Neko Case is in the lineup of the 2015 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival.
Benefactor’s gift to the city, free festival is finalizing 2015 Golden Gate Park lineup
Looking over the soon-to-be-finalized lineup of this year’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival at her office in a bricklined alley behind Slim’s, Dawn Holliday let out a sigh of disappointment.
“It’s not where I started,” said Holliday, who for the past 15 years has booked the acts that play the annual free festival in Golden Gate Park. “I usually start out with a plan. I walk
through the park and think about what I want to hear. This year, Manu Chao was the anchor for me.”
A quick glance at the roster of acts performing at the festival — from Paul Weller and Neko Case to Boz Scaggs and Tony Joe White — reveals that Chao, the FrenchSpanish pop star known for his folk-punk sound, didn’t make the schedule.
“When he said he couldn’t play, I was devastated,” says Holliday. “It took him three months to say no. And then I didn’t know where to go from there. I had to make up stuff around it. Without that anchor, what I booked doesn’t make sense to me.”
Does she think anyone else will notice? “No,” she laughs. Holliday, the general manager of Slim’s and Great American Music Hall, more than makes up for the omission with the rest of the Hardly Strictly lineup, which features an awesome assortment of country icons, buzz-worthy indie acts and bona fide superstars.
She has Michael Franti and Spearhead playing their first shows in the park since the Power to the Peaceful concerts ended in 2010. Conor Oberst, the front man for Bright Eyes, is back curating a stage that features indie all-stars M. Ward, Laura Marling, the Felice Brothers, Jessica Pratt and Johnathan Rice. Then there’s a tribute to Big Star’s “Third” album that is destined to blow minds.
Holliday also wangled an appearance by Paul Weller, the singer-songwriter who fronted beloved British acts the Jam and the Style Council.
They join a staggering assortment of musicians that also include Steve Earle, Lee Ann Womack, ALO, the Indigo Girls, Nick Lowe, Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, and Oakland’s Fantastic Negrito, whose set at Outside Lands was scrapped after a brush with the law.
“We’re not going to punish him for selling wristbands at a free festival,” Holliday said.
The festival, which is funded by an endowment by the late investment banker Warren Hellman, will also feature an additional stage this year; a Silent Disco area, and a refreshed Friday morning program for San Francisco middle-schoolers, which will include Poor Man’s Whiskey (called PMW for the benefit of the young audience) doing popular songs in a bluegrass fashion, and sword swallowers, magicians and clowns from Circus Quirkus.
So even though Manu Chao can’t make it, there will be plenty of entertainment for the 750,000 or so people Holliday expects to come through the park over the weekend, right?
“I guess,” she says. “When we were going over the lineup in our meeting the other day, I saw Sonny and the Sunsets, the Steep Canyon Rangers, James McMurtry, Jamey Johnson, Asleep at the Wheel and ALO. That’s a pretty amazing lineup. Can you imagine being in one place and seeing all of that?”