Sometimes
it seems like there aren’t many “firsts” left or new peaks to climb
after 33 years of Austin City Limits, but our special presentation of
“The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival” is without a doubt one of the
most unique and challenging projects we’ve ever tackled. First of all,
the Festival is an amazing event in itself – thanks to the generosity
of one man
, a FREE 3-day Festival with five stages and dozens of some of the most
original and eclectic talent you’d find anywhere.  All of this is
spread out over the sprawling meadows of beautiful Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.  Did I mention that about 500,000 music fans turned out for it?

This has been going on for seven years, but this is the first time
anyone had seriously tried to capture it all on camera for broadcast on
national television.  Our friends at the PBS station in San Francisco, KQED
, contacted us over a year ago to talk about doing it.  It seemed like
a long-shot, but with a lot of hard work, collaboration, imagination
and a little luck, we pulled it off.  We rolled our high-definition
cameras out over the weekend of October 6-7 and recorded as many
performances on as many stages as possible.  It wasn’t easy, but in
this one hour program we are pleased to present full performances or at
least highlights of 22 different artists and bands.  We tried to treat
the music with the same loving respect we show back home in our studio
- while contending with the crowds, the wind, sun, long hours and
non-stop music!  The one thing we vowed NOT to do was let our cameras
and production get in the way of the very natural, spontaneous
performances all around us – or the natural enjoyment of the people
filling the park.  As for the crowd, well, what can I say – it was SAN
FRANCISCO!  It seemed like the whole city turned out, and everybody was
there to have a good time and let it show (we did our best to capture
some of the people, too).  The weather was very un-San Francisco-like -
sunny, blue skies and mild temps all weekend.

This is a definite departure from our usual format, although the majority of the artists we featured on this program from the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival
have appeared on ACL down through the years.  We hope to be able to do
more of these special “ACL Presents” in the future, so please let us
know if you like this show and what your favorite performances are. 
Enjoy!

TERRY LICKONA
producer
AUSTIN CITY LIMITS

Tags: Emmylou, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, KQED, San Francisco

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 4:54 pm by acl_terry and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.