Exec Profile: Allen Sanford of BeachLife FestivalAllen Sanford

Founder

BeachLife

Years with Company: 5

Address: 239 North Harbor Dr., Redondo Beach, CA 90277

Web: beachliferanch.com

Email: info@thebeachlifefestival.com

Publicity: Angela Moreno, amoreno@falconpublicity.com, 805-390-5263

Clients: Tons of satisfied concert attendees

BACKGROUND

Allen Sanford grew up loving California’s sandy coasts. Naturally, he thought it wise to create a festival that revolved around the beach lifestyle. BeachLife began in 2019, later expanding with a second festival devoted to Americana, country, and roots music, BeachLife Ranch. Sanford and his team are also building a 15,000 square foot theater called the California Ocean Club, which will deliver the same sunny vibe all year.

Music + Beach Culture = BeachLife

Our festival is different from a lot of festivals. Most festivals aren’t created around any sort of culture. It’s more organized by genre of music. Obviously, there are a lot of festivals that are not subject to what I’m talking about. But our festival was created to serve a certain type of fan. It’s as much about the culture and community as it is the music. 

Building on Sand

Any show you do near the water makes it much more difficult to build. The stages and structures have to be designed with a lot more strength. Instead of wheeling things in, you’re using tractors. It definitely provides challenges. 

But the question of whether it’s worth it is a no-brainer. Every time the sun sets and there’s a band playing, we look at each other and go, “Yep, that was worth it.”

Many Moving Parts

I would love to tell you I never worry about anything, but that would be a lie. You’re depending on a lot of human beings to do their jobs. We have about 1,200 people working the festival. If you think about how much has to go right to have a successful festival, it’s daunting. I’ve run a lot of businesses over my career, but none that are as 3D-chess as this and with as many moving parts. 

Choosing Artists

I have a partner. After each festival, we’ll sit down and talk. We like to span generations, so we’ll go old-new-old-new. And then we spitball headliner names, with the preface that it’s got to fit within the BeachLife culture and vibe. 

And then we get at it. I do all the booking, because I’m fairly particular. It’s like putting together a video montage and you want each frame to be right. It’s one thing to get all the right frames, and it’s another to put them in the right order. 

Finding Artists

We’re not a huge festival, and we’re not trying to be a festival where the only reason somebody comes is because of the names. So, we like to pick ones you wouldn’t immediately shine after, maybe aren’t playing the festival circuits that year. I look at a lot of festival posters, and it tends to be the same artists. 

We have an area on our website where you can pitch [yourself as an artist to perform]. And we go to the agencies and ask them to send us anybody they think might fit. We have a stage for up-and-coming artists. It doesn’t matter how many fans you have; it matters how good your music is. 

Gone Country

Country music kind of gives me the same feel in my heart that the beach life does. I grew up going to the central California coast, where it’s a little more cowboy land. And I love the idea of mixing that with the cowboy-surfer mentality. Surfers are like the cowboys of the coast―riding waves and riding horses. It seemed like a cool way to send our culture into the winter. Having us on both ends of the summer seemed like a great idea. 

A Vibe of Respect

I think [throwing things at artists on stage] is super lame. I couldn’t think of a more despicable thing to do to somebody who’s putting one’s heart out there. 

I don’t think we’d ever have that issue at BeachLife, because we have a respectful culture. If we did, those people wouldn’t be welcome. That’s not what the beach life is about. At BeachLife, if you drop your wallet, somebody will pick it up for you. That’s the culture we try to promote. 

Keeping Everyone Safe

A lot of times, people who do festivals are music people. They’re not security people. And they hire an outside security company to make them safe. Many times, these companies fail. 

We wanted to take extra precaution. We brought on one of the best, a former chief of police with 30 years as a police officer. I’ve got my five-year-old daughter running around, so that’s my litmus test for how safe this festival needs to be. 

Singing the Pandemic Blues

COVID was brutal. I’m in restaurants and live music. You couldn’t pick worse verticals to be in during a pandemic. It was very tough. Luckily, we came back to a hunger for live events. That gave us the motivation to get back on our feet. It was a journey, for sure. I’m glad it’s behind us.

[The live music industry is] still finding its way. It weeded out a lot of small people, so the Live Nations are stronger than they’ve ever been. But as time goes by, more independents will pop up again, hopefully. 

Switching On and Off

The [BeachLife] app is a cool tool to help people enjoy the festival. Our whole goal is using technology to make the experience better. But we’re also not guys that love being on the phone at a show. It’s a fine line between using technology to improve the experience but also not overdeveloping to where fans are on their phones instead of enjoying the show. 

Dining On Stage

The perfect experience for me would be eating a nice meal on the side of the stage with a glass of wine. So, when we created the festival, we asked Michelin-level chefs to come. I don’t think any other festival’s doing this. We’ve had all sorts of crazy chefs, and they design their menus based on the type of artist they’re paired with. It’s another cool experience that you don’t get often in this world. 

Everything But Water Sports

We stay away from the swimming. Swimming and drinking is not a good mix. And you’d also have to bring a change of clothes and all that stuff. 

We’ve got a Kids Zone. We have a karaoke bar. We’ve got a sports lounge for those that like to watch sports. [We have] tons of shopping, tons of health and wellness. We have an arts area. We bring in a lot of musicians who are also graphic artists who sell their art. Last festival, Chad Smith, drummer for the Chili Peppers, was selling his art. We want to indulge your senses over and above the music. 

DonationLife

It wouldn’t be genuine of us to call our festival BeachLife but not care about the beach life. We have a mission statement as to whom we support. Our May festival focuses on ocean- and kid-related philanthropies, and our September festival focuses on hero philanthropies, like police, fire, and veterans. I happen to be the chairman of the local police foundation, so I’m a big supporter of first responders. The least we could do is help them raise some money. 

We do ticket giveaways. We have a big party at the beginning of Ranch for several charities. And pretty soon we’re going to be launching our own 501(c)(3) to help these same causes on a local level. I think we raised $150,000 for local charities last May. Not too shabby for an independent festival. • 

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ALBUM REVIEWS: "Marlboros & Avon" BY McBride & The Ride 8/10Marlboros & Avon

TMC Records / Ingrooves

Producers: Terry McBride, Billy Thomas and Ray Herndon

McBride & The Ride’s members each have jaw-dropping resumes, boasting experience with country royalty such as Vince Gill and Lyle Lovett. Naturally, the trio’s latest, a five-track EP, will make you click your spurs. Title track “Marlboros & Avon” is a flavorful chunk of tear-streaked nostalgia, while “Along Comes a Girl” could’ve charted in the 90s. The disc concludes with a boot stomping cover of a Webb Pierce classic. 

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The mugshot that launched a thousand memesMemes can happen in the blink of an eye, like a Jeopardy! contestant who accidentally makes a sexual innuendo under the pressure of stage lights, or a kid who randomly gets interviewed on a playground and professes his undying love for America’s most plentiful crop, corn.
But as soon as we knew former President Donald Trump would be processed at Fulton County Jail for his fourth indictment, we knew that the resulting mugshot would be all over the place for years to come, from novelty t-shirt stands to our hypothetical future childrens’ history textbooks. We waited for it, knowing that as soon as the image was released to the public, it would become unavoidable.
“This will break Etsy,” Jesse Case wrote in a now-viral tweet (or X post, whatever). And sure enough, less than 24 four hours after Trump’s mugshot was released, Etsy already turns up 5,290 results to the search “trump mugshot.”

What the chicken nuggets in my microwave see at 3AM: pic.twitter.com/4nzuueZwuS
— Kristi Yamaguccimane (@TheWapplehouse) August 25, 2023

Even the former president himself has already set up an extensive merch store with t-shirts, posters, mugs and stickers featuring the photo, which is accompanied by text declaring “NEVER SURRENDER!” It’s unclear if Trump chose this wording since he literally surrendered to Fulton County Jail, or if this somehow went over his team’s head. But nonetheless, Trump supporters can now buy their very own mugshot beer koozie, and yes, this sentence took a year off of my life to type.
Naturally, fake mugshots circulated social media before the real thing was even released — and perhaps due to their less rigorous fact-checking standards, pop culture news accounts like Pop Base beat legacy news outlets to the punch, circulating the now ubiquitous mugshot.
It didn’t matter what Trump’s mugshot would look like. No matter what, this image was going to be both a viral meme and an historically monumental artifact. But even without any editing, Trump looks yassified: his bright blonde hair shows no trace of gray, draped in a swoop across his forehead. Prison lighting is unforgiving, but combined with the over exposure of the flash, Trump almost looks younger, as the shadows smooth out the wrinkles on his left cheek. The wave of his hair is perfectly positioned in the center of his forehead, accentuating his angry countenance. At first glance, it looks as though his eyebrows and hair are one, making his scowl even more sinister, more jarring.
Image Credits: Anonymous internet user, with permission to TechCrunch
As TikToker Kirby Alice pointed out, there’s an irony to these historic mugshots, which aren’t very high-quality images, since, well, they’re mugshots from a county jail.
“I can pretty well guarantee that whatever camera they have to take mugshots was probably purchased at like, a Radio Shack circa 2007,” she said, days before Trump turned himself in. “It might be in the back of a closet suffering heat damage in Georgia right now, and it is about to take one of the most important images in American history.”

@kirby.alice
If you have the ability to rectify this situation i am personally begging that you do not
♬ original sound – kirby

I’m reminded of a recent episode of “The Kardashians,” when Kim brought an entire hair and makeup team with her to the DMV to get her license renewed, cheating us out of the idea that awkward driver license photos are the one great equalizer of mankind. While Trump’s team surely thought long and hard about everything from his tie color to his facial expression, he wasn’t going to get any special treatment while getting processed in jail, even as some probably underpaid municipal employee pressed the shutter button to take an undoubtedly iconic photo of our lifetime.
“LizaMinnelliOutlives was how I saw Trump’s mugshot,” a friend wrote to me on Discord. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that we found out that the Queen of England died due to the pronouncement that Liza Minnelli had outlived Queen Elizabeth II.

Liza Minnelli has outlived America’s wait for Donald Trump's mugshot. His latest arrest was finally accompanied by his first perp photo. pic.twitter.com/GXaICDO9yV
— LizaMinnelliOutlives (@LiZaOutlives) August 25, 2023

After Trump’s presidency, the American right and left are so far divided that perhaps only the Donald himself could unite us once more: Everyone, regardless of their political affiliation, is making memes of Trump’s mugshot. It is, quite literally, memetic, as used in the Richard Dawkins sense. It will be circulated, remixed, repurposed and mutated until it perhaps outlives even the LizaMinnelliOutlives meme, surviving the brutal natural selection that is the attention span of digitally-addled brains.
In liberal internet circles, the mugshot is a cause for celebration, an “I told you so” to relatives who were naively lured by Trump’s emboldening rhetoric almost eight years ago. And yet on Truth Social, the somewhat dormant social app that Trump himself founded, the image is a rallying cry — it’s literally being used to solicit campaign donations — yet Trump supporters still find the image funny.
One Truth Social meme account edited Trump’s mugshot to replace the Mona Lisa, as crowds swarm to get a closer look. Another user advertised t-shirts with the mugshot that declare “my pronouns are Trump/won,” which also conveys a serious misunderstanding of how grammar works.
You would think that nothing could be more political than a mugshot of a former president who is indicted for interfering with the democratic process. But some memes just aren’t political at all, reminding us of the absurdity of the moment.
“who cares,” wrote @roastmalone_ on X (Twitter). “trump isn’t even the first actor from home alone 2 to have his mugshot released.”

Former president Trump returns to Twitter, now X, with his mugshot

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The 11-track album, entitled Voir Dire, also features a track made with rapper MIKE, called Sentry, accompanied by a Ryosuke Tanzawa-directed music video. Watch it below:

The rest of the album is only available to stream via Gala Music, a music streaming service backed by Snoop Dogg and Death Row Records that lets listeners download music as a ‘digital collectible’.
This is not the first we’ve heard of a joint album by the pair. In 2017, The Alchemist told fans that they’d already put the album out on YouTube under a fake name. In a tweet two years later, he addressed the album again, writing: “We hid a whole album on YouTube under a fake name and YouTube page. Fake album cover, song titles, the whole 9. Nobody found it yet.”
Voir Dire comes ten years after Earl Sweatshirt’s Doris. The rapper has been running a ten-year anniversary tour celebrating the album and, at the LA show, was joined on stage by fellow OFWGKTA member and double Grammy-winner, Tyler, The Creator.
The full tracklist for the album is as follows:

100 High Street
Vin Skully
Sentry [ft. MIKE]
All The Small Things
My Brother, The Wind
27 Braids
Mac Deuce
Sirius Blac
Geb
Deadzone
Free the Ruler

Earl Sweatshirt isn’t the only in-demand rapper to have worked with The Alchemist recently. Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy Award-winning Mr Morale And The Big Steppers also featured the production wizardry of the LA-based producer.
In October of 2022, The Alchemist launched a production masterclass on the educational platform Aulert called Beatmaking & Sampling for Hip-Hop.
See when Earl Sweatshirt is playing in a city near you by heading to earlsweatshirt.com.
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