Gillian Welch and David Rawlings 2009 Oct 03
Banjo Stage, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival
Speedway Meadow, Golden Gate Gate Park, San Francisco, CA


stealth audience recording by Easy Ed from the fourth row directly in front of a speaker stack (about 20-30 feet away)

Rode NT4 stereo microphone mounted to the top of a cowboy hat > Sony D8 DAT (with microphone preamps modified by Oade Brothers) @ 44.1kHz > Sony D8 DAT (playback) > coax digital out > Sek'd Prodif Plus soundcard > Sound Forge 7 (fade in and out, track markers) > .wav files > Trader's Little Helper > FLAC level 8 encoding (align on sector boundaries), ffp, md5 and torrent files

I missed the introduction: none of the music is missing.

Musicians

Gillian Welch (vocals, guitar, banjo, harmonica)
David Rawlings (guitar, vocals)

Setlist

01. I Want To Sing That Rock And Roll
02. Rock Of Ages
03. Dear Someone
04. Elvis Presley Blues
05. Look At Miss Ohio
06. No One Knows My Name
07. Sweet Tooth
08. Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby*
09. It's Too Easy
10. I'll Fly Away
11. The Monkey And The Engineer**
12. The Weight***

* with Emmylou Harris
** with Old Crow Medicine Show
*** with Old Crow Medicine Show and Emmylou Harris

It was an extremely windy day, with winds of 20-30 mph and gusts of up to 50mph. The mike stands had to be taped down to prevent them from falling over. At about 12m50s into this recording the wind gusted so strongly it almost knocked Gillian off her feet - she and the audience had an audible reaction. Incredibly, the sound crew did not see fit to put wind screens on the mikes onstage, the ones the performers were playing and singing into, with the result that there was frequent wind noise coming from the mikes onstage over the PA. There is no wind noise from my mikes: I was using the manufacturer supplied windscreen plus tshirt fabric and a pillow case over the mike to prevent wind noise (successfully) - all the wind noise you hear is from the PA (it is frequent but not too loud).

The SF Chronicle estimated that 750,000 people attended this year's festival. The crowd was huge for the mainstage acts on Saturday - it took me quite a while to work my way up to the fourth row (thanks to Vernon, Robin, Bob, Dirk and "Mrs. Dirk" for sharing your space with me so I could make this recording and enjoy the show).