The yearly tribute to banjo players, fiddlers, and rockers—launched 15 years ago by financier and philanthropist Warren Hellman—filled San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with revelers on Friday, October 2, when indie singer-songwriter Conor Oberst took one of seven stages to play at this year’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. In addition to his solo songs, Oberst played two rambling gems from his band Bright Eyes: “At the Bottom of Everything,” and “We Are Nowhere and It’s Now.” Across the park, Oakland native Michael Franti had audiences on their feet as he and his band Spearhead performed hits including “The Sound of Sunshine” before closing the set with a rousing version of “I’m Alive (Life Sounds Like).”

Saturday, October 3, Boz Scaggs arrived in San Francisco with his band to play old standards and tracks from his new album, A Fool To Care. Over the weekend, acts including T Bone Burnett, Steve Earle & The Dukes, Gillian Welch, Paul Weller, Angel Olsen, Neko Case, and The Stone Foxes, all filled the park with tunes before Indigo Girls and Emmylou Harris (joined by Rodney Crowell) played the closing sets of the festival on Sunday, October 4. Harris and Crowell played “Love Hurts,” as well as “The Traveling Kind,” and “I Ain’t Livin’ Long Like This,” then joined Welch, Steve Earle, Dave Rawlings, and Buddy Miller for an encore acoustic performance of Earle’s “Pilgrim” just as the sun set into the Pacific. That’s how it’s done.

By Elizabeth Varnell

 

Pictured: Conor Oberst performs at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival held in Golden Gate Park.
Photo by Jason Fernschuss

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