In an Uber from San Francisco’s North Beach to its Golden Gate Park I met an incredibly personable driver and two middle-aged women, dressed in a variety of colors and patterns with patched jeans, who were also attending SF’s annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass concert that afternoon. As they reapplied their lipsticks and fluffed their brown, full heads of hair, the similar-looking Beth and Victoria humbly bragged to me about who they were off to see that afternoon: “We’re on the ‘Family & Friends’ list with Boz Scaggs. I have been riding horses with his wife for years. We’re excited, you know, especially because it’s this particular festival and he’s such a musician’s musician.”

Holding in my inner geek, hiding behind a stranger’s mystique, I expressed controlled excitement for this marvelous coincidence. And I asked for advice and their opinion on the festival because this was my first time attending the free fall festival.

“Well do you know the story?” asked Beth as we exited Robyn’s Uber and into the pot-filled festival air. “If you don’t know the story, I don’t think you can fully appreciate the awesomeness of this event.”

Before splitting from the side of my new friends — they were headed right for Roseanne Cash and I was exiting left for The California Honeydrops — Beth and Victoria gave me the story of one of San Francisco’s greatest musical traditions.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is an annual free and non-commercial music festival that has existed since 2001. Over a decade ago a San Francisco venture capitalist, Warren Hellman, decided that he wanted to give back to the city in a way he felt most connected to, and in a way he felt most fit: a free, self-subsidized annual bluegrass concert. Hellman’s goal was to create a non-commercial and entirely free festival experience that he and his posthumous trusts would pay for as long as sustainably possible.

Who is Warren Hellman? F. Warren Hellman is (officially) an American private equity investor and co-founder of Hellman & Friedman, a multi-billion-dollar private equity firm. He was an early-stage investor to SanDisk and Apple. Hellman was present for the early beginnings of what would become the “dot.com” era. Hellman was the earliest investors to all of the technology that supports our day-to-day, technology-based lives. He invested and supported those advancements, the ones that both gave and took, but kept giving ever so unconditionally to the musically-inclined ones as well.

For years, acts and musicians have gathered together at this event. They are all easily teased, following the massive herds of San Franciscans that gather for this purposefully free, usually sunny September event. Hellman died in 2011 following complications arising from his leukemia treatments. But the legacy that he left, and the legalities that support it, will keep Hardly Strictly Bluegrass a strong, everlasting and joyful part of the craved San Francisco for years to come.

Last night at San Francisco’s The Independent (an establishment with an incredibly clever FAQ section, I might add), Joey Dosik’s lengthy frame graced the stage with a sultry acoustic set of blue-eyed soul. He hopped onto stage to begin his forty minute set with an a cappella performance. Using the snaps of the audience and silence of the half-empty venue, Dosik yanked hearts from chests from start to finish. Never flat, always flowing from pop progression to soul-heavy addition, the young Dosik could do no wrong. He moved from his piano to his acoustic guitar, conversing naturally with crowd throughout the in-betweens, as a comfortable and chatty twenty-something with a voice built for church choirs.

A piano man at heart, Dosik shined most when the electronic piano rhythms matched the perfect, sliding and slippery movements of his best instrument — his voice. He played mostly from his June 2016 EP, Game Winner, but did deliver some previews of his soon-to-be released debut album. “Inside Voice,” a Dosik original that has been floating around the internet since 2013, was teased to the googly-eyed audience. The snaps of the audience stepped in for a soft beat in the absence of drums, making the performance all the lovely, all the more soft, and all the more matching for a song about whispers. Did this unplanned drumming addition beat out the one from the almighty Bernard Purdie two weeks prior at the 2016 Brooklyn Bowl? No, probably not, but the magic of acoustic musicality was sustained.

This initial EP release was made all the more popular by Vulfpeck’s cover of the EP’s title song, “Game Winner.” Written during reconstructive knee surgery following an ACL tear, Dosik’s physical pain moved into an ode to the Golden State Warriors on Saturday night. An obliging fan threw a  Kevin Durant Golden State Warriors jersey on stage for Dosik’s final song. And in the purple lights of the now-crowded venue, a synchronized bobbing crowd moved along to new lyrics about Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and the like.

Natalie Imbruglia was named the sixth most naturally beautiful woman in the world in 2004. She briefly dated David Schwimmer. And she is the writer of one of the most timeless, perfectly produced and written pop songs of the 1980s and 90s. This song competes with Madonna. This song competes with Cher. “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia would even make Cyndi Lauper go up to bat. With a haunting story arch, an amazing bridge, and perfected pop-song production styles, Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn is one of the best one-hit wonders of the 1990s not for just its vocally-driven pop song production; it’s the story of “Torn.”

But the most naturally beautiful woman of 2004 has very little to do with the perfection of “Torn.” She didn’t write it. The Aussie beaut reinterpreted the perfect lyrics of a lost Los Angeles band, Edna Swap. She replaced the heavy guitar, the angsty recollection of the bridge and the too long for comfort hair of her colleagues for a freshened up, face lifted version of the song.

“I thought I saw a man brought to life; he was warm, he came around like he was dignified.” The initial heartbreak; something to cry about. A man gone wrong, lost from you, flipping the script on what you once thought two people were. “A perfect sky torn.”

“I am cold and I am shamed, lying naked on the floor,” she sings. And we all collectively see her, this small and skinny Australian girl with a heart filled of hate. How did you get here Natalie? How did any of us? Have you ever been in love? No, never, but I think I might have.

“And there was nothing where he used to lie” because her “inspiration has run dry.” And we’re there with her, pulling a hoodie over our heads and looking back on some tumultuous past thing. Some scary past boy or girl or body that tore open the sky. They frustrated you to the bones of your body, to the moment where even the perfect Natalie Imbruglia feels the need to rip off all her clothes and lay, chained, and cry.

We are there with you, Natalie. We are there with your strangely addicting pop song, there with you as you feel all of the things in a preserved, nearly perfect 1990s hit. Thank you, Edna, for your attempt. But only one genre has ever permanently preserved emotion for all people and generations to understand: pop music. So thank you, Natalie; we salute you.

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