Spring-2023

Delivering Good Vibez Monterey Music Producer s Host Feel-Good Festivals With Hear t B Y M I CHA E L CHAT F I E LD B y one definition, the word “festival” derives from an Old French adjective: “suitable for a feast…magnificent, joyful, happy.” The events produced by Good Vibez Presents, the Monterey-based company founded by Dan and Amy Sheehan, most certainly embody that definition. Although Good Vibez puts on festivals and concerts at a wide range of venues in the western U.S., their flagship is the California Roots Music and Arts Festival, a four-day celebration—known simply as “Cali Roots”—of reggae and related genres held at the Monterey County Fair and Event Center. And that’s no accident. “The Fairgrounds is the birthplace of the American music festival,” Dan says. He’s correct. The Pattee Arena has been the site of the Monterey Jazz Festival since 1958 and hosted the seminal 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. In 2022, the Sheehans and their dedicated staff added Rebels & Renegades to their portfolio, a celebration of country and Americana music, also at the Fairgrounds. Together and separately, the Sheehans have been working in the concert industry for more than two decades. Both are avid fans of the music they present and of festivals in general and, as a result, have pio- neered a novel and thoughtful approach to how these events are pre- sented and curated. Dan grew up to a soundtrack of reggae in Hawaii. “Hawaii is one of the only U.S. markets where reggae is played on com- mercial radio. Reggae was part of the heartbeat of the islands.” He came to the Bay Area in the 1990s for college and attended Garberville’s Reggae on the River. “I fell in love with festivals and that kind of gathering of people and realized that this is the industry I want- ed to be in.” Amy, meanwhile, cut her production teeth working with Renegade 98 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 3