The 13th Annual San Francisco Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival began yesterday and runs through February 19. Musical performances, dances, workshops and jam sessions abound, along with a Saturday night old-time square dance. More than 30 shows are slated at an array of small clubs around the Bay area featuring such local favorites as The Brothers Comatose, The Crooked Jades, the Kathy Kallick Quartet, Evie Ladin, Nell Robinson & Jim Nunally, and the Earl White String Band, as well as touring Americana and roots artists like Boston’s The Deadly Gentlemen, Portland, Oregon’s Foghorn Stringband, Chicago’s Henhouse Prowlers, Seattle old-time duo Cahalen Morrison & Eli West, and Brooklyn, NY honky-tonk country band The Sweetback Sisters.

As part of it efforts to keep the tradition of bluegrass and old-time music alive and to spotlight local Bay Area artists, the grassroots, nonprofit, volunteer-run festival has also slated a band contest for the first time.

Special shows for children also are on the schedule, while a Bluegrass and Old-Time in the Schools program aims to expose elementary and secondary school students to the legacy of this roots music.

More information on the festival can be found at www.sfbluegrass.org.