Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
By Paul Lyons
Late to the local reporting scene about weekend events I must still however give a full report on the amazing 2008 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The festival takes place the first weekend in October with over thirty bands playing on five stages. The entire festival is free and your only real challenge is figuring out where the stages are and negotiating a nice spot to set up your chair or blanket.
Friday night showcased the Jerry Douglas band, and then Allison Krauss, Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin fame and T-Bone Burnett all on the same stage. The musicianship in Jerry Douglass Band was superb and they even played a Joe Zawinul song “The Remark You Made” that was fantastic and surely unusual for the genre. But then the festival is just plain unusual. The entire event, a bluegrass festival, was opened by MC Hammer. Talk about imagination!
Saturday I had a few hours to steal away and I caught Laurie Lewis & Friends a bit of Waco Brothers and Guy Clark & Verlon Thompson. All good stuff especially Clark and Thompson who sounded good even from about a hundred yards away. They sung epic tales of life’s ups and downs. Hard to hear all the words a times but one got the general gist.
Sunday I made it back one more time for the Elvis Costello show. My friend Tom and I sat on a packed lawn by the “Star Stage” and from afar heard Elvis belt out some good tunes. Elvis’s delivery was sometimes a bit off but the energy and a commitment was always genuine.
Billionaire banjo player and investment banker Warren Hellmann bankrolls the whole festival. While word has it that he has planned for the festival to go on even years after his death one can only wonder in these times how that will play out.
Upon leaving the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, and vowing to make more of an effort to spend more time at it next year, we ran into a band playing on the street that simply knocked my socks off – Fruition. Fruition is a quartet whose playing and singing have such spirit and fire they captivate like live acts should. See a short video of Fruition or hear stuff on the Fruition MySpace site. Their music takes you back and forward at the same time.
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