Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival

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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