A huge number of the artists set to play at this weekend's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park have also performed at Amoeba! Check out some performance videos, interviews and images of Steve Earle, Richard Thompson, Patti Smith, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and many more, and get ready for one amazing, incredible weekend at the free festival! 

For all set times and a full schedule of players, please check out the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass website!

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band - interview
Click here for the performance video


Patti Smith - performance video
Click here for the interview

Richard Thompson "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" - A song he usually includes in his live sets

There's an impressive line-up for this weekend's first ever LA Acoustic Music Festival on the Santa Monica Pier, today (Saturday, June 6th) and tomorrow (Sunday, June 7th) and it looks like it will guarantee that this will be just the first of many annual LA Acoustic Music Festivals to come.  Sponsored in part by Amoeba Music and a benefit for the California Acoustic Music Project (CAMP), the artist line-up for the two day festival includes Richard Thompson, Nanci Griffith and the Blue Moon Orchestra, Bruce Cockburn, The Kingston Trio, David Lindley, Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion.

Santa Monica's pier is currently celebrating its 100 year anniversary & includes such attractions as its historic 1922 carousel and its interactive aquarium. Seems like a great place to host this two day festival, a must for all fans of Americana and folk music. In fact, catching critically acclaimed singer/songwriter/guitarist Richard Thompson alone, who performs later today, is enough of a reason to attend this event.

Thompson is one of the greatest guitarists of our time (Rolling Stone placed him in the Top 20 of the magazine's list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time) and has been making incredible music since his early musical days in the legendary British folk-rock group Fairport Convention. Thompson, who penned such classic early Fairport songs as "Meet On The Ledge" and "Crazy Man Michael," was a member of Fairport Convention from 1967 to 1971. He still occassionally performs with Fairport -- usually at their annual Fairport's Cropredy Convention. Soon after splitting from the group he released his first solo album on which Linda Peters (soon to be wife Linda Thompson) sang. The two married in 1972 and officially became a musical team for the years 1973 to 1982 (a little longer than their personal relationship lasted), releasing a total of six albums together including I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight and Hokey Pokey, which the song "A Heart Needs A Home" (video below) comes from.

The legendary English guitarist and a major influence on practically every fingerstyle acoustic guitarist for the past 50 years, Davey Graham, passed away on Monday of lung cancer which was detected only a few weeks ago. He was 68.

Born November 22nd, 1940 in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England, he took up the guitar at the age of 12. By the age of 19 Graham composed what would probably be his most famous piece, “Anji,” released on his debut 1962 EP, 3/4 AD, and later covered by the likes of Pentangle and Simon & Garfunkel.

Here in the United States, Graham perhaps wasn’t as well known as some of his contemporaries but he has been credited with single-handedly inventing the concept of the folk guitar instrumental in the U.K.-- simultaneous honors in the U.S would go to John Fahey, who was making similar innovations. Graham influenced a who’s who of British guitarists from Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Richard Thompson, John Martyn, Nick Drake, Martin Carthy, and Jimmy Page -- Page’s instrumental "White Summer" was heavily based on Graham's "She Moved Thru the Bazaar/Blue Raga."

In 1959 Graham first made headlines with his attention grabbing performance of “Cry Me a River’ in the BBC television documentary Hound Dogs and Bach Addicts: The Guitar Craze, produced by Ken Russell. During the 1960s he played a major role in the British folk revival, releasing a series of eclectic solo albums that touched on a wide range of music, from jazz and blues to Indian and Arabic and gypsy. He introduced to many an aspiring young guitarist the DADGAD guitar tuning, whose chief appeal is the ability to improvise freely, yet maintain a solid underlying rhythm and harmony. But Graham's career was somewhat unpredictable; his concerts were often hit or miss. Much of his reputation was based on a couple of brilliant albums, both released in the same week of 1965, Folk Routes, New Routes in a duet with the folk singer Shirley Collins and Folk, Blues and Beyond, a mostly instrumental album that combined all his world music styles. His live playing was best captured and recorded in 1967 on an incredible album entitled After Hours, which was recorded in a student's dorm room on the campus of Hull University in front of an audience of about eight people. Nonetheless, and in many ways, even as impulsive as he may have been, Davey Graham was the first guitar hero … and certainly one of mine.

There will be a private funeral held for Davey Graham later this week. A public memorial service is being planned for January.