The 2024 edition of San Diego’s Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival will feature a mix of veteran music stars — including Beck, Weezer and The Roots — along with such rising young acts as singer-actor Dominic Fike, Samm Henshaw, Abby Anderson and the hip-hop duo Paris Texas. This will mark the first San Diego-area festival performance by The Roots — the longtime house band on TV’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” — since 2015.
To be held May 10-12 alongside San Diego Bay, the festival is again receiving underwriting and in-kind services from the Port of San Diego and the San Diego Tourism Marketing District. Also returning, as event ambassadors and co-founding partners in the festival, are two San Diego-bred sports legends: skateboarder Tony Hawk and surfer Rob Machado.
The La Jolla-based marketing and management software company Events.com is now the primary presenter of the festival, which it is in the process of purchasing outright.
The 2024 edition of Wonderfront will offer music on four outdoor stages and a live DJ club at Embarcadero Marina Park North, as well as two free-admission stages in the adjacent Seaport Village. The eighth stage will be aboard a 400-capacity boat that will regularly cruise San Diego Bay.
Discounted early-bird tickets and VIP packages go on sale Wednesday at 10 a.m. — for two days only — at wonderfrontfestival.com. General admission early-bird prices are $129 per day and $315 for a three-day pass, while early-bird VIP tickets are $399 per day and $999 for a three-day pass. Active-duty and retired military members get a 5 percent discount.
An evening crowd is shown at the inaugural Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival in San Diego in 2019.
(Wonderfront Festival)
Besides Beck, Weezer and The Roots, the roster of performers features a diverse array of other acts. They include: Haitian-born house and disco music favorite Kaytranada; South Carolina blues-rocker Marcus King; frothy Canadian pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen; New Zealand psych-rock group Unknown Mortal Orchestra; and the veteran English reggae band Steel Pulse.
“We’re really happy with the music lineup we have and we’re already in conversations with artists about performing at our 2025 festival,” said Wonderfront CEO and co-founder Paul Thornton.
More than 80 acts are scheduled to perform at this year’s festival. It is taking place — for the first time — on Mother’s Day weekend, after having been held in the late fall in 2019 and 2022. The festival’s 2020 and 2021 editions were canceled because of the pandemic. The 2023 edition was rescheduled to this May from last November.
The move to spring was prompted by several factors. One is the desire to hold Wonderfront during a more temperate time of year, after the 2022 edition was marred by cooler-than-expected temperatures and evening fog. Another factor is that because there are few events at the nearby San Diego Convention Center on Mother’s Day weekend, more hotel rooms are available downtown.
Singer Rivers Cuomo and drummer Patrick Wilson of Weezer at Petco Park in 2021. The band is one of the headliners for the 2024 Wonderfront festival on San Diego’s bayfront.
(Ariana Drehsler/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
“Not only does Wonderfront draw thousands of locals and visitors to San Diego Bay, it’s also a huge boon to our waterfront businesses and the local economy,” said Michael G. Brown, the Port of San Diego’s vice president of marketing and communications, in a statement released Tuesday.
“Based on this year’s lineup,” Brown continued, “fans are in for an epic experience.”
This year’s edition is being billed as “Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival, powered by Events.com.” The company, like Hawk and Machado, has also been a Wonderfront investor since the event’s inception five years ago.
“It’s very on-brand for us to ‘power’ a classy, fun festival for San Diego and Southern California,” said Events.com CEO Mitch Thrower. “Bringing people together, especially after a pandemic, is a really good thing for us to be doing. And the San Diego Bay area downtown, as a venue, is a perfect place for people to have an amazing time.”
The festival will this year offer VIP lounges next to both of its main stages. There will also be a new “VIP party pit” area in front of each stage that will extend from one stage to the other. To minimize the amount of walking for attendees, the two stages that were in the Seaport Village parking lot for the 2019 and 2022 editions of Wonderfront have been eliminated.
Despite being headlined by Gwen Stefani, Zac Brown Band and Kings of Leon in 2022, the festival’s attendance dropped to 30,000, from 57,000 in 2019. This year’s musical emphasis deliberately shifts away from mainstream headliners, although Beck, Weezer and The Roots are all veteran acts who have enjoyed broader commercial success.
“We like to spotlight emerging artists who are about to explode,” Thornton stressed.
“In 2022, we strayed away too much from that because we had (established) bands booked for 2020 and 2021 that — after COVID hit — we rolled into our 2022 lineup. This year, instead of having a bunch of different genres every day, we’re focusing on hip-hop and EDM on Friday, rock and indie-pop on Saturday, and roots-rock, jam bands, alt-country and reggae on Sunday. It’s more focused.”
Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival 2024 lineup
DJ and producer Kaytranada will headline the May 10 opening night of this year’s Wonderfront festival in San Diego. He is shown here celebrating his two 2021 Grammy Awards victories.
(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)
Friday May 10
Kaytranada, JID, T-Pain, MK, Joey Bada$$, Dayglo, Bakar, Paris Texas, Surf Mesa, Phony PPL, Healy, Allan Rayman, Amo Amo, Meridian, Channel Tres and more to be announced
Saturday, May 11
Carly Rae Jepsen will perform at the 2024 Wonderfront Festival in San Diego. She is shown here on stage during the 2023 Lollapalooza Music Festival in Chicago.
(Rob Grabowski / Rob Grabowski/invision/ap)
Weezer, Dominic Fike, Carly Rae Jepsen, Milky Chance, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, BabBadNotGood, Poolside, Q, Sun Room, IDKHOW, Fiji Blue, Kid Bloom, Proxima Parada, Trash Panda, Action Bronson presents Dr. Bachlava & The Human Growth Hormone, and more to be announced
Sunday, May 12
Drummer Questlove, left, and rapper Black Thought of The Roots will perform with their Grammy-winning hip-hop band at thi year’s Wonderfront Festival.
(Jack Plunkett / Jack Plunkett/invision/ap)
Beck, Mt. Joy, The Roots, Marcus King, Steel Pulse, Natasha Bedingfield, Fruitbats, Rayland Baxter, Alice Phoebe Lou, Abby Anderson, Samm Henshaw, JD Clayton, Mapache, Saint Cecilia, Sandy’s, Polo & Pan, and more to be announced