In March of last year, BottleRock Napa Valley CEO Dave Graham didn’t even know when live music might return to the Bay Area, let alone plan for two massive music festivals within nine months of each other.

“We have quite a large staff full-time, and we kept everyone on board. But everyone not knowing when we were actually going to return to work full-time was a bit challenging to deal with,” Graham said in early April, as planning for BottleRock Napa 2022 was nearing its peak.

Once in-person gatherings were given the go-ahead by state and Napa County officials, Graham and his partners at Latitude 38 Entertainment still had to navigate COVID-19 protocols and how to apply them to his large-scale event. That included not only figuring out testing and vaccination requirements for attendees—“How to communicate that in a way that is understood, that makes sense to our community of ticket buyers and not offend too many people was difficult”—but for artists and all staff.

In addition to all the work that a promoter does to putting on such a large concert, he suddenly found himself working with public health agencies to make sure BottleRock was being compliant. He’d never considered he’d need to plan around pandemics or become knowledgeable in healthcare.

“Safety is our no. 1 concern always, but we’re typically dealing with other sides of safety, as it relates to security and whatnot,” Graham said. “Our customer base was great, patient and understanding, and our community was as well. We went through it together, and did so pretty well, I would say.”

As the next BottleRock Napa approaches, on Memorial Day Weekend, Graham isn’t stopping to catch his breath. That’s because he’s always working on two BottleRocks at a time (not including his other concerts). As his team is putting the finishing pre-planning touches on this one, he’s already booking acts for the 2023 edition of the fest. Each festival takes about 14 months of planning, he said.

Last summer, as the festival was approaching its rescheduled dates over Labor Day weekend—which Graham is quick to point out that it was a one-time thing—he was in the thick of planning this spring’s event. Back then, he was already figuring out stage production needs from the likes of P!nk and Metallica, back-of-house needs for staff and artists, artist transportation and hospitality and pre-planning which artists would make special appearances throughout the event, be it on the JaMPad or culinary stages, or VIP meet-and-greets.

Then, of course, there’s the staging needs and the entire festival attendee experience, from food and wine offerings to merch, Instagram-ready opportunities, other entertainment and the actual layout of the festival.

Over email, Latitude 38 partner Justin Dragoo said this year’s festival will include a new look for the Allianz stage (formerly called the 3rd stage), more shaded areas in both VIP and general admission sections of the grounds, larger LED video screens at the main stage, a larger Sky Deck without additional Sky Deck tickets for the ultra-VIP ticketholders, redesigned VIP Village and Platinum Lounge and an expanded entrance for faster entry into the grounds.

Following in the footsteps of Outside Lands, there will also be a new customer lounge area dedicated to cannabis education (no onsite cannabis sales) called The Garden.

“We’re excited about a significant new art installation [by] local artist Nicki Adani: Bird’s Eye View,” Dragoo said. It includes a pair of hawks with 12-foot wingspans casting a large shadow.

All that is in addition to the festival’s regular offerings, such as more than 20 local wineries and 20 local restaurants, celebrity chefs, celebrity sommeliers and plain old celebrities making appearances at the culinary stage; art with which people love to interact and take selfies, silent disco and more.

If BottleRock were to begin today, it would take place without COVID-19 vaccination, testing or masking requirements. However, the producers have not yet released an official policy. Graham said he and others are still coordinating with local and state health authorities.

“As we’ve all seen, things can change quickly, or not, and so it would be premature for us to issue a policy right now, when we’ve still got quite a bit of time before,” he said.

Roger McNamee of Moonalice, which is again performing at the festival, said he doesn’t have any health concerns going into the fest—even though his band has had to cancel several shows in April, including Moonalice’s popular 4/20 show, after multiple musicians tested positive for COVID-19.

“From our perspective, the really important thing is that that everybody be sensitive to the needs of others. When you’re outdoors, that is inherently a better thing,” the 65-year-old McNamee said. “We’ve been doing outdoor festivals through this thing, and I think that’s how you do music in this environment. I encourage our fans not only to bring a mask but to wear a mask … just in case. Because even when you’re outdoors …  you know you can’t control who you’re next to. For those of us who are vulnerable, you want to take care of yourself.”

While the festival went off without noticeable hitches last September, Graham and his partners were constantly worried of a non-COVID-19-related scourge: Wildfire season, which has wreaked havoc on the North Bay in recent years.

“There is more fire danger towards the latter part of summer and into the fall than there is in the spring,” he said. “That was in the back of our minds, whether it be fire or whether it be smoke, or both. It’s all out of our control, of course, but it was an added concern.”

For that reason, Memorial Day weekend will always be home for BottleRock.

Booking acts to the 2021 festival presented more challenges than the festival has had in the past, largely because many artists weren’t willing to commit when so much of the future was up in the air. This was in addition to typical hurdles like money and proximity clauses (artists are often prevented from playing within a certain radius from previously booked events). In the end Latitude 38 got one of its strongest lineups ever with Foo Fighters, Miley Cyrus and others that included Jon Batiste (who just won the Grammy for Album of the Year).

But things fell into place quickly for the upcoming festival.

“We always knew that one day we would be so lucky to have Metallica at the festival,” Graham said. “Lars [Ulrich] has been to the festival. Their team has been to the festival. [Robert] Trujillo has been to the festival multiple times. It was always a foregone conclusion that at some point, when the stars aligned, we would be able to have them perform.”

When the stars did align for the May event, that deal got done quickly, he said. The wait was longer for P!nk, an artist Graham said the promoters had been waiting to go on tour again for some time. When she announced spring touring, they jumped at the opportunity, and Graham promised a spectacular production for her performance.

“She’s a wonderful human being, Alicia,” Graham said. “For those that haven’t seen it, I can’t wait for people to experience it. The music is incredible. She’s a top-10 artist in the world. It’s the added production value that she brings, and the performance, on top of her incredible music that just is the icing on the cake.”

The top of the lineup also includes Twenty One Pilots, country star Luke Combs and an all-star hip-hop collaboration of Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, E-40 and Too $hort. Unlike other festivals, which have only in recent years dedicated more effort to booking more female performers, that’s been one of BottleRock’s strengths for a while. This year there also appears to be a more inclusive representation of Latinx artists, which include Ana Tijoux, Pitbull, Diamante Eléctrico, rock band Kinky and others.

“We do our best to go down that path and to book as many as we can each year,” Graham said.

Each year, BottleRock has several returning acts. Regular attendees are likely familiar with the Napa Valley Youth Symphony, The Alive, Moonalice and Michael Franti.

McNamee, who lives in the South Bay, has performed at every BottleRock Napa since the festival’s inception in 2013, either with Moonalice or his other band, Doobie Decimal System.

He said he’s drawn back year after year because of the festival’s modern amenities (with no camping required), wide variety in music from the latest pop stars to significant heritage acts and so much alternative programming.

He said how when the band played at Burning Man one year, all their gear got covered in dust and gnats—he still hasn’t been able to play that guitar or get the bugs out of it—and that BottleRock is an opulent opposite from that festival.

“We have played at almost all the big [festivals] … and there’s nothing like BottleRock,” McNamee said. “When you’re there, it’s really obvious that it’s precisely the cup of tea for a really large community of music fans.”

Even if someone isn’t a fan of music, they can still find BottleRock interesting because nearly every winery and the best restaurants in the area are involved.

“The best thing about it for me is wandering around and seeing people I’ve never heard of, who blow my mind,” McNamee said. “It’s really easy to wander around, and there are three stages where you basically move 100 yards, and you can change your perspective.”

Unlike festivals like Coachella, which target a younger crowd, BottleRock’s brand continues to be about the Napa Valley experience rather than demographic or genre, Graham said. The festival is about the marriage of food and wine from the region with the best popular music.

“Nobody in the world does that because they’re not based in Napa. It would be hard to bring Napa anywhere else in the world,” Graham said, adding that attendees range from 7 to 70 and the average age being somewhere between 30 and 35. “If you have that kind of demographic, you definitely have to have music that is likeable to a broad audience. We always book a lineup that speaks into the listening of a broad demographic, not just a young demographic.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.