Cabo San Lucas, Mexico – Imagine sunning beside a three-tiered pool under an azure sky, palm trees all around and white-tipped waves crashing onto a long, empty beach.
Margaritas flow like water from a swim-up bar while first-rate rock bands play acoustic sets on a stage under an oversized hut within earshot of your chair.
Between gigs the artists participate in low-key jam sessions and fan-friendly Q&As. At night, musicians and music lovers alike slip out of swimsuits and into tropical clothes. The entire group then heads out to a tourist nightspot.
The next day, they do it all over again.
This might sound like a fantasy, but for roughly 550 fans of Big Head Todd & the Monsters, the Gin Blossoms, Cowboy Mouth and several other acts invited to Cabo San Lucas last month, it was a vacation dream come true.
Atlanta-based marketing whiz and former Coca-Cola executive Dan West conceived the four-day event, dubbed True Experience. The part-time music promoter launched the concept last year with a one-day festival on the Cajun Queen, a 19th-century-style riverboat in New Orleans, and invited bands he knew from consulting on the Voodoo Music Festival and the annual Rock Slope Spring Break concert in Steamboat Springs.
West also looked for bands that might attract a fun-loving yet mature music crowd with expendable vacation cash.
“I wanted to see something that would provide a true connection for the fans and the artists,” said West, who worked the Olympics in Atlanta and Salt Lake City for Coca-Cola before family and music grew more important than corporate perks.
This year, West expanded True Experience to four days in Cabo San Lucas at the Hotel Finisterra, a quiet resort where Keith Richards and actress Patti Hansen were married in 1983 on the rocker’s 40th birthday.
Cabo San Lucas has mushroomed since then, but the Finisterra is still situated away from the town’s commercialized marina-mall, where vendors hawk overpriced Mexican trinkets as families with strollers wander out of Dunkin’ Donuts and Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
Next year, True Experience could land in Colorado, offering bands and fans the chance to mingle in a Rocky Mountain setting. West is already talking with representatives from various resorts, including Vail, about that prospect.
“I have a passion for music,” he said, “and I like platforms that you don’t usually see.”
