Elizabeth Cook at Hardly Strictly 2009.

Buddy Miller. Rosanne Cash. Earl Scruggs. Kelly Willis. The Flatlanders. Jerry Jeff Walker. Emmylou Harris. Justin Townes Earle and Steve Earle & the Dukes.

The best music festival you’ll ever attend is also the most affordable: just drive, fly or hitchhike your way to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for the 10th annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass on October 1-3 and you’ll get your choice of 80 or so top-notch roots-related acts on six different stages… for free.

The event is put on by billionaire investment banker and bluegrass nut Warren Hellman, who foots the bill every year as his gift to music fans in the city, or pretty much anyone else who cares to take him up on the offer.

I’ve been eagerly anticipating the announcement of this year’s line-up, and now most of the list is up at the event website. Here are the performers announced so far, with the ones I’m most excited about in bold.

Jonathan Richman, Buddy Miller, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Railroad Earth, Bonnie Prince Billy & the Cairo Gang, Carolyn Wonderland, Peter Himmelman, The Felice Brothers, Robert Earl Keen, Holly Golighty and the Brokeoffs, Fountains of Wayne, Nathaniel Rateliff, Umphrey’s McGee, Evie Ladin, Citigrass, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Kinky Friedman, Rosanne Cash, Lucero, Justin Townes Earle, Kelly Willis, Doc Watson & David Holt, The Band of Heathens, Anderson Family Bluegrass, Wendy Bird, Jenny & Johnny featuring Jenny Lewis & Johnathan Rice, Randy Newman, The Magnolia Sisters, Jon Langford, Martin Sexton, The Wronglers, Hot Tuna Electric, Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys, The Dukes of September Rhythm Revue featuring Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald & Boz Scaggs, David Olney & Sergio Webb, The Del McCoury Band, Hazel Dickens, Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women, Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, Earl Scruggs, Gillian Welch, The Avett Brothers, Patty Griffin, Elvis Costello and the Sugarcanes, Emmylou Harris, Nick Lowe, Indigo Girls, Patti Smith, The Ebony Hillbillies, Mondo Cane, The Flatlanders featuring Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore & Butch Hancock, Skip Gorman, Steve Earle and the Dukes, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys, Blue Highway, James McMurtry, Yonder Mountain String Band, Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane & Fats Kaplin, Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band, Richard Thompson, Jackie Greene, Joan Baez, T Bone Burnett and Friends, David Grisman Quintet, Moonalice, the subdudes, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Keller & the Keels, Dry Branch Fire Squad

Pretty impressive, right? Still a couple months away, so book your hotels and such now. You know you want to see San Francisco sometime before you die anyway, so this is the time to do it.

Miss out if you must, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

A Truer Sound posted updated download links for the Todd Snider Tales from Moondawg’s Tavern bootleg, a generous five-disc story and song collection that’s about the finest companion for a long road trip I’ve ever found. Don’t let the ‘bootleg’ description scare you off: Snider has an open taping policy at his shows and is aware of this compilation, so it’s not like you’re doing anything illegal.

California honky-tonker Dave Gleason is the first country act featured on One Night Music, a site that tapes intimate performances from (mostly) indie musicians passing through California. You can head over to ONM’s Gleason page to view the videos or download the audio tracks in one handy zip file. Pretty cool.

Have you already grabbed the latest People Country sampler from iTunes? It includes songs from Merle Haggard, Court Yard Hounds, The Band Perry, Chely Wright, etc. Don’t miss out.

What about the free Discover Texas Music: Volume 1 from Amazon MP3? Songs by Dallas Wayne, Deryl Dodd, Two Tons of Steel, and a variety of other Texas acts. For free, why not?

Finally, here’s a decent Youtube video of the Keith Whitley song on Jamey Johnson’s upcoming album:

Want to do some good? Here’s the link to donate to the Middle Tennessee Red Cross.

First, time. Since you’re the sort of person who reads a blog like this, you probably do a fair amount of online reading each day. Here’s a handy speed-reading method that will save you minutes per day, which will add up to extra hours over the course of weeks and months. That bonus time can be used to listen to good music.

Here it is:

1. Read the title of the post
2. Scan the post for bulleted lists and bold words. If it’s not bulleted/bold, it doesn’t matter.
3. Read the final sentence of the post. This sentence is known as the “the pithy clincher,” and it summarizes everything else. Or at least as much as anyone needs to know, unless they’re total sticklers.
4. If challenged to remember any details of a post you ‘read’ using this method, spontaneously reroute the conversation by hurling a personal insult at the questioner.

There you go. Suddenly, you have extra time.

As for money, Drew Kennedy and Lone Star Music are offering a FREE download of Kennedy’s new live album, Alone But Not Lonely. Here’s the post where Kennedy talks about the offer, and you can click on the image below to sign up for a mailing list and grab the album yourself. It’s a pretty entertaining listen, as you might expect if you read Kennedy’s fantastic interview with Farce the Music on Monday. So, I recommend that you download the new live album from Drew Kennedy for free by clicking on the image below.*

* See, that was the pithy clincher. You didn’t even have to read the rest of the post.

• Gene Watson and Rhonda Vincent take on “Together Again” (link)
• Patty Loveless kills “Blame It On Your Heart” (link)
• Roy Clark with a stirring rendition of “Yesterday When I Was Young” (link)
• Travis Tritt and the always-enjoyable “It’s a Great Day to Be Alive” (link)
• Loretta Lynn helps Nanci Griffith through “Fist City” (link)
• Josh Gracin makes it through mile-a-minute “Nothing to Lose” without fainting (link)
• Lorrie Morgan is something in blue on “Something in Red” (link)
• Mindy Smith will be home for Christmas (link)

There are lots more, so check out the whole list to see what else might be of interest.

Here’s the Watson and Vincent duet:

Click the cover art to visit the appropriate download page on Amazon.

Here are those Old Crow Medicine Show boys doing “Next Go ‘Round” off of their latest album. Check out the other clips at the Youtube page for MartyStuartVideos. Good stuff.

But then every once in a while something actually pertinent comes through, like the news that an exhibit called Sparkle and Twang: Marty Stuart’s American Musical Odyssey will be featured at the Autry National Center of the American West in Los Angeles for the next four months. It includes performance costumes, handwritten lyrics, personal correspondence, instruments, and unpublished photographs handpicked from Marty Stuart’s historic collection of country music artifacts. From what I understand (and it’s not hard to believe), the Autry Center is a destination in itself, so to have this exhibit featured there is almost too cool to handle.

The cost of admission tops out at $9, so if you’re in Southern California, check it out. Who knows? I might have to make the six-hour pilgrimage down there myself sometime in the next few months.

You can find more information at the Autry National Center site.

Here’s your link: The Very Best of Asleep at the Wheel

Here are some clips for your listening pleasure:

Here are a couple choice press quotes from his website:

“His barbarous exorcism of Depression-era blues—with a bedrock of frantic flatpicking, foot stomps into a floor mike, and gutteral growls through a distortion mike—has made Biram a rising star in Austin.” – Brian T. Atkinson, No Depression

“Biram is the kind of guy you don’t laugh at all the way just in case he really is crazy. We all wanna be entertained, but nobody wants to get stabbed in the head with a screwdriver.” – Frank de Blase, Rochester City News

Anyway, this is just an announcement: Two of Biram’s albums, The Dirty Old One Man Band and Graveyard Shift, are available from Amazon MP3 for $6 apiece, so there’s never been a better time to get hip to one of the most distinctive fringe artists you’re likely to find. He isn’t for everyone, but if you can get past some coarse language and the CB-style sound, the guy’s just full of talent. For six bucks, he’s well worth a listen.