Ahead of the 2023 BottleRock festival in California’s Napa Valley, held May 26-28, preview some of the notable up-and-coming acts who will hit the festival’s four stages.
By GARY MOSKOWITZ | For GRAMMY.com
PHOTO: RICK KERN/WIREIMAGE
MAY 23, 2023
Roughly 120,000 people will head to California’s wine country May 26-28 for the 10th BottleRock festival, which serves up music, food and libations at the Napa Valley Expo. BottleRock leans in on the food and beverage experience: on social media they refer to themselves as “a food festival with music playing in the background.”
On the festival’s culinary stage, headline musical acts join celebrity chefs and personalities for cooking demonstrations: at past festivals, Martha Stewart has chopped vegetables alongside Seattle rapper Macklemore, and Snoop Dogg has rolled sushi with Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto. More than a dozen wineries participate, as well as breweries and distilleries. The festival also features a silent disco, spa, pop-up live music jam sessions and art installations.
But beverages, food, art, and massages are not the headline act: Spread across four music stages, more than 20 musical artists perform each day. Post Malone and Smashing Pumpkins headline on Friday, Lizzo and Duran Duran on Saturday, and Red Hot Chili Peppers and Lil Nas X headline Sunday. Well-known marquee acts will play early-evening sets: Billy Strings and Bastille on Friday, Leon Bridges and Japanese Breakfast on Saturday, Wu-Tang Clan and the National on Sunday.
A handful of festival acts will also feature at BottleRock Presents “after show” performances at venues in Napa, San Francisco and around the Bay Area May 23-28. Some of these after-show performances are sold out, but tickets are still available for Cautious Clay, Lucius, the Wrecks and several other acts. At the time of writing, three-day festival tickets are sold out but individual day tickets are still available.
In addition to the many big-name acts on the bill, noteworthy artists further down the roster will be performing from about noon onward. Representing pop, punk, blues, hip-hop, indie rock and more, the following 10 rising artists stand out for their originality, style, and approach.
Oke Junior
Oakland, California-born, Napa-raised Matthew Osivwemu raps under the name Oke Junior. He made music throughout middle school and high school: his song “Elmhurst” is a reference to Elmhurst Middle School in Oakland.
An older brother mentored Osivwemu , encouraging his early musical pursuits and making sure he was a student of the rap game. “The first time I rapped for him, I thought I was raw. He broke it down straight up and said ‘Man, that ain’t it. If you’re gonna rap, you gotta make sure it has meaning…don’t be out here just saying anything,” Osivwemu said during a “Sway in the Morning” interview last year.
In 2017, Oakland hyphy rapper Mistah F.A.B. spotted Osivwemu at open mic nights in Sacramento, and took the young rapper under his wing. In 2016, Oke Junior tweeted that he wished he could have performed at BottleRock, and then joined Too Short onstage in 2019. He’ll perform at 1 p.m. on the Truly Stage on Sunday.
Cimafunk
Erik Alejandro Iglesias Rodríguez, a.k.a. Cimafunk, is a Cuban singer who performs funky Afro-Cuban music with a nine-piece band with an energetic intensity that has drawn comparisons to James Brown.
For his 2021 album El Alimento he collaborated with Lupe Fiasco, CeeLo Green, and funk legend George Clinton, an experience he said was like “talking to a friend.” The album was nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album at the 2023 GRAMMY Awards.
Rodríguez grew up in a tight-knit community in Western Cuba, surrounded by music: Mexican music, Christian music, and salsa, mixed with African rhythms. “We had a big family. We were always dancing in the house and every Sunday, we were dancing– salsa and other types,” Rodríguez told GRAMMY.com. “Everybody loved music and we all listened to music the whole day. In any house, at some point, many types of music would be playing — Mexican music, reggaetón, Lionel Richie, or Michael Jackson, that was my fave.”
Cimafunk performs at 4:15 p.m. Sunday on the Allianz stage.
Danielle Ponder
Ponder, a former public defender from Rochester, New York, is also a powerful R&B/soul singer who has performed on late-night talk shows and at festivals like Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Ponder was serious about her legal work, but was also making music on the side for several years She made the jump full-time to music after she turned 40.
Released in 2022, Ponder’s debut album Some of Us are Brave is filled with upbeat, spiritual bangers and chilled-out confessionals. The music often pulls way back, allowing Ponder the quiet space to convey to listeners that she feels their pain and their joy, and she wants to uplift them. The album’s title track is a timely anthem for social justice: “all we want is to be ourselves … we don’t want problems,” she sings.
“We did an album and everything through law school. I just always felt like I didn’t want to be struggling. I had this fear of financial instability, and so I just was like, I can’t do music full time. But eventually it just pulled me,” she told NPR.
Ponder performs at 1:45 p.m. Saturday on the Jam Cellars stage.
Joey Valance & Brae
This Pennsylvania hip-hop duo, with their cocky, high energy Beastie Boys vibes and pop culture references to topics like Star Wars and fresh produce bring a heavy dose of prankster, ’90s hip-hop style — but from a humorous, adolescent Gen Z perspective. Scroll to the bottom of their Spotify page and you’ll see this: “Who tf reads Spotify bios.”
The rapper-producers — real names Joey Bertolino and Braedan Lugue — are longtime fans of early rap innovators like Biz Markie, Eric B. & Rakim and the Beastie Boys, but also EDM. They met at Penn State University and both credit their fathers with being big musical inspirations. The duo make most of their music in Valance’s bedroom. “He comes over and we just mess around until something fun comes out of it what we f—ing love,” Valence told Ones To Watch.
After gaining traction on TikTok, the duo performed their song “Double Jump” on the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” and won a $10,000 talent show grand prize. They now have more than 850,000 followers on TikTok.
Joey Valance & Brae perform at 7:15 p.m. Sunday on the Truly Stage.
Maude Latour
The Sweden-born singer has an enviable breakout story In March 2020, during the early pandemic lockdown, Latour — who was a student at Columbia University — posted a video of herself singing “One More Weekend,” an upbeat tune about college heartbreak, to TikTok, where it has since been viewed more than 455,000 times. A year later, Latour was applying to summer jobs when record labels approached her and she signed with Warner Records. Last summer, she performed at Lollapalooza on the same day as Metallica.
A child of journalists, Latour studied philosophy in college, and her songs explore a range of emotions tied to relationships, death, messy bedrooms, and existentialism.
“I feel connected to this overpowering awareness of my mortality. It is what makes life beautiful. This is my ‘thank you’ to existence,” she told Billboard.
Maude Latour performs at 2:45 p.m. Saturday on the Allianz Stage.
Thunderstorm Artis
Growing up in Oahu, Thunderstorm Kahekhili Artis played in a family band with his dad, Ron Artis, an artist and Motown session musician who, played with artists such as Michael Jackson, Van Halen and Stevie Wonder.
After touring with his older brother Ron Artis II, Thunderstorm was invited to perform at the wedding of Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu, and was a finalist in the 2020 Spring season of “The Voice,” where he performed renditions of “Blackbird” by the Beatles and songs from artists like Louis Armstrong.
Thunderstorm has gone on to perform his blendings of folk, rock, soul and country music alongside artists like Jack Johnson and Booker T. He’s been known to play renditions of songs from artists such as David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and Elton John.
Thunderstorm Artis performs at 12:15 p.m. Sunday on the Verizon stage.
Ayleen Valentine
The 21-year-old from Miami dropped out of Berklee College of Music in 2021 to pursue music full time. She combines guitar, piano, and saxophone with electronic beats to make moody dream pop.
Valentine has said that she loves to watch videos of her favorite artists before she takes the stage, listing a who’s who of famous rock stars that inspire her: “Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Mitski. I used to love Kanye — not so much anymore. James Blake. Axl Rose is very theatrical. Fiona Apple is cool and very scary.”
Valentine released Tonight I Don’t Exist, a seven-song EP of bedroom pop, last year, and more recently released a video for the song “Next Life” from that EP.
Ayleen Valentine performs at 12:30 p.m. Friday on the Jam Cellars Stage.
Meute
The head-bobbing, dancing crowd and flashy, bright lights of a Meute show look almost exactly like any average club scene, but instead of a DJ and turntables and laptops, crowds see 11 people wearing marching band uniforms and holding brass instruments.
Like most brass bands, the 11-piece German brass collective Meute offers up lush harmonies and expressive horn solos backed by marching band percussion. But Meute is a “techno marching band,” that aims to create a high-energy, hypnotic club vibe with marching band instruments. Meute founder and trumpet player Thomas Burhorn loved the ecstasy and intensity of going to raves, but thought it would be more interesting and exciting if there was a live band onstage instead of a DJ.
“We do interpretations…It’s a nice part of art, and a nice part of the history of music… when you can give the composition something new, when you can see it from another point of view, it’s a beautiful thing,” Meute founder and trumpet player Thomas Burhorn told Variety.
The group toured 18 cities across North America last summer and performed at Goldenvoice’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
Meute performs at 8:45 p.m. Saturday on the Allianz stage.
The Alive
The members of The Alive are teenagers from Southern California, but they make music that sounds like a collage of ’90s and early 2000s alternative rock.
“We’d grow up going surfing and skating. In the car, our parents would start playing music,” singer and guitarist Bastian Evans told an interviewer. “I didn’t pay attention the first four or five years I was alive – but after a while, I started really listening to what was playing, and got a connection to some of the bands, especially Queens of the Stone Age. My dad would play it all the time in the morning, especially on the way to school.”
The Alive have performed at Lollapalooza Chile and Ohana Fest, and opened up the main stage at BottleRock in 2021 and played an after-party show with fellow Laguna Beach musician Taylor Hawkins and his former side band Chevy Metal.
The Alive was named one of Stab Magazine’s “30 Under 30 Culture Shifters of Tomorrow” and has performed benefit concerts for the Surfrider Foundation, Surfers Against Sewage in England, Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii, and Save The Waves.
The Alive perform at 12:30 p.m. Sunday on the Jam Cellars Stage.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram
When 24-year-old Christone “Kingfish” Ingram won the Best Contemporary Blues Album award at the 2022 GRAMMYs, he told the crowd, “For years I had to sit and watch the myth that young Black kids are not into the blues, and I just hope I can show the world something different.”
His debut album, Kingfish, produced by Tom Hambridge, was released on Alligator Records in 2019, and earned him a nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album at the 62nd annual GRAMMY Awards.
Ingram grew up in Clarksdale, Mississippi, playing drums, bass, and guitar. He studied music at the Delta Blues Museum under Bill “Howl-N- Mad” Perry and Richard “Daddy Rich” Crisman, and was playing gigs around town by seventh grade.
In 2014, he performed for Michelle Obama at the White House with the Delta Blues Museum band. Ingram joins a long legacy of artists to emerge from Clarksdale: John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner, Sam Cooke, Muddy Waters are just a few.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram performs at 5:45 p.m, Sunday on the Allianz Stage.
