In Golden Gate Park, a free taste of Central Texas sounds

Festival this weekend draws huge crowds thanks to billionaire fan.

By Bob Keefe
WEST COAST BUREAU
Friday, October 06, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO — Not far from where the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane helped create the psychedelic "San Francisco Sound" of the 1960s, a different sound will rise this weekend: the sound of mandolins and fiddles.

In a city about as far from the Appalachians as you can get — in more ways than one — and still be in the United States, Golden Gate Park plays host this weekend to one of the biggest and most unusual bluegrass festivals in the world.

Legendary banjo picker Earl Scruggs will play here. So will Ricky Scaggs, Emmylou Harris and just about the biggest collection of Texas musicians outside the Lone Star State. And don't forget Elvis Costello, T Bone Burnett and singer-songwriter David Berkeley.

In all, more than 60 musicians will take to five stages for the aptly named Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival that kicked off Friday. About 300,000 people attended the free fest last year, all guests of the chief sponsor, Warren Hellman, a local billionaire investment banker and bluegrass fan.

Though diverse, the festival definitely is steeped in bluegrass and country music. Costello, for instance, played as part of an outfit called Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods.

If you don't think of San Francisco as a bluegrass kind of town, consider this: Last year, the police had to close the gates at Golden Gate Park after too many people — more than 300,000 — showed up.

Partly, the huge turnout reflects the revival in bluegrass music nationally in the shadow of country music's resurgence.

But the real reason the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival has become so huge is that, astoundingly enough, it's free.

"There is nothing like this," said Austin singer-songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore, who played his fifth Hardly Strictly festival this year. He says it's the only date he makes sure is on his calendar each year.

Gilmore, who performed Friday, is one of a small army of Austin-area musicians who made the trek to San Francisco this weekend. Others include Guy Clark, Butch Hancock, Kelly Willis, Bruce Robison and the Austin Lounge Lizards.

Robert Earl Keen, Steve Earle, Chip Taylor, Carrie Rodriguez and former Austin-area resident Todd Snider are there too.

"It's an incredible, unbelievable atmosphere," said Boo Resnick, bass player for the Austin Lounge Lizards. Resnick said that what helps makes the festival so great for performers is that, just as it is for attendees, everything for the bands is free.

In addition to paying entertainers, the festival picks up their travel costs, puts them up in nice hotels in San Francisco, feeds them well through the weekend and hosts a first-class after-party for them — at a San Francisco bar known for bluegrass, of course.

The story behind what is quickly becoming one of the country's biggest bluegrass festivals is as unique as the festival itself.

It revolves around Hellman, a billionaire investment banker and amateur banjo picker who conceived it about seven years ago as a way to get the sort of music he loves to the city where he lives.

Hellman decided to pay for it all himself because, well, he could.

"I keep describing it as the world's most selfish gift," he said. "Because I love every minute of it. It's sheer pleasure."

Hellman won't say how much it costs to put on the festival, open it to the public and pick up the tab for entertainers. But easily, it's in the millions.

"Obviously, it costs quite a lot of money," he said. "But it's worth every penny of it.

"It's sort of a way to create a combination of the music that I absolutely love and at the same time being able to give — I hate to say give back — but to allow a lot of other people to appreciate this music as well," Hellman said.

On his surface, Hellman, 72, could be one of the last guys you'd expect to be hanging out with the fiddle-and-jug set. He's a New York-born Harvard man and a Republican in the most liberal city in the country.

He's one of the San Francisco Bay area's richest residents and biggest philanthropists.

Yet talk to Hellman, and he's about as humble and self-effacing as a dirt-poor Kentucky hillbilly.

He'd rather discuss music than money, and though he regularly rubs elbows with the likes of super-celebrities such as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, he professes that he's much more interested in meeting musicians, especially bluegrass artists.

"Basically, I can't really understand why I like it or how I got to like it," he said. "It's like it got hard-wired into me."

Gilmore became friends with Hellman over the years and says he's actually a pretty good banjo player. Hellman will take the stage Sunday with a group called the Wronglers.

"He's an interesting, interesting man," Gilmore said. "He's extremely intelligent, and he's obviously good at what he does. But his first love, his strongest love, is old-timey music."

Hellman can rattle off bluegrass musicians' names and musical styles like a Rolling Stone critic can converse about rock 'n' roll.

But he stops when asked why he created a bluegrass festival that includes acts that are, well, hardly strictly bluegrass.

Bluegrass, Hellman said, is more encompassing than the traditional sounds from front-porch Appalachia. It touches on folk music, on twangy Texas music and, to him at least, a lot of genres in between.

"I'm sort of hung up on this definition of bluegrass being only three-fingered picking or something," Hellman said. "I think people try to define things too narrowly sometimes."