Bonnie Simmons

City: Oakland

Years with HSB: 17

The job: I think I am the transport director. I used to have some kind of “artist liaison” title in there somewhere. Mainly I get people from the airport to the hotels, and from the hotels to the park. Qualifications: I did many years of radio, starting in the late 1960s at KSAN. I’m now the executive director of the Bill Graham Memorial Foundation. I also do a little two-hour radio show once a week on KPFA (“The Bonnie Simmons Show” at 8-10 p.m. Thursdays on 94.1 FM).

Landing the gig: Sheri Sternberg called me in year two, when the festival was two stages and one day. She asked if I could help with a few hotel rooms and maybe get a van driver or two. I had maybe two drivers. Now we run Qualifications: Multiple decades of doing every job I could find in the music business.

Landing the gig: I started as a stagehand in 2001 and showed up for all my shifts on time. I’ve been production manager since 2008. I’m also a musician, so I have a pretty deep knowledge about the gear needed at a festival like this. (His band Four Year Bender is scheduled to play the festival from 11 to somewhere between 30 and 40 drivers. Logistics: There have been a couple of situations due to weather where the artist is in the van and we are tracking with the driver on a cell phone how close they are because we need to get them onstage . ...

We book 1,200 or 1,300 room nights in boutique hotels all over San Francisco — that’s only for the artists and crews. We try and get them in the day before they play. The hotels work really closely with us, and I am detailed . ...

I also set up a grounds schedule. Sometimes bands come in early because they want to do a sound check. It has to happen very early in the morning because we open at 11 a.m.

The tools: I have old-fashioned landlines in a trailer. I need to be able to talk to these tour managers and various musicians. My drivers can’t be texting because they are driving, so I have to be able to talk to them, too. I

11:45 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 6.)

The war story: We had a flooded Rooster Stage meadow 48 hours before show day (in 2008). Let’s just say it involved truckloads of turf and a lot of sore backs, but we had a dry Rooster Stage meadow 48 hours later.

The victory: Watching a happy field full of people enjoy Robert Earl Keen on Rooster Stage. also use a radio to talk to all of the stage managers out in the field. I cannot do my job without wireless because we are tracking flights and taking in hundreds of emails.

The preshow nightmares: All the time ... the HSB nightmare is that people are due in and these people are not arriving, and you’ve got to have them there.

I also have the recurring radio nightmares. It is generally that you are on the air and you go to get the record that you are supposed to play next and the record library is through a swamp and 200 feet away.

Seeing the music: The joke around the festival is that you never see me out there because I don’t have time. I’m in my trailer, and I’m really happy with what I’m doing with my logistics. But I get to listen to the archival recordings after the show. I get turned on to so many great bands that I never thought about.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass:

Noon-7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 5; 11 a.m.-7 p.m. SaturdaySunday, Oct. 6-7. Free. Hellman Hollow, Marx and Lindley meadows in Golden Gate Park, S.F. www.hardly strictlybluegrass.com Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle. com Instagram: sfchronicle_art