Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival

Jerry Moore's LIFE IS A CONSTANT JOURNEY HOME

We heard from Jerry Moore, who’s thinking about re-forming the Jerry Moore Work Band and/or Children of God. These acts were staples on the Woodstock music scene in the late sixties and seventies.

Jerry’s brother, Don Moore, was a member of Children of God for a time and he says the group took their name from an Odetta song. The lyric went something like “We are all children of God.” Don says they obtained Odetta’s permission to use the phrase as the name of their band. They were like the Chambers Brothers and their music had a great get-up-and-go vibe. It got people dancing. They had a guitar line plus a trumpet and saxophone players. In 1969 they played the Woodstock Sound-Outs at Pan Copeland’s farm. After the Woodstock festival at Bethel, Michael Lang bought out their management contract.

Jerry Moore plans to debut his re-formed band at Roots of Woodstock Live Concert on 8/15/09.

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Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys at the Woodstock farm

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 country. His space was defined by a bustling cityscape, but he was outvoted. The band soon rented Pan Copeland’s farmhouse on the outskirts of Woodstock for $90 per month. They later learned that it was haunted, but they were penniless so they stuck it out. The field back of the house was a natural amphitheater. Cat Mother became the host band for the Woodstock Sound-Outs in the summer of 1968. They invited acts of their acquaintance to perform, like Tim Hardin, Jerry Jeff Walker and David Bromberg. No money was exchanged, but the acts could camp out or stay at the band’s 17-room farm house and eat from the a huge stewpot that was always warming on the range. The word went out via the underground. The Sound-Outs were all about peace, love and sharing.

This was all happening in the summer before the 1969 mega-festival in Bethel. According to Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival: The Backstory to “Woodstock,” Michael Lang attended these Sound-Outs, and they sparked his thinking about doing a similar “Woodstock” event.

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Tags: Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys, Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, Sound-Outs Posted in Roots Book |