After a failed sale of Cali Roots to a big producer, the founder sues, alleging fraud.

The California Roots Music and Arts Festival has come a long way from humble beginnings in 2010. “When it first started it was meant to just be your backyard barbecue type of event,” says founder Jeff Monser, who lived in Santa Cruz at the time. He started first with a clothing line, then live music. “It turned into a festival – a lifestyle, you could say.”

In 2012, its third year, producer Dan Sheehan joined the team and took the festival to another level. It continued to grow from there, regularly drawing big crowds for three or four days around Memorial Day to the Monterey County Fairgrounds. It also draws big musical acts; this year’s lineup from May 23-25 includes Rebelution, T-Pain, Buju Banton (“a big one for us,” Sheehan says) and Atmosphere and more headliner-worthy names in hip-hop, roots and reggae. During the pandemic, Cali Roots offered online music, keeping fans connected.

Along the way, things between co-producers Monser and Sheehan took a turn for the worse. Eventually, they saw an opportunity to sell their successful festival to a big producer.

In 2023, Sheehan was in talks with representatives of entertainment company LiveCo. Discussions priced Cali Roots as high as $13 million.

In April, Sheehan bought out Monser’s 50 percent stake for over $1.6 million, and says he then expected to sell Cali Roots to LiveCo.

But the sale to LiveCo fell through after the 2023 festival lost money, following a post-Covid resurgence in 2022 – a disappointment to Sheehan, as he tells it. “Jeff got his money from us, we were left holding the bag on a festival that lost a whole bunch of money.”

But Monser tells a different story. He thought he’d sold to LiveCo, and didn’t realize it was Sheehan who bought him out; it was only the next year during the 2024 festival that he says he realized that the deal to LiveCo never materialized – and he believes Sheehan never expected it to.

In June 2024, Monser filed a lawsuit against Sheehan (and his wife, Amy Sheehan, and their company Good Vibez Presents) then filed a renewed complaint in January 2025.

Monser, who now lives in the East Bay and runs the Brentwood Emporium, alleges Sheehan never intended to close the sale, and used a fake email address to docu-sign documents on Monser’s behalf. He is seeking at least $1 million in damages and renewed ownership of Cali Roots.

The parties are in settlement talks, with a trial date set for June 8, 2026.