Bob Fass on the Woodstock Sound-Outs
Bob Fass of RADIO UNNAMEABLE
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 his foreword to Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, these were known as the Sound-Outs: “Someone from USCO called it Sound-Out because it wasn’t a Be-In.” He continues,
“We invited the best musicians we knew. Stagehands built a stage. Macrobiotic, energy-transforming food was prepared and sold for pennies a bowl. Mind-expanding goulash imported from around the world was abundant. It was a potent mix of the new and the traditional. There was a whole lot of love and whole lot of creativity and community spirit . . .”
The festivals were open-air affairs held on Pan Copeland’s farm in West Saugerties, NY. Some of the acts associated with the Sound-Outs include Ellen McIlwaine’s Fear Itself, the Colwell-Winfield Blues Band, Tim Hardin, Don McLean, Scott Fagan, Frank Wakefield, and Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys.
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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 40th anniversary tie-in event. Music acts booked so far include the Dave Mason Band, Hubert Sumlin and Ellen McIlwaine. Read the rest of this entry »
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 Ellen McIlwaine has toured the world and worked with musicians like David Sanborn, Van Morrison, Link Wray, Rory Gallagher, John McLaughlin, Roy Buchanan, Jack Bruce, Taj Mahal and Cassius Khan. Needless to say we’re very excited to have Ellen appear at the Roots gig at the Bearsville Theater on August 15. Here is a link to Ellen playing “Jimmy Jean” from her We the People album: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzHUU9Lj5u0.
ROOTS Book: Dylan in the Sixties
Bob Dylan's BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME
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 the final lines, “The pump don’t work ‘cause the vandals took the handles.” This is said by locals to refer to the water pump at the Woodstock Library.
One of Dylan’s sideman on the project was Kenny Rankin, who performed at a Woodstock Sound-Out in 1967. ROOTS is in mourning for Kenny, who passed away on June 7, 2009. For more on this, click here.
Roots Pressroom
Fund-Raiser Concert
To raise money for Woodstock’s Zero-Carbon Initiative, Roots of Woodstock LLC held a "40th anniversary" concert on August 15, 2009, at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock.
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