30 bands, Vineyard sun: Here's what 10,000+ are experiencing at the Beach Road music fest

VINEYARD HAVEN — Members of the Mulhern family have long been fans of the Avett Brothers band so the joint music-related Christmas present was an inspiration.

The Boston-area clan has for years rented a Martha’s Vineyard summer vacation house, so pushed back the August timing for 2022 to this week after newlywed daughter Erin Kaukas bought all seven members tickets to be together for the three-day Beach Road Weekend music festival.

On Friday, they had set up their blanketed spot early on the grass of Veterans Memorial Park, enjoying hours of music under the sun from bands that included Shovel and Rope, Mt. Joy and Khruangbin before the marquee Avett Brothers brought in the biggest crowd to close the festival’s first night.

And you couldn't beat the location, Kaukas said of the holiday gift: “My husband and I came here on our mini-moon, too. I just love the Vineyard.”

The family was among an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 people who agreed with both favorites enough to travel Friday to the heart of Vineyard Haven for a nine-hour lineup of bands on two stages. With 10 bands scheduled to play each of Saturday and Sunday to similar or larger crowds, producers have said Beach Road Weekend is likely the biggest overall music festival ever on the island — ending with eight-time Grammy Award winner Beck on Saturday night and Wilco on Sunday.

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On Friday, most of the music fans sat in groups on blankets, towels, beach mats and low chairs in areas facing the two stages, listening, eating and chatting. Others stood in areas closer to the stages, cheering on the bands, while still others stood at the back to watch or talk, some moving between booths set up around the park. Dancing, including with children, was frequent and a cornhole game was set up in one area.

Crews had spent more than a week, organizers said, setting up the alternating stages and related technology, with sound that could be heard around the park (and, faintly, as far as the harbor); multiple giant screens offering concert views from various locations; and even a lighthouse as a centerpiece of the infrastructure. On Friday, there were booths for food ranging from burgers, gyros and burritos to Mad Martha’s ice cream; alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks, including wine and gin tastings; merchandise from sponsor Black Dog and other clothing options; promotions for sunglasses and more; plus cooling areas and portable toilets.

Those with VIP tickets got shaded skyboxes or covered tables and lounge areas close to the stages, while colorful canopies that fluttered Friday like blue/green/purple butterflies were also set up to try to keep people comfortable. Many, though, tried to find shade against whatever fence might temporarily block the sun, Hemp Hats was one pop-up shop doing brisk business, and hydration stations were busy amid regular warnings to drink a lot of water.

A lineup years in the making

The first-ever Beach Road Weekend happened on the Vineyard in 2019 with John Fogerty and Phil Lesh as headliners, then the pandemic canceled expanded plans for 2020 and required a smaller event (with Tedeschi Trucks and moe.) last summer. Performers on Friday seemed to be as happy as the fans to be back at such a giant event (roughly the same size as the former Pops by the Sea concerts that filled Hyannis Village Green each August – except doing that three days in a row).

“I’ve been excited for the festival ever since I was hired for it in 2019,” singer Aoife Donovan told the crowd. The musicians of Bully came in Friday morning on a ferry and were flying out that night for Seattle, but guitarist/singer Alicia Bognanno said it was worth it. “I’m glad we got to do this because this is FUN,” she told cheering fans.

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Friday’s 2022 opening day, which began an hour later than planned, was just part of an extended celebration created by festival founder Adam Epstein and his Innovation Arts and Entertainment.

A “Jaws” movie screening was a pre-opener Thursday night, nightly after-parties at The Loft in Oak Bluffs were scheduled, plus there were some pre-festival shows in Boston and elsewhere. Epstein, whose company staged drive-in concerts in 2020 in Yarmouth before neighbors nixed more music at the former movie-theater site, is also president of the Friends group for the Martha’s Vineyard Concert Series that has brought performers to Oak Bluffs all summer.

Can you get there from here?

Making Beach Road Weekend happen involved challenging logistics, though, for Epstein's company as well as for fans because the event added thousands of people to an already busy vacation island in August.

The Mulherns were at a house on the island, as was Isabel Prego of Boston, who brought two friends from Providence to stay at her family’s Vineyard home and see Caamp (on Sunday) among other bands. After planning for the festival for nearly a year, neither group had to go far to get back to their weekend home base.

Dartmouth residents Lisa and John Leaver said they live close to the Seastreak ferry out of New Bedford, so used this music event to plan their first-ever Vineyard vacation and were staying nearby too. They had heard of the festival as fans of WMVY radio, and John Leaver — who wore an Avett Brothers T-shirt — noted Friday that the attraction was that so many of the weekend’s acts, including Lord Huron and Dawes, were ones whose music he already has on his phone.

The lineup was also enough to draw fans of varying ages — from babies to grandparents — from much farther away, too, and be worth a little inconvenience. The morning shuttle to the Steamship Authority ferry out of Woods Hole, for example, held two groups of twentysomething music-lovers who discovered that they were all from the Burlington, Vermont area, with one group dragging a giant cooler and the other a cart with a small mountain of camping gear.

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Three other friends drove or flew from the Washington, D.C. area after hearing about the festival through musicians they followed via emails and social media, with Joan Susie noting this was the first multi-day music festival she’d been to in 35 years. Friend Richard Stempniewicz had never been to this kind of event, but said they’d been planning the trip since “cold and dark” November.

“It was a fantasy world,” he said. Besides the music, “you want a beach, you want to be on the water and get a lobster roll.”

On Friday, it was hot and sunny and the trio was planning to take the ferry back and forth each day from where they were staying on the mainland to make the long-planned music break happen — and had talked to people that morning from Indiana who were doing the same.

Beach Road Weekend advertised water taxis, too, that could take up to 2,000 people each night back to Falmouth, where shuttle buses ran between hotels. Extra trips available on Hy-Line ferries took fans to Hyannis.

On the island, a fleet of Beach Road Weekend shuttle buses moved people between Vineyard locations, using the high school as a hub for all routes.

Music fans James and Kathryn Hebert had driven east from Connecticut and turned Beach Road Weekend into a focus for a weeklong vacation, lucking into a room within walking distance from the Woods Hole ferry and not worried about getting back and forth. The couple had been drawn both to the island location — which they hadn’t visited in more than a decade and planned to see between acts and on other days — as well as the music.

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James was particularly interested in his first chance to see Billy Strings in a live concert (on Saturday night) — and at the same time see favorites like Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris and others at the same event.

The festival continues through Sunday evening and also due to play this weekend were Guster, Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Lettuce, Dalton & the Sheriffs, Crooked Coast, Brett Dennen, Jeremie Albino, Sammy Rae & The Friends and The War and Treaty.

The festival is expected to be back with other band lineups for at least the next two years. IAE has already worked out an agreement with leaders of the town of Tisbury to bring Beach Road Weekend back Aug. 24-27, 2023 and Aug. 22-25, 2024, according to a past announcement. IAE has pledged to pay 5% of net revenue to the town of Tisbury to support community causes.

Contact Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll at kdriscoll@capecodonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @KathiSDCCT.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Beach Road Weekend music festival on Martha's Vineyard: bands, crowds