Photo Gallery: Napa BottleRock Festival Final Preparations In Full Swing

By Al Francis

NAPA, CA -- Just a few blocks from the massive BottleRock Napa Valley music festival on First Street in downtown Napa sits a statue that reads "Napa-Birthplace of the loudspeaker..."

Well, things are going to get pretty loud with over 70 bands blasting all sorts of music from four stages at the Napa Expo Fairgrounds near downtown Napa with 40,000 music, food, wine and beer enthusiast expected each day for the sold out event that some are referring to as the "Coachella of the North" referring to the celebrity and music star studded festival in Indio in Southern California.

Headlining this year's extravaganza is Maroon 5 preceded by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis on Friday night, Tom Petty & The Heatbreakers highlight Saturday night and the Foo Fighters cap the three day festival Sunday night.

In May 102 years ago in 1915 the loudspeaker was invented by Peter Jensen and Edwin Pridham and the Magnavox Corporation in Napa. Ironically, bass speakers bigger then washing machines will line the bottom of stages and strings of speakers will form sound sails hanging from each side of the massive stages set up for this weekend's Festival.

But, something else will be exciting on Saturday-an attempt to break America's record for the largest silent disco using some 5,000 wireless headphones with a epic sound off between OutKast's legend Big Boi and Chicago mashup wizard The White Panda. Imagine 5,000 BottleRock fans dancing and and grooving (that's what older people do) but onlookers will not hear the music-it will be coming over the two wireless channels on headphones. HUSHconcerts is of the Bay Area is spearheading the record breaking attempt along with Silent Storm Sound Systems. Libratone is sponsoring the event Saturday. The silent disco will be going on during the 3-day event with some 30 DJs participating.

Also, coming to a BottleRock stage is cooking and lifestyle legend Martha Stewart following in the footsteps of Snoop Dogg who appeared on the Culinary stage as a chef at a previous year. Also appearing at the Williams Sonoma stage Jose Andres, Masaharu Morimoto, and Ayesha Curry of the Food Network. Who knows maybe her husband Stephen Curry might be in the audience since he has some time off after winning the NBA West Finals a few days ago along with his Golden State Warriors teammates.

Al Francis is a freelance photographer-writer

All images by Al Francis/NapaSonomaPhotos.com