The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band wowed its Bay Area fans — perhaps for the last time ever in concert — on opening day of the 2025 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco.
Yes, the Long Beach country act has announced its intention to retire from touring — after some 60 years of life on the road — whenever its current farewell trek comes to an end. If these musicians hold true to their stated intentions then that means that this beloved free festival in Golden Gate Park very likely hosted the last ever Nitty Gritty Dirt Band show in the Bay Area.
This (probable) NGDB finale was one of the big highlights of Day 1 (Friday) of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and ranks as the biggest music event in the Bay Area. Other highly anticipated names on Day 1 bill included Shawn Colvin, Margo Price, Rodney Crowell, The War and Treaty, Margaret Glaspy, ALO, Reverend Horton Heat and many others performing across multiple stages in front of tens of thousands of music lovers.
This festival’s silver anniversary run actually kicked-off on Thursday with a tribute to Emmylou Harris, the country music legend who has been on the lineup for all 25 years of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. The three-hour tribute show took place at The Masonic in San Francisco and featured many of the same artists — including The War & Treaty, Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, Lucinda Williams and Rodney Crowell — performing at Golden Gate Park.
Blessed with sunny, warm weather throughout much of Day 1, festival-goers once again did the usual HSB things on Friday — tossed frisbees around, played with their dogs, shared picnics with friends and, of course, listened to ridiculous amounts of quality music free of charge.
Everybody had their favorites on the day, but its doubtful that anyone delivered the goods better than the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band did on the Swan Stage.
The group — which is still led by Jeff Hanna, who founded the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1966 — sounded great as it rolled out a gorgeous version of Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country” and then dusted off its biggest pop hit, the Jerry Jeff Walker-penned “Mr. Bojangles.”
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band closed up its set — way too soon for fans’ tastes — with a tremendous one-two-punch combo of the gospel classic “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and The Band’s mighty “The Weight.”
Colvin also did well with her set on the Rooster Stage, displaying the kind of talent and savvy on both vocals and guitar that made her a massive folk-pop star back in the ’90s.
Colvin sang and strummed her way through a number of favorites, including “Killing the Blues,” “Trouble” and “Diamond in the Rough.” Not surprisingly, however, the South Dakota native garnered the biggest crowd response when she turned to the1997 Grammy winner “Sunny Came Home,” although others in the audience clearly preferred the haunting quiet desperation of “Shotgun Down the Avalanche” that served as a closer.
Margo Price, who made a big impression during the Emmylou Harris tribute concert held one night earlier, also made a mark with her riveting set of cool country (and countryfied) tunes on the big Banjo Stage. She’d showcase a number of songs from her most recent album — this year’s “Hard Headed Woman” — one of which (“Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down”) was done with Rodney Crowell, who performed his own Banjo Stage set earlier in the day.
Price also made the wise decision to tip her hat to one of the Bay Area’s all-time music greats as she closed her set with Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz.”
The three-day Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, which was founded in 2001 by billionaire philanthropist/music lover Warren Hellman, continues through Sunday with such acts as Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Lucinda Williams, String Cheese Incident and, of course, Emmylou Harris still set to perform. For more information, visit hardlystrictlybluegrass.com.
