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Bluegrass festival taps roots sounds
By Andrew Gilbert
TIMES CORRESPONDENT
California's largest hoedown returns to Golden Gate Park's Speedway Meadow when the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival transforms the park's western meadow into a huge jamboree.

Launched in 2001 by savvy San Francisco investor Warren Hellman as a one-day "strictly" bluegrass event, the festival has expanded temporally and stylistically, adding the qualifier "hardly" as it has come to embrace a wide swath of rootsy artists steeped in blues, bluegrass, rock and various forms of American old-time music.

Now in its sixth season, the free festival has quickly become a signature Bay Area event that draws on the region's deep reservoir of roots-music talent, while also presenting big-name national acts. It's as if someone rolled two months of Freight & Salvage's calendar into a single weekend, and then threw some rock stars into the mix for good measure.

"The first year we called it 'Strictly Bluegrass' because we had Emmylou Harris, and trying to push her into just playing bluegrass is impossible," said Hellman, a student of old-time banjo. "It's funny; she's been more bluegrassy every year since then. I've been surprised and pleased by the breadth of bluegrass itself; and as we've added the other stuff, the Jimmie Dale Gilmores and Robert Earl Keens, the different kinds of music that give me pleasure has expanded a lot."

The festival opens Friday with a light schedule on one stage. While open to the general public, the morning program is geared for grade-school students as part of the Daniel Pearl Foundation World Music Days. The afternoon kicks off with Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, who along with Joe Ely helped pioneer the progressive country music sound in the mid-'70s with their West Texas-based band the Flatlanders.

For many years Gilmore was better-known as a songwriter than a performer, but since releasing his first solo album in 1988 on the Oakland-based HighTone label, he's become a powerful interpreter of his original material.

Elvis Costello headlines on Friday with the Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods, a band he's borrowing from Bill Kirchen, the guitarist who supplied the hot twang and cool vocals to Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen's 1972 hit "Hot Rod Lincoln." Rumor has it that they will be joined by special guests Emmylou Harris and Gillian Welch.

With five simultaneous stages, Saturday and Oct. 8 offer far too many artists to list. Saturday's artists include the Stairwell Sisters; the Devil Makes Three; T Bone Burnett; Jerry Douglas and Best Kept Secret; Allison Brown; Steve Earle and the Bluegrass Dukes; and Earl Scruggs, a true bluegrass patriarch.

Sunday's lineup features Tim O'Brien's Cornbread Nation; Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder; the North Mississippi Allstars; Alejandro Escovedo; Ramblin' Jack Elliott; and the Waybacks with special guest Bob Weir. It's a program geared to appeal to a broad array of Bay Area music fans.

In many ways, Hellman's timing couldn't have been better. Ever since the 2000 release of the Coen brothers' popular film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" which spawned a hit soundtrack, the visibility of bluegrass and old-time music has increased exponentially. If attendance at the festival is any indication, the music's popularity is still growing.

Last year, the festival attracted an audience of more than a quarter of a million to the park, with so many people arriving on Sunday that Hellman said he hoped that attendance would be more evenly distributed this year.

The event has become so big that it's created a small economy of its own, with dozens of artists using Hardly Strictly Bluegrass as an anchor for West Coast tours. A one-day bluegrass festival has emerged in Santa Cruz to take advantage of the flood of talent coming into the area. Rather than seeing the other gigs as competition, Hellman welcomes the ripple effect.

"I don't have grand objectives, that I'm going to revolutionize modern society and bring world peace," said Hellman, who wouldn't put an exact figure on his festival underwriting, but indicated that it was costing him well into six figures. "If I had loftier goals, it would continue the growth and popularity of traditional music, which has made a huge comeback.

"Secondly, it's pretty great to throw a big party. Last year we had 300,000 people and only four arrests, which were all for drunkenness. Having two days where people just enjoy each other and what they're listening to with no problems, that's an accomplishment."

FESTIVAL PREVIEW

• WHAT: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival

• WHEN: Friday, 10:30 a.m.-7 p.m.; Saturday through Oct. 8, 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

• WHERE: Speedway Meadow, Golden Gate Park, S.F.

• HOW MUCH: Free

• CONTACT: www.hardlystrictlybluegrass.com