This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on June 13, 2024. To receive Josef Woodard's music newsletter in your inbox on Fridays, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
For a few decades, avid Santa Barbara music fans of varying and/or eclectic stripes found themselves faced with a delectable one-two punch of festival action in mid-June. First came the world-famous classical Ojai Music Festival (which went down beautifully last weekend: see review here), followed by the Father's Day weekend friendly blowout of the Live Oak Music Festival , a rootsy and eclectic fundraising big top event for KCBX (locally at 90.9 FM on Goletan turf, and worldly at kcbx.org ).
The June festival action lured Santa Barbarans, proper, to different corners of the region, starting in the ever-alluring hamlet of Ojai. For most of its now 36-year run, the Live Oak Festival settled into its namesake Live Oak Camp off of Highway 154, but difficult logistics with that venue drove the festival north to the San Luis Obispo's El Chorro Regional Park, a logical homecoming in the city where KCBX lives and thrives.
KCBX, as we know and love, is a treasured beacon of independent radio on the West Coast, home to Americana, indie, jazz, classical, “world,” and other musical flavors, many of which are represented by the festival programming.
We don’t have the luxury of just popping over the hill to partake, but the strength of the festival’s programming, its root cause, and the enveloping good vibe zone of the event is enough to pull Santa Barbarans up the 101, for a day or a weekend.
