About the Festival

That number is the whole philosophy. It's enough people to feel like something, and few enough that you can find your friends, hear each other between sets, and park without a shuttle. We hit it in 2026 and sold out. We're holding it in 2027 rather than raising it.

Everything else follows from that. Open lawn so you choose your own spot. Bring your own picnic basket. Five hours instead of two, so there's time to eat, move around and actually talk. The music is the reason you come. The comfort is why people come back.

Derrick Pipkin has spent more than thirty-five years putting on live music. He ran multi-decade concert runs at the Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood, and for years he ran PIPS On La Brea, a Los Angeles jazz room that was a regular home for working musicians.

Soul Springs came out of moving those ideas east into the desert. Same ear for a room, the same belief that how an audience is treated is part of the show.

The lineup is booked by hand, out of relationships built over three and a half decades rather than off a sheet of available acts. That's why the bill reads the way it does.

He still runs the festival himself: the booking, the ticketing, the vendors, the day-of. For better or worse, every decision on this page was made by one person who will be standing at the gate on February 6.