Hot new music festival Luna Del Lago draws concertgoers to the northwest Valley

If you’ve been around the Phoenix music scene for a decent length of time, you’re familiar with Apache Lake Music Festival, which featured Arizona artists and ran for 10 years until 2019.

Now, ALMF co-founder Brannon Kleinlein has returned to the festival scene with a new event: The inaugural Luna Del Lago music festival will be held Nov. 3 through 5 at Pleasant Harbor at Lake Pleasant in the far northwest Valley.

The three-day event brings together big names in the world of local music (The Black Moods, Sydney Sprague, Wyves, Banana Gun and Las Chollas Peligrosas, to name a few) and national acts across a variety of genres, including Black Joe Lewis, Monophonics, The Brothers Comatose and more.

Kleinlein, who also owns central Phoenix music venue Last Exit Live, recently spoke with Phoenix New Times about Luna Del Lago’s backstory, how to pick a festival lineup and the beloved legacy that permeates the event.

Quotes have been edited for space and clarity.

Phoenix New Times: What was the genesis of Luna Del Lago?
Brannon Kleinlein: I think it’s a little bit of a continuation from Apache Lake, doing that for 10 years. That was an event that obviously catered to local bands. It was a tradition, and it was well-known from that.

The last few years, I thought about the possibility of expanding it. When we came to the point where we were tapped out of room out there ... I started thinking about the possibility of a different location — adding to it and being able to have a spot that was a little easier to bring in some touring bands along with it, because although Apache Lake was beautiful and a great spot for us, it’s much more difficult to get to than the majority of the lakes out here.

I started looking around in 2018, 2019 at what my options might be for new locations, and that’s when I came across the fact that they were doing events out at Pleasant Harbor. I went out there and met with them, and went to several events and was pretty impressed by their event production.

After 2019, after the 10-year anniversary and the change of ownership and where it looked like for sure that we were going to be ending things out at Apache Lake, that’s when I decided to pull the trigger on starting a new event at a new location — a different event, a different vibe — but kind of a continuation of what we had going on at Apache Lake.

So when did planning for Luna Del Lago actually begin?
We actually had dates booked for 2020, and then COVID happened. So it’s been in the making since late 2019. After COVID hit, things were paused for a couple years. When that was all behind us, that’s when we started up the conversation again, that this is definitely something we’d be ready to do in 2023.

In summer of 2022, when I approached them, they asked if I just wanted to do something that year, and I said no. Something like this takes a long time to plan, so I just wanted to have extra time. We picked a date for 2023 and gave ourselves plenty of time to get everything in line.

The thing with festivals is the first year’s always the hardest, especially when you’re starting a new concept with new branding, new logos and everything. And we’re also in the situation where this is much different than what we did out there at Apache Lake, because in this situation we’re bringing in a lot of things. We’re working with food vendors, we have beer gardens, we have artisan vendors.

How do you go about designing a lineup?
For me, I wanted to have a diverse lineup. There are many festivals that you see where there’s just one specific genre, whether it’s jam bands or a reggae festival, and that’s all you get. I didn’t really want to have that. I wanted to have something where all different genres of bands and there’s maybe a little bit of something for everybody.

And maybe you’re not into certain bands that are playing on certain days or certain times, but another great thing about doing this at the lake is you have a bunch of other built-in activities you can do. You can rent jet-skis, paddleboards, boats. There’s hiking out there.

But I think the idea for me was that I wanted to have a diverse lineup that featured all different kinds of genres and acts, a little bit of something for everybody.

With that being said, I wanted a nice mix of locals. It looks like it’s about half and half, locals and touring bands, so I wanted to make sure that we still had that local flavor that we were built off of, that we showcased for all those years at Apache Lake, but also wanted to open it up for some touring acts. It’s a mix of bands that I’ve worked with before as well as some that I haven’t that I just think are great acts that I’m excited to work with.

Is there a lot of overlap in the staff between Apache Lake and Luna Del Lago?
Yeah, a lot of the core people of my team are still there, still on board. That being said, there’s definitely some new people that we added. We needed to, because we’re taking on a bigger event here.

It’s a combination of core Apache Lake crew plus adding on additional knowledgeable people. It doesn’t happen without a solid team and a big team. This is definitely much bigger from the standpoint of internal staff as well as volunteers, and that’s all required to make a festival go.

Paul ‘PC’ Cardone [a co-founder of ALMF who died last year] obviously would be deeply involved with Luna Del Lago if he were still with us. How does it feel to put on a festival without him?
It’s certainly on all of our minds. We’re trying to do something that we know he’d be proud of, and it’s something that’s tough knowing he would love to be there. He lived for putting [ALMF] on, and that was one of his favorite things to do. There’s going to be a big hole, an obvious hole. He was a big part of what we did for 10 years, and he’s not going to be there. So I think our focus is on “let’s make PC proud, let’s put on a great event and try to keep it going.” He’d want us to keep it going for sure.