Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

[thatguy]

Free concerts in Golden Gate Park, Oct. 2-4.

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The line up (so far):

Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder
Lyle Lovett & His Large Band
Austin Lounge Lizards
Roger Knox presents the Aboriginal Country & Western Songbook
Steve Martin with the Steep Canyon Rangers
Galactic
Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands
The Knitters
Doc Watson & David Holt
Abalone Dots
The Tim O'Brien Band
The Duhks
Barefoot Nellies
Eliza Gilkyson
Fireants
Emmylou Harris
Boz Scaggs and the Blue Velvet Band
Natalie MacMaster
Marianne Faithfull
Poor Man's Whiskey
Malo
Marty Stuart
Old Crow Medicine Show
World Party
Jessica Lea Mayfield
Hayes Carll
The Claire Lynch Band
Nick Lowe
Gillian Welch
The Flatlanders featuring: Joe Ely
Jimmie Dale Gilmore & Butch Hancock
Robert Earl Keen
Songwriter Circle w/ Tom Morello
Dar Williams
Steve Earle & Allison Moorer
Little Feat
Mavis Staples
John Prine
Neko Case
Marley's Ghost w/ special guest Cowboy Jack Clement
Amadou & Mariam
Red Wine
Moonalice
ODC/Dance
Allen Toussaint
Billy Bragg
Dr. Dog
Mike Farris & the Roseland Rhythm Revue
Steve Earle & the Bluegrass Dukes
Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys
Old 97's
Great American Taxi
The Del McCoury Band
Todd Snider
The Chieftains
Dry Branch Fire Squad
Kimmie Rhodes
Pamela Rose with Wild Women (and other friends)
Kevin Welch
Kieran Kane & Fats Kaplin
The Brothers Comatose
Darrell Scott Band
Okkervil River
Billy Joe Shaver
Buddy Miller
Marshall Crenshaw
Richie Havens
Earl Scruggs
Jorma Kaukonen
Booker T. & the Drive-By Truckers
Elvis Perkins in Dearland
Reckless Kelly
MC Hammer
Hazel Dickens
The Wronglers
Rodney Crowell
Guy Clark & Verlon Thompson
Robyn Hitchcock
Dr. Magpie
Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women
Elizabeth Cook
Rosie Flores with Jon Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts
Aimee Mann

--tg

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

All on one day? Your head would explode.
Put me in for the Chieftains.

[thatguy]

My daughter and her boyfriend came down from Arcata to see the Fri, Sat, and Sun shows. So my son and I went up on Sat. morning to meet them. The weather was beautiful, but got seriously windy and cold in the late afternoon. We caught a few Jorma songs, but we couldn't see the stage and it wasn't my son's cup of tea, so we went to get lunch. Then we tried to connect with my daughter at the stage with Steve Martin and his band and got stuck in a crowd of moving people. There's a song by They Might Be Giants called "Women and Men" that has the line:

Soon the stream of people gets wider
Then it becomes a river
River becomes an ocean carrying ships that bear
Women and men...

Anyway, it felt like a slow moving river of people and we could hardly get out of it. We could hear Steve Martin, but we couldn't see the stage. In fact, when we got farther away, and higher, we could hear much better.

Then we went to the stage for Nick Lowe. Saw a few songs from his set (again, not my son's cup of tea). Then we went back the previous stage to see Gillian Welch and tried to hook up with my daughter. It was packed, but we pushed all the way up to the front, but we were on the wrong side of the stage from them, and security was a little uptight, so we hung out to the side of the stage where there was a little elbow room. We could hear great, and at that side of the stage I could see the back of Emmylou Harris' head about 20' from where I was standing. She came up and sang a couple songs with them, as did Old Crow Medicine Show. The wind was crazy, you could hear it blowing in the mics, but they did great. Played a couple songs from O Brother, but mostly stuff from Gillian's last album "Soul Journey" which is about 5 years old now. They did say that David Rawlings has recorded his first solo album and it should be out in about a month. Great news. He's an awesome guitar player.

After that, we hoofed it back to the car, got out of Dodge, and had food at a Taqueria in Daly City, dropped my daughter and her BF off at their friends', and made the trek back to Santa Cruz.

All in all, a nice day...

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

DSO was at the 'Mo on Sat, and I thought about making it up for that, but my kid had a gymnastics tournament in Petaluma that day and by the time I got home, I wasn't up to heading back to SF, even for DSO. I figured I'd have to get around the Love Festival and HSB traffic, and it just didn't seem worth it.

[thatguy]

Golden Gate Park...Free...

The lineup is has not been posted yet, but here's their teaser:

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MORE ARTISTS & DAILY SCHEDULE TO BE ANNOUNCED!
Jerry Jeff Walker, Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, Wendy Bird, Moonalice, Elvis Costello and the Sugarcanes, Richard Thompson, the subdudes, Rosanne Cash, Nick Lowe, Emmylou Harris, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Joan Baez, Evie Ladin, Exene, MarchFourth Marching Band, 7 Walkers featuring Bill Kreutzmann & Papa Mali with special guest George Porter Jr. , Shelby Lynne & Allison Moorer, Bonnie Prince Billy & the Cairo Gang, Jerry Douglas with Omar Hakim & Viktor Krauss, Jackie Greene, David Grisman Quintet, Conor Oberst, Nathaniel Rateliff, The Ebony Hillbillies, The Del McCoury Band, The Dukes of September Rhythm Revue featuring Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald & Boz Scaggs, Jonathan Richman, Guy Clark and Verlon Thompson, Kelly Willis, Earl Scruggs, The Felice Brothers, Railroad Earth, Jenny & Johnny featuring Jenny Lewis & Johnathan Rice, Songwriter Circle with Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen, John Doe & Justin Townes Earle, Mondo Cane, The Waybacks with Sarah Dugas of the Duhks, Peter Himmelman, The Band of Heathens, Carolina Chocolate Drops, The Magnolia Sisters, Hot Tuna Electric, Kinky Friedman, Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys, Dry Branch Fire Squad, Randy Newman, Yonder Mountain String Band, Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys, Martin Sexton, Fountains of Wayne, Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women, James McMurtry, Skip Gorman, Anderson Family Bluegrass, The Wronglers, Patti Smith, Keller & the Keels, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Indigo Girls, Carolyn Wonderland, MC Hammer, Hazel Dickens, Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs, Doc Watson & David Holt, Lucero, Kate Gaffney, Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane & Fats Kaplin, Blue Highway, Heidi Clare & AtaGallop, Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band, The Avett Brothers, Justin Townes Earle, Buddy Miller, Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion, Basia Bulat, Citigrass, Umphrey's McGee, Steve Earle and the Dukes, Robert Earl Keen, Poor Man's Whiskey, Patty Griffin, The Flatlanders featuring Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore & Butch Hancock, T Bone Burnett featuring the Punch Brothers and special guests Karen Elson and the Secret Sisters, David Olney & Sergio Webb, Jon Langford & Skull Orchard, Gillian Welch

--tg

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

MC Hammer is going to play!!! I thought we were supposed to just refer to him as Hammer?

[Drunk Monk]

A visiting Shaolin scholar is coming to town this weekend to speak at Cal, so I'm escorting him over the weekend. Strangely, I've never been to HSB. There's always been a schedule conflict.

RM is totally overbooked this weekend. They are struggling to get vols for all the shows they've committed to covering. So here's what you can do. Go by the RM tent while at HSB. Tell them you just took a puddle of liquid acid, along with about two dozen people who have never dosed before. Tell them that you're fine, but you lost the others in the crowd. Then tell them that I helped you in the past and if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could RM go get me to help? It'll be funny. Plus it'll do wonders for my street cred. Come on, help a brother out.

[thatguy]

So I was able to get out to HSB on Sat. Like last year, I parked down by the windmills. I did take the tour past the Tea Garden and Steinhart, but it was all parked up everywhere, so I just said fuck it and went all the way down Lincoln to the beach and parked at the first open spaces (by the motorhomes and cars that people sleep in...)

Even though I packed my bike, I figured getting around the festival would mean locking it up somewhere and I just didn't feel comfortable locking up a Cannondale and leaving it unattended.

I've had a skateboard in my car forever, so I dug it out, grabbed my Coleman camp chair, and skated in to the park. It was a much longer haul than I expected, but once I got to the festival area I was really glad to be on wheels. With traffic and parking, I got there late and missed Exene. I really love the Broken Flowers soundtrack, so I wanted to see Holly Golightly. She was on the stage at the far end of the park, so I barged over there, found a comfortable spot by the sound board, popped out my chair and set up camp. I had a couple beers, water bottles, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in my backpack, so I was ready to veg.

I didn't catch the name of the guy on stage, but he wore chaps and an old smushed cowboy hat and he had to introduce each song by telling the history behind it. His voice was going (which he admitted several times) so it kept cracking, but it wasn't bad.

The fog was rolling in, but luckily it wasn't as windy as last year. I met a few of my neighbors and scored a Lagunitas in exchange for loaning out my opener.

Holly Golightly and bandmate came out and did their set. It was ok. I didn't recognize anything, but it was enjoyable. I was impressed by the bandmate playing guitar and drums at the same time.

The problem with HSB is that all the stages are going simultaneously, so there tend to be conflicts. Gillian Welch started her set on the next stage over while Holly was still in the middle of hers. I knew that Gillain's stage would be crowded, so when Holly finished, I went over to watch the end of Gillian's set from the road. Next up I had to choose between Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen, and Jackie Greene. Steve Earle followed Gillian on the same stage, so I picked that, walked down as people were leaving after Gillian, and picked a spot near the front. As time passed, more and more people crowded in and blocked my view. Steve Earle was enjoyable, but it was starting to get dark and cold and I figured I should start back to the car. I was going down MLK and about half way, I had some misstep, ended up doing the splits and got some great road rash on my knee. I picked up the board and started out again and when I got to the car checked out the damage. It was a bloody mess, but not that painful. I cleaned up as best I could with water and Purell (which stings like a mutha). Then I headed home.

The next morning I played 2 hours of soccer, so I guess I'm alright.

--tg
PS: Didn't bother to look for Rock Med, it was too crowded. I did see some guy in the Gillian audience with a RM jacket, but he was pretty far away...