Typically occurring in San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Park, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival will be switching gears to provide its attendees a virtual experience in 2020. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 virus, measures were taken to keep the fans, artists, and staff safe, as well as adhering to California’s statewide mandate against large public gatherings, while still producing a high caliber musical and community-focused event. One thing that has never changed, is the custom of this festival to remain free to its attendees. Warren and Chris Hellman initiated the festival as a gift to the City of San Francisco by sharing their love of American Roots music. Celebrating its 20th year, it was important to the Hellman Foundation, who oversees the festival, to maintain their tradition. Part of the celebration broadcast will include new performance footage, archival sets, as well as fan and staff memories from previous festival years.

This year’s festival theme is Let the Music Play On and they will honor that promise by broadcasting the festival directly into your homes and backyards via the internet. Throughout the summer, HSB released multiple announcements as they continued to stack the line up with stellar performers. Announcements revealed a litany of veteran performers that included Alison Brown, John Doe, Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Steve Earle & the Halfgrass Dukes (feat. Tim O’Brien and Dennis Crouch), Chuck Prophet, and Patty Griffin, returning artists Aaron Lee Tasjan, Yola, and The War and Treaty, along with first-time performers Sierra Ferrell, Amythyst Kiah, Birds of Chicago, Los Coast, and Shakey Graves. The most recent announcement added Boz Scaggs, Jim Lauderdale, Fantastic Negrito, Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi, Robert Earl Keen, Bonnie Raitt, and many, many more to the already heavy-hitting list.

“Hardly Strictly bluegrass is definitely unique,” says Rhiannon Giddens. “The way it was started, the energy it has, there is this incredible warmth that pervades since it’s open to everyone. There’s the air of discovery for a lot of people. There are folks on stage playing to folks that they wouldn’t be playing to who don’t listen to their kind of music. It’s a gathering which is really cool. I feel like Hardly Strictly is really more about the vibe and the heart of the music.” 

One of the exciting announcements regarding the festival was the creation of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Music Relief Fund: Bay Area in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis. The $1.5M grant program was developed to recognize, appreciate, and care for the people who lend their creativity, heart, and hard work to the American Roots music scene of the Bay Area. The fund includes $450,000 for individual musicians’ relief and additional support for local music venues and their workers. “Our fund for roots music musicians, in the form of grants up to $2,000 in unrestricted funds, is available to all but will give priority to Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color,” says Frances Hellman, one of the directors of the Hellman Foundation. “This is not only because these communities have been historically under-funded by philanthropy, but also because they have been adversely affected by the pandemic.” In addition to this grant program, HSB just announced their partnership with Artist Relief to dispense $1M to artists nationwide who have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. You can find more on that initiative at artistrelief.org/HSB

A special feature of this event is the performance of the Black Banjo Reclamation Project led by musician and program founder, Hannah Mayree, joined by fellow Roots musician, Seemore Love. The Black Banjo Reclamation Project is a program designed to return instruments of African origin to the descendants of their original makers. The focus is to promote ancestral healing and envision a world where the act of remembering gives us the power to shape our world. To learn more or become involved, please visit Black Banjo Reclamation Project.

The virtual festival will be comprised of new performances filmed at various locations across the country. Some will include venues in Austin (like The Continental Club), Nashville (like The Ryman Auditorium), and San Francisco (like Golden Gate Park) to stream as a unified broadcast. The broadcast will air Saturday, October 3rd at 2 pm Pacific/5 pm Eastern on Circle TV, home of the legendary Grand Ole Opry, and streamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com and nugs.tv. For a more interactive experience, HSB is encouraging attendees to show them your festival-viewing set-up like in this example. 

We hope you are as delighted as we are to still experience the unique spirit, community, and remarkable music that makes up the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. For more festival details, please visit their website or any one of their social media pages listed below.

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