Hardly Strictly!

I don’t know if San Francisco is like this all the time but the concert at Golden Gate Park next weekend leaves Bumbershoot, Seattle Folklife Festival, etc. in the dust (or out in the rain, more likely) – and it’s free. FREEEEEEEEE!!!!!!eeeeeee……. However, this may mean ten million bastards stuffed into a pickle jar, i.e., Golden Gate Park, but hey, San Francisco the city is almost that way as it is!

Sarah Lee and Johnny are on the list – among my favorite folk acts. Favorite of folk acts that I’ve heard, anyway. Anyone can be a folk act, and the more persons playing the merrier I suppose. Some would  say folk music can only be folk music when played in front of folks!

Po’ Girl  (Deer in the Night, 2008) are among my favorite acts, but they too I’d only heard of because they’ve been promoted by this or that for-profit enterprise. Well, in point of fact I learned of Po’ Girl through Columbia City Bike Works annual benefit, and they’re a co-op…but the email came to me via Gmail ; )

Big names include Indigo Girls, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, etl.al., with up to eight or nine stages according to Sunday’s section of San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle had a special section devoted to Hardly Strictly and it’s billionaire founder/benefactor/banjo enthusiast Warren Hellman ( the mayonnaise?). The Chronicle also says Earl Scruggs, Joan Baez (really?), Roseanne Cash, etc., etc., plus a slew of largely unknown folk groups, many of which I’m sure will be fantastic!

It’s hard to believe they won’t be forced to turn people away, but it’s Golden Gate Park so I don’t know how that would work. I’m not huge on attending shows so I don’t how something like this goes down.

But to see Sarah Lee and Johnny would be badass. What little I could find of them and of Sarah Lee and father Arlo on Youtube is bomb. 

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Stick out Arlo’s speech at the beginning (and end) of this rendition of Woodie Guthrie’s old song “Union Maid” — worth checking out (this vid also includes Woodie Guthrie’s original short tune “Ladies’ Auxilliary”, done ad hoc by Guthrie, by request from someone in the audience at a 1950s Guthrie set in New York City.) 

…the songs that regular people were singing were just as important (if not more important) than the songs that was gettin’ played on the popular radio…you weren’t hearing some of these things on the popular radio…country ballads, chain-gang songs, mining-disaster songs, cowboy ballads, trail tunes, lumber tunes, murder-ballads (you know, lots of murder ballads from everywhere)…

– Arlo Guthrie

 Never thought I’d have the opportunity to see Sarah Lee Guthrie in person. Hope I can make it!

– d.g.w.