Hollywood Bowl – June 18, 2025
Here we go back to the Bowl for a lovely Wednesday night show. I’ll be honest, this show was not on my radar until I saw that Steve Martin was a special guest. I saw that Ed Helms was another guest and was surprised to learn he also plays the banjo – but we’ll get to that.
First of all, they MOVED THE CULVER CITY BUS! I’d left work a bit early to give myself time to stop home and grab my stuff and hopefully get on the first bus early enough to choose a seat on the starboard side so the sun wouldn’t be glaring on my phone while we were on the 405. I got to WLA College at 5:08 and there was no one there. I thought it was odd, so I checked the app and found out the bus had been moved to the La Cienega Expo Station parking lot (yes, I know it’s called the E line now – I still call the A Line the Blue Line too). I plugged it into Maps and it said I’d be there at 5:31, so away I went. I don’t know if you’ve traveled down Jefferson through Culver City in the late afternoon, but it’s the very definition of the word “gridlock”. When I finally pulled into the parking lot at 5:35 or so, the familiar guy with a mustache handed me a parking pass and directed me to park upstairs. He said the pass was good for the entire season and I had 15 minutes to get to the bus. Phew! Parking is normally $3, so that pass will come in handy. He didn’t have a lot of them and I had the feeling he wasn’t giving them to everyone. I could be wrong though. Once I was on the bus I texted the friend I’ll be going to the Bowl with on July 3rd to tell her they moved the bus and she said, “I know, I got the email.” Now why would they send an email to her and not to me? Sigh. The good news about the new bus location is that it’s not really near the freeway but is a lot closer to Hollywood, so we just went up La Cienega and were there in just over half an hour.
Julie got there pretty fast too so we had lots of time to make our way up to our cheap seats and stop for a cushion. She brought sandwiches and pastries. I brought Jolly Joes and Red Vines. We were amused by the kind of crowd Rhiannon Giddens drew – cowboy boots and Birkenstocks.
Ed Helms served as MC for the show. Rhiannon played and sang a couple of songs and then brought out Our Native Daughters and Rainbow Coalition. After intermission, Alison Brown and her band were joined by Steve Martin and then Rhiannon returned with her Old-Time Revue and were joined by Ed Helms – who might actually make it as a banjo player because he meets Steve Martin’s requirements for banjo success, “One – be very creative and never compromise your music, and two – already be famous.” For the encore, everyone was onstage. There were a lot of banjos…a LOT of banjos! That was exactly what I was hoping for, so I enjoyed the evening. At the beginning of the night, Rhiannon had said she was excited for the show because no one she asked to join her had said no. She was right to be excited. The music was wonderful. It’s refreshing to see so many women on stage too. Our Native Daughters and Rainbow Coalition are all women. Even though Steve Martin made jokes about being the star, it was clear that he was joining Alison Brown and HER band on stage. And speaking of Steve Martin, he was the highlight for me. He’s just so amusing while at the same time killing it on banjo.
The Bowl was not packed so getting back to the bus was easy. And on my way back down the hill, I saw that the dude with the dog puppet takes Venmo now which means I now know his name: David Liebe Hart. Look him up – you won’t be disappointed. I made it to the first bus and started working on the puzzle, because one thing I learned on the way there is that it’s a lot bumpier on surface streets and bumping makes it pretty hard to get the puzzle done. We were back at the train station pretty quickly, but since it was so late at night I was able to make a left out of the lot onto La Cienega. I had been wondering for hours how I was going to get out of that lot facing the right direction. It turned out to be easy.
All in all a great way to spend a Wednesday night and well worth the $12 ticket price.