Last weekend I visited Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where the "Hardly Strictly Bluegrass" Festival was going on. It's a big collection of bluegrass and country music stars (Ricky Skaggs, Earl Scruggs, Patty Griffin, The Del McCoury Band, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, and many others) that gets together once a year to put on a series of "free" performances in September in San Francisco's biggest city park. I say "free", because actually, a local area bluegrass fan and billionaire, Investment banker Warren Hellman, sponsors the whole thing. And what a grand party it is! Despite the fact that the music is not all that blue-grassy (looking at the artist list above will tell you that much), fans from all over the area (and lots of non-fans as well) converge on the park to enjoy music, companionship, food, beverages, and herbal cigarettes of all kinds. Actually I expected more of the herbs. I was only there for about 3 hrs on Sunday. I heard some band called "Drive By Truckers", booming from mounted speakers, and later, listened to the end of "Del McCoury Band" (much better, it is actual bluegrass music). Finally, Emmylou Harris came on stage to give the send-off. There must have been over 100,000 fans there listening to her (in the back, you couldn't hear much). Overall, it was a good time, and made me feel lucky to be in San Francisco. Especially nice, was riding the MUNI train home afterwards, and not dealing with traffic. San Francisco is one of the few U.S. cities that has an actual functioning tram railway system. I love this investment of local tax dollars.
