The final day of BottleRock Napa Valley 2022 was a warm one. After two days of relatively mild temperatures and some cloud cover, Sunday brought sunshine and 26 degree Celcius highs.
I arrived just before 2pm to begin my day of coverage at the Truly stage with Tessa Violet who took the stage adorned in a sparkly winged outfit. It was a colourful start to the day.
From there it was off to see a some Canadians from Toronto in grandson at the Verizon stage and Wild Rivers back at the Truly stage. grandson took the stage and addressed festival goers out in the distance saying “My name is Pitbull. Come join us at the stage,” referencing the Miami rapper who would perform at the Verizon stage. grandson had just completed a tour opening for Avril Lavigne and also two other festival just days prior. He and his guitarist bounced around the stage and fans in the front row thrashed their heads around.
Things were much calmer at the Truly stage where Wild Rivers performed some gentler folk-rock.
I completed a Canadian trifecta with Alessia Cara at the JaM Cellars main stage where a catwalk had been installed overnight in preparation for P!nk’s headlining set later. White lanterns and a large heart hanging from the stage were also there for P!nk. Cara kicked of her set with her breakout hit ‘Here’ walking out in a Charlie Parker t-shirt and long black skirt. One thing I’ve always liked about her is she’s never needed to fall into the typical pop singer route of dance routines and elaborate fashion. Her voice, music and natural charisma as always shined through on their own.
Alessia Cara’s set time was bumped 15 minutes later due to the last minute announcement that Bleachers had cancelled due to a band member testing positive for COVID. It threw a wrench in my plan to cover Eliza & The Delusionals.
After missing the opportunity to see Eliza & The Delusionals, I had a tough choice to make at 6pm. Cover Pitbull on the Verzon stage? Or cover Aly & AJ at the Truly stage? Both sets started at the same time with the latter having a slightly shorter set. My strategy was to photograph Aly & AJ first, then run over to cover Pitbull from the VIP viewing area before moving on to Vance Joy. Boy, was that a mistake.
Aly & AJ ended up beginning nearly 40 minutes late. 15 minutes into what would have been their set, crew were still setting up stage pieces with not much urgency. At 6:30 the band attempted to start their set, but abruptly stopped with Aly and AJ Michalka telling the audience that there were some technical issues and that they were going to try to start again in a couple of minutes. A laptop ended up needing to be rebooted. Once the show finally started, the sun was beginning to get low and
I’m not sure if it was isolated problems but extended delays only seemed to occur at the Truly stage.
That 40 minute wait meant missing Pitbull’s set entirely. Based on reviews on social media, I missed one of the top sets of the festival. It also meant missing Vance Joy as well.
I closed out my weekend of coverage with P!nk. I had intentions of venturing off to see The Wailers featuring Julian Marley halfway through, but decided to stay put. I was glad I did.
P!nk emerged from under the end of the catwalk to immediately “Get The Party Started” with a full band, backup singers and a dance team. She proceeded to perform radio hits for a solid 30 minutes before covering Bishop Briggs’ breakout hit ‘River’.
It was her first large scale live performance in 3 years. She jokingly mentioned that this is the most she’s had to use her voice in that time other that to yell at her kids.
Towards the end of the set a bunch of giant white balls with LED lights inside were released to bounce around the audience. A few ended up stuck on the catwalk until a crew person stepped into kicked them back out to the audience.
P!nk ended the show flying over the audience in a wire harness doing flips and doing mid-air pushups against a couple of towers that were strategically placed on the grounds.
I ran into Latitude 38 Entertainment CEO Dave Graham and head of BottleRock Monday morning in the hotel lobby. He said P!nk and her team were super nervous about the show after so many years off, but they were ecstatic at how the performance turned out.
