Float Fest is an outdoor camping music festival that will take place at Cool River Ranch in Martindale, Texas, on July 21st and 22nd. The festival is set apart by the fact that it also serves as a tubing event, inviting 20,000 music fans daily to take the opportunity to float down the San Marcos River during its two days.
For its fifth year in 2018, Float Fest boasts a truly impressive artist lineup as well, tapping Tame Impala, Bassnectar, Snoop Dog, Modest Mouse, Run The Jewels, Lil Wayne, Glass Animals, Toadies, Cashmere Cat, White Denim, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Com Truise, The Suffers, and more for performances.
With Tame Impala heading the lineup, Float Fest marks the third announced appearance the massively popular Australian psych-rock act will be making this year in addition to headlining at Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival and California’s Desert Daze. The group last performed in the United States when the band headlined the Panorama Music Festival in New York City last July. The Australian rockers’ set marked only their second U.S. date of the year, which made sense considering they planned to take a bit of a hiatus in 2017.
This year, Float Fest has expanded its capacity after an embattled back-and-forth with Guadalupe County officials. While the festival originally requested a permit for 30,000 fans daily, the two parties eventually settled on 20,000 after locals complained about the influx of traffic to the area as well as waste and noise left by attendees. In response, Float Fest founder Marcus Federman and his attorney filed a 150-page safety and traffic plan detailing how the large-scale festival plans to deal with parking control, waste management, and the distribution of 120 police officers. The plan also shared past efforts to ensure the San Marcos River isn’t unduly affected—over the past three years, the festival has spent $10,000 on mesh bags for floaters to use as trash bags in addition to crews cleaning the river during and after the event.
As Federman shared with Community Impact, a local news source, “I hope the commissioners would agree and acknowledge that it’s been a different permitting process this year. … What we put in here will be followed to a T, and if it’s not, it’ll be with everybody’s knowledge and acceptance.”
