Bluegrass on the Beach

Bluegrass on the Beach sets up each March at Site #4 of Lake Havasu State Park, 699 London Bridge Road, on the shoreline of Lake Havasu City. The 2027 festival is scheduled for March 5, 6 and 7. The organizers bill it as “always the first weekend in March.” The gates open at noon on the Monday before, and from then on the grounds fill with campers, instruments and lawn chairs. Under the festival’s chair policy, seats may be set in the audience area beginning Tuesday at noon, so by midweek a crowd of empty chairs is already waiting in front of the stage for Friday.

Lot #4 and the dry camp

The general camping lies inside the Lot #4 area, and all of it is dry. There is no electric service inside the lot. Water is on site for filling tanks before entering, and a dump station stands nearby. Dry sites take no reservations and go to whoever arrives first. A parking crew meets rigs at the front gate and finds each one a spot. The festival’s page notes that these sites sit “just a bit closer to the Festival activities” than the state park’s own campground. Fifty sites in that campground have water and electric hook-ups. Twelve of them are on the lakefront. The promoter holds them for the festival week and rents them only to members of its Gold Club.

Visitors who come for the day enter at a gate near the Hampton Inn. Seating on the grass is the audience’s own lawn and beach chairs and blankets, and outside coolers are not allowed. A shuttle runs within the festival grounds.

Stages, jams and the Navy band

The program runs three full days. The festival lists concerts, workshops, food and craft vendors, “Toe Tapping, Dancing & Just Good FUN!” The local tourism office adds arts and crafts, food and beer. Jam sessions happen on stage and off, and visitors are told to bring an instrument and join in. One newspaper preview gave concert hours of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The lineup changes every year, but some names come back. In 2019 RiverScene Magazine counted more than ten acts over the three days, among them Sideline, Midnight Run, the U.S. Navy Band’s Country Current, and Wayne Taylor and Appaloosa. A preview in The Standard of Kingman listed the Tennessee Bluegrass Band, Dave Stamey, The Country Gentleman Tribute, Fast Track and Country Current again. The paper described Country Current playing a mix of jazz, classical, country and rock. The Friday program in March 2026 included the Bays Mountain Cut Ups and David Adkins and the Mountain Soul.

Wayne Taylor started playing bluegrass at age 9. He comes from Maiden, North Carolina. He played with the Navy’s Country Current Band for 21 years and formed Appaloosa after retiring from the Navy at 25 years. By 2019 he had been playing Havasu for three years, and the magazine reported that his was the only band to have played there three years running. He talked to the reporter while selling CDs after his set. “We’ve just toured through Mexico on the Stewart Bluegrass Cruise,” he said. “We’re going to Scotland this year, too.” The same report quoted Kene Hyatt, a bassist based in Canada, who said he loved the desert life in Havasu. That year the Western Arizona Humane Society held dog adoptions during the concerts, and community vendors set up alongside the music.

The festival’s edition numbers do not agree from source to source. RiverScene called the 2019 gathering, held at Windsor Beach, the 17th annual. The Standard called a festival running Friday, February 28, through Sunday, March 2, the 22nd. RiverScene called the March 2026 festival the 23rd. For 2027, the festival’s own page says 26th, and the Lake Havasu tourism calendar says 23rd.

Manitoba in a motorhome

The campground jams get less press than the stage shows. One was written up in detail. In 2014 Yvonne Higby Tatar and her husband, Mike Sr., drove to Lake Havasu for a column later reprinted by the California Bluegrass Association. They traveled with their friends Kit and Mary Birkett, each couple in a motorhome. She wrote that they made the trip partly for “the drive through the late winter desert areas to see how things are beginning to bloom.”

She recalled that at the previous year’s festival they had been jamming one night at their campsite “when two guys from Manitoba, Canada walked up with their mandolin and guitar.” The players were Stephen and Terry. A second jam followed the next night, and the four traded emails. In 2014 the Manitoba men wrote ahead to say they were coming again. On Friday evening the group played inside a motorhome while it rained outside, and on Sunday afternoon they met once more.

Between songs they talked about the weather. The Canadians had left fifty below zero to come south. They also talked about drought in California and the Southwest. Stephen was a dairy farmer and told the group about robots that milk cows. Terry was a financial planner. The two had grown up in a small Canadian town before the internet reached it. They learned bluegrass from the one or two records the music stores in larger towns carried, among them a couple of Bill Monroe LPs. As a result they stuck to traditional numbers and sang the high harmonies of Monroe and Stanley. The Californians brought more modern tunes. “This was the only way we could really feel what the music was since we lived so far away from it,” the Manitoba men told her. By the end of 2014 the group had named itself the annual meeting of the “Polar Vortexans.”

From the Bakers to the Stewarts

The festival Tatar described was promoted by Larry and Sondra Baker, who created it. The current organizers write that the Bakers ran some of the best festivals on the West Coast for more than 20 years.

In 2015 Danny and Christa Stewart came to Bluegrass on the Beach. Danny was playing in a band. Christa came to watch their son, Danny Jr., play with the U.S. Navy Band. The Stewarts had been promoting bluegrass festivals and bluegrass cruises since 2006, and their mailing address is in Laceyville, Pennsylvania. Danny has sung and played bluegrass for more than 45 years. After that visit they called the Havasu event “one of the best festivals in all America,” according to The Standard.

The couples became friends, and the Stewarts learned that the Bakers wanted to retire. The Stewarts write that the Bakers invited them to buy the festival and take it over. In 2018 the Stewarts joined the Bakers as partners in promoting it, and the partnership lasted through 2023. In 2024 Danny and Christa Stewart took over Bluegrass on the Beach entirely. Their page tells visitors to look for them on the grounds and say hello: “At this festival, you will meet some of the best people in the world, Bluegrass People.”