Dawn Holliday, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival’s musical curator, to step down

Jane Anne Randolph cheers on Robert Earl Keen at the Tower of Gold Stage at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco, Calif. Saturday, October 7, 2017. Jane Anne Randolph cheers on Robert Earl Keen at the Tower of Gold Stage at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco, Calif. Saturday, October 7, 2017. Photo: Mason Trinca, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Mason Trinca, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Dawn Holliday, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival’s musical curator, to step down 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

Dawn Holliday, the talent buyer for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass music festival, is stepping down to pursue other musical ventures, including a prospective project with Roger McNamee, the venture capitalist and frontman for the Silicon Valley jam band Moonalice.

Holliday, who co-founded the weekend of free concerts in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with the late investment banker Warren Hellman in 2001, said in an interview on Friday that she felt the time was right to hand over the reins to someone who could bring fresh enthusiasm to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.

She also retired from her position as general manager for Slim’s and Great American Music Hall in 2017, following 28 years of running the popular San Francisco nightclubs.

“I was so over the administrative stuff,” Holliday said at her office in Pacifica. “I had so much fun just listening to music over the last year. I realized that Hardly Strictly Bluegrass was limited musically.”

Holliday said her enthusiasm for booking the three-day outdoor festival started to wane after Hellman passed away in 2011, followed by his wife, Chris Hellman, a former ballerina turned philanthropist who died last February.

Holliday added, however, that she is in the process of helping the Hellman family, which continues to fund the festival with an endowment, find someone to fill the position.

“There’s no end to the festival in sight — none,” Holliday said. “They’re going to find a wonderful talent buyer. The people I’m recommending to them have so much spirit and knowledge that it would easily bury me.”

Hellman’s son Mick Hellman, founder of a private investment firm and board member on the Hellman Foundation, confirmed that Hardly Strictly would continue for the foreseeable future.

“As a family, we’re committed to doing this as long as we can do it,” he said. “The money is still there, but it’s not as simple as having money. You also need a team that’s willing to dig in and make it work.”

Holliday was the one who insisted that Warren Hellman bring in more popular acts when he approached her in 2001 with the idea of producing a multi-act bill as a showcase for obscure folk singer-songwriter Hazel Dickens.

She oversaw the expansion of the free, one-day concert in a quiet corner of Golden Gate Park into a huge annual fete that last year featured more than 100 acts performed across seven stages over three days for 500,000 music fans.

During her tenure as the festival’s musical curator, Holliday brought in major headliners such as Elvis Costello, Robert Plant and Rosanne Cash, while establishing a stable of festival regulars such as Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, T Bone Burnett, Billy Bragg and Conor Oberst.

“Dawn did an amazing job carrying this thing in the first place,” Mick Hellman said. “How do we carry it forward? Where do we want to be five or 10 years down the road? We don’t want it to be static. It was the time to make this change.”

Holliday will serve as a consultant to the new talent buyer for this year’s festival before stepping aside entirely.

“I’m only doing fun things now,” she said. “I feel like I’m free.”