American song

A week has passed, but the psychic horror of last week’s massacre at the Route 91 country music festival in Las Vegas, at which 58 attendees were slaughtered and over 500 were wounded, just won’t quit, will it? I’ve read a lot about it, but nothing that made me feel a single bit better. And then the situation it was made all the more horrible – if such a thing is possible – by the news that the shooter had booked rooms looking down on other festivals this summer, including Lollapalooza. 

In light of that knowledge, I thought briefly about not going to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the free, three day, festival in Golden Gate Park that happens during fleet week every October to warm the hearts of us San Franciscans…for about one second. And then I rejected the thought. 

This year’s version of Hardly Strictly began a mere five days after Route 91. And certainly, with Trump as President, several wars in the offing, and the Blue Angels annual buzzing overhead, going to a festival to see Cheap Trick and and so on did not feel exactly right. But then…to not go to the concert would also have really sucked.  Not only would it be cowing to terrorism, but it would be very much against the entire reason for the Festival’s existence, which, according to venture capitalist Warren Hellman, the festival’s original moving force and its ultimate bankroller, is “about thanking America.” 

This may not seem like a great time to ‘thank’ America. But it wasn’t in 2001, either, when Hellman launched the festival. That first iteration was in October of 2001 – less than four weeks after 9/11, and that fact is key to what makes Hardly Strictly Bluegrass a site of intense meaning even now – meaning that, like all the best musical moments, may even help us to transcend our troubles. 

Simply put, the Festival re-imagines America and American history.  By re-defining the enormous range of music it showcases as “hardly” strictly bluegrass, Hellman’s festival allows concert goers to connect to a vision of America as a warm, beneficent and inspirational global force. 

Clearly, in light of recent events, providing a sonic balm to wounded American pride is more important now than ever. When I interviewed him for my PhD. dissertation on rock, crowds and power, in 2009, Hellman said: 

 “(Watching the festival) you stand up there and you think…how do I put this without sounding stupid or maudlin or both? – this is the GOOD side of America. This music, it makes you feel good that this is so central to the United States. Whether it’s bluegrass or roots music or old time music coming out of the backwoods of other parts of the States, or black music coming from Africa, only restated, or repotted in the United States…(listening to this music is) as close to being patriotic as I can imagine being.” 

Hellman’s words still ring especially truly today, when reasons to be patriotic are so desperately needed, if only to keep us sane. But I don’t know. Can a festival be utopian when we live in an actual dystopia? Apparently, it can, for despite the dark wood we, like Dante, have found ourselves in at this juncture, this week’s iteration of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass still shone with the same kind of starry-eyed belief in live music as a space for spiritual healing that Warren Hellman was so attached to; that he was so eager for it to be. 

 

In the middle of the journey of my life I found myself in a dark wood.

Because admission is entirely free, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass’s mandate entirely precludes having any kind of restrictions on attendance – no tickets, no gates, no searches, no prohibitions -- although of course the organizers were careful to make gestures towards increased safety measures in the press. 

In practice, this meant that the emcee of Friday afternoon’s Banjo stage told concertgoers, in case of emergency, to “run to the beach.” He paused, and gestured vaguely towards the Great Highway. “It’s that way.”'

 

ocean beach

And at that I had to laugh. I know that park better than most, and the idea of all 500,000 concert goers scampering downhill through the eucalyptus woods, like some kind of mad real life players in “The Most Dangerous Game” or Grand Theft Auto was almost charming in its absurdity; it practically made me want to do it. So in the end, even if we looked up into the trees sometimes, it was more out of curiosity than fear, because the festival has changed very little over the years. It is still held the first weekend of October. The weather during it is still spectacular. And the Blue Angels still buzz the stages – all six of which were still hosting over 90 acts. 

In short, it is the best free festival you’ll ever go to. Over the course of the three day weekend, bands and artists from five continents performed across the park, bumping up against one another in ways that were both challenging and rewarding, mixing folk, blues, and world beat up in some kind of cosmic ipod shuffle in the sky. At one point on Sunday, I heard Courtney Barnett, Bob Mould, and Cheap Trick perform within an hour of one another. On Friday I was within hearing distance of the Bo-kays, a soul super-group featuring Don Bryant and Percy Wiggins from Memphis, Tennessee, Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 from Nigeria, and First Aid Kit, a band from Sweden. 

Just prior to that set, the English singer Billy Bragg had played the Banjo Stage with an act that embodied every single value embedded in Hardly Strictly’s original manifesto. As the keeper of Woody Guthrie’s archive and a longtime political activist whose songs are pointedly leftwing, he seemed self-charged with keeping the atmosphere tied to the ideology of the 1960s. “I was pleased to hear the world socialism used in your last election,” Bragg opined at one point, after mentioning Jeremy Corbyn. “You know what socialism would look like? If anyone asks you? Tell them it would look like a free concert in a park, a concert open to everyone, with acts of every kind…it would look exactly like this.” 

Bragg went on to sing Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changing,” with a few pointed lyrical changes, including swipes at 45 and the addition of the Bob Roberts-inspired word ‘…back,” as well as a finale of his own number “There Is Power In A Union” to furious applause. 
  His set was great, and totally in keeping with Hardly Strictly’s raison d’etre, but the sight of him always makes me a little nervous. Indeed, last summer I found myself in the EasyJet boarding lounge at Gatwick seated alongside him and I carefully got up and switched my seat. We were going to the same place – the KISMIF conference in Porto, Portugal – and I love his music, so you’d think I’d have been tempted to say ‘hi’ or something, but no; I was too intimidated. It had been twenty-five years since we’d last spoken, but that time had not gone well. That time, he roared at me so meanly that I cried, all because I had dared to say something vague about the Social Democrats. 

The incredible awfulness of this conversation – easily the low point in my entire career as a rock critic, because I loved and admired Billy Bragg at the time, so being berated by him felt far worse than, like, the time someone in Ratt asked me to show him my tits -- came flooding back to me both at Gatwick last summer, and again as he took the stage at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. I can put it behind me now, but only from very safe distance of two hundred yards. It even seems sort of sad and poignant now, because as Billy himself remarked, his songs seem to be more pertinent than they were when he wrote them, as if (he added, laughing ruefully), somehow the protest songs of the 1960s and 1970s hadn’t succeeded in effecting lasting change. 

I felt like that remark showed that Billy Bragg has changed since the time he flattened me so badly, and I’m not surprised since everything else has changed so much as well. Though the festival was as beautiful as always, the festivities were punctuated with gorgeous tributes to Tom Petty – and one, by Bob Mould, to Grant Hart, his former band mate in Husker Du – not to mention the underlying knowledge that we are, in fact, living through the worst of times and we are probably never going back. That being the case, one can only give thanks to those who have struggled to maintain the integrity of this festival...and who keep on keepin on.