Zaferia's homegrown Happy Sundays music fest expands to 2 days, hosts aerospace talks this weekend
The husband-and-wife musician duo behind the free 'anti-festival' festival hopes to keep expanding citywide in future years.
Scott Montoya and Julia Kugel Montoya, well-known figures in the indie music scene, have spent the past eight summers organizing Happy Sundays, a multi-venue event they hope strips away everything you thought you knew about music festivals.
"People picture festivals in a big field, where you pay $12 for water or whatever," said Julia, former guitarist and vocalist for the Coathangers.
Now in its eighth iteration, Happy Sundays will expand into Saturday, taking over the Zaferia District for a full weekend, Aug. 24 and 25. The free "anti-festival" festival has never been beholden to any one genre, age group or type of entertainment. This year, attendees will experience everything from punk rock to a symphonic petting zoo and more across seven venues.
Musicians, DJs, comedians and others will take the stages of Alex's Bar, Art Theatre Long Beach, The Bamboo Club, Compound, Long Beach Playhouse, Port City Tavern and Fear City Tattoo.
Happy Sundays doesn't have a VIP lounge, wrist bands or really even headliners.
"None of that backstage stuff. Everything that just got out of hand with festivals — we're just not including," said Scott, former drummer of The Growlers. "It's an independent festival for independent venues."
In recent years, corporate sellers like Ticketmaster started introducing costly upgrades like the "Golden Circle" to stand close to the stage.
"You pay $1,000 to stand in front of the stage...and it's a bum out for the band that is playing and it's a bum out for all the people at the show," Juila said. "We want everyone in the community to feel like [Happy Sundays] is for them. It's not for rock 'n' rollers...or investors and there's no influencers."
After spending years in their respective touring bands, the Montoyas formed sultry dream-pop outfit Soft Palms, which has, of course, had a spot on Happy Sundays' lineup almost every year.
"We've been kind of the backup band or if someone needs to drop out, we'll fill that spot," Scott said. "This year, we decided to be nice to ourselves and give ourselves the six o'clock [slot] at Bamboo Club's stage on Sunday."
Consistent with the past several years, the Montoyas, along with fellow local artist Jess Giles, have handpicked a lineup of Long Beach bands, local DJs and even friends they've made while playing in other states.
"Zzzahara is playing Saturday at Compound," said Julia, listing off some of the groups she was most excited to book. "We played with [them] in Dallas. That's how we met."
Self Improvement, Fartbarf, Sleeperz, Asi Fui, DJ Little Son and DJ Dennis Owens are among those based in Long Beach. Plus, Hex Code, which is lead by "Long Beach legends," Julia says.
Representing San Pedro is Clown Sounds and, of course, beloved punk rock bulwark Mike Watt and his band The Missingmen.
For the first time, a piece of the festival will be hosted on Fourth Street's Art Theatre, which will host yet another first for the festival: speakers from the aerospace industry.
"Long Beach has a growing aerospace industry and one of the mayor's goals is to wean Long Beach off of oil and onto other stuff like music, entertainment and aerospace," Scott said. "So we decided it might be a good idea to give the local companies a chance to talk about what they're doing, because it's super neat."
While the fest wasn't able to book any local aerospace companies this year, Jeff Megivern, a rocket scientist at NASA, along with spacecraft robotics engineer Bobby Van Ness, will be among those giving presentations at the theater on Saturday from noon to 2 p.m.
Over the next few years, Scott and Julia hope to see Happy Sundays keep setting foot into other neighborhoods across Long Beach. They even have ambitions to bring Happy Sundays to Athens, Greece in the near future as well as other places abroad.
But the Zaferia District, where the Montoyas have lived for years, will always be where the festival is rooted and where it continues to be centered each summer.
"There's a lot of independent music venues here and we really want to see them succeed," Scott said. "This is kind of our way of helping the area."
Over the years, and more so after the pandemic, a slew of small venues across Southern California were bought out by big corporate music promotors like Live Nation and Goldenvoice. But this hasn't happened yet in Long Beach, Scott noted.
"Those guys are still holding strong and we're super stoked for all of them," Scott said. "They pushed through the pandemic and we want to help them survive."
Each year during Happy Sundays fest, the Anaheim corridor, which doesn't usually draw a ton of foot traffic, is filled with people traipsing from one set to another — from Alex's Bar to Bamboo Club to Compound up to Port City and back.
"That's where the scene happens," Julia said, referring to spaces like Alex's Bar. "Any kind of music scene happens in the small, independent venues because they can take a chance on a new act. It's the only place it can thrive.
"So having been independent musicians our entire career, we want to take care of those venues, we want to take care of the bands and we want to take care of the neighborhood."
Happy Sundays kicks off this Saturday and Sunday (Aug. 24, 25) from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. on both days. RSVP for the free festival here.
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