GridLife Festival set to rev up, electrify South Haven

Share the story

The Friday-Sunday festival at Gingerman Raceway featuring sets by Levity, Sullivan King, Rossy, Nightmre and more also boasts racing and car drifting. The lowdown at Local Spins.

Lighting Up South Haven: GridLife returns this weekend to Gingerman Raceway. (Photo/Shea Flynn)

SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS, VIDEO, PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

Support our coverage of
West Michigan's music scene

A few miles outside South Haven, in a patch of sprawling countryside, lies Gingerman Raceway.

Built in 1995, the 2.14-mile paved track has been home to numerous races, drivers safety courses and events.

Since 2014, it’s also been home to the unique GridLife Festival, which combines “sound and speed.”

Pumping Up Crowds: Electronic music acts will do that throughout the weekend. (Photo/Shea Flynn)

A melding of music, racing and car culture, the festival takes place at Gingerman Raceway Friday-Sunday (June 6-8). Weekend tickets are available for $169; day passes for Friday and Saturday are $99v while Sunday passes are $49, available online here.

“It’s kind of multiple events in one. There really isn’t another music festival like it because it has this whole car culture component that’s like smashed into it and kind of integrated authentically throughout the weekend,” says organizer Chris Stewart.

“If you’re coming to it because you really like cars, it’s also unique in that space because there aren’t any other car culture events that have a music festival that is produced at the level that we do it.”

Stewart added that it feels “like a music festival or like any type of festival environment except during the day you have a whole lot of really awesome racing and drifting and all this other stuff on the racetrack. The music performances are a piece of it, the cars are a piece of it, but like with any really good festival experience, the community is actually the product and that connection between individuals.”

Featured electronic music-leaning acts include Levity, Sullivan King, Rossy, Nightmre, Super Future, Tarrow and Okay Jake. Tarrow, who creates expansive and immersive soundscapes that pulse through the speakers, mentioned an eagerness to “share new songs and sound designs” at the festival.

Drifting: Yup, that’s what it is. (Photo/Shea Flynn)

Racing events at the festival include drifting, track battles, Rush Series, a high-performance racing series and GLTC, which is a wheel-to-wheel sprint racing series that focuses on single-class sprint racing. (Car drifting, by the way, is a driving technique whereby drivers intentionally cause their vehicles to slide sideways through turns.)

“I’m excited about all of the races,” Stewart Says. “In regards to racing, you know, that’s kind of the beating heart of what we do. We produce the races, so we write the rules and we’re one of the most robust grassroots series. So a lot of the drivers in the racing that you’ll see are just regular people. We’re not necessarily a professional series so that makes it really cool.”

Other attractions include the festival’s GridLife Arcade, which will act as a social hub, complete with bar, lounge, music and silent disco, while the concourse will celebrate vehicles, and feature an invite-only collection of racing cars and tuner cars.

This year, the festival has slightly shifted its main footprint from the Turn Two Zone of the raceway to Festival Hill, which festival organizers say will accommodate a larger stage and give the festival an open atmosphere.

Check out a full roster of Michigan music festivals: MICHIGAN MUSIC FESTIVALS 2025: THE LIST