BottleRock Napa Valley’s slogan is ‘The first taste of summer.’ Day 3 of the festival was proof of that with a high of 27 degrees Celsius and nothing but sunshine for most of the day. Blankets covered just about every piece of grass that was under any bit of shade.

Starting off my coverage for the final day of the festival was Victoria’s very own Jon and Roy at the smallest of the four primary music stages. Before their set, most at the stage were sitting in the shade, but once Jon and Roy got going quite a few ventured closer. I asked Latitude 38 Entertainment‘s Dave Graham how he discovered Jon and Roy and he told me he heard about them through his sister-in-law.

Up next was Alice Merton on the main stage. Her set was scheduled to start at 2pm, but as I approached the main stage at 2:20 the set had just started. Merton proceeded to power through a shortened, yet impressive, set that included her singles ‘Lash Out’ and ‘No Roots.’

A couple hours earlier, former Taylor Swift backup singer Liz Huett opened the day at noon on the mains stage. That time slot was too early for me. I ended up catching her short acoustic ‘JamPad Session’ on a stage in the back corner of the festival grounds.

From there it was on to brief stops to check out a cooking demo wit Giada De Laurentiis and Halsey and performances by Lake Street Dive and Allan Rayman. Australia’s Amy Shark made her Napa debut and was the second international artist of the weekend to declare BottleRock her favourite North American festival to perform at this year. (England’s Oh Wonder made a similar remark on Saturday)

Finally, I briefly checked out The Rivivalists before deciding i needed to get out of the sun, grab some water and get a bite to eat.

While there were a few other artists on my list to potentially check out on Sunday, I made the decision to park myself at the main stage in order to secure a good vantage point for Halsey and Bruno Mars. Halsey intentionally started her set with some less well know songs to gauge how many true fans were in the audience and she was pleasantly surprised by the response.

Bruno Mars‘ set began with a white sheet at the front of the stage while a pre-open showed on the video screens before kicking off with ‘Finesse.’ Mars and his band wore various MLB and NBA jerseys and various pyrotechnics exploded at the rear of the stage at numerous points in the set. The evening concluded with ‘Uptown Funk’

— Adam Lee (Victoria Music Scene)