By: Zeb Hargett

‍A Curated Music Vacation

Where to begin? I had so much fun with this story that I had to re-watch Almost Famous to catch the reference to Topeka, Kansas - the inspiration for the parent company that produces Moon Crush Curated Music Vacations. This classic 2000 movie is about a band on the rise, and the story fits like a glove for the journey of Andy Levine, Chief Promise Maker. He created and launched the Moon Crush concert series in Destin, Florida, and hosts it several times a year. It’s the industry of cool!

I met Andy by phone to talk about the origins of Moon Crush before Linda and I headed to the Cowboy Moon 3-day event curated by Lyle Lovett in Miramar Beach. If you are wondering about the reference to Almost Famous, Topeka is the name of Andy’s company, inspired by a scene in the movie. 

Our conversation began with a general assessment of music festivals. Recently, I’ve read that several established festivals in California have been canceled due to poor ticket sales. Other big stadium music events have struggled to fill seats. It seems that not everyone is Taylor Swift (at over $1,900 per after-market ticket for her recent 3-day New Orleans tour). Plus, inflation has taken its toll on ticket pricing as the cost of hosting an event has increased.

The Hangout Festival in Gulf Shores announced that this year’s event has been suspended for a year (the future is still uncertain) to make way for the Sand in My Boots May 16–18, 2025 at The Hangout venue. This Morgan Wallen headliner includes an A-list collection “curated” by Wallen, and it sold out as soon as passes went on sale, in less than 2 hours.  

There is a shift taking place in the music scene, and I asked Andy his thoughts. He is certainly qualified as he has had a behind-the-scenes career in every aspect of the music industry. A native of Nashville, he attended the University of Florida and says he had a gig in a college band called Water Dog at the time. “I played acoustic guitar, not very well, but since I booked the band, they let me play,” he tells me. “I majored in having fun and hustling gigs for bands.”

Soon, he was booking shows for Sister Hazel, an American rock band from Gainesville. He dropped out of college (more on that later) and became their manager for ten years. Along the way, Andy had an idea to create a fantastic experience for the Sister Hazel fans. 

“We did weekly group chats with the fans, which provided good feedback about what they wanted. We decided it would be cool to do a music cruise. In 2001, two weeks before 9/11, we had 400 people on a cruise, and it was a life-changing experience for me.”

That first cruise wasn’t an exclusive charter, so the band had to work around the ship’s schedule. Andy decided to check into chartering the entire ship and found out it would cost $750,000. With backing from friends in Atlanta, Andy chartered the ship, and Sister Hazel reached out to other bands to see if they would join them to fill out the entertainment dance card. 

He marketed the cruise as the Sixth Man Cruise and 1500 people put down a $99 deposit to reserve a spot. The cost to attend was $1000 per person. It was such a huge success that other bands reached out to Andy to participate in music cruises, and the concept remains big in the music business today. After 24 music cruises, he sold the business to Norwegian Cruise Lines.

“I learned everything there. I built relationships with lots of big bands. We were generating $10 million in revenue annually. After we sold, I went back to the University of Florida to finish my degree in business management when I was 35 years old.”

He tells me he was the oldest person in all of his classes, but that his work experiences made learning fun. He took an entrepreneurial course that required writing an essay about starting a business. “I just told my business story from the last 10 years, and my professor saw what we had done and said, ‘I guess I’m going to have to give you an A.”

Then Andy discovered Destin, Florida. He fell in love with the white sandy beaches and beautiful turquoise waters and decided to rent a house there for two months. Then he bought a house and lived between Destin and Nashville full-time. 

Always in tune with the fan experience, Andy decided to launch a new kind of music festival category. “I wanted to create something that would satisfy the hardest-to-please person and do something for the fans. I wanted to provide a level of service that attendees would experience and say “Wow!”

“I considered that most fans know everything about their favorite bands, but do the bands know much about their fans? I wanted to create a fan experience that built a community. Then Covid happened and people wanted a place to go and gather. That was the catalyst I needed. The concept was a beach vacation with a musical bent, in the Destin area.”

Miramar Beach, where Seascape Resort is located, provided the tenets Andy wanted. “A cool place to bring people, easy to get to, and lots of places to stay,” he says. “I began reaching out to artists I knew who were clamoring to get in front of people during the pandemic. It was an easy sell.”

The venue was set up so that people would have their own “cove” with chairs provided, a server, and protection from the pandemic. He installed air-conditioned restrooms providing clean, comfortable breaks, and rental options on site with easy access to come and go from your condo to your cove. “Once things opened back up, guests said, “Please don’t change a thing, we love the pampering the coves provide.” So the coves became a fixture, with chairs provided so there is no lugging camp gear, ice chests, food, or jockeying for position.

As we spoke on the phone, Andy told me the previous Bootleggers Bonfire Moon Crush event featured Luke Combs. It was a sell-out, with people attending from 40 states and 13 countries. “Our goal is to provide a VIP experience for everyone with no upgrades needed. Artists take a lot of pride in connecting with their fans, and the Moon Crush experience does just that. We want to build a sense of community for Moon Crush, where you can make new friends for life.”

One aspect of a Moon Crush experience that makes it easy for music lovers is that they don’t have multiple stages where fans are constantly looking at the music lineup to decide where to go and who to hear next. “People love that,” he says. Always interested in guests’ feedback, Andy often serves attendees at their cove himself, asking for comments about what they would like them to do that would make the experience better. 

As far as the overall trends in the music festival space, he says he is seeing that the artists view these partnerships positively. Smaller venues put them closer to their fans than large venues. “We are all in this together and share in all the  components (expenses and profits) of a Moon Crush concert series.”

So far, Andy and his team have held 12 Moon Crush concert weekends at Seascape with more scheduled. Once he has a headliner on board, they reach out to other band friends to join them. For our Lyle Lovett and the Large Band curated “Cowboy Moon” 3-day concert, other artists included Jason Isbell, Molly Tuttle, Mason Carll, The Mavericks, Little Feat, Nikki Lane, and Paul Thorn.  

“These artists play deep-cut sets, music from their repertoire you may otherwise not hear.  And no two sets are the same. It’s a more intimate connection with the audience. No repeat performances. The fact we have accommodations at the venue makes it an intimate, convenient experience. So far, so good.”

Back to Almost Famous, the scene that captured the essence of Moon Crush and Andy’s imagination was when the band, Stillwater, was touring in Topeka, Kansas. The rock star tells the young Rolling Stone reporter, “You know everything about me, but I don’t know anything about you.” A little later, a group of teenagers pulled up next to the rock star at a traffic light, recognized him, and invited him to come to a party at their friend’s house. “Don’t you want to hang out with some regular people who just want to have a good time? We’re just real Topeka folks.” 

In-Time, In-Tune, and In-Color is the mantra of Moon Crush. “We want to be on time with everything we do, we want to be in tune with the guests, and we want our hospitality to be in color with this beautiful area along the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn’t get any better than this. By day you can enjoy a fantastic beach vacation doing whatever you want. In the evening, you can enjoy some of the greatest music you will ever hear and be pampered like a VIP.”

Thank you, Andy! What’s not to like about a Moon Crush Curated Music Vacation? For more information, go to Topeka.Live to view the upcoming concert schedule.