Splash House 2023: Founder said festival a 'crazy idea' a decade ago

Jun 23, 2023

A lot can happen in a decade. But Palm Springs resident Tyler McLean's dance music festival Splash House gets better with age.

“It’s a great feeling to still love what we’re doing and (be) so invested that it continues to thrive,” McLean said. “It doesn’t feel like it’s slowing down, and we haven’t tapped the full potential of it either. It feels like there’s a lot of things we want to do (and) improve on, and the fan base is better than ever.”

The Palm Springs pool party/music festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary this summer, and McLean, its founder, said the event's prominence speaks to the popularity of Palm Springs as a tourist destination over the past decade.

That prominence has allowed Splash House to grow in recent years. In 2022, the event, which takes place at the Renaissance, Margaritaville Resort and Saguaro Palm Springs hotels with After Hours programming at the Palm Springs Air Museum, expanded from two weekends to three and sold 21,000 tickets, which he described as “the biggest expansion" in its history. According to organizers, the 2022 event contributed $6.7 million each weekend to the local economy.

The June edition featured performances by Chromeo, The Knocks, Armand Van Helden and more.

Splash House returns Aug. 11-13 and Aug. 18-20 at the Renaissance, Margaritaville Resort and Saguaro Palm Springs hotels. After Hours programming at the Palm Springs Air Museum during Weekend 1 will feature ODESZA, Phantoms, Maya Jane Coles and QRTR. Chris Lake, Channel Tres and KREAM will perform during Weekend 2.

More:August editions of Splash House EDM music festival to feature ODESZA, Classixx and more

The festival is Palm Springs' largest summer concert and draws thousands of attendees during the slowest and hottest months of the year. Each weekend features prominent names in dance music performing poolside while festivalgoers take a dip, dance in front of the stage areas or watch from their decorated hotel room balconies.

Although Splash House has become a prominent music festival, it didn't seem destined for success when the first edition was proposed in 2013.

“It takes a certain naivety to dive into producing music festivals without any background in them. I learned a lot of hard lessons along the way that first year, but really believed in it,” McLean said.

During the early 2010s, Palm Springs was quiet during the summer. The revitalization project in the downtown area was in the beginning stages, tourism ground to a halt and most local businesses would shut down until the fall. But McLean and his sister Kelly were certain a summer music festival in Palm Springs could work.

“No one felt like there was hope for anyone to come out here when it was 115 degrees," McLean said. "I said ‘We can do that, I think we can not only get young people out here but we can do something that people need the most.’ That’s where the impetus of creating Splash House came from.”

The McLeans were inspired by the city’s history of pool parties and began planning the first Splash House in 2013 while Tyler was senior at University of California, Los Angeles. Three Southern California promotion companies partnered with the McLeans to promote the event: LED, Private Label and Pacific Festival.

“It was a crazy idea,” McLean said. “At that point in time, being a senior in college, I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to pull something like this together. At the end of the day, there was a conviction in the vision of what I saw and felt we could accomplish.”

It was a complicated and unprecedented endeavor – a two-day event during August at the Saguaro, Caliente Tropics and The Curve (now The V) with shuttles running between the three hotels and featuring poolside performances by Viceroy, Neon Indian, and Poolside, among others. A general admission ticket was $119.

Former Palm Springs councilmember Ginny Foat described plans for the first edition as “innovative,” but asked herself “Who’s going to come just to swim in a pool?”

“Obviously, they had a much better insight into what young people were doing than those of us who were on the council at the time who were much older,” Foat said.

By mid-afternoon on the first day, Splash House attracted more than 1,000 attendees across its three venues. More than 3,000 people attended through the weekend, a spokesman told The Desert Sun near the close of the event. Most were from Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego, which planted the seed for success and bigger names on future lineups.

"This is a success," Kelly McLean told The Desert Sun during the event in 2013. "Splash House has the intimacy of a pool party scene. That's what makes people love it."

When Splash House announced its second festival in 2014, there was a new production partner listed on the event poster — Goldenvoice. McLean didn't approach the world-renowned music promoters during the first year and laughed while remembering his first meeting with the company.

"They were like 'Who the hell are you?'" McLean said. "We were born and raised in Palm Springs. We had a vision in our own right, weren't looking for any other partner support and just wanted to do it. It landed and drew attention, including Goldenvoice. From that first meeting on, whether there was an alignment, division and what I thought was potential with this, Goldenvoice saw that along with the need and reason to support a local promoter in Palm Springs to fulfill that vision. It's been an awesome partnership."

The partnership was a win for the McLeans, who were suddenly able to attract bigger names and fill their venues. The second edition expanded to three days and two weekends featuring performances by Moby, Toro Y Moi, A-Trak Chromeo, actor Elijah Wood and more. The following years would feature many of the same acts that perform at Coachella such as ODESZA, Gorgon City, Hot Chip, Justice, Tycho and more.

In its second year, the festival sold out during the pre-sale — before a lineup was announced, which McLean described in 2014 as a "benchmark" for Splash House to achieve so early on. Hotel packages at the host hotels, the Saguaro and Hard Rock Hotel (now Hotel Zoso) also sold out. The third venue was the newly opened Hacienda Cantina & Beach Club, a restaurant and pool that closed in 2015 and is now the The Sonoran Event Center.

In 2016, Splash House began the After Hours programming at the Palm Springs Air Museum with RÜFÜS DU SOL and Claptone. Since then, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, SOFI TUKKER, Purple Disco Machine and more have performed at the museum.

In recent years, the air museum shows have been the festival’s biggest challenge in terms of noise because of the proximity of the Escena neighborhood. In 2021, Splash House began hanging over 70 sound absorption panels inside the museum from an Ireland-based company called Echo Barrier to reduce the noise. It was part of a $50,000 investment to reduce noise complaints averaging 45-50 each year between 2017-2019.

Palm Springs Air Museum Director Fred Bell said Splash House does a "good job" on the planning and execution of the events on the museum property and added the festival helps the hotels and businesses during the summer and attendees return after the festival to go through the museum.

"These types of events are good because people come here and have a good experience," Bell said. "Hopefully as they get older and have families, it pays off down the line, people remember they had a good time there and they come back to enjoy something else as they age. That's not a bad thing for Palm Springs or for the Coachella Valley."

When asked if there's a specific memory from the past decade that stands out, McLean hesitated.

"Each milestone is a specific memory. Our first time growing into three venues, the first time at the Palm Springs Air Museum, or having major artists like Flume. Those are all special moments in their own right," McLean said.

Even though there's more opportunities to expand, McLean said he wants to keep the event "organic" without the need to rush anything.

“We’re not seeking growth for growth’s sake. We want to feel like there’s a need or a moment for us, a void we can fill or moment we can capture. The focus is on producing three great weekends and having as much success as we can with our partner hotels,” McLean said.

Previous reporting by Desert Sun staff was used for this report.

Brian Blueskye covers arts and entertainment for the Desert Sun. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @bblueskye.