incubus, and My Morning Jacket, with each nights set. Here is Cannapolitan’s beachLife festival 2024 recap.
The Line up!
BeachLife is celebrating its fifth festival this year (covid-19 cancelled the 2020 line-up). The line up has to be one of the greatest so far with headliners; Sting, Incubus and My Morning Jacket, Devo, Seal, The Expendables, Dirty Heads, Local Natives, and G. Love & Donavon Frankenreiter and more. Sadly due to the extreme wind on Sunday, the day was cut short mid afternoon. Several artists and the headliner was unable to perform as planned.
We were there to take in all the sounds and smells of beachLife festival for the first time this year. It’s been long overdue and when the line-up was released it was without a doubt we made a plan to cover this festival and report to our readers all that we experienced and what to expect next year’s festival.
BeachLife Festival attendees look out towards the high tide stage
Parking is a prickly pear, but sometimes you get lucky.
In any first experience at a festival, it’s about finding your way around the area and figuring out a parking plan. Sometimes you have to get to your destination to come up with a strategy. Luckily, day one we found a parking spot on the street that was about a quarter mile from the entrance of the festival. We recommend getting there early to land parking in a few small lots nearby. If not, sometimes it’s just easier to get a ride share or have a taxi to drop you off at the entrance. No matter what it’s always tricky to find parking at many of these festivals if they don’t have much parking structures nearby.
Stages and landscape of BeachLife
The stages are named High Tide and Low Tide. The High Tide stage is the main stage for the headliners and everyone in between. Sets were close enough in times that you would need to leave one act towards the end to go to the other stage to catch the other act’s set that is already underway.
Seal gives the audience wings to fly like an eagle
Day One Highlights
Seal was everything we imagined. He brought out all his hits including; Fly like an eagle, Kiss from a Rose, and our favorite classic Crazy, which he did a really cool rendition of that we had not heard before. Seal was full of gratitude with an audience that knew his hits and was singing along with him. This was a great way to kick off the weekend. City and Colour was a new band to us and was pretty chill and we enjoyed the vibe. The schedule seemed to work out where the acts would overlap slightly between the two main stages, low tide stage and high tide stage. There was also a stage for DJ’s and electronic artists that played during the headliners, which we couldn’t understand why it was set up that way. Moving on, we made our way over to the low tide stage for The Dirty Heads set.
The Dirty Heads
The Dirty Heads got us high!
The Dirty Heads always put on a kick ass show. The band packed the sandbox floor at the low tide stage and performed many fan favorites. We couldn’t deny it felt weird not being able to light up during their set, after all The Dirty Heads are definitely Cannapolitan! The song “Vacation” is one of my favorites among others. You’re instantly driven to want to party when it comes on… but unfortunately Cannabis on any level wasn’t allowed. So even though “Vacation” begs us to want to light up a fatty, we couldn’t. Read on and I’ll explain later. In the meantime, I digress… Moving on to the headliner for the night, Sting!
The man with all the HITS, STING!
Sting brought all his solo and Police hits with him for BeachLife Festival. His set kicked off just as the sun was set and was over an hour of hit after hit. He kicked off his set with “Message in a bottle” and he had the crowd singing along practically with every song because the man has nothing but HITS! Sting has a 40+ year career of music to choose from and it showed. Every song was known among the crowd. In fact, looking back at the whole weekend, Friday night’s show had to have the largest attendance because of Sting! This was a giant pull for this festival’s ticket sales for sure. The audience was all ages from kids to seniors, everyone came to hear Sting’s hits. From “Desert Rose” transcending spiritual sound to “Every Breath I take” every song was as you’d want to hear it and Sting was in great form and shape as expected. The man is in his early 70’s and is in better shape than most half his age. His voice was glorious and his band that he was “retiring” that night were on point in every way. Apparently Sting is employing a new, smaller band to join him for a tour after this show that will be accompanying him throughout this year to come. The small venue tour includes his return to Los Angeles for three nights at the legendary Wiltern Theater, which is a fairly small theater for a HUGE act. It will be certainly a show to see! The “Sting 3.0 tour” as they are calling it, tickets on sale here.
Sting brought all the hits to BeachLife!
Watch your steps & handicap accessibility
From Seal to Dirty Heads, the pathway to leave one stage and head to the low tide stage was an experiment with the environments they are in. For example, the Low Tide Stage is situated in a sandlot, whereas the High Tide stage has artificial turf on the grounds. There are booths for some of the sponsors on each side of the High Tide Stage, including a karaoke bar that happened to be adjacent to the handicap riser. This by all accounts of the majority of the people around us in the handicap section was not thrilled about this noise (not many people who sing karaoke are tolerable to listen to, sorry not sorry). At least that was the consensus of the folks in the handicapped section. It was difficult to see the main stage from this section, that only was about 3 feet off the ground. We were told by the locals that the handicap stage riser was much closer to the stage in the years prior. So many of the handicapped patrons were not thrilled, we’ll leave it at that. We did make friends with our neighbors and those new alliances helped hold seats for us for bathroom and food breaks. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t injured my foot… sometimes these things in life are blessings. Moving on…
Day Two Highlights
Our favorite performances of the day included The Expendables, who always bring great vibes and high spirits with their long list of tunes. Our favorite “Bowl for Two” is a great love song for friends or lovers about sharing a bowl of Cannabis, it’s great (wish we could have partaken with the sentiment). Chevy Metal brought their kick ass rock with their covers from Van Halen, Queen, Rush and more during their set. It was a bit bitter sweet to experience the late great Taylor Hawkins’ rock tribute band without Taylor. However it was a huge treat to discover that Taylor’s son, Shane Hawkins was at the drums for the entire set. It was amazing to watch him play and his style of drumming are so much like his father’s, it was truly awesome to see the legacy continues. Shane Hawkins is certainly set to have a great career in music thanks in part to his dad and the rock and roll genes that Taylor passed on to his son. They also brought on Lee Ving from the classic punk band “Fear” and he brought his own style of singing to classic songs was epic! Once in a lifetime performances in one moment in time.
Shane Hawkins with Chevy Metal
Incubus absolutely owned Saturday night!
Incubus brought all their hits and jams from all of their albums with them on Saturday night. The entire set was incredible and on point from the band that started their own sound in the 90’s. Every song you wanted to hear was played including some new renditions of their hit album Morning View. Throwing down hit after hit, this reporter had the power of some solventless edibles to enhance the set. Highlights included the sounds of the magical and mystical songs like “Wish you were here” and “Stellar” and my favorite, “Are you in?” with a version that included The Doors’ hit “Riders on the Storm” intro. The band’s current tour surrounds a celebration of the Morning View album and their latest re-imagining of the album being released called Morning View XXIII. The entire set was truly a highlight of the entire weekend for this Incubus fan.
Incubus was perfection, this band always delivers the goods!
First a few Cannapolitan tips to consider.
Here at Cannapolitan, we’ve attended and featured many festivals over the years throughout the country, especially our home state of California. So, we’re seasoned festies. We need to share with our readers all the details of our experiences from GA to VIP to Super VIP, we have you covered. In our pre-show and post festival coverage in the past, we keep you, our Cannapolitans in the know. Our money spends just as well as anyone else, so it’s important that these festivals start getting Cannabis friendly to keep us coming. Being that I am a Cannapolitan reporter, I know the ins and outs of each festival I have been to before, for the most part. Many festivals over the years have become extra awesome with Cannabis! Including Cannabis dedicated sections of the festivals (Outside Lands, Cali Roots, Cali Vibes, Northern Nights, Reggae on the River, are just a few). These festivals have gone beyond Cannabis friendly and have fantastic Cannabis consumption areas with sales too! Here’s looking at you Outside Lands and Northern Nights!
However, some festivals are still very anti-Cannabis, there are few that immediately let you know they are this way, others just have to say no smoking and get the point across for the sake that they HAVE TO say that, but it’s not really enforced. Unfortunately, our experience at Beachlife sadly involved a hard search at the entrance that made it evident there would be no smoking, vaping or edibles allowed. Seemed like confiscating Cannabis products was a priority, even edibles were off the table, unless you ate them before you entered or you have a bra to smuggle them in. We know what’s up and we know what we can say here get my drift? Of course we lit up! SMH!
The Prohibition era continues…
NO SMOKING, but drinking is ok!
We did appreciate the no smoking tobacco rule, no issues. But even then, they could have created a smoking area because I still smelled cigars and cigarettes from time to time. If the move to no smoking was a concern to keep the beach areas clean, then understandable. Unfortunately, not all smokers are considerate with how they dispose of butts, so we get that. Most Cannabis people we know (true Cannapolitans) are considerate and use trash cans to throw away crutches/filters, etc. Perhaps this was a rule that the city required and not so much the festival. Many festivals that say no to Cannabis use usually are having to comply with the city’s requirement, after that it becomes how much its being monitored and enforced. But it was clear when we walked through security that everything Cannabis was off limits…that is unless that said Cannabis is inside your body! Edibles become about the only thing that can easily be smuggled in or ingested just before you enter. Game on!
Meanwhile there was alcohol everywhere inside. We watched mommies and daddys with baby strollers and toddlers in tow with their beers are in the cup holders. Grown men passed out on the ground in front of the handicap section for hours, security did check on the guy to make sure he was alive at least. Dozens of other patrons stopped to make sure the dude was breathing as well. It was a sport to watch the drunk behavior everywhere. This will probably be our first and last time at Beachlife. It’s not for the Cannabis friendly at all, which is a shame with a line up that begged to smoke Cannabis with! The Expendables, yes please give me that “Bowl for Two”.
Pretty much every Incubus song is enhanced with Cannabis. Dirty Heads, Pepper, G Love as well, I mean come on!! We get it, but at the very least, they can always act like they did their part to “weed us all out” at the entrance, but then during the show, let it go like all other venues and festivals often do…nothing, let us light up and we promise to be responsible (throw our trash away properly unlike the beer towing types) and of course, be FAR less rowdy as well.
The Expendables brought the fire to BeachLife
Final Thoughts about BeachLife Festival
We can’t help but feel the excitement in the air for next year’s shows and festivals. Beachlife certainly had an incredible lineup this year, thus why we went. It was filled with incredible artists, and the energy was certainly palpable. However, we can’t help but notice the lack of cannabis-friendly policies that we hope will change sooner than later. It’s disappointing to see such a vibrant lineup without the freedom to enjoy cannabis. We hope that festivals will soon embrace a more inclusive approach, allowing attendees to responsibly enjoy their preferred form of relaxation. The tide is turning, and we look forward to a future where cannabis-friendly festivals are the norm. To see more of our exclusive photo highlights and videos direct from BeachLife, check out the gallery and video links below.
