HSB 2022 SCHEDULE

SEP 30, OCT 1, & OCT 2    SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Schedule Subject to Change | Download Print-At-Home Kit

The name Satya means “truth” — and that’s exactly what 22-year-old Oakland artist Satya delivers on her new EP, Deep Blue, which tackles themes of love, heartbreak, and healing with striking vulnerability. The singer-songwriter, who first garnered attention in 2020 with her debut EP, Flourish Against Fracture, has an unspoken way of touching on her fans’ emotions with lyrics that speak to others and help mend their emotional wounds.

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In the years since recording his 2018 breakthrough, Unsung Passage, Ryan Gustafson, recording under the name The Dead Tongues, had built words and songs of intense emotional reckoning. He had wrestled with relationships that failed spectacularly. He had contemplated growing up in and then apart from a devoted religious household. He had surveyed the damage of living hard in his 20s, partying in the back of vans as he prowled the interstates of the United States, reckless and free. Before any of the songs detailing these reckonings emerged, Gustafson had the title Transmigration Blues—a reference to the Buddhist concept of a dead body’s soul migrating into another host. For Gustafson, though, it also represents the “little deaths” we all experience as we grow and evolve, the lessons and fables (however indirect) we take with us as we molt and slip from an old skin into our next one. At a time when admitting that most of us are doing the very best we can seems revolutionary, Transmigration Blues is a welcome statement of radical acceptance.

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A powerfully gifted musician and a scholar of Black American music, Jake Blount speaks ardently about the African roots of the banjo and the subtle yet profound ways African Americans have shaped and defined the amorphous categories of roots music and Americana. Underlying his work is the realization that the more we learn about where we’ve been, the better equipped we are to face the future. The New Faith, his first album for Smithsonian Folkways, is spiritual music, filled with hope for salvation and righteous anger in equal measure, in which Blount enacts an imagined religious ceremony performed by Black refugees after the collapse of global civilization due to catastrophic climate change.

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Blackie and the Rodeo Kings got their start in Hamilton, Ontario, when Colin Linden, Stephen Fearing, and Tom Wilson came together to record High or Hurtin’: The Songs of Willie P. Bennett, a tribute to the great Canadian songwriter. They figured it was a one-off project, but they keep coming back, most recently with King of This Town. As Fearing says, “When we play together and sing together as Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, something magical happens. We haven’t asked ourselves what it is all these years, and we’re not going to start now.”

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Founded in 1970, Asleep at the Wheel has been part of the American roots music landscape for more than 50 years. Although the band got its start on a farm in Paw Paw, West Virginia, Asleep at the Wheel became a cornerstone of the Austin, Texas, scene upon its arrival in 1973. Inspired by Western swing and honky-tonk country, the band has accrued 10 Grammy Awards, and is currently on the road in support of its recent career retrospective, Half a Hundred Years.

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Young prodigy Sam Bush was already an up-and-coming fiddler when the sight of youthful Ricky Skaggs on TV, accompanying Flatt & Scruggs, inspired him to acquire his first mandolin at age 11. The talented innovator and multi-instrumentalist co-founded New Grass Revival and played with them for 18 years before collaborating with artists including Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, and Béla Fleck. Working as a solo artist for two decades, he’s released seven albums and a live DVD, and received the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Instrumentalist.

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Following in the footsteps of The Band, the Drive-By Truckers are today’s version of rock ’n’ roll journeymen, touring with a relentlessness that few independent bands can match. Their latest, Welcome 2 Club XIII, pays homage to the Muscle Shoals honky-tonk where founding members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley got their start: a concrete-floored dive lit like a disco, with the nightly promise of penny beer and truly dubious cover bands. The 14th studio album from the band — whose lineup also includes keyboardist/guitarist Jay Gonzalez, bassist Matt Patton, and drummer Brad Morgan — the 2022 release looks back on their formative years with both deadpan pragmatism and profound tenderness, instilling each song with the kind of lived-in detail that invites bittersweet reminiscence of your own misspent youth.

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Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com

Austin, Texas-based singer-songwriter Bob Schneider, former frontman of The Ugly Americans and The Scabs, has become one of the most celebrated musicians in the live music capital. Combining elements of funk, country, rock, and folk with the more traditional singer-songwriter aesthetic, Schneider draws inspiration from the ’70s with a modern twist, As seen most recently in 2021’s In a Roomful of Blood with a Sleeping Tiger, his songs are uplifting and sober, unafraid to tackle powerful subjects like alienation, drug addiction, and lost romance or to celebrate life’s joys.

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Rolling Stone called Kentucky native S.G. Goodman an “untamed rock n roll truth-teller.” Her debut album, Old Time Feeling, finds her gritty, haunting vocals narrating the dual perspectives of her upbringing as the daughter of a crop farmer, and a queer woman coming out in a rural town. Her new release, Teeth Marks, brings to life 11 powerful vignettes examining the way love between communities, families, and even one’s self can be influenced by trauma that lingers in the body. It’s about what love actually is, love’s psychological and physical imprint, its light, and its darkness. The love we have or don’t have for each other, and perhaps, more significantly, the love we have or don’t have for ourselves.

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Montreal native Allison Russell is an artist, activist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist of extraordinary power, talent and grace. A founding member of the acclaimed groups Our Native Daughters (with Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla and Amythyst Kiah) and Birds of Chicago (with her husband and musical partner JT Nero), she has begun to emerge as a potent force among creative circles worldwide. Her debut solo album, Outside Child, shares the harrowing story of her abusive childhood in a deeply moving song cycle of courage, empathy, hope, and love. Named the #2 Best Album of the Year by the New York Times, Outside Child garnered multiple honors, including three Grammy nominations, Best International Artist from the Americana Awards, and a 2022 Juno Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year.

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Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com

Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com

Rainbow Girls first came together in 2010 as part of an open mic scene in Isla Vista, California. With their sweet harmonies and poignant songwriting, they’ve become favorites at festivals and opened for such artists as John Craigie and The Brothers Comatose. After relocating to the Bay Area, they released their crowdfunded debut album, The Sound of Light, in 2013. Currently a trio of founding members Vanessa May, Erin Chapin, and Caitlin Gowdey, the Rainbow Girls followed 2019’s Give the People What They Want, a covers album inspired when their internet video of “Down Home Girl” went viral, with 2021’s more dystopian Rolling Dumpster Fire.

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“I feel like it’s not an accident I’m a queer black woman writing and making music,” says singer-songwriter Joy Oladokun. The first of her Nigerian-American family to be born in the U.S., Oladokun grew up in Arizona, listening to her father’s wide-ranging music collection. Her life was changed forever when she saw Tracy Chapman on TV serenading Nelson Mandela on his 70th birthday. “Seeing Tracy Chapman up there with a guitar in front of a full stadium was such an empowering moment. I ran into the next room and begged my parents to buy me a guitar for Christmas,” she recalls, and she’s been writing songs ever since. Now based in Los Angeles, she followed her critically acclaimed debut album, 2020’s in defense of my own happiness (the beginnings), with in defense of my own happiness, released in 2021.

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Prolific, late-blooming Texas singer-songwriter Charley Crockett has endured the collapse of the recording industry, no money, petty crime, societal ennui, the Covid-19 pandemic, open heart surgery, one-night stands, long distance rides in a van, loud truck stops, and diners serving stale, lukewarm coffee to get to where he is now. Hard as it is to describe such an enigmatic figure and his equally enigmatic music, Charley transcends stereotype. Whatever you might think he is or isn’t, he’ll change your mind with his next song. You know he’s a skilled driver familiar with all the roads. You just don’t know exactly which one he’s taking, or where he’s taking you, only that the journey will be a pleasurable one.

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Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com

Phil Salazar and the Kin Folk, founded in 1984 as the Phil Salazar Band, are a group of friends who have been recording and performing together for almost 40 years, mixing traditional music with rock, blues, country, jazz, Irish, pop, and bluegrass, among others. Ventura, California native Phil Salazar crawled around the stage of his father’s symphony as a baby, and has been playing the violin since he was 5. At 14, he heard and began to play blues and rock fiddle. He’s played with some of the best musicians from many genres, including Bob Weir, Kenny Loggins, Jimmy Buffett, Pete Sears, Steve Miller, and Kate Wolf. Phil Salazar and the Kin Folk have recorded seven albums, two for the legendary Flying Fish Records, and currently have two more on the way.

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Michaela Anne’s music incorporates elements of classic country, pop, indie rock, and honky tonk. The New York Times called her 2014 debut, Ease My Mind, “plain-spoken songs of romantic regret and small-town longing”; the Village Voice named it one of the year’s best country albums. Her latest, Oh to Be That Free, ponders the question of “If only you knew what was in front of you / Would you do the things you wanted to?” The songs are lush and cinematic, full of honest, insightful meditations on embracing the present and nourishing one’s roots that couldn’t have arrived at a more vital and necessary moment.

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Ismay represents the collaborative work driven by singer-songwriter Avery Hellman, who grew up backstage at their grandfather’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and was inspired early on by such artists sas Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and Hazel Dickens. Ismay has sharpened their musical craft over the last decade while living and working on their family ranch in Northern California. Songs of Sonoma Mountain, their debut full length album released in 2020, realized a contemplative vision blending field recordings and intricate melodies with live, inventive composition. Since then, Ismay has developed the sound further, letting their singular melodies breathe, interact, and come to fruition through a full band groove with psychedelic color in upcoming releases.

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Singing in her native Amharic and in English, Bay Area-based Ethio-American vocalist, songwriter, and composer Meklit is known for her soulful performing style and for combining jazz, folk, and East African influences in her work, including her much-acclaimed recent album When the People Move, the Music Moves Too. She has collaborated with the likes of Kronos Quartet, Andrew Bird, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and musical legend Pee Wee Ellis. A National Geographic Explorer, a TED Senior Fellow, and a former Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University, Meklit is Chief of Program at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. She is also co-founder, co-producer and host of Movement, a new radio series and live show telling stories of global migration through music.

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Rolling Stone said of Tré Burt’s debut album, Caught It From the Rye, released in 2020 on John Prine’s Oh Boy Records: “Tré Burt blazes his own troubadour path, a powerful and moving debut from a singer poised to become a folk festival mainstay for years to come.” His single “Under the Devil’s Knee,” a song that continues the tradition of outspoken political folk songwriters of yore, traces the lives of George Floyd, Eric Garner, and Breonna Taylor. His sophomore album, You, Yeah, You, and his 2022 EP, Know Your Demons, showcase his ongoing development as an artist; like his label mate and songwriting hero Prine, Burt has a poet’s eye for detail, a surgeon’s sense of narrative precision, and a folk singer’s natural knack for a timeless melody.

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My Boy, New Zealand singer-songwriter Marlon Williams’ third album, sees Williams having fun while questioning his own behaviors and those of people around him. After touring extensively in support of his previous release, Make Way for Love, he returned home to New Zealand, reconnected with family and friends, returned to his Māori language and culture studies, and joined a basketball team. Soon new demos and lyrical themes emerged: of self-identity and escapism; tribalism and a gnarled family tree; and ruminations on the role of masculinity and mateship. “Growing up an only child,” he says, “I had to outsource my brothers and build a world around me. So while masculinity is a big theme, it’s really subsumed by broader explorations of vitality, and the social and cultural value placed on legacy.”

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Kieran Kane and Rayna Gellert first met at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, sharing a musical kindred-spiritedness in their restrained, roots-oriented approach to both songs and arrangements. After working together on songs for each other’s albums, Kieran’s Unguarded Moments and Rayna’s Workin’s Too Hard, they released their first duo album, The Ledges, in 2018, following it in 2019 with When the Sun Goes Down. In 2022, they continued their exploration of minimalist writing and recording with The Flowers That Bloom in Spring.

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AJ Lee and Blue Summit have performed all over the world, but find their home in California’s Bay Area. They followed their 2019 debut album, Like I Used To, with their second full-length project, I’ll Come Back, in August 2021. AJLBS features Sullivan Tuttle and Scott Gates on steel stringed acoustic guitars, Lee on mandolin and vocals, Jan Purat on fiddle, and Chad Bowen on upright bass.  Drawing from influences such as country, soul, swing, rock, and jam music, the band uses bluegrass as a lens through which to express and explore the thread that binds and unifies all great music.

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While growing up, the sibling quartet of Judith (keys, hand percussion), Tricia (guitar, banjo), Frances (vocals) and Mick (Marco) Hellman (drums) played the original call-and-response game after which their band is named. Their music ranges from blues and rock covers to Americana-tinged originals. They are joined by fingerstyle guitarist Stevie Coyle (The Waybacks), Joshua Zucker (The Jones Gang, Rowan Brothers, Poor Man’s Whiskey) on bass, and Austin deLone (Eggs Over Easy, Elvis Costello) on keys.

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Steve Poltz’s fan base includes fellow musicians, regular folks, and festival-goers who stumble onto his performances. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and raised in San Diego, California, Steve toured and recorded with San Diego cult favorites The Rugburns before embarking on a creative partnership with Jewel, ongoing to this day, that produced her multiplatinum hit “You Were Meant for Me.” He’s collaborated with other artists including Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, Nicki Bloom, Oliver Wood of the Wood Brothers, and Mojo Nixon, in addition to releasing numerous solo albums — most recently pandemic project Stardust & Satellites, an exuberant, thoughtful batch of songs that celebrate life in all of its stages.

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Cedric Watson & Bijou Creole resurrect the ancient sounds of the French and Spanish contra dance and bourré alongside the spiritual rhythms of the Congo tribes of West Africa, who were sold as slaves in the Cariibbean and Louisiana by the French and Spanish. Unlike many of his contemporaries, the four-time Grammy-nominated fiddler, singer, accordionist is also a prolific songwriter, writing almost all of his songs on his double row Hohner accordion. Cedric’s songs channel his diverse ancestry (African, French, Native American and Spanish) to create his own brand of sounds.

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Grammy Award-winning musician Laurie Lewis is internationally renowned as a singer, songwriter, fiddler, bandleader, producer, and educator. She was a founding member of the Good Ol’ Persons and the Grant Street String Band and has performed and recorded since 1986 with her musical partner, mandolinist Tom Rozum. Laurie has twice been voted “Female Vocalist of the Year” by the International Bluegrass Music Association and has won the respect and admiration of her peers. “I’ve always thought that bluegrass was basically a singer-songwriter with string band,” Lewis says. “I like to think that I fit that description and trajectory of the music rather well.”

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The singing Closner sisters – Natalie, Allison, and Meegan – adopted their band name in 2014 on a trip to visit their grandfather in the town of Joseph, Oregon, and soon went from singing at backyard parties to gathering a devoted fanbase. With intimate storytelling and restless intensity, their songs careen, sprawl and often soar, ultimately spinning a narrative of life-changing transformation. Their latest album, Good Luck, Kid, showcases Meegan’s sharp melodic skills, Allison’s gift for uncovering the emotional heart of each track, and Natalie’s extraordinary songwriting instincts. In reflecting on the quiet metamorphosis chronicled within Good Luck, Kid, Joseph hope that the album might spark a similar evolution in listeners. As Meegan Closner says, “For me this record is about stepping out of being a victim, and I’d love for it to help people feel like they have the power to change their own lives too.”

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Waxahatchee is the solo project of singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield. Since her bedroom-recorded 2011 debut, American Weekend, her vulnerable, confessional lyrics have won her critical acclaim and made countless year-end lists. Her fifth album, 2020’s Saint Cloud, was named Best Country Record at the Libera Awards 2021; Crutchfield has said the album is largely about her decision to get sober. She’s also collaborated with singer-songwriter Kevin Morby, with whom she lives in Overland Park, Kansas.

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One of the most acclaimed singer-songwriters of his generation, multiple Grammy Award recipient Steve Earle was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2020. A protege of legendary songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark (to whom he would pay tribute in TOWNES and GUY), he quickly became a master storyteller in his own right, with his songs being recorded by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, The Pretenders, and countless others. Most recently, his 2020 album Ghosts of West Virginia was named as one of “The 50 Best Albums of 2020 So Far” by Rolling Stone. J.T., released in January 2021, pays homage to Earle’s late son Justin Townes Earle. His most recent album, Jerry Jeff, is a tribute to the colorful cowboy troubadour Jerry Jeff Walker, who passed away in October 2021.

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The Go To Hell Man Band features the daughters, son, grandchildren, sister, friends and band mates of the late, great Warren Hellman. The band was formed so that his family could create and carry forward their own expression of roots and Americana music, which he loved and worked to bring to larger audiences. “We think Dad is up there playing the heck out of his Whyte Laydie, but at HSB he will be playing with us in spirit,” says son Mick Hellman, who is also the band’s drummer. “He would love playing with his grandkids, who have become accomplished songwriters and musicians.”

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Rolling Stone described Kelsey Waldon’s self-released debut, The Goldmine, as “Tammy Wynette on a trip to Whiskeytown.” A few years later, she became the first new artist signed to John Prine’s Oh Boy Records in 15 years when Prine invited her to join — onstage at the Grand Ole Opry. Her 2019 Oh Boy debut, White Noise / White Lines, included the single “Kentucky, 1988,” which later topped Rolling Stone’s 25 Best Country and Americana Songs of 2019 list. Her most recent release, No Regular Dog, finds her in a deeply introspective state of mind. “I’ve always used songwriting as a way to process the world around me and also process my own thoughts and feelings,” she says. “If I didn’t have the ability to put all that down on paper, I think I’d be pretty lost today.”

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Jim Lauderdale is a two-time Grammy winning Americana icon, a singer-songwriter whose unmistakable rhinestone-encrusted silhouette has been a symbol for creative integrity and prolificacy for 32 albums over decades of recording. An A-list Nashville songwriter whose songs have ruled the country charts, he’s also recorded an eclectic catalogue of albums that run the gamut of American roots styles, most recently on From Another World, his antidote to the anger and divisiveness of today’s world, a world full of bad news and folks yelling at each other on CNN.

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Multi-instrumentalist-singer-songwriter Larry Campbell and singer-guitarist Teresa Williams were longtime collaborators with the late Levon Helm, playing in his band and taking part in his legendary Rambles, where they first started performing as a duo. They’ve also guested with Phil & Friends, Little Feat, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady. Their second album, Contraband Love, explores deep emotions of love, loss, and addiction.

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“Country music has been made by and loved by Black people since its conception. For just as long, we have been overlooked and disregarded in the genre by fans and executives,” Black Opry notes. Founded in 2021, Black Opry seeks to change that via its website and touring revue, which has performed at numerous concerts and festivals, and shared a stage with Canadian singer-songwriter Allison Russell.

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A roots music renaissance man, Buddy Miller has made a name for himself as a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and producer. Miller’s guitar work is rich, soulful, and evocative, more focused on atmosphere and tone than dazzling the listener with technique, while his songwriting offers an intimate glimpse into many sides of the human experience, and his production work lends a natural sound to the recordings that’s honest but casts the artists in their best light. He frequently collaborates with his wife Julie Miller, most recently on Lockdown Songs and Breakdown on 20th Avenue South.

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Andy Shauf’s songs unfold like short fiction, densely layered with colorful characters and a rich emotional depth. On his album The Neon Skyline, he sets a familiar scene of inviting a friend for beers on the opening title track: “I said, ‘Come to the Skyline, I’ll be washing my sins away.’ He just laughed, said ‘I’ll be late, you know how I can be.’” The LP’s 11 interconnected tracks follow a simple plot: the narrator goes to his neighborhood dive, finds out his ex is back in town, and she eventually shows up. On top of heartbreak, friendship, and the mundane moments of humanity that define his songwriting, Shauf makes music that explores how easy it is to find yourself in familiar patterns and repeat the same mistakes of your past. Shauf says, “There’s moments on the album where the characters are thinking ‘this is the end of the world.’ But there are also moments with some clarity and perspective: Nothing is the end of the world.”

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Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com

The McCoury brothers — Ronnie (mandolin) and Rob (banjo) — were born into the bluegrass tradition. Their father, Del McCoury, is among the most influential and successful musicians in the history of the genre. Years on the road with Dad in the Del McCoury Band honed the brothers’ knife-edge chops, and encouraged the duo to imagine how traditional bluegrass could cut innovative pathways into 21st century music. “If you put your mind, your skills, and your ability to it, I think you can make just about anything work on bluegrass instruments,” says Ronnie. “That’s a really fun part of this — figuring the new stuff out and surprising the audience.” With fiddler Jason Carter, bassist Alan Bartram, and Cody Kilby on guitar, they assembled a group that could take what they had in their DNA, take what traditions they learned and heard, and push the music forward. Their self-titled debut garnered a Grammy Award in 2019 for Best Bluegrass Album.

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East LA’s Las Cafeteras take their name from the Eastside Café community space, where the bandmembers first met as students. Since they started playing together in 2005, their infectious live performances use traditional Son Jarocho instruments and sing in English, Spanish, and Spanglish to cross many genre and musical borders. “Yo no creo en fronteras. Yo cruzare. (I don’t believe in borders. I will cross),” they sing in “La Bamba Rebelde.” Remixing roots music and telling modern day stories, creating a vibrant musical fusion with a unique East LA sound and positive message, their Afro-Mexican beats, rhythms, and rhymes deliver inspiring stories of a community seeking love and justice in the concrete jungle of Los Angeles.

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Melina Duterte’s dream-pop songs hint at a universe of her own creation. Recording as Jay Som since 2015, her world of shy, swirling intimacies always contains a disarming ease, a sky-bent sparkle and a grounding indie-rock humility. In the wake of her 2017 breakout, Everybody Works, she left the Bay Area for Los Angeles, and wrote most of her new album, Anak Ko, during a week-long solo retreat to Joshua Tree. Inspired by ’80s pop and the ecstatic guitar work of contemporary Vancouver band Weed, Anak Ko delivers a refreshingly precise sound. The album title, Tagalog for “my child,” comes from a text message from Duterte’s mother: “Hi anak ko, I love you anak ko.” The album is suffused with that sense of care, and the importance of patience and kindness.

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Jerry Harrison, Adrian Belew, and an all-star band deliver a must-see live performance of the Talking Heads’ 1980 classic Remain in Light. Keyboardist and guitar player for Talking Heads, Harrison is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2021. He has multiple critically acclaimed solo albums, including Casual Gods. Additionally, he has an illustrious career as a record producer. Longtime lead singer and guitarist for prog rock legends King Crimson, Adrian Belew has also recorded with, performed alongside, and toured with David Bowie, Zappa, Talking Heads, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos, Paul Simon, Cyndi Lauper, and more. He has released over 20 solo albums and was a 2005 Grammy Nominee. Expect powerhouse renditions of “Once in a Lifetime,” “Psycho Killer,” and “Take Me to the River,” as well as selections from their respective solo careers.

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Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com

Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com

Waco Brothers have been described as “country as it should be written and played, with a long memory for roadhouse honky-tonks.” The group grew out of Jon Langford’s wish to play more country-influenced music than his usual band the Mekons. This version will feature a perfect blend of both, as several members of the Mekons will join them onstage.

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Since their humble beginning as a neighborhood dance / protest band in the block parties and underground parties in pre-gentrified Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Antibalas have toured around the globe and evolved into what The Guardian called “one of the world’s finest Afrobeat bands” while enjoying equal renown for their cross-genre collaborations. They’ve backed legendary artists including Allen Toussaint, Cee Lo Green, Sharon Jones, Santigold, and Angelique Kidjo at Carnegie Hall and the Apollo Theater. Their new Daptone Records full-length Fu Chronicles offers a thrilling sonic journey of kung fu meets Afrobeat, weaving together the strands of Edo and Yoruba cultural memory from Nigeria with frontman Duke Amayo’s training and study in Chinese martial arts.

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Bonny Light Horseman was born in 2018 when Anaïs Mitchell (of Hadestown fame), Josh Kaufman, and Eric D. Johnson turned from their solo careers to collaborate on what became their self-titled debut album, described as a “modern folk masterclass,” reimagining centuries-old transatlantic standards. Their new release, Rolling Golden Holy, finds the trio exploring an essential question: Where does traditional folk music end and modern folk music begin, if there even is such a binary? Their songs suggest and embody an unspoken continuum.

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Elvis Costello arrived as a sneering spitfire, the smartest and meanest artist in the first waves of 1970s British punk. In the years since he has ventured from loud & fast to consummate singer/songwriter of all genres. He masterfully leads a band and captivates as a solo act. The past few years found him revisiting This Year’s Model in Spanish and reconnecting with old bandmate Allan Mayes on an EP titled “The Resurrection of Rust.” He is spending the summer touring with The Imposters, occasionally including old friend Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets.

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Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com

Stevie Coyle and Glenn Houston call themselves The Quitters because they’ve both quit some of the best bands around over the years, including The Waybacks, which they cofounded. They’re a right-handed, right-side up fingerpicking (Coyle) and left-handed upside-down flatpicking (Houston) duo, whose performances (mostly acoustic, sometimes electric) offer lots of humor and tuneful serendipity.

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Wreckless Strangers is a collective of six seasoned Bay Area musicians known for their collaborative songwriting and high-energy live shows, performing an infectious blend of music they call “California Americana Soul.” The band features Amber Morris (premier Bay Area vocalist and voice coach) on vocals; David Noble (Poor Man’s Whiskey, Pardon The Interruption) on lead guitar and vocals; Joshua Zucker (The Jones Gang, Rowan Brothers) on bass; Austin de Lone (Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, The Fabulous Thunderbirds) on keys and vocals; Mick Hellman (The Go To Hell Man Band) on drums and vocals; and Rob Anderson (repeat world champion cyclist) on guitar. Over the course of their six years together, the Wreckless Strangers have released two records and become fan favorites at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Their latest album, When the Sun and a Blue Star Collide, is produced by GRAMMY-winning artist/producer/guitarist Colin Linden (Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Keb’ Mo’, Alison Krauss & Robert Plant).

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Danielle Ponder turned to a career in law after her brother received a 20-year “three strikes” prison sentence, serving as a public defender in her hometown of Rochester, New York. But music had always been part of her life, from blues and gospel to alt-rock and hip hop, and she kept playing in numerous bands before taking a leap of faith by leaving the public defender’s office to focus on her songwriting. “I write the songs I need to survive the situations I am in, and these are those songs,” she says of her debut album, Some of Us Are Brave. “Nina Simone is one of my favorite artists, and she’s really given me the permission to write whatever I feel. She said, ‘Don’t put nothing in it unless you feel it.‘ So, she sang about heartache, but then she would also record a song like Randy Newman’s ‘Baltimore.’ This is where I am right now.”

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A pioneer of American roots music for more than half a century, Jesse Colin Young has left a unique mark on the intersecting worlds of folk, blues, jazz, country, and rock ’n’ roll. As the frontman of the Youngbloods during the turbulent ’60s, he immortalized the ideals of the Woodstock generation with “Get Together.” In the following decades, Young expanded both his audience and his artistic range, releasing solo albums that mixed socially-conscious lyrics with top-tier guitar skills and gorgeous vocals. An acclaimed songwriter, singer, instrumentalist, producer, label owner, podcast host, and longtime social/environmental activist, he has established a permanent place in America’s musical landscape, while continuing to make modern music that’s every bit as vital as his work during the countercultural era.

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If there’s one lesson to be gleaned from Neon Cross, the newest release from singer, songwriter and guitarist Jaime Wyatt, it’s that life, in all its inherent messiness, goes on. Her debut album, Felony Blues, chronicled her time battling drug addiction and serving almost a year in LA County Jail for robbing her heroin dealer, all before she’d turned 21. Produced by Shooter Jennings, Neon Cross is “a lot of turmoil and drama, but…a lot about rebirth, too,” says Wyatt. “My experience with recovery made me realize I lost years of my life being in the closet and living a lie and trying to be someone else. I just can’t do it anymore. And yeah, I’m scared there are people that like country music that aren’t gonna like that I’m gay. But ultimately I’m going to die if I can’t be who I am.”

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For Eleanor and Bonnie Whitmore, two of roots music’s most accomplished songwriter/ instrumentalist/ vocalists, the onset of Covid and the forced end to touring presented an opportunity. Back in the day Eleanor, then 22, used to protect Bonnie, then 15, when the sisters had gigs in bars. Now, as Bonnie moved in for the duration with Eleanor and her husband Chris Masterson (with whom Eleanor tours and records as The Mastersons), it was time for the sisters to make their long-deferred album. The result, 2022’s Ghost Stories, produced by Masterson, is a collection of cathartic songs about love, death, and loss, songs that ultimately embrace the beauty and experience of living.

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North Carolina-based Sarah Shook and the Disarmers are known for a high lonesome sound tinged with country-punk, twang, and outlaw country. Fronted by singer-songwriter Sarah Shook, the band also includes Eric Peterson (guitar), Aaron Oliva (bass), Phil Sullivan (pedal steel), and Will Rigby (drums). Their first album, Sidelong (2015) was followed by Years, whose creation was the subject of the documentary film What it Takes: film en douze tableaux. In February 2022, they released their third album, Nightroamer.

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For over 40 years, Kevin Welch’s songs have been covered by artists from Bobby Bare to Linda Ronstadt to Solomon Burke. Chris Stapleton had a hit with his “Millionaire.” Since his self-titled recording debut in 1990, Welch has gone on to record several solo albums, most recently Dust Devil. He’s also recorded and toured frequently with Kieran Kane and Fats Kaplin, and co-founded the Americana label Dead Reckoning Records.

Kevin’s 2003 appearance was part of the Ribbon of Highway/Endless Skyway Tour, a tribute to Woody Guthrie

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One of the foremost contemporary practitioners of Sacred Steel, a blues-gospel tradition dating back to the Pentecostal-Holiness churches of the 1930s, DaShawn Hickman grew up hearing the pedal steel in the tiny House of God church his family attended in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, and listening to his mother play lap steel in their home. Hickman picked up the instrument at the age of 5. In his teens, he formed a group with three of his cousins that found fame as The Allen Boys, North Carolina’s only touring Sacred Steel band.

Now, Hickman puts his own spin on the Sacred Steel tradition with Drums, Roots & Steel, his debut album on Little Village, produced by Charlie Hunter (who also plays bass on the recordings), and featuring the soulful vocals of Hickman’s wife Wendy on several tracks. “We just want to spread love and joy to people,” says Hickman. “That’s our mission, me and my wife both. We love what we do, and we just want to take it out and let other people experience it, and be heard in the right manner.”

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Widely recognized as one of the most exciting young bands in acoustic music, Crying Uncle Bluegrass Band plays a unique mix of bluegrass, Dawg, jazz and original modern acoustic music. Joining founder/brothers Miles (fiddle) and Teo Quale (fiddle and mandolin) are bassist Andrew Osborn and guitarist John Gooding, CUBG is making waves in the world of bluegrass and acoustic music, most recently with their 2021 EP, Till I Dance Again With You, inspired by the experience of living through the pandemic.

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Based in Alexandria, Virginia, Yasmin Williams is an acoustic fingerstyle guitarist with an unorthodox, modern style of playing. She utilizes various techniques including alternate tunings, percussive hits, and lap tapping in her music to great effect. After playing the video game Guitar Hero 2 in 2009, she begged her parents to buy her a real electric guitar, then she taught herself how to play the guitar by ear. She went on to play the bass guitar, 12 string guitar, and classical guitar before focusing to the acoustic guitar because of the instrument’s versatility. She released her debut album, Unwind, in 2018, and followed it in 2021 with the acclaimed Urban Driftwood.

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Dry Branch Fire Squad has been a staple in the traditional bluegrass world for over 40 years now, with singer/songwriter/instrumentalist/comedian Ron Thomason leading the way. The band provides thoughtful harmony lines that give expression to the soulfulness and meaning of bluegrass and old-time music. Ron Thomason’s professional music career started when he was just 13, and he has collaborated with the likes of The Clinch Mountain Boys, Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley. He started Dry Branch Fire Squad in 1976 and is known to enjoy music–making more now than ever.

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Alison Brown is a Grammy-winning musician, Grammy-nominated producer, and former investment banker.  Known as one of today’s most forward thinking and innovative banjo players, she takes the instrument far beyond its Appalachian roots by blending bluegrass and jazz influences into a sonic tapestry that has earned praise and recognition from a variety of national tastemakers including The Wall Street Journal, CBS Sunday Morning, NPR and USA Today. Her 2022 release, On Banjo, finds her collaborating with an eclectic range of virtuosos including mandolin phenom Sierra Hull, classical guitarist Sharon Isbin, comedian/actor/banjo player Steve Martin, and Kronos Quartet, to deliver one of her most lyrical and beautiful albums to date.

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A special set of music celebrating the songs of those we’ve recently lost including John Prine, Nancy Bechtle, Justin Townes Earle & more.

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Acclaimed musician Rhiannon Giddens uses her art to excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present. A MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, she co-founded the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops. Nominated for six additional Grammys for her work as a soloist and collaborator, she was most recently nominated for her 2019 collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. Her latest album, They’re Calling Me Home, was recorded with Turrisi in Ireland during the recent lockdown; it speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death, a tragic reality for so many during the COVID-19 crisis. Giddens’ lifelong mission is to lift up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased, and to work toward a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins.

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A 14-time Grammy winner and Billboard Century Award recipient, Emmylou Harris’ contribution as a singer and songwriter spans 40 years. She has recorded more than 25 albums and has lent her talents to countless fellow artists’ recordings. In recognition of her remarkable career, Harris was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008 and earned a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. Few artists have achieved such honesty or have revealed such maturity in their writing. Four decades into her career, Harris continues to share the hard-earned wisdom that — hopefully if not inevitably — comes with getting older, though she’s never stopped looking ahead.

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Grammy award-winning songwriter and musician Aoife O’Donovan is one of the most sought-after singers and songwriters of her generation. She has released three critically-acclaimed solo albums, and co-founded the bands I’m With Her and Crooked Still. She is the featured vocalist on The Goat Rodeo Sessions with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile, and spent a decade contributing to the radio variety shows Live From Here and A Prairie Home Companion.

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Arooj Aftab is a semi-classical, Hindustani, minimalist composer, songwriter and singer. She grew up in Pakistan and is now based in Brooklyn. In 2022 she became the first Pakistani artist to receive a Grammy Award when her song “Mohabbat” received a the award for Best Global Music Performance. She transforms ancient Urdu poetry and ghazals into genre-defying, contemplative compositions. Released in 2022, her album Vulture Prince has received unprecedented critical acclaim and coverage.

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The Brothers Comatose — brothers Ben Morrison (guitar, vocals) and Alex Morrison (banjo, vocals), plus Steve Height (bass, vocals), Philip Brezina (violin), and Greg Fleischut (mandolin) — forge their own path with raucous West Coast renderings of traditional bluegrass, country and rock ’n’ roll music. At home in the Bay Area, they’ve also performed for audiences around the world, including cultural exchange tours of Latvia, Lithuania, and China for the U.S. State Department’s American Music Abroad program.

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Roots music legends and longtime friends Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore realized some years back that they had never played music with each other before. Texas-born Gilmore (twice named Country Artist of the Year by Rolling Stone), and California native Alvin (of hard-rocking rhythm and blues band The Blasters) discovered that their musical roots in old blues and folk music are exactly the same. So when they hit the road to sing songs and swap tales back in 2017, their shows included their own classic original compositions, plus songs from a wide spectrum of songwriters and styles, from Merle Haggard to Sam Cooke to the Youngbloods. Now they’re back, with a full band, an album, Downey to Lubbock, and some new stories to share.

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Swedish singer-songwriter Kristian Matsson, performing as The Tallest Man on Earth, has garnered comparisons to Bob Dylan for his songwriting and vocal style, but says “I don’t consider my work to be a part of any tradition. This is how I play. This is how I write songs.” NPR says of his most recent, introspective album, I Love You. It’s a Fever Dream, written in the wake of a painful divorce, “Matsson seems to have figured out that the crests and valleys of our interiorities are just as beguiling as the vast expanses around us.” For listeners and viewers the fascination has been in watching an artist work through his life, in problems and celebrations large and small, putting his thoughts out into the world while he’s still processing them himself and watching them evolve over time.

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Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com

Known for its renegade spirit and an ethos of love, peace, and happiness that permeates everything they do, Moonalice is an exuberant Bay Area 10-piece known for its unique brand of psychedelic soul and rock-tinged Americana. Led by vocalist Lester Chambers, co-founder of pioneering ’60s psychedelic soul group The Chambers Brothers, bassist Pete Sears, a founding member of Jefferson Starship, and guitarist Roger McNamee, who was an advisor to Grateful Dead and U2 and fights against entrenched power in the tech industry, Moonalice also features Barry Sless (lead guitar and pedal steel), Jason Crosby (keyboards), Grammy winner John Molo (drums), along with the next generation of legends including Lester’s son Dylan Chambers, and Erika, Rachel, and Chloe Tietjen of acclaimed Americana band the T Sisters. They recently released their version of the Chambers Brothers classic “Time Has Come Today.”

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Cymande is a group of Black British musicians who all came to the UK from the Caribbean as children, released three brilliant albums in quick succession in the early ’70s — but faced a UK music business beset by prejudice against home grown Black talent. Largely ignored, they split in 1975. But their music lived on, as successive generations of artists and fans in many genres found and embraced their songs. And now Cymande is back, touring the world and being embraced by the internet generation who weren’t even born when the band split up. A new documentary about the band, “Getting It Back— The Story of Cymande,” debuted at South by Southwest in 2022, and plans for a new studio album are in the works.

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“They nearly always come back,” says banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck. “All the people that leave bluegrass. I had a strong feeling that I’d be coming back as well.” The 15-time Grammy Award winner returns to his roots in the third chapter of a decades-spanning trilogy that began in 1988 with Drive and continued with 1999’s The Bluegrass Sessions. My Bluegrass Heart is a homecoming for Fleck, an amalgamation of generations, ideas, and style, returning to the traditional bluegrass band form after a lifetime of exploration.

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Landing in New Orleans for college in the early ’90s, childhood pals Jeff Raines and Robert Mercurio fell hard for the music scene and started a band. Ever since, their band Galactic has been firmly rooted in NOLA funk, blues, and brass band, while always willing to explore something new, including hip-hop, electronica, fusion, and jazz. Fronted by vocal powerhouse Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph, the band features Raines on guitar, Mercurio on bass, Ben Ellman on sax, Rich Vogal on Hammond organ, and Stanton Moore on drums, Galactic is known for studio collaborations with vocalists including Mavis Staples, Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas and Macy Gray. Longtime regulars at legendary music venue Tipitina’s, where they regularly invite local artists onstage to perform with them, Galactic became the club’s new owners in 2018.

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Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com

Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com

Seratones’ new release, Love & Algorhythms, blends guitarist/vocalist AJ Haynes’ undeniably personal lyrics and an entire universe of conceptual influences into a statement of insistent joy. Haynes says, “There’s a whole lineage within Black feminism of centering pleasure and centering joy as a means to liberation, and I feel very privileged to have my art richly rooted in Black feminism.” Honoring that strength of tradition, Seratones let their imaginations unfold, to let the universe expand and explode with each track.

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Amythyst Kiah’s anthem “Black Myself,” from Songs of Our Native Daughters, her collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell, was nominated for a Grammy for Best American Roots Song and won 2019 Song of the Year at the Folk Alliance International Conference. Her Rounder Records debut, Wary + Strange, is a deeply immersive body of work that redefines the limits of roots music in its inventive rhythms and textures. Always at the forefront is Kiah’s storytelling around the trauma, at age 17, of losing her mother to suicide, and her own struggles to find a place to belong in the world. “For anyone who’s struggled with grief or trauma, or felt left out and weird and like they didn’t belong, I hope this album lets them know that they’re not alone in that feeling,” says Kiah. “I hope they understand the experiences I’m trying to relay to them, and I hope they come away from these songs knowing that they can heal from whatever it is that they’re going through.”

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Second Nature, the funk- and disco-infused third album from LA’s Lucius, finds singers and songwriting collaborators Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe confronting life changes (including Wolfe’s divorce from bandmate Dan Molad and the birth of Laessig’s first child), the pandemic, and a host of hard truths — and emerging triumphant. “It is a record that begs you not to sit in the difficult moments, but to dance through them,” says Wolfe. “It touches upon all these stages of grief, and some of that is breakthrough. … I think you can really hear and feel the spectrum of emotion, and hopefully find the joy in the darkness. It does exist. That’s why we made Second Nature and why we wanted it to sound the way it did: our focus was on dancing our way through the darkness.”

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Marcus Mumford began his musical career playing drums for Laura Marling on tour. Born in California and raised in London, he is an acclaimed collaborator and producer, listed in the Forbes 30 under 30 in 2012. On 12 July 2022, Mumford announced his debut solo album (self-titled) would be released in September of that year. Produced by Blake Mills, it will feature guests Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers, Clairo, and Monica Martin and includes “Cannibal,” a song Mumford wrote in January 2021 about his personal struggles.

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Performances from this stage will be livestreamed at hardlystrictlybluegrass.com