All My Friends 2015: A California Music Beach Festival

In order to understand All My Friends Music Festival (AMF), held in Rosarito, Baja California, you must first realize that there is no Baja California nor California, USA. There is but one California. This attitude is reflected in the numerous event production companies focusing on trans-border events, such as Chad Deal’s Caliblablabla and Josemar Gonzalez’s Gnar. The Moustache Bar in downtown Tijuana might soon pick up where Iguana’s left off twenty years ago hosting regular US music acts. After realizing this, one can see that AMF is just as much a California festival as it is a Mexican one.

#AMF2015

Presented by NRMAL, this year AMF went to great strides to make it easy for people to get there from Los Angeles and San Diego with Algo Bien. AMF-goers had the option of riding to the festival with Algo Bien, which had group packages for rides and hotels starting as low as $125 per person from San Diego (1 hour) and $175 from LA (3 hours).

NRMAL Presents AMF

Castillos del Mar Hotel in Rosarito, Baja California is located just 5 minutes from the downtown area of Rosarito and the BAJA Fox studios, where Titanic was filmed back before Leo’s dad bod. The hotel, in Spanish style architecture, houses beautiful facilities adorned by artisanal furnishings. For awhile above the festival, Once Upon A Time in Rosarito’s GoPro cruised above the festival to capture some of the festivities:

Rosarito, where AMF takes place, is a small municipality in Northern Baja California, Mexico, with Tijuana on its northern border. Once a part of Tijuana, Rosarito features beautiful weather along a breathtaking coastline of sandy beaches and cliffs.

AMF has received past press from outlets like Pitchfork. In 2012, when AMF took place in Tijuana, Erez Avissar put together a cool photo journal of the event. According to the pictures by Avissar, it is clear to see that AMF has grown, featuring this year and last (at least) a beautiful beach stage located on one of California’s beautiful sandy beaches.

Photo by https://instagram.com/abacaxi3/

There were some random activities held at AMF alongside the tunes. On Saturday afternoon, Surfviviendo, a website focused on the latin surfer community, celebrated International Surfing Day at AMF on a beach that actually gets some pretty big swells. There were surfers in the water and activities on the sand, which featured demos, surfing accessories and lessons for beginners. Also featured at AMF was Vinyasa Flow Yoga who held a free yoga session on Saturday.

The first night of All My Friends featured Sunio Teklife Party, featuring Ejival, Benfika, DJ Nombre Appellido and Teklife: DJ Spin & Taso

Photo looking at one of the stages by https://instagram.com/abacaxi3/

The Sunio Teklife Party was hosted by the Sunio Beach Club, which is built into a cliff literally on the beach, with a beautiful outdoor dancefloor. The evening started with a sunset set by DJ Set by Ejival, a music journalist and founder of Statis Discos. Benfika and DJ Nombre Apellido both come from Tijuana’s electronic underground.

In the late morning on Saturday, my girlfriend Kimberly and I made our way to Hotel Castillos in Rosarito. Entry was 500 pesos ($35 USD). The festival had clearly grown a bit from last year. There was a wide assortment of food, wine, cheese, artisan crafts and so on to choose from, including La Brownie Girl, who has a location in Playas de Tijuana, Quesos Don Carlos and Mecanica Cervecera, where the guys from Cerveceria 1889 were also hanging out.

Mecanica Cervecera at #AMF2015

The beers at AMF were by Mecanica Cervecera, and they were tasty. I personally liked the Hoppy Pale Ale, which was like an IPA, and Kimberly enjoyed the Session Pilsner and the Black IPA.

Quesos Don Carlos

Helping the Mecanica Cervecera guys was the Cerveceria 1889 team. When I told Aldo Rodriguez of 1889 (the year Tijuana was founded) that I wanted to quote him on BajaSocal, he told us:

“Every Beer tells a story. By that I mean every beer has its own story. I believe that since a beer is crafted it has a story about the people who made it and when people drink it they are making a story with the people they drink it with.”

Saturday’s lineup

A California Sunset:

Sunset at AMF2015. Photo by https://instagram.com/abacaxi3/

Throughout Saturday, bands like Shiro Schwarz, an audiovisual production and performance duo, took the AMF crowd through, what they call, “an extrasensory voyage through space into a mysterious funky universe” on their Twitter. One thing that is noticeable at AMF is there is far less marijuana than at California festivals North of the Border.

Throughout the day some bands which I enjoyed most included Protistas, an indie rock group from Santiago, Chile with punk influences, which played a set at Tijuana’s hip hangout spot Moustache bar on the Sunday after their AMF set. As well, Los Angeles’ King Tuff played its brand of Led Zeppelin style rock n’ roll fused with southern California punk rock sounds. By this time, AMF had hit its stride. King Tuff releases music on the revered Sub Pop label.

Photo by https://instagram.com/abacaxi3/

The headlining set by Biarritz, France band La Femme, a so-called “psych-punk rock band” perhaps best described as “world music,” ended the night with a tight set by a well-toured group. The temperature at set-time was probably about 60–65 degrees fahrenheit. The band mostly played songs from their album Psycho Tropical Berlin. For me, a half-gringo (three-quarters?) in Mexico, seeing a French band with musical inspirations from Germany (think Kraftwerk and Grauzone) and the tropics, All My Friends was the perfect venue.

Sunday’s lineup of DJs and electronica.

Sunday was a much more relaxed day than Saturday, as most people were probably a bit hungover from the late night dance party the night before. Numerous house and electronic DJs and groups took to the stage at the Sunio Beach Club playing avant-garde house tracks. There was some weird stuff played and I am definitely going to look more into the DJ’s.

AMF is definitely one of the better festival settings (if not the best) I’ve ever been to, and the festival offerings there grow each year. AMF has some things no other festival in southern California does: The wind blowing off an emerald Pacific Ocean, your toes in the sand, $3 amazing craft beers, 50 cent veggie tacos right around the corner, and of course a worldly air about it with bands from all over the Americas.

All My Basura

Writing and some photos by:

Editing & some photos by: