Like a fine wine, BottleRock returned for its 13th year over Memorial Day Weekend with a refined blend of music, food, wine and drinks that has made it a destination festival for over a decade.
The festivities started Friday with the biggest act of the weekend — a headlining set from Green Day that spanned the Bay Area trio’s catalog for more than an hour and a half.
Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong admitted to the large crowd that he never thought he would be onstage shouting out Napa. But here we are — East Bay punk in all its glory in front of an audience that ranged from kids getting their first taste of live music to retirees in polo shirts, and everything in between.
Earlier in the day, festival-goers could choose between defiant rap veterans Public Enemy with ultimate hype man Flavor Flav rocking neon green Supreme camo, a shoeless Jakob Nowell honoring his dad as frontman of Sublime, or a spectacularly choreographed dance party with Sofi Tukker.
The rest of the weekend unfurled in similar fashion with celebrity sightings at the Culinary Stage competing with a wide range of acts — blues-driven riffs from guitar powerhouse Grace Bowers, to West Coast classics from Ice Cube, to the Sunday downtempo funk vibe that only Khruangbin could deliver.
The weekend closed with the kind of ridiculousness that only BottleRock can offer — a food stunt involving a roasted pig descending on a fluffy cloud from high above the Culinary Stage as hosts Liam Mayclem and DJ Umami, and 80s pop star Bobby Brown and Chef Darryl Bell of celebrated Napa BBQ joint Stateline Road Smokehouse looked on.
Pigs were flying in the Napa Valley. A few hundred yards away, Noah Kahan and Cage the Elephant were plugging in for the last headline sets of the weekend. The perfect pairing for this vintage of BottleRock Napa Valley.