{"id":12797,"date":"2012-10-08T10:32:19","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T18:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/?p=12797"},"modified":"2012-10-08T21:59:02","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T05:59:02","slug":"hardly-strictly-bluegrass-festival-day-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/2012-10\/hardly-strictly-bluegrass-festival-day-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival–Day I"},"content":{"rendered":"

As mentioned, our now-annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival<\/strong> musical madness began on Friday and didn’t end until 7pm last night on Sunday.\u00a0 As usual with HSB<\/strong>, we saw some outstanding music that we had anticipated, some unexpected magical sets, and one or two that sorely disappointed.\u00a0 As with every music festival, hard stage choices have to be made so when you guess wrong, it can hurt.<\/p>\n

On Friday we saw John C. Reilly, Tom Brosseau and Becky Stark, Chuck Prophet & The Mission Express, Beachwood Sparks, Ben Kweller, Jenny Lewis<\/strong> (with the Watson Twins<\/strong>) and Conor Oberst<\/strong>.\u00a0 All were outstanding (though Beachwood Sparks took a while to spark).\u00a0 Reilly-Brosseau-Stark<\/strong> have been playing together for a good long period now, and they have truly jelled, with Reilly<\/strong> really ratcheting up his singing chops and comfortableness on stage since we saw them last in Santa Barbara. We then moved over to Conor Oberst’s annually-curated stage (Rooster)<\/strong> for Chuck Prophet & The Mission Express<\/strong> (including Prophet’s talented wife, Stephanie Finch<\/strong>), who were one of the highlights of HSB this year.\u00a0 They primarily played songs from Prophet’s outstanding recent album (Temple Beautiful<\/strong>), regaling the local crowd with locally-set lyrics and songs.\u00a0 Prophet and band showed themselves to be fine musicians with great feel for the express lane.\u00a0 Prophet blazed on guitar throughout and especially fired-up the crowd in the last third of his set (no small feat when you begin at noon on Friday).\u00a0 Beachwood Sparks<\/strong> started a little sleepily after Prophet’s firebrand performance, but eventually ignited and got at least one festival dancer dancing.\u00a0 As for the next hand-picked performer, Ben Kweller<\/strong> simply killed.\u00a0 Kweller is one of our better songwriters and singers, and playing solo on acoustic guitar (which he pedaled into electric-fuzz), he quickly won the crowd over with his energy, voice, playing and well-crafted songs.\u00a0 He’s a must-see when on tour.\u00a0 Jenny Lewis<\/strong> then came out with Jonny<\/strong>, the Watson Twins<\/strong> and a great band and stormed the stage and airwaves with fan-favorites and couple of new songs (one an homage to her recently-passed father).\u00a0 Lewis’ voice was in fantastic form and her fans ate the show up.\u00a0 Following Lewis, Friday’s finale was, of course, Conor Oberst<\/strong> who came out with his Mystic Valley Band,<\/strong> with Nate Walcott<\/strong> added on keys and horns.\u00a0 Oberst and band gradually built their set with Oberst’s well-crafted songs, culminating in several soaring highlights.\u00a0 The first was a stunning delivery of favorite Lua<\/strong><\/em> with Jenny Watson and the Watson Twins vamping perfectly on backup vocals in support.\u00a0 The second was an excoriating delivery of Roosevelt Room<\/strong><\/em>, with the band raging and Conor literally spitting the lyrics as if the world’s survival depended upon its heeding his message.\u00a0 It was a perfect way to end the day in San Francisco.\u00a0 All was well again.<\/p>\n

Check out some photos from Day 1 below.<\/p>\n

John C. Reilly <\/strong>and Tom Brosseau<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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John C. Reilly, Becky Stark and Tom Brosseau<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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Chuck Prophet<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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Chuck Prophet and wife, Stephanie Finch<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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Beachwood Sparks<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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Ben Kweller<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band, with Nathan Walcott<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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Conor Oberst, Jenny Lewis and Watson Twins on Lua<\/em><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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Conor and band on Roosevelt Room<\/em><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As mentioned, our now-annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival musical madness began on Friday and didn’t end until 7pm last night on Sunday.\u00a0 As usual with HSB, we saw some outstanding music that we had anticipated, some unexpected magical sets, and one or two that sorely disappointed.\u00a0 As with every music festival, hard stage choices have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}