Texas officials are expecting more than 1 million people to visit the state Monday (April 8) for a chance to experience a rare total solar eclipse in the state that will be visible from the Texas border town of Eagle Point all the way to Texarkana.
To mark the event, the state will be home to more than a dozen festivals celebrating in true Texas style: from the Salt Lick BBQ festival honoring the beloved Driftwood brisket and ribs joint in Texas Hill Country to the rugged Texas Traditions camping fest, where attendees must sign a waiver acknowledging the danger posed by “poisonous snakes, reptiles, spiders and insects; diseased or startled animals, dogs, snares and traps; ladders, deer blinds, trucks, jeeps and four-wheelers.”
But the state’s largest celebration will be the Texas Eclipse festival, to be held on a sprawling ranch in Burnet, Tex., 100 miles north of San Antonio. Texas Eclipse is organized by a newly formed alliance of independent promoters including longtime EDM promoter James Estopinal and his recently rebranded Texas concert outfit Disco Presents; technologist, entrepreneur and Texas Eclipse festival founder and “head of alignment” Mitch Morales; and California-based festival organizer, curator and producer Gwen Gruesen from Symbiosis Gathering.
Texas Eclipse is being headlined by U.K. superproducer Paul Oakenfold, American indie dance duo Big Gigantic, veteran dance producer Tycho and Philly dubstep superstar Subtronics. Other performers include jam scene super franchises like String Cheese Incident, Disco Biscuits, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead along with dozens of others, including CloZee, Boogie T, LP Giobbi, Zeds Dead and Bob Moses, who will appear across six stages curated and designed by the festival’s 12 global partners.
“People are drawn to eclipses in part because of the potential to experience something bigger than themselves,” says Gruesen, who is the only one of the three organizers to have witnessed an eclipse in person, having put together more than a half-dozen festivals and experiences from North America to Australia around totality events like the one taking place Monday. She notes that it’s the job of event organizers not to supplement the experience but to create opportunities to highlight the eclipse as a headliner.
To that point, adds Morales, “We’re not programming any content during the totality event. We don’t think we need to augment that experience.”
Music only represents a fraction of the bookings for the camping festival, which also includes hundreds of speakers including funghi expert Paul Stamets, environmentalist Adrian Grenier and more than 20 astronauts and researchers from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Attendees can attend yoga, movement and meditation instruction and experience immersive art from collective Meow Wolf as well as workshops from visionary artist and storyteller Hannah Muse.
Estopinal, a veteran live music promoter who played a key role popularizing raves and live EDM shows beginning in the 1990s, tells Billboard that Texas Eclipse has been one of the most challenging events he’s ever promoted due to its geographic isolation and the sheer size of the site being built.
“This is one I will never forget and I’m excited to pull it off,” Estopinal says. “From the size of the event, to the sheer scale, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen and I can’t wait to see what happens.”
The 2024 eclipse will first be viewable in the coastal Sinaloan city of Mazatlan, Mexico around 11 a.m. CT. In the U.S., it will be visible at Eagle Pass, Tex., starting at 1:30 pm CT and slowly moving Northeast through Texarkana, Ark., before crossing into, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennyslvania, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. The total eclipse will end its U.S. journey in Caribou, Maine, before crossing into New Brunswick, Canada. It will last be viewable on the French islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
