I have always been an avid concertgoer – I love seeing artists live and really feeling the music as they perform. You’d think that this fact would make me an avid festivalgoer as well – unfortunately not. I used to go to blues festivals with my parents when I was really little, but I hadn’t attended a music festival that I personally chose to go to before this year! I went to the famous Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco. I’ve always been intrigued to go, but in the timeline of me having “adult money”, I either couldn’t afford to go, it was the literal pandemic, or I wasn’t in the Bay Area. However, this year, fortune was in my favor, and my experience at Outside Lands was absolutely incredible!

I opted to only go for the final day of the festival, and I drove up to SF the night before so that I wouldn’t be dealing with too much traffic on the day of. Knowing SF, I also opted to arrive to Golden Gate Park somewhat early, which had me physically waiting in line at the entrance for a longer amount of time, but I was one of the first hundred-ish people in the venue from the GA entrance right around 11 AM. Though the first act wasn’t on until noon, I did really appreciate the ample amount of time I had to explore the festival grounds and check out all the vendors that were in attendance before I parked myself at all the different stages I was going to see.

Some of the areas around some of the stages were really well decorated. One stage had lots of cute antique-looking couches and giant mushrooms everywhere, so it looked like a cute little fairy forest. The vendors at the fairgrounds offered a wide variety of food and drinks, so there was a little something for everyone! I also really appreciated that the festival had an app you could download that showed a live schedule, map of the grounds, and allowed you to bookmark vendors and artists to help keep track of where you wanted to go.

Big Freedia and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus

I was not intending to see Big Freedia or the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, but I just happened upon them! I think they were the first act to go up on the main stage (Land’s End), so I happened to catch them as I was grabbing food nearby. The performance was high-energy and entertaining to watch. For me, it kind of acted as a mood setter for the rest of my experience at the festival.

Hope Tala

I did not go into Outside Lands intending to see Hope Tala, but I’m really glad I caught her! She was performing right before a set I really wanted to catch (CA7RIEL y Paco Amoroso) at the Sutro stage. She’s an Alternative R&B singer from Britain, and she really surprised me! I could tell she was a bit nervous at the beginning of the set, but she got far more comfortable as time progressed and was really lovely! I was really pleasantly surprised by her, and she’s definitely put herself into my rotations. I really enjoyed just getting to chill, sit, and vibe to some really nice Alternative R&B for an hour before the more high-energy set started.

CA7RIEL y Paco Amoroso

This was a performance that I was really looking forward to. Much like a million others, I loved their NPR Tiny Desk performance. They’re very charismatic performers. Despite them spending a good chunk of their set sat on some barstools, they were very entertaining to watch. They played quite a few of their popular hits, including “#TETAS”, “DUMBAI”, and “EL DÍA DEL AMIGO”. When they were up dancing around the stage, they were really performing for those in the very back of the field. The screens we could see them on from the back of the field were smaller in comparison to those at the bigger stages, which kind of sucked for someone who was way, way in the back, but their performance was so worth it. For at least some of their songs, lyric translations into a couple of different languages were shown on the screens, but they had them at the very bottom of the screen rather than towards the top, so it felt kind of pointless since the further back you were, the less of those screens you could see. Despite those couple of minor setbacks (which were at the fault of the organizers rather than CA7RIEL y Paco Amoroso), their set was absolutely fantastic!

julie

The band, julie, was one of the acts I was most looking forward to. I found them while browsing through recommendations on RYM and I’ve had them in my rotations ever since. You can imagine how ecstatic I was to hear that they were performing at Outside Lands! I headed to their stage shortly after I saw CA7RIEL y Paco Amoroso and I caught their soundcheck. The Panhandle stage and (for lack of a better term) viewing area were pretty small – only big enough for a few hundred to stand around. I absolutely love their sound – a hazy mix of shoegaze and slacker rock. It’s absolutely perfect to vibe to. I loved watching them live – they even performed my favorite song of theirs, “april’s-bloom”! I started out three people away from the stage – pretty close to front and center. I was pretty stoked and I had been waiting for about an hour between their soundcheck and their performance, so being up so close was really cool! However, pretty early on in their set, someone opened a pretty massive and violent circle pit that took up most of the space for the audience. I won’t lie, I really don’t consider julie’s music to be something to mosh to, and despite me continually trying to back away from the pit, the moshers made it bigger and bigger. I got way too many elbows thrown my way and I ended up nearly all the way to the left of the stage trying to avoid the pit. As sucky as the physical experience being in the audience was (solely due to a particularly violent mosh pit), their set was really good and I am still so, so ecstatic that I got to see them live!

Jorja Smith

Jorja Smith was another artist that I was absolutely so excited to see. I’ve really been in a mood for R&B and Neo-Soul lately, and Jorja Smith is one of my favorite artists from that scene. Her voice is powerful, bold, and husky – hearing her live was absolutely incredible. Beyond having vocal talent, she is also such an incredible lyricist. She has a very cool vibe and presence, much like another soul and R&B singer – Sade. Though she doesn’t go crazy all over the stage, she commands the audience’s attention so easily. Her set was fantastic. The live band supporting her was really grooving, which made the set more fun to watch. The chemistry between Jorja Smith and the supporting band was really fun and it genuinely seems like they love to perform together. Seeing some of my favorite songs – like “Blue Lights”, “With You”, and “Try Me” – live was such an incredible experience. Truthfully, her set was my favorite performance of the night. Every set I saw was good, but Jorja Smith truly hit the trifecta of what makes a good performance: solid vocals, good setlist, good chemistry with all performers on stage.

Hozier

Hozier was the artist that brought me to Outside Lands. I’d seen him perform once prior to the festival, so I was definitely excited to see him again. Knowing how popular he is, I was not at all surprised to see people camped out at the barricade of the Land’s End stage long before his set started – I’m talking camping out starting at 11AM for his 8PM set. I was not going to do that and was perfectly happy to find a spot just wherever in the crowd, especially since there were many screens put up in the crowd, so even though I was probably about 10,000 people deep in the crowd, I could still see the performance pretty well, even though I was seeing it on a screen. The only concern I had with being so far back was the audio being a bit funky due to the vast expanse of the space designated for the crowd watching Hozier. Luckily, my fears were proven to be unfounded, and the audio of the performance was great, even as far back as I was. Hozier was, of course, absolutely amazing live. His voice carried across the Polo Field at the fairgrounds like a fog across the San Francisco Bay. His setlist was great, his messaging between songs about unity and justice were powerful, and he performed not just to the fans in front of him, but also to those at the very back of the polo field.

Overall, Outside Lands was a fantastic experience. It had a really broad range of musical genres represented, the grounds were easily navigated, and the performers were absolutely fantastic. Not only was it a genuinely fantastic first experience, but it was an experience that has made me dead-set on going back to another Outside Lands festival in the future.