Cowboy boots will not be hitting the sand in Redondo Beach in September because the BeachLife Ranch Country & Americana Festival is not happening this year.
According to festival founder Allen Sanford, BeachLife Ranch, which made its debut in 2022 at Redondo Beach’s Seaside Lagoon, will be postponed until next year.
Sanford, who also founded the more reggae and rock oriented BeachLife Festival in 2019, said the cancellation of the country festival for this year is because of complications with another one of his projects; the California Surf Club, an indoor-outdoor, 21,000 square-foot compound adjacent to the Seaside Lagoon that is set to open in October at 239 N. Harbor Drive.
“We just can’t juggle the complexities of construction while putting on a festival,” he said.
The Surf Club, which will include restaurants, outdoor bars, sunset dining and lounge decks, a private music and event courtyard, a Zen chess garden, kayak and bike rentals, is in the “deep construction” stage but recently hit a few roadblocks, he said.
The land for California Surf Club is being leased from Redondo Beach as part of a public-private partnership and includes two old buildings that are being repurposed.
“One of the buildings was nearly falling down,” Sanford said. “What we thought was a light renovation has turned into a massive structural project.”
With that level of work Sanford said he didn’t feel the project would be finished by the time BeachLife Ranch came around in September.
“The plan is that we’ll take a year off and we’ll bring it back in 2025 bigger and better than ever and our construction will be finished later this year. It’s just too much of a logistical puzzle to figure out,” Sanford said.
BeachLife Ranch made its debut in 2022 with three stages and a lineup that included Brandi Carlile, Dierks Bentley, Lukas Nelson & Promise of The Real, Greensky Bluegrass and Songs of Waylon Jennings. It returned last year with a lineup of about three dozen country and Americana acts with headliners that included Jack Johnson, Cody Links, Brad Paisley, The Doobie Brothers, Wynonna Judd, Shakey Graves, Chris Isaak.
Sanford’s BeachLife Festival, which features headlining sets by Sting, Incubus and My Morning Jacket, is still set to take place at Seaside Lagoon on May 3-5.
