It’s 11:30 on Friday morning—Hammer Time. The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival makes its eighth annual return to Golden Gate Park, and 3,600 San Francisco sixth-graders erupt as the man in pants takes the stage. Hammer, the second act in the 69-act weekend-long festival, represents a growing list of artists who fall closer to the “Hardly” side of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. The founder and sole financial backer of the free festival, Warren Hellman, collaborated with 18 San Francisco middle schools to bring busloads of students to the park for the start of the festival. You can’t touch that.

After spending nearly 15 hours trekking from stage to stage, weaseling my way up close, and listening to a truly great list of performers, here are some of the weekend highlights.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, featuring T Bone Burnett, capped off Friday evening with a mix of older material and songs from Plant and Krauss's collaborative album, Raising Sand. Despite producing a record together, the former Zeppelin frontman and his cohort lacked chemistry early on, and the set teetered back and forth between Plant songs and Krauss songs. However, a beautiful a capella version of “Down to the River to Pray” coaxed the crowd to sing along softly. B+

Cult favorite Jerry Jeff Walker took the stage on Saturday and proclaimed proudly, to wild cheers and applause, “I like my women a tad on the trashy side." Associated with outlaw-country artists like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, Walker sang of sour relationships, whiskey, and rednecks “kickin’ hippie ass and raising hell.” What did you expect? A-


Steve Earle & the Bluegrass Dukes. Photo by Brian Heffernan.

Steve Earle & the Bluegrass Dukes put on a rousing show to close out a full day of performances on Saturday. Earle—dubbed by some the "new Bruce Springsteen”—and his band huddled around one microphone and came out of the gate with Appalachian bluegrass gems like “Carrie Brown,” before going into storytelling songs like “Dixieland” and “Hometown Blues.” The latter, about returning home after a long time away, received a fitting fly-by from a flock of Canada geese. After offering explanations for several of the songs, Earle added simply, “I’m gonna keep on singing this one till it comes true,” before launching into a well-applauded rendition of “Jerusalem.” A

After a lengthy setup, Elvis Costello’s High Whines and Spirits pulled out an impressive set of hits, covers, and special guests from the frontman's trademark fedora on the final day of the festival. Costello played some of his early hits, like “(Angels Want to Wear My) Red Shoes” and “Radio Sweetheart” before busting into a crowd-pleasing cover of Van Morrison’s “Wild Night.” Afterward, Jim Lauderdale came on stage to join Costello in singing “Friend of the Devil.” The two were later joined by Emmylou Harris, who made a surprise appearance to sing “Love Hurts.” A+

Though he overlapped with Costello’s set, Earl Scruggs was a must-see. When it comes to traditional bluegrass, it's hard to pass up the guy who popularized today’s most common style of banjo picking, known as Scruggs Style. Now 84,  this living legend may not say or move around much (if at all) on stage, but seeing him was entirely worth it—especially after he closed the set with originals like “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” (The Beverly Hillbillies theme song) and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” A-

Gogol Bordello was likely the only act all weekend that had more people standing and dancing than sitting—and definitely the only one that had concertgoers crowd surfing. The seven-piece, multiethnic band sent the mostly young crowd into hysterics with wild stage antics, danceable Eastern European rhythms and melodies, and popular tunes like “Wanderlust King” and “Start Wearing Purple.” At several points during the show, two white and neon green–clad dancers carrying a bass drum and cymbals added to the onstage madness, as band members jumped around and interacted with the crowd. In broken English, lead singer Eugene Hütz told the crowd as he was leaving the stage to “enjoy the rest of the evening and lighten up.” If he meant "have a good time," it wouldn’t take much work after that set. A+


Emmylou Harris. Photo by Sandra Kwak.

After the wildness of Gogol Bordello, the largest crowd of the weekend settled into the closing performance by Emmylou Harris. As the sun set, the crowd was once again graced by a flock of Canada geese, as Harris sang her way through lovely renditions of “the saddest songs written by Merle Haggard and Steve Earle," as well as a tune by the Stanley Brothers. Her sage voice came through most strongly in a cover of Tracy Chapman’s “All That You Have Is Your Soul,” which Harris dedicated to Odetta, who had played on the main stage earlier in the day. Warren Hellman, banjo in hand, joined Harris onstage for one final song, when the crowd came dancing toward the musicians for the close of the festival. A

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2008: A