Live Oak Music Festival is moving to a new Central Coast location

After three decades of peace, love and dirt, Live Oak Music Festival is moving to a new home.

The popular outdoor music festival, traditionally held Father’s Day weekend near Lake Cachuma in northern Santa Barbara County, will be held at El Chorro Regional Park in San Luis Obispo in June 2019.

Live Oak is temporarily changing dates, as well.

Next year’s three-day event will kick off a few days after Father’s Day, on June 21, according to KCBX president and general manager Frank Lanzone. “The plan is to avoid graduation weekend,” he explained in an email, adding that Live Oak will return to Father’s Day weekend in 2020.

“There are a multitude of reasons for the move,” Lanzone said in a news release.

They include better infrastructure, more moderate summer temperatures, fuller tree coverage and an adequate water supply for dust control.

The San Luis Obispo spot offers another advantage, as well.

“Live Oak Campground in Santa Barbara County is a designated base for firefighters in the region, and we have twice come dangerously close to being locked out of Live Oak Camp due to active fires in the area,” Lanzone said.

Live Oak, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in June, began as a two-day event at Biddle Park in Arroyo Grande.

In 1989, the festival relocated to San Marcos Camp about 5 miles south of Cachuma Lake. (Santa Barbara County later renamed the 40-acre campground in Live Oak’s honor.)

Live Oak Campground has served as the festival’s home ever since.

“It’s such a wonderful and beautiful spot that we wouldn’t want (Live Oak) anywhere else,” Lanzone told The Tribune in 2013.

Live Oak is an annual fundraiser for public radio station KCBX-FM.

Over the past three decades, the festival has raised more than $3 million for the station, which reaches about 40,000 listeners a week in Monterey, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

For more information about Live Oak Music Festival, visit liveoakfest.org.

This story was originally published August 23, 2018 at 5:48 PM.