The good folks who put on Hardly Strictly Bluegrass created an epic conundrum of good musical fortune by booking the Wood Brothers, the Infamous Stringdusters and Emmylou Harris in simultaneous, festival-closing slots. This, of course, created high anxiety – and the need for late-festival, on-the-fly maneuvering – as all three acts are high on any music lover’s gotta-hear list.
It had all begun some 55 hours earlier when Chuck Prophet, Ismay, Steve Earle and Kelly Willis – joined by Willis’ Wonder Women of Country bandmates Melissa Carper and Brennen Leigh – kicked off the 2024 edition of HSB in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park by bringing the spirit of Lucinda Williams to the Banjo stage as the Songs from a Gravel Road Band. It was a guitar-pull-style opener – a nod to a woman whose influence imbues many of 70 performers who graced the festival’s six stages over three days of free music inside one of America’s most-beautiful city parks.
Oct. 4 was a warm-up day with a 1 p.m. start that climaxed with Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway’s high-energy set of originals and covers— including the first of two festival performances of hometown heroes Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” (Moonalice played it the next day at Towers of Gold)—and prefaced their return the following day to back Earle with the bluegrass show he always wanted to bring to HSB.
“This turned out exactly the way I wanted it to,” Earle said of playing with Golden Highway in a slightly under-rehearsed, completely exhilarating, 75-minute gig of the variety that only a festival can effectively host.
Here is a day-by-day recap of a magnificent weekend in Golden Gate during a record-breaking heat wave that found festivalgoers in search of shade and leaving large swaths of sun-bathed grass empty.
Day One – Oct. 4
Following the Gravel Road set, Lindsay Lou took over the Arrow stage with her three-piece, all-female Queen of Time Band and proceeded to knock out 45 minutes of jazz-inflected folk, rock and weepy country music that had the smallish but enthusiastic crowd focusing tightly on the singer in her white shades with yellow flowers wrapped around her microphone stand. A nearby red-shouldered hawk screamed along with the audience as Lou performed such tracks as “Nothing Else Matters” and turned band introductions into a lovely-and-profane song of its own as she literally sung the praises and names of her accompanists.
The aforementioned Wonder Women provided a harmony-rich soundtrack as this festivalgoer rambled to the Swan stage where the Milk Carton Kids sung like Simon & Garfunkel and bantered like comedians as the two-guitars-and-two-voices duo of Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan joked about “slowing it down” between songs and, when a banjo briefly entered the mix, remarked: “It’s very hard to write a song on banjo without killing a person in the song.”
Tuttle & Golden Highway were next on the Banjo and Tuttle delighted in performing on the main stage of a festival she once attended as a youngster with her parents. When she doffed her wig to sing “Crooked Tree” and proudly show off the effects her alopecia, Tuttle sung about the beauty of being different in a city where being different – and finding acceptance – is the norm.
Sounding like the antithetical Milk Carton Kids, Sleater-Kinney provided the pre-show music for Cat Power Sings Dylan ’66 as their kinetic Swan-stage set flooded the field in front of Towers of Gold. Power could’ve used some of that volume as she was scarcely audible on “She Belongs to Me,” rendering the singer, her guitarist and harmonica player soundless specters. Oddly enough, Power’s set sounded much better at the Swan, where “It’s All over Now, Baby Blue” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” were as clear as bells; a phenomenon that would serve thousands well two days later when Patti Smith played to the festival’s largest audience by far.
Day Two – Oct. 5
It was strictly bluegrass to kick off Day Two as HSB perennials the Dry Branch Fire Squad offered stories about festival founder Warren Hellman and songs of the Civil War and death and Jesus alongside instrumentals on the Banjo stage. There were no amps during the day-opening, 11 a.m. set that found the quartet playing and singing into shared mics and telling slow-to-develop tales with good humor.
As the warm morning turned to a sweltering afternoon, Jobi Riccio and her rhythm section created a stripped-back, Hejira-era Joni Mitchell/Harris hybrid of sound for the enthusiastic Rooster-farians, as the emcee called those gathered at Rooster stage for a lunchtime showcase. Playing during Buddy Miller’s daylong Cavalcade of Stars, Riccio, who spent this spring opening for the Wood Brothers, surely earned some new fans.
Hours later, former Carolina Chocolate Drop Dom Flemons continued the Cavalcade and played bones, harmonica, guitar and quills on such songs as Elizabeth Cotten’s “Freight Train,” on guitar, and “Brown Skinned Girl” (harmonica only) to demonstrate what being an American Songster is all about. And though Flemons was the rare solo act to hold a festival-sized crowd rapt in near silence, he also received a hand from the Red Dirt Boys – whose morning set had been a spicy treat – featuring original country and western songs from Flemons’ Traveling Wildfire and an old-timey rendition of “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad,” as he danced with rubbery legs of joy. A couple of false starts added to the spontaneous nature of this surprise mini-set.
Showcasing their just-released How to Make Mistakes LP, Fruition entertained the Swan stage shade-seekers as the quintet with multiple lead singers and multi-instrumentalist members took a a Bandian approach to 21st-century Americana with faux-blood harmonies buttressing ballads like “Still on My Mind.” Well-attended and just-as-well-received, the performance must’ve made the band – which not so long ago used to busk outside Hardly Strictly – feel as good as it made the audience feel.
Moonalice followed immediately on the adjacent Towers of Gold, with Phil Lesh and Friends alumni drummer John Molo, keyboardist Jason Crosby and guitarist Barry Sless, Chambers Brothers singer Lester Chambers, former Jefferson Starship bassist Pete Sears, and others, with a hugely entertaining and soulful set that included the front-line trio of the T sisters leading such covers as Marvin Gaye’s “You’re all I Need to Get By,” the Grateful Dead’s “Bird Song,” Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “(Turn on Your) Lovelight” and the aforementioned Airplane number.
As the sun began to sink, Mavis Staples emerged to lift spirits with an invigorating Banjo stage show that included “I’m Just Another Soldier,” “Handwriting on the Wall” “Respect Yourself” and “Freedom Highway” as she declared the healing power of music and her gruff, joyful laugh.
“We come to bring you some joy, some happiness, some inspiration,” Staples said.
And she did just that.
Earle, Tuttle and Golden Highway wrapped the middle day with a loose gig that included a surprise appearance from Harris on a heart-breaking rendition of “Goodbye;” a rickety version of Little Feat’s “Willin’;” and a general looseness that reinforced the power of music-making sans net and the beauty of musicians willing to take chances in a festival setting.
Day Three – Oct. 6
Miko Marks began the day at the Rooster stage with some Sunday soul music before 93-year-old Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, accompanied by mandolin and bass, came out yodeling on Jimmie Rodgers’ “Waiting for a Rain.” He then dug into Woody Guthrie’s “The 1913 Massacre,” got a bit uptempo on “The Cuckoo” and nodded to the Hardly Strictly atmosphere with Jesse Fuller’s “San Francisco Bay Blues.” Between numbers, Elliott regaled the squeezed-into-shady-areas fans with tales from 70 years of music making before Earle emerged and talked over quiet picking for more than 10 minutes of Elliott’s 40-minute allotment.
So … off to the Banjo stage where Tony Trischka’s Earl Jam was finishing “Brown’s Ferry Blues” and launching into “Lady Madonna” – strictly bluegrass style. Brittany Haas, who would appear later with Aoife O’Donovan and Hawktail, then joined the band for double fiddling with Shad Cobb on “You Got to Die,” and put the blues in the grass.
Peter Case, Carsie Blanton, Teddy Thompson and Carper then hit the Rooster for HSB’s second guitar guitar pull, this one featuring songs of truth and reinforcing the power of folk music.
But there was also blues at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass because: “If you don’t like the blues, you probably don’t like your mama.”
So said Bobby Rush on the Banjo, where the 91-year-old frontman and his big band got down and dirty in flashy sequins as they spanned 70 years of Rush originals and covers like “Hoochie Coochie Man.” Rush blew harp with the lungs of a young man, danced around the stage with the body of a young man and rapped like the OG he is, proving yet again the magic of music – even when you’re singing of your woman leaving you “for the damn garbage man.”
After a public soundcheck that included the unplayed Crooked Still chestnut “The Golden Vanity,” O’Donovan, Hawktail and the San Francisco Girls Chorus spanned O’Donovan’s solo discography rearranged to fit Hawktail’s jazz-classical-bluegrass musical tapestry. The Chorus voices—one-dozen plus—soared across Golden Gate as O’Donovan led them through songs about the battle to pass the 19th Amendment before concluding with “Oh Mama.”
It was a stirring performance that provided some hope in a hopeless-feeling era and earned a standing ovation from the Banjo stage listeners.
Down the road at Towers of Gold, Smith played to a crowd so stupendously large, people were turned away to listen to her cover Bob Dylan’s “Man in the Long Black Coat” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” read poems and play such anthems as “People Have the Power” at the adjacent Swan stage, also rammed, where the Wood Brothers were to play next and Smith’s set benefitted from stellar sound piped in from next door.
Even from behind the Towers, Smith’s performance was deeply affecting – a penetrating mix of soft-edged emotion and hard-edged aggression.
“Use your voice,” she said as both sides of the stage exploded in applause when she finished her gig.
Now the conundrum, splitting up three must-see acts into the final hour of HSB. And so it transpired that we caught the Wood Brothers (Hardly) playing such songs as “Little Bit Broken” and “Pilgram;” the Rooster-perched Infamous Stringdusters (Strictly) offering numbers like “Gravity” and “Rise Sun;” and Harris’ (not Bluegrass) homestretch featuring a rollicking rendition of “Luxury Liner” and a weepy “Together Again.”
We felt pretty good smart our choices until learning later that Joan Baez had made a surprise appearance on the Banjo stage early in Harris’ set. But such is the lot of a festivalgoer—unless you’re at LOCKN’, you’re gonna miss some not-to-be-missed moments.
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