MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — A little more than an hour before the first act takes the stage at the Moon Crush Pink Moon music festival, concert promoter Andy Levine circles up a crew of about 150 for a last-minute pep talk before the gates open. “Hey we had no lines anywhere yesterday.
Woo! Zero,” Levine says before leading a group mantra of “keep on trucking.” The workers then fan out across the 5,000-acre festival grounds, built out on a former golf driving range in this Florida panhandle town. “This is my first Moon Crush and my first time in Miramar and I don’t think I’m leaving,” Nashville singer-songwriter Cassandra Lewis tells the crowd before playing her set.
Levine has created a new kind of vacation music festival here, taking ashore something he honed at sea as the founder of Sixthman , the music cruise promoter. He says the idea is a music fest without the usual long lines and competing acts, and one that gives both artists and fans a more meaningful experience. Concept grew out of the pandemic Levine came up with the concept during the height of the COVID pandemic when his family was spending time on this part of the Florida Gulf coast.
And they weren’t the only ones. “I see all these people coming down and being distanced, but still being together with their group,” Levine says. “And I was like, I bet we could put something together in a safe way.
” So he set out to get people back listening to live music in April 2021, convincing a resort to.