Roots of Woodstock by Weston Blelock
Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys
During the spring of 1968, Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys lived on Manhattan's lower east side. They were the house band at the Electric Circus. The way banjo player Charlie Chin tells it, Bob Smith, the keyboard player, began to promote the idea that everybody was going up to the country. The band's mantra became, "Yeah, let's move up to the country." Charlie was a city cat and hated the...
Bob Fass on the Woodstock Sound-Outs
For more than 40 years, Bob Fass has hosted Radio Unnameable on Pacifica Radio's WBAI. Fass's show pioneered free-form radio. He has welcomed them all—the famous as well as the lesser known. Some of the former include Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, The Fugs, and Happy and Artie Traum. In the late sixties, Fass emceed a series of music festivals on the outskirts of Woodstock, NY. As Fass writes in...
Roots Concert Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: David Salidor Phone: 212-245-5909 Email: DSalidorCompany@aol.com Woodstock at Woodstock Live Concert Concert Team Books Initial Acts Woodstock, NY—June 16, 2009—Weston and Julia Blelock, producers of the August 15, 2009, Roots of Woodstock Live Concert at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, today announced a preliminary lineup for the...
Ellen McIlwaine Returns to Woodstock for Roots Concert
Ellen McIlwaine played the Woodstock Sound-Outs during the late sixties with her group Fear Itself. Larry Packer relates in Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival: The Backstory to "Woodstock" that he once saw Ellen give a "Janis Joplin-like" performance. After McIlwaine left Fear Itself, she achieved cult status with her Polydor albums of Honky Tonk Angel and We the People. Over a 40-year career,...
ROOTS Book: Dylan in the Sixties
Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home was written upstairs from Woodstock’s Café Espresso in a studio that Dylan dubbed “The White Room.” This building, at 59 Tinker Street, is now occupied by The Center for Photography. Dylan wrote the album at a feverish pace and appropriated bits of lore from the local scene to fill out his lyrics. For example, in “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” Dylan raps in...
Woodstock Cleans Up . . .
The June 6th Spring Clean-Up Event in Woodstock, NY, was a big success. Well over 100 volunteers turned out, and the bicycle teams picked up numerous bags of trash from roadside collectors distributed all over town. This was another event in support of Woodstock's Zero-Carbon Initiative. Thank you, Greg Stanton, and all those who participated, including corporate sponsors! ~ Weston...
The Backstory to “Woodstock”
Saturday, July 18, from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Kleinert/James Arts Center, 34 Tinker Street in Woodstock, NY: WoodstockArts, in association with The Golden Notebook, will host a brief presentation celebrating the newly published Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival. This will be followed by a contemporary Sound-Out, with special music guest Naked. The event is free and open to all, and...
Roots Concert Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: David Salidor Phone: 212-245-5909 Email: DSalidorCompany@aol.com Roots of Woodstock Live Concert 40th Anniversary Concert Brings Festival Home to Woodstock Woodstock, NY—May 19, 2009—Weston Blelock, author and editor of WoodstockArts' forthcoming Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival: The Backstory to "Woodstock," has...
Roots Book Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: David Salidor Phone: 212-245-5909 Email: DSalidorCompany@aol.com Why Woodstock? Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival Woodstock, NY-April 13, 2009-The town of Woodstock is poised to launch a series of fortieth-anniversary celebrations of the 1969 Woodstock mega-concert. Prime among these is the July 15, 2009, launch of a new book from publisher...