Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, less Hazel Dickens

Every year for the past decade Warren Hellman has promoted the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival and Hazel Dickens has been one of the headline acts.

Sadly, this year Hazel Dickens, the prime reason that venture capitalist Hellman started the free festival, will be missing, having passed away in April this year.

However, Ms Dickens has not been forgotten as this year’s event is dedicated in her memory.

Among the multitude of acts participating in this weekend’s festival are Seldom Scene, the Del McCoury Band (with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band), Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris, the Dry Branch Fire Squad, Laurie Lewis & Tom Rozum, Greensky Bluegrass, Alison Brown, the Punch Brothers, Abigail Washburn, Gillian Welch and the David Bromberg Quartet.

The festival, which takes place in Speedway Meadow, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, begins this Friday (at 11:oo a.m., 9/30) and finishes late afternoon on Sunday (10/2).

For full details of the artists’ schedule and other information about the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival visit their website.

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About the Author

Richard Thompson

Richard F. Thompson is a long-standing free-lance writer specialising in bluegrass music topics. A two-time Editor of British Bluegrass News, he has been seriously interested in bluegrass music since about 1970. As well as contributing to that magazine, he has, in the past 30 plus years, had articles published by Country Music World, International Country Music News, Country Music People, Bluegrass Unlimited, MoonShiner (the Japanese bluegrass music journal) and Bluegrass Europe. He wrote the annotated series I'm On My Way Back To Old Kentucky, a daily memorial to Bill Monroe that culminated with an acknowledgement of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 13, 2011.