Some Glad Afternoon

'Bluegrass' is what we heard, 'free concert by the ocean.' So we studied our maps, finding Golden Gate Park, and we went.

“So many hippies,” my friend Jordan said, his voice shocked and low.  “So many hipsters.” So much plaid, so much pot, so much 'stach. We were standing between the two stages of the Warren Hellman Public Celebration, a free concert honoring a man who brought about Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. There were people crammed everywhere, people sitting down and chatting, people on the beach, people with children and cameras.

The music blasted over us through an impressive set of speakers, but the maker (Steve Earle) was only a tiny, blobby figure on a far-away stage, discernible only because I could see the flashing of his guitar as he swayed back and forth with his music.  Even with the proximity of being at this location, it was difficult to believe the music I could hear was the same music that was coming from Steve Earle's living, breathing, guitar-strumming self.

When he finished his set, we all drifted and shifted to the stage on the other side for a similar performance from Buddy Miller; I didn't feel that deep and abiding attraction to any musician until I shoved and sneaked my way up the side just so I could see the stage. 

I was just in time to see Gillian Welch, with her partner David Rawlings, wondering to her listeners what tunes would go well with their matching sequined outfits.  She looked tiny on that stage, but not so lost from my sight that I couldn't connect her to the tunes she played: "Elvis Presley Blues," "Look at Miss Ohio," "The Way It Goes."  I marveled at how the notes and chords fitted together so well; how they were both familiar and strange to my ears.  To finish it off, EmmyLou Harris joined them. They offered up that old gospel tune “I'll Fly Away,” and even over the added voices of the audience, the sound had a beautiful sense of intimacy.

 To see as well Old Crow Medicine Show from that distant but workable vantage point was another pleasure of the day.  To be drawn into their onstage energy, their high-fuel performance, as if life and music were a freight train destined to crash—known to be destined to crash, and pushed to a greater speed despite that knowledge, was incomparable in experience to any of their recordings I have heard.  They played some fast, fast tunes, and of course they played “Wagon Wheel,” (you've probably heard it: “Rock me mama like a wagon wheel, rock me mama any way you feel,”)...they played, too, a tribute to Whitney Housten and another to Warren Hellman.  What makes OCMS remarkable (besides front-man Ketch Secor's Virginian accent) is their rough-edged force, which draws in people like some of the friends I've come with, for whom OCMS is the only recognizable name on the bill.

I'm sorry to say that public transportation schedules made me leave then, to the sound of Robert Earl Keen.  My feet ached from standing for hours, but I would have stayed if I could; there was still more music to be heard.