As if San Francisco wasn’t already electric enough, it now has a major roots music festival worthy of comparison to Merlefest, Telluride, or any other. For six years running, a very wealthy investment banker named Warren Hellman has single-handedly financed Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park. What began with a single day and a two stages has grown into a five-stage miracle of a party that attracted a record crowd, again. Police put it at about a half million people. Of course size can be a liability, and this year’s perfect weather drew so many people that at times the best stages felt a little oppressive, but folks treated each other well, in high (read that as you will) San Francisco style. The most remarkable thing is this deal is free to the public. There’s not even a gate or a fence to pass through. Wander into the park around 35th Avenue and bang, you’re walking up to the first stage.
In our case, that put us face to face, albeit at a distance, with the Nashville Bluegrass Band. No matter that I’d just seen them do a full set at IBMA, this is one of the greatest bands on earth and well worth another 45 minutes of sitting in the grass. Alan O’Bryant is a fantastic banjo player, singer and front man. Mike Compton’s shambly, rhythmic mandolin has no equal for casual grace. Pat Enright’s warm, Jimmie Rodgers-tinged voice sounded better outdoors than in Nashville’s airplane hangar of a Convention Center anyway.
And what an outdoors. Golden Gate Park is a forest primeval, a rugged meandering of massive woods, gnarled trunks, pine cones and peat moss. Somehow, and with a mystifying lightness of touch (leave ecology to the Californians), they placed the Porch Stage on a grassy knoll next to a park road and the Star Stage in a sort of fairway sized clearing next to a massive athletic field. The Banjo Stage was the largest, featuring day-closing sets from Steve Earle and the Bluegrass Dukes on Saturday and Emmylou Harris and friends on Sunday. There were probably 30,000 – 40,000 people there each afternoon, in liquid late-day sunshine.
The Rooster Stage was the most intimate, in a deep hollow with steep walls, covered with gargantuan rhododendron on one side and redwood forest on the other. Folks stood hundreds deep in the little valley to hear Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis do a rare duet set, harmonizing on a batch of homemade songs as good as any couple since the Bryants. Their coupled take on “Angry All The Time” was especially moving, and it was awesome to hear Kelly back on stage after so many years focused on mothering their four kids.
Just one set later, Todd Snider wove a spell with words, even more than music. His hilarious set up to his new song “If Tomorrow Never Comes” involves plagiarism, Garth Brooks, and a song about a beer run. I know of no more entertaining and smart a songwriter in his generation, and he’s from right here in little old East Nashville.
Actually half of Nashville was there. Jerry Douglas, Del McCoury, Guy Clark, Tim O’Brien, Allison Brown, and excellent sidemen like Casey Driessen, Bryan Sutton and Hans Holzen. It was a lot like Telluride in that respect, actually. Anyway, the greatest of all Nashvillians to take the stage was Earl Scruggs at 3:05 on Saturday afternoon. Son Gary more or less led the band, with Rob Ickes on dobro and (yes!) Hoot Hester on fiddle. Mr. Scruggs played his booty off and made me proud to be an American. Eighty-two years old. Doesn’t seem possible.
Highlights from the “hardly” bluegrass side of the festival came from the UK in the persons of Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson. Elvis played several sets over the three-day weekend, but the circle in my program was around Sunday’s duo show with T-Bone Burnett, billed as The Coward Brothers. The former punk rocker turned worldly pop genius (Costello) and his former producer T-Bone, father of the O Brother boom, hadn’t played in this old-time pairing in twenty years, or so they said. With backing pickers like Dennis Crouch and Mike Compton and a guest appearance by Emmylou “Coward” Harris, the set revisited country classics and even John Phillips’ “San Francisco,” which went over like free beer.
Richard Thompson came on next and did with one guitar what it usually takes a whole band to do. I’ve long said he’s my favorite package of singer/songwriter and guitarist, and he didn’t let me down, singing a chill-inducing “Vincent Black Lightning” and the witty “Valerie” among others.
There were many more acts worthy of comment, but I’ll spare everyone. We wrapped our two brilliant days with a portion of a late Sunday set featuring the Waybacks (a new favorite band of mine) with special guest Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. Take away the cell phones and it could have been 1972. The nation was at war and this crowd was, quite reasonably, angry about it. There was even a dishonest, beleaguered Republican president in the White House. Thus there was no shortage of political sentiment from the stage (and with folks like Steve Earle and Billy Bragg on the lineup, who could have expected anything different). Being pissed off as I am, I had no problem being part of the choir being preached to. It all would have made Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity nauseous and upset. Wish they’d been there.
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