The venerable Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival (HSB) celebrated its 25th anniversary last weekend with three days of free music on six stages in Golden Gate Park. Sunny weather and friendly fans cooperated to manifest merriment worthy of the magnificent musical lineup.

The ostensible “headliners” included Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, The String Cheese Incident, and alt rock bard Courtney Barnett. Lucinda Williams, Shawn Colvin, Rosanne Cash, and Patty Griffin were on hand to raise their powerful roots Americana voices. And yes, there was plenty of bluegrass, including a performance of Old & In the Way songs by the legendary Peter Rowan with Sam Grisman Project.

Like an NCAA tournament bracket, the odds are strong that nearly every HSB attendee will see a different configuration of acts. There are a lot of stupid ways we could calculate this, but just for fun I asked ChatGPT (which, to my knowledge, did not attend this year’s festival) how many possible configurations of experiences there could be, assuming a person spends at least fifteen minutes watching a band and spends some time walking between stages. The result: “The count of distinct feasible itineraries … is astronomically large.”

Safe to say, everyone’s dance card will vary. But if you can qualify a festival experience by the acts you did not get to see, I’ll note that I missed Rateliff and Williams while I was off seeing other amazing stuff. Call it “Hardly Strictly PHEWgrass!”

A few themes emerged over three days that define the magic of HSB: family, tradition, and variety.

FAMILY

HSB was founded by Warren Hellman, a wealthy Bay Area investment banker and private equity investor who also had a deep fondness for playing and enjoying bluegrass music. Hellman died in 2011, but he and his family endowed the festival to continue indefinitely.

Warren Hellman Fun Fact #1: One of the festival stages is on a meadow that the city of San Francisco has officially named “Hellman’s Hollow.” Warren Hellman Fun Fact #2: Because he is a local god, my wife and I long ago adopted Hellman as our own personal parking deity, and we invoke him every time we are looking for street parking in the crowded city. Laugh if you will, but the dude comes through time after time.

The Hellman clan is rife with pickers and grinners. Performances over this past weekend included Purple Glaze (yes, it’s a pottery pun), featuring Hellman’s daughter and granddaughter Tricia and Katie Hellman Gibbs. The senior Hellman’s eldest son Mick played both with his rock band The Wreckless Strangers and also joined several other descendants of his father for a tribute to the old man (titled “O Warren, Where Art Thou?”) at the homey Horseshoe Hill Stage.

Other familial relationships abounded. Sam Grisman, son of Dawg music great David, played with his father’s associate Peter Rowan. Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s band The West Texas Exiles included his son Colin, who sang alongside his father. Jeff Tweedy had two of his kids in the band, including drummer Spencer and singer Sam. By the way, Tweedy’s new song “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” may have a tongue-in-cheek title, but it was a rabble-rouser when the entire audience quickly learned to sing along on the refrain “The Dead Don’t Die!”

The first time I saw wife-and-husband duo The War and Treaty was on the Rooster Stage in 2017, and I fell in love with their blues/gospel freight train within the first twenty seconds. Now an established act with Grammy nominations and all that jazz, Michael and Tanya Trotter returned to the Rooster Stage with all of their charm intact, bolstered now by well-earned swagger and confidence. As the stage emcee told the crowd, the only big difference between the blues and gospel is that one is on Saturday night and one on Sunday morning. The War and Treaty closed that gap for us.

TRADITION

Emmylou Harris continued her uninterrupted run of appearances at HSB. Though her streak is unmatched, Steve Earle and Gilmore are among those who can count numerous appearances. (Earle missed only the first year, when the festival was billed as “Strictly Bluegrass.” Gilmore said the only ones he missed were “the Covid ones,” which were virtual livestream events in 2020 and 2021.)

Longtime HSB fans know Harris will close the Banjo Stage on Sunday evening. But only a select few know she also does a lengthy soundcheck in front of the early arrivals who come to lay their tarps and blankets down when the festival gates open. This year’s 9 am “set” included partial run-throughs of Neil Young’s “Long May You Run” (an apt choice), and Chuck Berry’s “C’est la Vie (You Never Can Tell”), which Harris said she hadn’t played live in forty years.

Harris’s annual Sunday morning HSB service – I’m not the only one who calls it “church” – provides some consistency for a festival known for eccentricity. Likewise, HSB fans can always count on some bluegrass stalwarts, despite the “Hardly” part of the festival name. In addition to the august Rowan playing tunes from Old & In the Way (once the highest selling bluegrass album of all time, likely due in part to Jerry Garcia’s contributions), traditionalist fans were treated to a masterful set by Dan Tyminski, who sang the George Clooney parts on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, which is now the highest selling bluegrass album, according to some measures. Virginia’s Dry Branch Fire Squad made their 21 st appearance too.

John Langford of British pub rock band The Mekons has appeared numerous times with numerous bands over the years. This time he returned with – The Mekons!

VARIETY

There are two ways to look at variety in the context of HSB. First, there’s the breadth of musical styles. Jazz singer Samara Joy blew away the crowd on the Towers of Gold Stage on Sunday with a voice as powerful as Ella Fitzerald and as sweet as Sarah Vaughan. Cimafunk delivered the goods with his band’s infectious Cuban groove, with strong scents of both James Brown and Fela Kuti in the air.

The extended jam band world was well represented by The String Cheese Incident (who welcomed guests AJ Lee, Tim O’Brien, and Rowan to the stage), and Bay Area stalwarts ALO, the Mother Hips, and Moonalice. Rockers Courtney Barnett and Margaret Glaspy garnered new fans in addition to the Millennials who turned out to hear their favorites.

Several seasoned performers showed up with alternative configurations, including these delightful combos:

• Nick Lowe sang some of his classic radio hits backed by surf rockers Los Straitjackets, who wore their trademark Mexican wrestling masks.

• Chuck Prophet explored Tex-Mex rock with his new band Cumbia Shoes.

• The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band featured New Grass Revival alum Sam Bush for most of their set. (The audience singalong during NGDB’s rendition of their hit “Mr. Bojangles,” written by Jerry Jeff Walker, was one of my personal weekend highlights.)

• The breathless bluegrass band Trampled By Turtles toned down their energy to play with Low’s Alan Sparhawk singing leads. The set, which closed the Swan Stage on Sunday, featured songs from their new collaborative album while the sun sank behind Golden Gate Park’s treeline behind them.

Family. Tradition. Variety.

And perhaps above all else, fun. It’s hard to measure all the fun at HSB 25, but suffice to say – fun was had! Now the only thing left is to wonder who’s gonna show up next year?!

Long may you run, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass!