Stern Grove returns to celebrate 85 years
After the flood that destroyed the festival site and an errant Muni ad that leaked the season’s lineup a week before it was set to be announced, organizers of San Francisco’s beloved Stern Grove Festival are ready to put the setbacks behind them and celebrate the 85th year of the free summer concert series.
“It was a very stressful time for me and the organization,” Executive Director Bob Fiedler told The Chronicle, confirming the roster of acts that would play the festival’s landmark year in its namesake Sunset District park.
As previously reported, the festival is scheduled to open June 12 with an Oakland doubleheader featuring East Bay funk veterans Tower of Power and rapper Too Short, the concert that was originally scheduled to end last year’s season. The Sunday series continues on June 19 with Berkeley indie-pop icon Toro y Moi with Hello Yello, and on June 26 with singer-songwriters Liz Phair and Madi Diaz.
Cold War Kids and former San Francisco resident Geographer are scheduled to perform on July 3; followed by Old Crow Medicine Show and Molly Tuttle on July 10; Cat Power and Oakland’s own Spellling on July 17; country star LeAnn Rimes and Amythyst Kiah on July 24; the San Francisco Symphony on July 31; and Taj Mahal and Monophonics on Aug, 7.
The summer series is set to close with the annual Big Picnic fundraiser, with a treat for local Grateful Dead fans as Phil Lesh and Friends with Midnight North are scheduled to perform.
At least half of the acts on the bill have deep roots in the Bay Area.
The Stern Grove Festival, a free event for city residents and visitors alike, returned in 2021 following a 15-month pandemic hiatus with audiences limited at 30% capacity, or about 3,000 guests, along with fencing and a reservation system. Despite the restrictions, Fiedler described the feeling of bringing it back as a transcendent experience.
“Because we had been locked up for so long, it felt extremely celebratory,” he said. “While the crowds weren’t quite as big as usual, the energy and goodwill and vibes were better than ever. The joy and energy felt palpable to me.”
He said he nearly teared up onstage when introducing last year’s season opener, the Mission District singer-songwriter La Doña.
“It was so powerful,” Fiedler recalled. “It really showed to me how much we need live music and gatherings for our wellbeing and our community.”
The festival was among the first major gatherings to take place in San Francisco following the nationwide COVID-19 shutdowns, paving the way for the comeback of events like the Outside Lands festival in Golden Gate Park. To get to that point, however, Stern Grove Festival organizers had to draft a 35-page safety plan and review protocols weekly with the city’s health department as the delta variant of the coronavirus took hold across the region.
“We were threading a needle and dealing with changing conditions on a day-to-day circumstance,” said Fiedler. “It was a tricky thing to fundamentally change the way we run the festival.”
Some of those changes will remain in place when the series returns this summer.
Despite last year’s jubilation, the festival’s season came to an abrupt end after a water main break flooded the park with 700,000 gallons of water, forcing organizers to cancel the event’s final weekend and Big Picnic fundraiser. Fiedler estimates the organization lost approximately $500,000 in potential revenue.
Park repairs, which are expected to total $20 million and stretch into 2023, are still under way but are far enough along for the series to move forward, festival spokesperson Trey Hicks told The Chronicle.
Fiedler said he remembers finding out about the flooding via a short video clip staff members sent him.
“It was a little like watching your house burning down,” he said. “It was really demoralizing on top of the roller-coaster whiplash of the pandemic — feeling the exhilaration of returning only to have this cruel, unexpected turn. Who expects a flood in the middle of a drought?”
The flood was followed by another devastating leak. Eagle-eyed public transit riders in San Francisco spotted the lineup for the 2022 festival on a Muni bus on Friday, April 22, and shared it on Reddit, where The Chronicle picked it up and reported on it.
The leak and subsequent publicity jeopardized contracts the festival had in place with the artists it had booked, creating additional stress for the organizers, Fiedler said.
He said it was already difficult to book the lineup given the uncertainty of when the festival site would be ready.
“We normally would have been working on this summer’s lineup back in August and September, but we weren’t able to do that because we didn’t know if we were going to have a season or not,” Fiedler said. “It put us in a holding pattern for many months. It was only in January or February that we felt secure enough that we would have a season this year.”
By that point, the pool of artists available to book for the festival was considerably slimmer than normal, he noted.
“In the end, it worked out OK, and we’ve gotten some nice publicity as a response,” Fiedler said. “It gave us a little bit of a preview of how the public was going to respond.”
Though admission remains free, organizers are keeping the online reservation system, where audiences must sign up for free passes on a first-come, first-served basis beginning 12 days before each concert on the festival website at www.sterngrove.org. Tickets will be offered in waves to ensure everyone has a chance to secure a pair.
Organizers will also once again offer a live stream of each concert.
The Stern Grove Festival has been a centerpiece of the city’s cultural landscape since it began presenting regular performances in 1938. The 33-acre spot, centered on a grassy expanse surrounded by eucalyptus trees, was purchased by Rosalie Meyer Stern in 1931. She named it after her husband and gifted it to the city for use as a performance venue.
Her descendants, twin brothers Matthew and Jason Goldman, represent the fifth generation of the family to head the organization.