Stern Grove hosts Big Picnic weekend fundraiser with Chaka Khan, Sylvan Esso and more
The beloved annual free music festival at San Francisco's Stern Grove comes to a close with its first-ever Big Picnic weekend fundraiser featuring indie electronic acts Sylvan Esso and Poolside on Saturday and R&B diva Chaka Khan and reggae greats Steel Pulse Sunday.
This year's 87th Stern Grove Festival hosted a fantastic line-ups of performers, presenting shows that ranged from indie-rock headliners Tegan and Sara and Alex G, soul and funk favorites Chicano Batman and the Commodores, and jazz-piano legend Herbie Hancock in addition to the annual appearance of the San Francisco Symphony.
While the Big Picnic Benefit and Concert that raises funds for the festival and its associated programs was held on Stern Grove's opening Father's Day weekend for many years, more recently it has taken place at the final concert of the season. This year, the event brings Stern Grove to a big finish with an expanded two-day celebration with two very distinct concerts each day. While donations that help keep the festival running are collected every Sunday by volunteers, the Big Picnic Weekend will serve as a major source of festival funding with donor packages that include reserved tables, valet parking and more.
For Saturday's performance, the talent leans towards more modern electronic sounds with headliner Sylvan Esso. The partnership of singer Amelia Meath and musician/producer Nick Sanborn dates back over a decade with the two artists from Durham, NC, coming together from backgrounds that gave little indication of what their future would hold. In 2012, Meath was making traditional Appalachian folk music as a member of the all-female trio Mountain Man. When she asked Sanborn -- then playing bass for psychedelic folk band Megafaun -- to create musical backing her solo song "Play It Right," the collaboration planted the seeds for the new electronic-music project.
Sylvan Esso released their eponymous debut on Partisan Records in 2014 and earned widespread critical praise and radio play for singles "Hey Mami" and "Coffee." The duo saw wider exposure with a performance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" and appearances at such festivals as Coachella, Firefly and Lollapalooza the following year. In 2016, they were featured at San Francisco's own Treasure Island Music Festival.
The duo followed up with the even more commercially successful effort What Now in 2017 and has since released two more albums, most recently No Rules Sandy in 2022. The duo will share the stage with Poolside. The project of onetime San Francisco DJ-turned-producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Paradise, the group has become one of the better known lounge-influenced nu-disco/synthpop acts in Los Angeles. The group's propulsive, bass-driven cover of Neil Young's "Harvest Moon" has been played over 116 million times on Spotify. DJ Marcus Rosario plays tunes before and between acts.
Sunday afternoon's Big Picnic concert will be headlined by legendary soul singer Chaka Khan. An early fan of jazz and R&B as she grew up in a bohemian Chicago household, the artist born Yvette Marie Stevens was singing in her first vocal group by the age of 11. She would continue to perform with bands through her teens, but didn't connect with the group that would be her ticket to fame until she was invited to join Ask Rufus (as the outfit was initially known) as lead singer in 1972, just before recording their first album for ABC Recordings.
That record found Khan sharing vocal duties with Ron Stockert on material that mixed rock and soul, but her robust voice, broad range and commanding performance of the Stevie Wonder song "Maybe Your Baby" placed her squarely as the band's focal point on the follow-up hit, Rags to Rufus. With Wonder penning Rufus the single "Tell Me Something Good" after admiring the cover from the first album and Khan co-writing the opening tune "You Got the Love" with guitarist Ray Parker Jr. (later of "Ghostbusters" fame), the record firmly established Rufus as a band to watch and the diminutive singer as a vocal powerhouse.
The recording would be the first of a stream of platinum albums for Rufus that continued through Street Player in 1978, the same year the singer would record her first solo record that included the iconic hit "I'm Every Woman" that would be famously covered by Whitney Houston over a decade later. Khan would periodically reunite with Rufus for recordings and tours into the early '80s, but would later explore the jazz songbook and score another massive solo hit in 1985 with her cover of Prince's "I Feel For You" that had included harmonica courtesy Stevie Wonder and an introductory rap by Grandmaster Melle Mel.
The singer has remained active as a performer and recording artist through her most recent album Hello Happiness from 2019. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. Chaka Khan will get support from popular British reggae band Steel Pulse. Founded in Birmingham in the mid-1970s by lead singer/rhythm guitarist David Hinds and keyboard player Selwyn Brown, the group took inspiration from the growing popularity of Jamaican reggae giant Bob Marley and made its name playing punk venues around England.
The outfit wore its politics on the members' collective sleeves from the outset, releasing their first single "Ku Klux Klan" in 1978 on Island Records. Steel Pulse allied themselves with the Rock Against Racism organization and played the first RAR music festival around the same time. The band shared stages as often with punk contemporaries like the Stranglers and XTC as they did with fellow reggae artists including Burning Spear. The band has maintained the activist tone of their music throughout their career, from '80s albums entitled True Democracy and Earth Crisis through to their most recent recording, Mass Manipulation from 2019. Popular Bay Area DJ Ladyryan also appears.
Stern Grove Festival Big Picnic
Sylvan Esso and Poolside
Saturday, Aug. 24, 2 p.m. Free (reservations required)
Chaka Khan and Steel Pulse
Sunday, Aug. 25, 2 p.m. Free (reservations required)