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Thursday, October 8, 2009

Hardly Strictly Blue Grass

Last weekend Jessica came down and we went to San Francisco for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. It was my third year in a row and always a great show.

Jessica didn’t get in till late Friday, so we left Saturday morning. We weren’t expecting it to take over 4 hours to get there, but we were wrong. There was tons of traffic everywhere. Also during Saturday was Love Parade and the Cancer walk. I think after getting across the bridge it took us an hour and a half to get near the park, then we had to park.



So we finally made it to the concert at 4. I knew the Old 97’s were playing, but thought I had missed it. We borrowed someone’s schedule and saw they had ten minutes left in their set, so ran over and saw the last two songs. It wasn’t a lot, but still great. Then we saw Richie Havens which was kind of slow, then wandered over to Gillian Welch which was awesome. We wrapped it up with Robert Earl Keen. He’s been there every year and puts on a great show, on my favorite stage.



Sunday we had much better luck with parking and getting to the show on time. We went to Red Wine, also the third time I’ve seen them and probably my favorite act. They are from Italy, but sing bluegrass like Appalachia. If you ever have a chance, see them! Then was The Chieftains, followed by Galactic. Galactic was my favorite surprise of the weekend. We saw the end of Mavis Staples who can still move a crowd after so many years and stayed for the headliner, Old Crow Medicine Show.





A great time. Then it was the long drive back to Reno, across the Sierras that got a couple inches of snow that evening.

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