Texas Eclipse Festival Offered An Eclectic Diverse Landscape For Transformational Learning… Plus Partying Your Face Off
If there’s one thing Uproxx knows best, it’s the importance of being on the dancefloor at once-in-a-lifetime curated events. As per my own submission in the Spring Travel Hot List, “music is the universal force that connects us all.” And if there was any event this spring season that got the memo, it was Texas Eclipse Festival.
The festival welcomed an astounding 35,000 attendees for its sold-out celestial event in Burnet. Placed within the path of totality, festival founder Mitch Morales and global promoter Disco Donnie executed an event where creativity, music, art, space, and technology converged in one massive celebration. It was essentially the ultimate Burning Man meets Art Basel meets SXSW meets TED Talks destination festival of the year, and possibly even the decade.
Except that…
No professionally curated event can beat Mother Nature.
While social media has run rampant over the past couple of weeks with far-fetched rumors, over-exaggerations, and conspiracies as to why the festival abruptly canceled its final day, if you took the time to look into the detrimental weather forecast you’d (mostly) understand. While the days leading up to the festival and even the first three days of the event boasted beautiful Texan sunshine, Monday night’s forecast was bleak.
Thankfully, Texas Eclipse gave attendees the option to stay onsite for the afternoon or leave at their leisure to witness the solar eclipse before the storm arrived. As far as I could tell “Cancelled!” was much more a way to get people’s attention and have them take the forecast seriously. That said, I decided to get offsite — and I found a secluded area surrounded by wildflowers to fully bask in the solar eclipse’s transformational energy with my partner.
By later that evening, most attendees were offsite, and while it was upsetting for everyone involved to cancel the final day’s programming, the golf ball-sized hail, thunderous lighting strikes, and flooding on the grounds later that evening and early Tuesday morning should be enough to convince the “FYRE FEST II” skeptics that it was the right call.
(For information on pro-rated refunds, click here.)
With that elephant in the room at least partially dealt with, I want to focus on the three days of the festival that did happen. I’ve been to dozens of music festivals around the world and the celestial art concepts, musical programming, and learning experiences offered by Texas Eclipse are certainly deserving of praise. While the weather and perhaps even some of the overall contingency planning is up for debate, from my vantage Texas Eclipse Festival was one of the best events I’ve ever been to.
Here’s what worked:
Stage Conceptualization
One aspect that immediately jumped out at me was the impressive conceptualization of each stage. While I knew that there would be seven stages, Texas Eclipse took it a step further and curated seven different music environments — each soundtracked by artists whose global sounds matched the energy of that particular space. Paul Oakenfold and Desert Hearts flew us through techno soundscapes on the Sky Stage; Big Gigantic and The Disco Biscuits jammed in a league of their own on the Lone Stage Stage; Subtronics and Zeds Dead revealed low-end soundscapes and illuminating dubstep on the Eclipse Stage; Vincent Antone and Equanimous vibrated connective global beats on the Earth Stage; Distinct Motive and Ashez kept us in awe of their visceral bass on the Moon Stage; and Re:birth Festival hosted its global deep techno collab on the Ether Stage.
But it wasn’t just the artists that made these stages work but rather the art design surrounding each environment. Paired with zero sound overlap among the stages, each stage provided a perfect musical oasis to get lost in.
Nova Sky Stories Stunning Drone Show
The night before the eclipse, there was also a spectacular drone show that kept us in awe of the sky. Nova Sky Stories designed and flew three drone shows between the Eclipse and Lone Star Stage and it was a sight to behold. While the use of drones in sky shows is gaining mainstream appeal, Nova Sky Stories exceeded any preconceived expectations, illustrating for viewers a celestial story full of intergalactic happenings. Flying thousands of drones to mimic an eclipse occurring, spaceships shooting off into space, and spinning planets is truly an art unto itself — one that Texas Eclipse elevated both literally and metaphorically.
Transformational Learning
Aside from the music, Texas Eclipse was home to inspiring conversations and innovative learning. While Reveille Peak Ranch lit up with infectious beats at night, the property hosted some exceptional thought leaders and experts from around the world during the day time, including Paul Stamets, Allyson and Alex Grey, Dr. Andrew Weil, astronauts Brendan Hall and Nicole Stott, BIOTA Institute Director and Chief Scientist Dr. Bruce Damer, international yoga and meditation teacher Hannah Muse, to name a few.
These workshops and inspiring open conversations not only offered a fresh lens on current topics surrounding plant medicine, AI, space technology, and mindful movement, but also cool, shaded areas to retreat to during the day. There was even a Kendama workshop that brought dozens of amateur and skilled players together for a mid-day meetup on the dusty grounds. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, kendama is the newest “flow toy” in the festival community, although it has been around for centuries in Japan. I’ve never seen so many people (including myself) walking around with a kendama to play and practice with at a festival.
With so much happening at all hours, I was fortunate enough to listen in on Andrew Weil’s speech on how eclipses affect consciousness.
“Eclipses make people do and say weird things,” Weil said. “The government doesn’t want you to look up during an eclipse. Eclipses can be threatening to anyone in power because it’s out of the ordinary and makes people question their own consciousness and reality. There are some countries and cultures that bar their windows to prevent their citizens from observing the sky during an eclipse because of this very reason. It can also provoke incredible shifts of thinking and action for those who witness one for days, weeks, and months after.”
Inspired Artwork
When picking out a property to host Texas Eclipse, founder Mitch Morales wanted to ensure it was in the path of totality while also offering enough space to foster a psychedelic playground.
“I wanted to make sure that the location was perfect for this type of event,” Morales said. “[Reveille Peak Ranch] is an incredible property. It spans over 1,300 acres, 60 miles of hiking trails, and elevated hilltops for optimal viewing of the eclipse.”
What’s impressive about this feat is that only 200 acres were dedicated to the campgrounds, leaving 1,100 acres for the seven sound “environments” and additional art programming. Almost every nook and cranny of the festival grounds boasted some sort of art installation, immersive experience, or renegade stage. From Meow Wolf’s “Gone Fishing” activation, Gregg Fleishman’s Sky Portal X sculpture, the Multiversal Dome that featured the artistic work of VJ Android Jones and innovative teams Chimera.art and Microdose VR, to the various glow-in-the-dark and LED art installations lining the walking paths to the stages and within the vending areas, Texas Eclipse filled up Reveille Peak Ranch with effervescent and psychedelic eye candy.
Even synesthetic artist Sarah Kraning — who was supposed to live paint during the totality of the eclipse on Monday — found the beauty in shaping her art to the ebb and flow of the festival’s abrupt cancelation on Monday morning and found solace within the quietness of Texas Hill Country.
“We sourced a private location on Monday morning, a family friend’s ranch in Florence, TX just 20 minutes away from the festival grounds,” she told me later about her painting session. “I did not know what to expect…leading up to totality. Wildlife was really loud and the spot was full of bird calls. When it became totality, it became quiet pretty suddenly and then all that was left was crickets chirping. My painting actually illustrates a timeline of painting the sounds 30 minutes before totality and 15 minutes after totality. During totality, the painting doesn’t have a lot of color due to the lack of sound that was experienced and observed during totality. Right after totality, there was an eruption of sound as the birds and other animals saw the sun again, so it was very colorful for me right away. I didn’t expect it to be so intense.”
Fans can snag one of the only 1,000 high-quality prints of Kraning’s eclipse painting by making a donation of $125 or more to Re:wild. With a global network of more than 500 partners in 86 countries, Re:wild is driving the conservation of 450 million acres of wild places, protecting thousands of species, and equipping our Earth’s Guardians to be effective stewards of our shared home. To donate and receive a print, click here.
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While Texas Eclipse may not have been perfect, mostly due to Mother Nature’s spoiler role, the festival offered a global reunion for curious learners, dancefloor gurus, and wisdom sharers to one of the world’s only locations to witness this celestial phenomena in totality. It was truly special to witness — even with the hiccups.