The man, who wanted to establish a festival for blue grass music and collaborated with Sheri Sternberg and Dawn Holliday to produce the festival, which eventually became the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, is Warren Hellman.
Hellman first mentioned his dream of holding a festival for bluegrass music in the park to Jonathan Nelson in 2001. Holliday and Sternberg agreed to help and would continue to produce the festival, respectively, each year thereafter. 
