Country Music Festivals Are Exploding in Mexico — And They’re Not Just Catering to American Fans
Festivals appealing to American tourists and Mexican locals are thriving, expanding the audience for American country music.
Black News 
“Down south” has lately taken on a new meaning for country artists looking to expand their audiences and geographic reach.
Over the last few years, there has been a burst of new country music festivals in Mexico that prominently feature American country music acts. They fall into two categories: festivals that serve as luxury destinations for American travelers, and multi-day music events away from tourist centers that cater to Mexican fans.
Related
“Mexico is on the cusp of having a massive American country music moment and country music needs that,” says Range Media Partners co-founder/manager partner Matt Graham, whose firm manages Midland, Luke Grimes and Russell Dickerson, all of whom have recently played regional festivals in Mexico. “It needs to be more international because country music artists are oversaturated in America.” Graham compares the explosion to similar growth for the genre in non-English-speaking European countries like Germany: “It feels like it’s on the precipice of being bigger,” he says.
WME Nashville partner and co-head Jay Williams, who books Luke Bryan, works with the country superstar on his Crash My Playa festival in Cancun, and is seeing more activity in Mexico for country artists across the board. “We’re having a lot of conversations,” he says. “There’s two or three promoters that are becoming a lot more active in that space. There’s a lot of potential in interior Mexico, border Mexico, where real country fans are, not just these resort towns.”
In the destination festival category, the newest entry is Country Splash Cabo, which debuts this Labor Day weekend (Sept. 4-6). Headlined by Riley Green, Tucker Wetmore, Jon Pardi and Diplo, it will take place in Cabo San Lucas at the Paradisus resort.
Country Splash Cabo co-founder Robert Fried, who fell in love with country music after he started attending Stagecoach 10 years ago, “realized there really wasn’t anything west of Texas that combined country music and water or the beach,” he says. “Cabo is really the only luxury beach location I could see doing something like this.” (Jam band Goose holds its Viva El Gonzo festival in neighboring San José del Cabo.)
Fried says Country Splash Cabo, which features a wellness element, including yoga with Diplo, capped attendance at 3,000 people per day, with plans to scale up to 5,000 people per day in year two. “One of the core concepts was to be the opposite of a major field festival,” Fried says. “The intent is to be up close and personal where you can see your favorite country artists from 100 feet away instead of watching on an LED screen.”
Additionally, at least four new festivals have started in the last three years that appeal to Mexican country music lovers and feature U.S. country acts. Mexican superstar Carin León, who has duetted with a number of country artists including Kane Brown and Cody Johnson, headlined his new La Cura Fest in March in his hometown of Hermosillo, Sonora. The event, which drew 35,000 people on each of its two nights, concentrated primarily on Latin acts of several different genres but also featured country trio Midland (Jelly Roll was initially on the bill but pulled out).
In August, Midland also headlined the Chihuahua Country Fest, which was relaunched and revamped last year, drawing more than 8,000 to Chihuahua City. The band also played the Ahuestern Country Fest in October, which additionally featured U.S. country acts Eli Young Band, Los Lonely Boys, Danielle Bradbery and Sammy Arriaga, in Nuevo León, Monterrey. That festival drew up to 22,000 people.
Just outside of Monterrey in Santiago, Duckfest celebrated its third year in May with American acts Luke Grimes, Los Hermanos Mendoza and 49 Winchester following an appearance by Dickerson last year.
Quack Productions owner Patricio Martinez Garcia founded Duckfest, which also includes a Professional Bull Riders-sanctioned rodeo, three years ago and has seen attendance grow from 4,000 to 10,000 people. “It didn’t start out as a country-themed venture — it was perhaps a 50-50 mix,” he says. “But the country bands we booked were what really motivated me; it’s a genre that’s very family-friendly.”
Mexican fans are also buying into the romanticism of the American West that country music provides through its vivid storytelling. Many are discovering the music through streaming.
“There really hasn’t been country radio in Mexico, and there still isn’t much of a country radio presence today,” says Alfonso De Alba Jr., whose Bakersfield, Calif.-based company, Monterrey Promotions, manages Los Hermanos Mendoza and Mexican superstars Los Tigres del Norte. “Years ago, if someone in Mexico wanted to discover or listen to American country music, a lot of the time someone physically had to bring that music across the border. Today, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, TikTok, Instagram and other digital platforms have completely changed that. Country music is right there in people’s feeds and available instantly.”
Crash My Playa Started It All
The destination festivals in resort towns are also thriving. Of those, Bryan’s Crash My Playa, a four-day festival the country superstar launched in 2015, is the granddaddy.
Crash My Playa, which takes its name from Bryan’s 2013 No. 1 hit, “Crash My Party,” was born out of a brainstorming session his manager, Kerri Edwards, and booking agent Williams had with CID Entertainment’s then-executives Dan Berkowitz (who is still involved in Crash My Playa through his 100X company) and Matthew “Chewy” Smith, who were running Bryan’s VIP programs. “We challenged them to come back to us with some ideas of locations and sites they thought could work,” Edwards says.
The festival started at the Barceló in Riviera Maya and is now at Moon Palace in Cancun, its home for the past seven years. Many attendees return every year, leading Bryan to come up with treats for “alumni,” including meet-and-greets.
“You just have to roll the dice from time to time and time, and that’s what we did with Crash My Playa,” Bryan tells Billboard. “Then as it morphed into what it’s [become], we just wanted to always create a better fan experience from top to bottom.” Even though the attendees are mainly Americans, he says he’s proud “that Crash My Playa has been an avenue to introduce up-and-coming acts to country music fans in Mexico” and often gives the burgeoning talent their first exposure in the country. “I look at the young artists that have been a part of it through the years that have gone on and become giant stars: Ella Langley, Chris Stapleton, FGL, Old Dominion,” he says.
In addition to Country Splash Cabo and Crash My Playa, Brandi Carlile started Girls Just Wanna Weekend in Riviera Maya in 2019. The festival, which Berkowitz also handles, features all female acts, many of them country, including past performers The Chicks, Maren Morris, Wynonna, Tanya Tucker, Shania Twain and Margo Price.
Safety First
Even with destination festivals in heavily tourist zones, there has been some hesitation from artists unsure of how safe Mexico is to play given U.S. State Department warnings to Americans to avoid specific states, including Colima, Michoacán and Sinaloa, because of the potential for violent crime and kidnapping.
“We’ve had a few people not want to [play Crash My Playa]” because of safety concerns, Edwards says. “They have some reservations about going. But the [artists] who have shown up have been almost overwhelmingly supportive [and] have walked up to me and gone, ‘Please let me come back next year.’”
Duckfest’s Garcia admits that booking talent “was a little bit hard because it’s something new for the Americans to come to our country and play, but when they come here, it exceeds their expectations. They leave really happy.” Dickerson raved about the festival on social media after his appearance last year, posting, “Duckfest was Ducking Lit. Can’t wait to see y’all again!”
Midland’s lead singer Mark Wystrach grew up in Sonoita, Arizona, “near the border of Mexico, so he’s been dealing with cartels his whole life, and he speaks Spanish fluently,” Graham says. “The band’s perspective is they want to see their fans in Mexico, and they’re not going to be dismayed by activities that are happening unless it’s completely illogical” to play.
Having said that, Midland still made sure security greeted them at the airports and had independent security at the three festivals, beyond what the festivals provided.
Graham and De Alba Jr. also advise using common sense and appropriate caution when dealing with a new partner in a new territory. Acts invited to the new Mexican festivals should make sure the booking agents properly check out the promoters, as well as receive 50% of the money upfront, Graham says.
De Alba vetted Garcia to make sure he was “the real deal and not some one-off promoter,” he says, before signing off on Los Hermanos Mendoza playing Duckfest. In Mexico, “finding good people that are honest is just like anywhere else. I gave [Duckfest] all kinds of demands, and they took care of everything the right way,” he says. “It doesn’t matter how much money you can get. It’s about doing things correctly.”
Room to Grow
De Alba is so high on Duckfest’s potential that he and his cousin, Diego De Alba, will book the festival with Garcia going forward. Instead of blending American and Mexican country acts, the festival will focus more on American artists, with possibly one legacy act and an up-and-comer as headliners. “I really believe there’s a market there” for American acts, De Alba says.
By booking from the States, De Alba thinks he can also bring down talent costs, adding, “I know [Duckfest] overpaid” for acts. Graham simply says that Mexican gigs were “definitely profitable” for both Grimes and Midland.
Garcia and De Alba also plan to expand Duckfest to other markets in Mexico. “Those conversations are getting really deep,” Garcia says. “We think it’s a great option because this way, we’re not just expanding the festival; we’re expanding the genre itself, which is our strong suit.” He’s looking at neighboring states, “where country music is a big part of the culture. People in those states really listen to [American] country; they don’t limit themselves to just, say, norteño or reggaeton.”
“First, we want to get the trust of the artists and management team to understand what Mexico is and how it works and that it’s a little bit different,” De Alba adds. “We have to make the artists feel comfortable and willing to come partner with us and try to open this market with them.”
The festivals should be the jumping-off point for American artists to expand their Mexican audience instead of existing in isolation, Graham says, adding that Midland is now looking for a Spanish-language artist to record a duet with so it can “try to have some success with streaming and radio in Mexico and then the shows will get bigger and bigger.” (In 2018, Midland put out a Spanish-language version of the trio’s hit song “Drinkin’ Problem” with Mexican rocker Jay de la Cueva.)
Ultimately, Graham says playing these festivals is a way for the American acts to show appreciation to their Mexican fans and Mexico in general. “Mark hoped that by Midland going down there, it showed Americans that it’s not unsafe everywhere and that it will be helpful to the tourism there. We want our Mexican fans to know that we appreciate their support.”
