EARLY BIRD PRICING (April 5 at Noon – Wed, April 17 at noon)
Friday Single Day Adult – $45.00
Friday Single Day Kids – $20.00
Sat/Sun Adult GA – $110.00
Sat/Sun Adult VIP – $250.00
Sat/Sun Kids GA – $30.00
Fri/Sat/Sun Adult GA – $150.00
Fri/Sat/Sun Adult VIP – $290.00
Fri/Sat/Sun Kids GA – $50.00
REGULAR PRICING (starts at Wed, April 17 at noon)
Friday Single Day Adult – $50.00
Sat/Sun Adult GA – $120.00
Sat/Sun Adult VIP – $275.00
Sat/Sun Kids GA – $30.00
Fri/Sat/Sun Adult GA – $160.00
Fri/Sat/Sun Adult VIP – $320.00
Fri/Sat/Sun Kids GA – $50.00
ADULT SINGLE DAY SAT & SUN TICKETS (on-sale Wed, May 8 at noon):
Sat Adult Single GA – $65
Sun Adult Single GA – $65
Sat Single Day Kids – $20.00
Sun Single Day Kids – $20.00
VIP INCLUDES
• Tickets to each TP show with access to an VIP exclusive concert viewing area
• Fast Pass Access line to get into the show
• VIP Concierge Service with festival essentials like phone charging, sunscreen, snacks, samples and more
• Private restrooms in VIP
• Exclusive access to VIP Food Trucks
• Private VIP Bar Access
• Exclusive Guster VIP merch item
PLEASE NOTE: Kids do NOT need a VIP ticket. Kids are welcome in VIP if a parent has a VIP ticket.
Learn more at: www.ontheoceanfest.com
Look Alive is our 8th album. The bulk of it was recorded in a vintage keyboard museum in Calgary AB, during a January stretch when the temperature reached 30 degrees below zero. We ended up in Canada because our British producer, Leo Abrahams, couldn’t turn around an American work visa fast enough, and we feel lucky to have discovered Studio Bell at the last minute. Despite having access to room after room of well-maintained analog keys, Leo gravitated to a cheap Ensoniq Mirage synth from the 1980’s that made Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation-era sounds from floppy disks. Leo spent countless hours poring over these floppy disks while the band gawked at the mellotrons, harpsichords, and other vintage equipment housed at Studio Bell. It was the beginnings of a stylistic clash that would ultimately play out beautifully. Our band had always gravitated to “warm” sounds. Leo would introduce us to “cold” sounds and the way they challenge us as listeners. He was the perfect complementary piece for Guster.
After working with the late Richard Swift four years ago and discovering a more raw and vintage sound on Evermotion, we fully embraced studio production with Leo this time around. The sheer amount of production on Look Alive grew into its own statement. There is a lot to unpack.
One day in Calgary we arrived at the studio to discover that Leo had put in a few extra hours on our song “Summertime.” He’d built an entire new intro using the Ensoniq Mirage overnight and played it for us. The band reaction wasn’t too kind. Our beautiful song now had a jarring, harsh, disruptive introduction, instead of the soft mellotron flutes we’d known. After some days of light bickering about it, Leo finally shed his proper British diplomatic side and belted out that “the world doesn’t need another fucking Beatles pastiche!” This would eventually become a rallying cry for the album as we strove to make something new and powerful together.
Title track “Look Alive” is an ominous, processed sonic collage with haunting words about waking up and becoming active in the midst of hollow words and fake heroes. “Hard Times,” written in the studio, came out more like the dark pop of Peter Gabriel / Depeche Mode / Tears for Fears than what people might think of Guster. “Overexcited” felt like classic Brit-pop and so Ryan sang it with a British accent over an Ensoniq marimba. Some of Guster’s critics will say “but you can’t do that” — and that’s something we’ve heard our entire career. We don’t subscribe to the same musical ideology they do and never have.
Writing songs for the second straight record with multi-instrumentalist Luke Reynolds (who joined the band in 2010) has been a key to our evolution. Working with artists like Leo Abrahams, John Congleton, and Collin DuPuis proved to be inspiring and adds to a “brain trust” that bolsters the songs. With Look Alive the plan is simple. Grow our musical community. Write better and better songs. Keep our minds open. Never repeat ourselves and create a legacy of music that is undeniable.
– Brian Rosenworcel, drummer of Guster
VIP MOTHER ROAD SOUNDCHECK PARTY
• One general admission ticket to see Grace Potter live
• Invitation to the pre-show Mother Road Soundcheck party featuring:
• An exclusive soundcheck performance by Grace and her band
• Opportunity to step into the creative journey and help Grace shape the setlist for the show later that night
• One Mother Road tour poster autographed by Grace
• One road trip essentials travel kit
• Merchandise shopping opportunity before doors open to the public
• Early entry into the venue
Back in summer 2021, Grace Potter took off on a solo cross-country road trip that would soon bring a life-saving reconnection with her most unbridled self. Heading out on Route 66 from her home in Topanga Canyon, the Vermont-born artist spent the coming weeks crashing in roadside motels and taking time each night to deliriously transcribe the song ideas she’d dreamed up behind the wheel, often scrawling those notes onto the backs of postcards and motel notepads. After completing two more trips across the U.S. on her own—and partly navigating her way with the help of hand-drawn maps from self-styled historians of Route 66—Potter flew to Nashville for a series of recording sessions that quickly gave way to her most magnificently unfettered collection of songs to date. Equal parts fearlessly raw memoir and carnivalesque fable, the result is a body of work that goes far beyond the typical album experience to deliver something much more all-enveloping: the original motion picture soundtrack to a profoundly transformative moment in Potter’s life, a fantastically twisted odyssey populated by the hitchhikers and outlaws and other lifelong wanderers who roam through the wonderland of her psyche.
The follow-up to Daylight—a 2019 release that earned GRAMMY nominations for Best Rock Album, and Best Rock Performance—Mother Road marks the start of a thrilling new era of a career that’s included turning out seven acclaimed albums, sharing the stage with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Robert Plant, and the Allman Brothers Band, and playing nearly every major music festival (in addition to launching her own festival, Burlington’s Grand Point North). Over the course of its 10 larger-than-life tracks, the album fuses elements of soul, blues, country, and timeless rock-and-roll with masterful abandon, thanks to the vibrant musicianship of Potter and her collaborators: legendary keyboardist Benmont Tench, guitarist Nick Bockrath (Cage The Elephant), bassist Tim Deaux (The Whigs, Kings Of Leon), pedal-steel guitarist Dan Kalisher (Fitz And The Tantrums, Noah Cyrus), Potter’s longtime drummer Matt Musty, and her husband Eric Valentine (a multi-instrumentalist who plays everything from African lute to synth bass on Mother Road). Produced by Valentine (who’s also worked with Queens of the Stone Age, Slash, and Weezer) and recorded at RCA’s famed Studio A, Mother Road fully echoes the ecstatic catharsis of its recording sessions, a process that Potter alternately likens to a tantrum and a haunting. “I didn’t have any real intention of making a record; I just thought I’d get into a room with some friends and mess around with these unfinished ideas I’d been gathering,” she says. “But then an entire album fell out of me, including all the lyrics—the blanks had been filled in, like my subconscious had created finished sentences spoken distinctly from the perspective of all these characters that were living inside me.”
As she reveals, that explosion of creative energy followed a period of emotional crisis for Potter, a turn of events partly triggered by moving back to her hometown with her husband and young son a year into the pandemic. “There was a big piece of my heart that wasn’t ready to go back to Vermont—it all happened about 10 years earlier than I’d expected,” she says. “California had always felt like a new beginning, a place where I was able to step into a community of like-minded weirdos, and through that first winter I started to feel trapped.” After suffering a miscarriage (a particularly brutal medical experience compounded by the fact that she’d unknowingly been carrying twins), Potter began treatment for clinical depression and soon decided to seek the solace and release she’d always found on the road. “I used the rental-car shortage as an excuse to go get our car in Topanga, but the truth is I was going to probably have a full mental breakdown if I didn’t step away from the pressure cooker of judgment, I’d placed on myself and my environment,” she says. “At first, I thought of what I was doing as escapism, and I felt ashamed of that. But eventually I realized I was giving myself permission to do what needed to be done for me to get better.”
Within days of that first road trip, Potter was overcome by memories of past adventures and began piecing together stories set in parallel realities and alternate timelines, each rooted in the unvarnished truth of her emotional experience. “Mother Road is a reframing of my understanding of my history,” she says. “It’s an important and powerful perspective I’d never had until this record, and the heart of it is my journey to self-reliance and a sense of worthiness.”
Named for a line from The Grapes of Wrath—in which John Steinbeck refers to Route 66 the “the mother of all roads…the road of flight”—Mother Road opens on the soulful swagger of its sublimely rowdy title track. “That song is my way of saying I’m not okay, and I’m hoping that the road will at least be my partner-in-crime on this journey, if not a healer,” says Potter, whose powerhouse voice lends the track a certain incandescent grit. A world-weary plea for redemption (from the chorus: “Wherever I’m headed/Mama, don’t let it be down”), “Mother Road” also makes for a prime introduction to the album’s ingenious use of background vocals. “All of those vocals are me, but each voice is a different character I was manifesting in the album,” Potter explains. Mother Road’s motley cast of characters includes the ghost of Waylon Jennings and an enigmatic road warrior named Lady Vagabond. On “Good Time,” meanwhile, Potter inhabits the role of a hellraiser called Brigitte as she serves up a groove-heavy sizzle reel of her real life’s wildest moments (e.g., “I breastfed a stranger once at an In-N-Out Burger/Stripped down to my skivvies and danced across the boulevard”). “Writing that song, I was thinking about all the times when there were no boundaries between me and the world at large,” says Potter. “As you get older there’s this expectation that you need to fall in line, that you can’t keep living in a fantasy your whole life. But I don’t know about that. Maybe we can.”
At the heart of Mother Road lies two back-to-back tracks that together speak to the transcendent power of bending reality and creating our own myths. Co-written by Potter and the Highwomen’s Natalie Hemby (a Grammy-winning songwriter whose credits include tracks by Kacey Musgraves and Maren Morris), “Little Hitchhiker” brings Potter’s delicate piano melodies, luminous acoustic-guitar work, and gorgeously longing vocals to a tender reflection on her experience as a nine-year-old runaway. Next, “Lady Vagabond” unfolds with spaghetti-western bravado as Potter immortalizes the lawless superhero within. “To me she represents complete self-reliance and strength, and the permission to be as mischievous or as benevolent as you want to be,” says Potter. “She may not have a great grasp on everything else in the world—she may not even have the greatest grasp on herself—but that’s okay.”
For the closing track on Mother Road, Potter offers up an epic piece of cabaret-pop touched with both theatrical flamboyance and devil-may-care attitude. A bit of coming-of-age autobiography in song form, the piano-led “Masterpiece” paints a picture of her libertine young adulthood in irreverent and dazzling detail (“I was the long-lost daughter of disco/Dancing thru my jock-strap dreams/In my funky little Fiat/Chasing down my Masterpiece”). “One of the silver linings of going back home was driving by my high school every day and having all those memories come rushing back,” says Potter. “The kids I’d grown up with were there with a million stories about me, and every story got weirder and wilder than the last. But I love that that’s how they remembered me, and I love that I’m still living those stories out through my songs.”
Even in Mother Road’s most outrageous moments, Potter infuses her songwriting with essential insight into the endless nuances of life and love and belonging. True to the cinematic nature of Mother Road’s storytelling, she’s also immersed herself in creating the album’s elaborate visual components, an undertaking that’s involved expanding her talents as a filmmaker and multimedia artist. “I know now that there’s more depth to my expression, and I feel ready to bring everything into focus under a much larger circus tent than I have in the past,” she notes. And after thousands of miles on the road, countless nights at seedy motels, and a heartrending return home, Potter has made her way to the kind of creative freedom that leaves both artist and audience indelibly altered—a freedom that’s undeniably led to her masterpiece.
Some of the most potent music of their careers” – Seattle Times
“Infectiously thrilling melodies and solid musicianship…The Dip remains a genuinely one of a kind act among its peers, its members’ educated musicianship and nostalgic vision pairing sublimely each time.” – Under the Radar
“Sticking With It by The Dip isn’t just a solid…soul album. It’s also a musical antidepressant with no prescription needed. It is the kind of album you can put on anytime you want to put yourself in a better mood and dance your troubles away.” – Glide Magazine
On their Dualtone Records debut Sticking With It, Seattle-based seven piece The Dip deliver the kind of unbridled rhythm-and-blues that hits on every emotional level. Inciting everything from raw catharsis to heavy-hearted reckoning to wildly exuberant joy, the self-produced album marks a major creative breakthrough for the band. To that end, Sticking With It fully channels the vitality of the freewheeling live show that’s earned them an ardent following over the last decade, matching their sophisticated musicianship with a fantastically loose energy. When met with The Dip’s reflection on matters both timely (the crush of late capitalism, the glaring need for true community) and irrefutably timeless (the vast complexities of love and loss), the resulting body of work captures the mood of the current moment while offering immediate escape into a more elevated state of mind.
The third full-length from The Dip, Sticking With It came to life at their studio in Seattle’s Central District, a modest but meticulously outfitted space the band built entirely on their own. Although the album features a small number of guest musicians (including a Macedonia based string ensemble and background singers Vanessa Bryan, Dasha Chadwick, and Nic Jackson), The Dip crafted each extravagantly arranged track according to a self contained process that allowed for a rare depth of exploration and spontaneity. “It’s really important to us to catch those lightning-in-a bottle moments when you can feel the momentum of a song taking shape,” says drummer Jarred Katz. “At the same time, it makes a huge difference to have this homebase where we can take our time with the sounds and not worry about that precious studio clock ticking away.”
Kicking off with a magnificent bang, Sticking With It opens on “Paddle to the Stars”: a prime introduction to the groove-heavy and richly detailed sound The Dip have embodied since playing house parties in the early 2010s. The first song recorded for the album, “Paddle to the Stars” arrives as a striking departure from the reverb drenched aesthetic the band’s favored in the past. “We’d gotten some nicer gear to play with, and wanted to try something completely different in terms of our guitar sounds,” notes guitarist Jacob Lundgren. “We ended up going with a very dry sound with no reverb behind it, which allows you to really hear the room and feels so much more like the live show.” And as lead vocalist Thomas Eddy reveals, the song’s stark quality is perfectly suited to its candid declaration of devotion. “It’s about being in relationship with someone who’s emotionally in touch beyond your own abilities, but recognizing that and wanting to invest in opening up,” he says. “I liked the idea of playing with the image of the immensity of the ocean, how it’s sustaining but also dangerous— and if you don’t watch out, it’ll get you.”
In its intimate examination of the human heart, Sticking With It also includes tracks like “Sleep On It” (a delicately layered love song about “someone who only gets to see the object of their affection in their dreams, so they’re just waiting until they can go to sleep again,” according to Eddy). One of the album’s most profoundly moving moments, “When You Lose Someone” brilliantly contrasts its meditation on grief with the rapturous harmonies of Bryan, Chadwick, and Jackson. “They’ve been singing together for over a decade and they’ve got an impeccable blend in the room, so we captured that by recording the trio gathered around one microphone,” recalls trumpet player Brennan Carter. “They were on board with whatever was required to elevate the music, and the results are undeniable.” And on “Real Contender,” The Dip present a bold but bittersweet standout built on a blues-country groove and shapeshifting arrangement courtesy of tenor sax player Levi Gillis. “It’s about someone who’s always been there as a friend but who now wants to be considered in a romantic way,” says Eddy. “I was really inspired by how Levi’s intro was upbeat but sorrowful, which is a compelling thing to work with as a songwriter.”
While Sticking With It endlessly spotlights each member’s exceptional craftsmanship, The Dip embraced a sort of anti- perfectionism in every step of the process. “One of the main goals for the album was to create that feeling of all of us in a room together, instead of worrying too much about everything lining up perfectly,” says Katz. Not only essential in shaping Sticking With It’s sense of abandon, that approach echoes the uniquely communal spirit at the heart of the group. “In other bands there might be a hierarchy as far as who’s in charge and who writes the music, but we make sure to keep everyone involved,” says Katz. “With seven people it can be hard to agree on anything, but to me all the success we’ve had so far has to do with being very democratic and letting everyone have equal say,” Eddy continues. “We all believe in doing it our way, handling everything ourselves and making sure we’re choosing the right songs for the right reasons.”
After years of defying trends and following their own distinct vision, The Dip have steadily amassed a passionate fanbase (an element reflected in their tremendous organic success on Spotify). In the making of Sticking With It, the band kept their ever-growing reach in mind, ultimately creating their most impactful work to date. “With the lyrics I tried to evoke certain emotions that aren’t often showcased in popular music, with the hope that people will come away feeling validated or understood,” says Eddy. Indeed, the title to Sticking With It partly refers to the joyful sense of gritty perseverance The Dip hope to impart to their audience. “We’re in this strange moment when sometimes it’s difficult to even get out of bed because of what’s going on in the world,” says Katz. “But over the years we’ve had so many people tell us that our songs have helped them get through a rough patch, or break through to a new beginning in their lives. That’s something we’re honored to provide for everyone, and hopefully these songs will do the same.”
“…her right thumb plunks the bass part while her forefinger upstrokes notes and chords, leaving the other three fingers unused. A banjo technique, it’s also used by acoustic blues guitarists. Her fingers are long and strong – Robert Johnson hands – in jarring contrast to the waif they’re attached to. The walking bass line sounds like a hammer striking piano keys in perfect meter, while the fills are dynamic flurries – like cluster bombs. I haven’t heard a young guitarist this dexterous and ass-kicking in eons.” – Michael Simmons, L.A Weekly
Sunny War (born Sydney Lyndella Ward) is more than just an artist; she is a force of nature that is tough to pin down. What exactly is her style? Is she a blues or punk artist? The answer is yes and no. You can try to place Sunny in a few boxes, but doing so would be a major disservice to the young songstress. Yes, she may be a Robert Johnson with a shot of Bad Brains, but even this description falls short. The only way to really know Sunny is to immerse oneself in the music. Easy enough, right? OK, maybe not that easy.
Sunny was born to single mother just over 20 years ago. Her childhood was unconventional. One way to describe it is nomadic. Her mother’s bohemian lifestyle had Sunny moving from place to place, including stays in Colorado and Michigan. Most stays were not for very long, usually about a year or so. “Throughout my whole childhood, I was in a different place every other year, so naturally, I am not used to staying in one place for too long. I think it is time to leave once people get to know your name,” she comically explains.
Early life was somewhat of a struggle because there were many instances Sunny experienced being different from her peers. This was especially evident when she moved from Michigan to Tennessee. “I lived in a predominately white suburb while I was in Rochester, Michigan. When I went to Nashville, I did not ‘talk Nashville.’ I felt the kids at school were really closed-minded, mostly because we were in the Bible Belt. They would harass me all the time. I was also small for my age and wore glasses, “says Sunny. She found music to be the ultimate refuge. “I was really depressed all the time, but I was playing guitar all the time. I would hang out with my cat. I did not have a lot of friends when I was younger,” says Sunny.
By the age of 13, Sunny taught herself to play guitar and began to write her own original songs. She credits her mother’s boyfriends for introducing her to the blues. Once that fire to create sparked, there was no turning back. Eventually, Sunny decided California would be a good place to try to set down some kind of roots and get her music heard. She found herself living and performing on the streets of San Francisco and San Diego.
After a short time, Sunny felt that familiar feeling…the need to change her scenery. She felt a strong connection to the eclectic art center, Venice Beach, CA, where she has become a mainstay performer on the world famous boardwalk on and off for 7 years.
In addition to memorable boardwalk performances, Sunny continued with a side project, Anus Kings, as an outlet for other musical interests. The band created a buzz in the local LA punk scene with frequent performances at the famed Downtown punk favorite, The Smell. “With Anus Kings, I try write punk stuff, but I try to write like a blues musician would,” she says when talking about her punk influence. Local art and music advocates in Venice soon caught wind of the young guitarists’ claw hammer style—a complex banjo style of guitar playing frequently used by Southern acoustic blues guitarists. After years of paying dues, fans and critics are finally beginning to “get it.”
Then there is her voice with all the melancholy found in Billie Holliday and its remarkable ability to cut through the listener’s heart like a hot knife through butter. Many Venice Beach cultural notables, including Gerry Fialka, have publically sung their praise (no pun intended). Soon, influential publications like the LA Weekly took notice. The attention resulted in a feature article by Michael Simmons. In the article, Fialka is quoted saying, “Sunny is going to blow your mind. She is like no one else.”
Sunny’s repertoire includes an expansive collection of songs exploring personal aspects of her life. Her lyrics prove she is not afraid to share her insights and philosophies on life. In her track, “Man of My House,” Sunny speaks on the trials and tribulations of living without a father in the home and inheriting the role of head of the household. Other tracks are just as powerful, but also contain a dose political philosophy as exemplified in the moving blues tracks, “Police State” and “Sheep.” There is also “Downtown–”a track that touches on the damage to one’s life drugs can cause without warning.
Sunny has indeed blown people away as evidenced by signing a sponsorship deal with Gibson Guitars and signed with performance rights organization BMI.
“On their breezy third album [Queendom of Nothing], Rebecca, Rachael, and Kat Wolff — actual sisters, raised just outside the city — live comfily at the crossroads of Americana, roots, and ’60s rock ‘n’ roll, where The Band might meet Brandi Carlile and take her out for a beer.” — The Boston Globe, 2019
The Wolff Sisters Band’s latest album, Queendom of Nothing, picks up right where they left off with their sophomore album, Cahoon Hollow, serving up the right amount of grit, moodiness, and wild rock n’ roll to reflect on the summer’s slow burnout and what comes next. Both albums were recorded at Dirt Floor Studio in Chester, CT, and produced by Eric Michael Lichter.
The Wolff Sisters is fronted by three sisters — Rebecca on acoustic guitar, Kat on the keys, Rachael on electric guitar, and all three on lead vocals and harmonies. Raised on Bob Dylan, The Band, and Little Feat, the sisters crafted their sound around a honky tonk piano in the living room of their childhood home. With a talented cast of rotating drummers and bass players, The Wolff Sisters are a rag tag group of hardworking individuals that bring a big sound and timeless songs. Their music is honest and genre defying, but still rooted in traditional rock and americana storytelling.
Boston Music Award winner for Americana Artist of the Year 2020 and Folk Artist of the Year nominee both 2018 and 2019, the band’s electrifying live performance and unique sound continues to gain momentum and recognition from their hometown of Boston and beyond. Queendom of Nothing landed a spot on The Boston Globe’s top 15 albums for Fall following its release in October 2019, while their previous album Cahoon Hollow was nominated for New England Music Award’s Album of The Year 2018. The Wolff Sisters continue to work tirelessly at honing their sound and touring the U.S while paying homage to their roots in New England.
