The annual West End Celebration offers local musicians a chance to break out from the underground.

Put your dancing shoes on and get ready to groove – Sand City is preparing to host the 22nd West End Celebration, the biggest annual music festival by locals, for locals on the Monterey Peninsula.

When it comes to music venues for local artists, the West End Celebration is where it’s at – boasting three music stages featuring national, regional and local talent, as well as 150 artists and other vendors spanning six blocks between Contra Costa, Redwood, Ortiz and Holly streets. Over two days in late August the streets of this small city are packed and vibrant – and a great place to see new local bands.

Many of those bands will play the Hear & Now stage, set up by local recording artist Kevin Proctor. Three years ago Proctor, who has worked with local projects such as THE BASSMENT, SEA.LVL and the Dead Cassettes, asked to set up a stage for local, independent artists contributing to the ecosystem of music in Monterey.

“I’m very inclusive – if people come to me and want to be involved, I try to make it happen,” says Steve Vagnini, event coordinator for the West End Celebration and head of SLV Management, describing how the Hear & Now Stage came to be.

Vagnini is in charge of booking medium and larger touring acts that appear on the Independent Stage. This year, some of those acts include Shanna Morrison, daughter of rock legend Van Morrison, and Carl Verheyan, guitarist of London-based progressive rock pop group Supertramp.

Vagnini is also the director of the Monterey chapter of Guitars Not Guns, a nonprofit organization that provides music lessons to young people as an alternative to violence. The Guitars Not Guns group will also have a slot on the Independent Stage.

There’s also the Mechanic Bank’s Redwood Stage, where Oakland-based Forrest Day will headline on Saturday and local reggae group One A-Chord on Sunday. Bluegrass string band Sunny Side of the Mountain and Santa Cruz rocker Anthony Arya (who, at age 15, was a contestant on Season 15 of NBC’s The Voice) join.

After 40 years of booking music, Vagnini really gets what playing a festival like West End can mean for a band. “[When local artists] get a chance to play at the West End, they get to play their original stuff,” he says. He notes that many bands around town typically play covers, especially when gigs are mostly at wineries or breweries.

One problem many local musicians face in Monterey County is the lack of appropriately sized music venues. For artists who want to expand their fan base and tour, just playing house parties is not going to cut it.

“We need a venue with not necessarily a big stage – 250-350 seats – like the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz,” Vagnini says.

In the absence of that kind of venue, West End can pick up some of the slack – albeit just once a year. Nearly all of the music projects that you’ll hear at the Hear & Now stage are locals who have singles and EPs out on Spotify and Apple Music, including projects like electro-vocal artist Gabi Bravo, Latin indie-pop cantante Flaco el Jandro, and newcomer on the Monterey singer-songwriter scene, Sabelle (McKayla Maddox).

Gabi Bravo has collaborated with Flaco el Jandro and performed independently, pairing dreamy vocals with new-age pop electronic beats at Monterey house shows and local open mics. After getting her start in early 2023, Sabelle has begun playing her original acoustic folk rock at wineries and other opener gigs for touring artists, such as Los Angeles-based Kaycie Satterfield. And Salinas-born Flaco el Jandro (Alejandro Gomez) has been coming into vogue on his own on Spotify and Apple Music, boasting a hit single “Mi Encendedor,” among other releases with over 250,000 plays.

Playing the Hear & Now stage is a chance for these artists, and more, to break out of the “if you know, you know” scene, and play above ground for a larger audience.

Over half of the music scene at the West End Celebration will feature local artists – further identifying Sand City as a hip artist community in Monterey. And many of the other musicians hired to play West End have ties to the area in some way.

For example, Bassist Dave Morotta had played with Carl Verheyan, and happens to be Monterey-based jazz singer’s Miranda Perl’s uncle, adding to the community feel. And that, according to Vagnini, is what the West End Celebration is all about.

That, and bringing people together for a free community event. “If everyone had to pay five bucks, sure you could hire a bigger act. But it takes away from what the purpose of this event is: To create goodwill and a community event that’s free for the public,” Vagini says.

WEST END CELEBRATION 11am-5:30pm Saturday, Aug. 26 and noon-5pm Sunday, Aug. 27. Sand City. Free. For more information and to see the complete lineup, visit westendcelebration.com