Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

We’ve been planning on going to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival for almost a month and we finally did. Last month I saw the list and I saw that Doc Watson was playing and I just had to see him at least once in my lifetime (six years ago [or more] he played two blocks away from our house! Too bad I didn’t know about him back then). I woke up at 6:30 and kinda got ready. For the past week, it’s been sunny throughout the day but suprisingly, it was incredibly foggy today. We left around 8:45 and suprisingly, we didn’t get lost very much!

At Chinatown, we pulled up at a stoplight and the car about 3 feet to the right of us got rear ended fast by another car. Fortunately, no damage was done to us but the other car got a little scratch on the bumper. I kept looking back when we slowed down and switched lanes just in case. We went to Japantown to go to Sharaku, a store where we sell (or sold) our Shakuhachi books. When we went in, I saw Kotos, a few small Shamisens and a Biwa! I’ve always wanted to try one of them! Oh yeah, there was also decorative stuff like shirts, clogs, tabi ‘n such. We talked with the lady who owned the store. She knows people we know so it was like a family reunion! . . but not. While they were talking, I tried to tune the Biwa. Boy, I thought our Shamisen was hard to tune! This one, boy, I couldn’t find which string went to which tuner, they pegs kept slipping out and I didn’t know what tuning to use. When we got a few strings (it has five strings) rather tuned, I tried it. It’s cross between a Koto and a Shamisen. It’s like a koto ’cause you bend the strings over multiple bridges. I tried to play the beginning of Ogi No Mato and Atsumori but I had one of those “well, wouldn’t you know it” moments. You know, the moment where you suddenly forget something you’ve always remembered. Basically, I forgot both songs. The parts I did remember, I couldn’t play ’cause only a few strings were tuned and the parts I knew required all the strings to be brushed. She brought down a Koto to play. I’ve never seen one played before (well, that’s a lie. I have seen one played once online) so it was a treat to watch. The Koto she played was only $350! Most kotos for sale are $900 at the least! I think I should’ve gotten it but I didn’t. I asked if she had any Bachis (the pick used for the Shamisen) and she showed me a few of them. All of them had pointy edges used for Kouta, Jiuta or Naga Uta Shamisens but I wanted to get one for Tsugaru Shamisen (which has rounded edges). She said somebody had a solid ivory bachi for $10,000 but that seemed a tad much.

Doc Watson started in two hours so we wanted to get down to Golden Gate Park to have a hope of sitting somewhere even close to the stage. Over 50,000 people go to the festival so it would be pretty hard to get some place close to the stage. Since parking was a laugh, we parked a few blocks down from the park a walked down. I brought my sandwich to eat there. As we were walking, A yellowjacket stung Ma on the head. She’s allergic but fortunately nothing happened. As we were walking down to the park, we could see the entire festival from our vantage point and sweet fancy Moses! There was a lot of people! It’s like a zoo . . . but with people! When we reached the park, we walked among the people scouring the area for at least a foot of grass to put our towel down on. Since there was lots of people, the security crews wanted everybody looking for a spot to keeping moving or sit down. While walking, we found quite a few people we know (and among fifty grand of people, that’s remarkable). At this point, Del McCoury just went on. We chose one spot that was pretty close but the girder holding up the roof of the stage was blocking the whole band’s heads ‘n all from our view. Just great! Fortunately, Ma scoped out a 3 1/2 by 2 foot section of grass that was pretty close to the stage. We had to sit in Seiza position to all get an equal share of grass. Luke could raise one of his legs (you know, sitting on one leg and the other is up where you can rest your arm on. If you are looking at that sitting position from the side, it should look like an ‘L’. Now you know what I mean) which was more comfortable but I had a few layers of pants on (I thought it’d be cold in the fog but all those people are like human heating pads) and bring up one foot didn’t feel good with all the layers. I had shorts under my long pants so I tightened my belt and pulled off the long pants and kept the shorts on (I tightened my belt just in case taking off the one layer of pants pulled down the other layer along with it and I didn’t want that) boy, that felt better. My legs were getting hot as well ’cause of all the people were packed together like saridines. Luke spotted a couple Bluegrass buddies and they let us sit on there tarp while they went to another stage (there was a total of 4-5 stages stages).

At this point, Mama and Luke got out there sandwiches to eat but I held back. I looked to the left of me and I saw 15 Porto-Potties and every one of them had extremly long lines. I knew I didn’t want to be stuck in that crowd so I didn’t eat (and I wasn’t starving anyway).

Finally, the Doc of Watson came on with David Holt and Richard Watson! Wow, Doc is just as hot (musically) as he was 40-50 years ago. They all missed a few notes ’cause it so cold on stage and his 82 years old hands were pretty chilly but it was all just as good. I used Luke’s monocular so I could see his face closely. Him and David played Way Downtown, Raincrow Bill (with the Hambone Rhythm), Shady Grove, Little Log Cabin in the Lane, Train That Carried My Girl From Town, Sitting on Top of the World, and a few instrumentals but I don’t care for those. After that, David got off stage and Richard Watson came on and they played Milk Cow Blues, a few other tunes that I forgot the names to and a wonderful rendition of Summertime. At the end, David came back on with Richard and Doc and did I Am a Pilgrim. Whoo! Just . . . W, O, W, ! After Doc played, I figured that compared to him, all the other bands were a bunch of dumps so I suggested that we go. We listened to a bit of Hot Rize and then left.

While walking back to the car, I saw Willie Nelson pushing a shopping cart full of empty cans. He smelled funny but men’s perfume is getting more distinked (I mean distinct) and broad these days. I guess the fresh trash cans must be all the rage among country artists.

We dropped Luke off at Annie’s ’cause he was gonna spend the night there. He hasn’t seen here in at least six days and they need to have quality time together for sure. Since Ma and I’s internal compass lost it’s magnetic charge, Luke gave us directions to the highway. I quickly used their bathroom before leaving. That is some of the best latrine paper I have ever used in my life!

So, at 4:20PM, we left for home. We were going and 17 but there was stop and go traffic. We stuck with it and after 30 minutes, I decided to take a little movie of the situation (since I brought my video camera). Mama wanted to take a movie of me but just as she got the camera, the cars started moving and it was time to go! Talk about Murphy’s Law! Then it stopped again. I reached for the camera so Murphy could do his stuff but the Law didn’t work. We started eating lunch/dinner (lincher) in the car and then the traffic cleared up again. When we got through the traffic, we pulled over and finished lincher. When I made my salami sandwich, I noticed we didn’t have any cheese so I borrowed a few cheese food slices from Grandma. As I was eating the salami sandwich, I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before. My sandwich tasted like a Burger King burger ’cause it had the cheese food on it! Anyway, we went back on the road again.

A while later, we saw a cop lighting flares and then the traffic came to a halt. Apperantly a drunk driver ran over an 18 year old and then ran into the woods. Since they wouldn’t let anybody through, people got out of their cars and started talking. It was quite a social moment! People were talking about where they were from, italian bread and cabins! A couple said they were going up to stay at a several generation old cabin and a fella said that he farms and tends to that cabin! Small world! So, it turned out rather happy. 40 minutes later, a P-U-V (Police Utility Vehicle) came by and told everybody to turn around. So we went back and stopped at a gas station for some gas. We were considering going back to Annie’s but there was an oil spill and they blocked off that area. Highway 280 (I’m not sure I’m getting the highway numbers right but you get the idea) was heavily trafficized apperantly but we decided to take it anyway. It was actually pretty good. Not much traffic.

At San Jose, we saw the sign for Santa Cruz but we were in the wrong lane and we started to go backwards back to SF (if you know what I mean). It was dark and we were thinking about just going to a hotel but we pushed on. A couple of tries later and we finally got on the right lane and got to Santa Cruz. We passed by Costco and Mama was considering going to use the massage chair there. When we were on our street, we missed our house and had to go around the block to try agin. Finally, we made it into our driveway. I turned on our Hazard lights just in case of an accident. At 8:40PM. we made it home. That’s right, 4 hours later, we made it home!