Red hot finale for BottleRock Napa Valley

Fans of the Red Hot Chili Peppers - and there were thousands of them at BottleRock Napa Valley Sunday - should be relieved to know Anthony Kiedis appears recovered from a raging bout of stomach flu.

Alas, his new ‘reverse mullet’ refuses to die.

Sporting the new combed-forward hairstyle, Kiedis took the main stage with Flea and other members of the band for a bare-knuckled run through their vast catalogue. The sundown set closed out BottleRock, which in its fourth year appears to have found the formula for appealing to mass consumer taste.

In the VIP section near the stage where the Red Hots jumped and wailed, Jenny Goff of Sonoma danced with her daughter Charlotte, the pair singing along to “Otherside,” “Dani California” and other hits, proof of the band’s popularity across generations.

The pair, who are BottleRock regulars, said the venue felt more crowded than ever this year.

“But we’ll be back,” Jenny said.

At the conclusion of the show, BottleRock’s producers announced that the event will return over Memorial Day Weekend next year.

The festival appears to have hit upon a winning formula, with tasty grub and wines and a ramped-up VIP experience.

“If you’re a 9-year-old or a 65-year-old, or anyone in between, there’s someone in the lineup that’s going to move you,” said Dave Graham of Latitude 38, the festival’s producer.

Rudy Zuidema spread out on the lawn with his wife, Amy, and two of the couple’s four children Sunday afternoon while waiting for alternative rockers X Ambassadors to take the stage.

“My wife was asking, ‘Who are these guys?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, but they’re on both of our kids’ playlists and I like it every time it comes on,’” the Napa man said.

The pungent smell of marijuana smoke suddenly wafted across the area. The couple chalked it up to a teachable moment.

“We’re here to explain it to them,” Amy said.

BottleRock exploded on the local music scene in 2013.

But despite a lineup for the ages that year, the event imploded in massive recrimination, including bankruptcy for the festival’s founders. Latitude 38, consisting of three high school buddies, swooped in to right the ship.

Sunday, they expressed confidence the festival is on the right course.

“It’s the right mix of music for this kind of vibe we want to create,” said Justin Dragoo of Latitude 38. “It’s fun, it’s happy, it’s full of energy. That’s really played out the way we planned.”

Organizers said attendance for the three-day event would top 120,000 and shatter previous records. Getting around the Napa Valley Expo on Sunday was a challenge at times, with people crowding walkways and taking up every available inch of space in front of the main stage for performances by the Lumineers and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Several residents who live around the venue, however, said they felt traffic and crowd control had improved this year.

“They’ve streamlined things, as far as traffic goes and getting things shut down and clearing people out,” said Mo Elgazzar, a Napa teacher who lives in a rented home near the expo.

Napa police reported no major problems related to the festival as of late Sunday.

The fire marshal closed a sports bar on the festival grounds Saturday night during the third quarter of the Golden State Warriors’ comeback win in Game 6 of the NBA Western Conference Finals because crowd capacity had exceeded safety standards.

Speaking prior to his performance Sunday, singer-songwriter Langhorne Slim (aka Sean Scolnick) expressed wonderment at being able to bring his brand of music to such a large venue in Napa.

Slim, who lived in Oakville in Napa County for a time, referenced the hit-and-miss attempts over the years to make live performances part of the wine music scene.

As an artist, Slim said, he had to find his inspiration elsewhere.

“I wasn’t in the wine industry, except for drinking all the wine I could. Which is why I left,” he said from beneath a brown Stetson hat.

But the singer also showed his fondness for the beauty of Wine Country, posting sunset photos to Twitter taken from the house he rented in Glen Ellen through Airbnb for the weekend.

Flea also expressed his gratitude from the main stage, telling the enthusiastic crowd that it was “great to be playing for people who listen and care.”

You can reach Staff Writer Derek Moore at 521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemo?crat.com. On Twitter ?@deadlinederek.