The 12th edition of Warren Hellman’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival will take place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park from October 5 – 7. This will be the first installment of the fest since Hellman’s passing. Event organizers have just announced the first batch of confirmed artists and they include Rubblebucket, Ralph Stanley, The Del McCoury Band and Jerry Douglas.
Here’s the full list of confirmed HSB ’12 artists…
Rubblebucket / Ralph Stanley / Dirty 3 / Red Baraat / The Head & the Heart / The Del McCoury Band / Jerry Douglas / Steve Earle & the Dukes (& Duchesses) / Tim O’Brien Party of 7 / Giant Giant Sand
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is a free event and no tickets are needed.
While one festival, Outside Lands, kicks off tomorrow in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park [read DaveO's preview], we turn our attention to another event held in the historic park – Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. The 11th installment of HSB, a free festival founded and funded by investment banker Warren Hellman, features a diverse lineup filled with talented musicians that will invade Speedway Meadow from Sept. 30 – Oct. 2.
HT faves M. Ward, Dark Star Orchestra, The Felice Brothers, Hot Buttered Rum, Greensky Bluegrass and Gillian Welch are just a few of the dozens of bands expected to perform at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2011. Head to the festival’s website for the full lineup.
List Time: 15 Fictional Music Buffs We Wish Would Make Us A Mix CD
Finally, the ever-volatile Van Halen situation made us wonder if the band would actually play the Soundwave Revolution Festival they were tabbed to headline in Australia next month and alas word came down yesterday that the five-show run has been cancelled. But this time it’s not Eddie and David Lee Roth’s relationship that’s to blame. According to RollingStone.com, lackluster ticket sales and the lack of a second headliner led to the touring festival’s demise. While the band is said to be working on a new studio album, there’s no solid information about future tour dates or plans to count on.
While the Beastie Boys are hard at work prepping for a summer filled with festival appearances, they have announced the details of their new album. Hot Sauce Committee Part 1 will drop on September 15th and contains 17 tracks. Among the tracks will be Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win featuring Santigold, Too Many Rappers featuring Nas and a song titled Crazy Ass Shit. The B Boys performed Too Many Rappers with Nas at Bonnaroo.
[Photo by Dave Vann]
Also of note, the initial lineup announcement for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival has been released with Little Feat, Booker T. and the DBTs, Dr. Dog and Gillian Welch among those performing at the free festie in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on October 2 – 4. Visit the festival’s website for the full list of performers and more details.
Finally, our friend videographer Jake Krolick has been prolific as fuck these days in recording and editing videos from a wide range of artists and uploading them to YouTube. Besides fantastic montages of Marco Benevento, The Brakes and Vieux Farka Toure, he released our personal favorite of the latest batch – a clip of The Dirty Projectors rockin’ Remade Horizon and Stillness Is The Move live in Philadelphia. Check it…
The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival finally confirmed for us there’s an East Coast bias. Last weekend’s three-day event drew anywhere between 300,000 and 500,000 people to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, trotting out some heavy hitters like Jeff Tweedy, Bela Fleck, John Prine and Emmylou Harris. Yet HSB still fell off the radar of just about everybody we know. Blogbuzz? Not even.
But we’ve been hearing nothing but positive reviews since the 52-hour, 72-band orgiastic aural fiesta ended. And our man on the scene said this year’s seventh annual edition may have been the best. We couldn’t persuade him to jot down some notes before heading off to the upcoming Echo Project in Atlanta, so we’ll point you to some professional reviews and hit you with the best photo gallery of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass you’ll find on the world wide superweb.
The San Francisco Chronicle penned a decent review of the festival from start to finish, but as BeyondChron astutely points out, the Chronicle’s reporter failed to even mention Jeff Tweedy’s memorable 100-minute acoustic set on Friday night. The San Jose Mercury News provided three separate days of fantastic coverage, which you can check out here, here and here. That should be good enough to satiate you on the words…now let’s bring you the pictures.
We’re fortunate to bring you a full gallery from one of the best photographers working the scene. Dave Vann is a man among boys, and his work follows after the jump. He’ll be shooting for us down at Echo, so stay tuned this weekend for some live updates from the field. Onto the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass shots…
